Laverne to the rescue!

Well, last week was a long one (eventhough I had Monday off). My travels included the Southern Tier, and near the east end of Oneida Lake. The weather has been quite rainy as of late, which is good because we need it, but not good for our surveys because the birds don't come out and play when its crappy. So far we are on schedule and halfway done with our first go-round.

On Tuesday we were down south of Watkins Glen. We stayed in Ithaca because it was close enough for us to drive to the sites from my apartment, but it meant being on the road at 4:30am. It poured on the way to the first site. Things weren't looking good initially, but as we arrived at the first property the rains halted and the sky broke up. Perfect!! We didn't have to turn around and could continue as planned. It was pretty good day, birdwise, and as we finished the last site I took off my field gear, set down my clipboard and wrung out my saturated socks. "Lets eat," I drearily proclaimed. We drove off to this great little diner in the Glen, called Tobe's, to get some much-needed coffee and greasy breakfast food. It was a long morning and I was spent. After breakfast we went back to my apartment where I proceeded to take nap, because it was off to the Chappy for the Tuesday night ritual of Irish music, free popcorn, beer and good conversation.

Before we left for the bar I was getting my stuff together so I could have an extra 15 minutes of sleep, when I could not find my clipboard that had all the data sheets I had filled out. My heart sank. I looked in the car, underneath the couches, the table, everywhere. It was nowhere to be found. Then it dawned on me....I may have left it on the trunk of the car when I took off all my shit to wring off out my socks. I was so embarrased because I am not usually a space case like that, but the lack of coffee and sleep had made me weak. What to do? Well, luckily the next group of sites were in that general direction, so we decided to go search the roadways near our last stop. We got there about 7:00am, and it was nowhere to be found. The bright spot was there were no pieces of broken and shattered plastic clipboard anywhere. I crossed my fingers with hopes that someone picked it up and would notice the Audubon card inside and call the office.

The next day found us camping on Oneida Lake. After doing our surveys near Canastota, I was relaxing by the shores of the lake when my phone rang. It was my supervisor and he was calling to see how we were doing, and to let me know someone had called him and found my clipboard!! Halleluja (sp?)!!!! I was psyched that I didn't have to write on a stupid manila folder anymore, becasue they make horrible clipboards, and oh yeah, I didn't lose the data that I had collected so far.

Laverne found my clipboard on the road where I was sure we lost it, and had it in his posession. But how to get it? We were too far away to drive and get it, but I was headed back to Ithaca for the weekend, and could drive back down to Watkins Glen to pick it up. It was an extra trip, but there's a great brewery and resturaunt that I could stop at as I drove through there. It turned out that Laverne wasn't going to be in town this weekend, because he is a truck driver. He delivers nails. Wow, thats pretty tough. But it turns out, he delivers to NYSEG in Ithaca which is two miles from my house. Perfect, I'll just meet him there and pick it up. He called me on Friday to let me know that he did not go home and did not have the clipboard on him, but he would be in town on Saturday. But, that didn't work for me because I was going to be golfing in a tournament all day. I'm never going to get this freakin' thing I thought. But it all worked out, as Dan was not going home downstate, and was going to stay in Cortland with a friend. Perfect! As I returned from the tournament, I walked in to find my precious clipboard sitting on the coffee table. Thank You Laverne, because of you I did not lose over a weeks worth of data vital to this program. The embarrasment was killing me.