And getting ready

 I decided tomorrow would be a good day to get my first set of samples. I'm going to do six locations - three on the east side of the main path; three on the west. And mixed in with that, three will be under trees (two sets of oak - an area with denser forest, and an area with more scattered trees  - and one with mostly elm) and three under herbaceous vegetation (at least one in a heavily sericea lespedeza invaded area; if I can easily enough find a couple locations it's not moved into yet I'll use those as the other two)

I'd like to get all six tomorrow but if I start to fatigue or my knee gets hurting, I can get the three west samples first and go back the following day for the other set.

I will have to leave early; it's not too bad before noon but after that it gets awfully hot. I am hoping to get there not too much after 8 am. 

I've gathered (I hope) everything I need: sample bags, and a marker to mark on them, and my field book and pencils, and the bulb corer I use for sampling. I have a water bottle ready to go (you need to keep drinking water in the field). I'm going to take one of my hiking staffs to help support myself and in case my knee gets to hurting.

I need to also record the vegetation around where I take the samples, and record the UTM coordinates of each one. I do have surveyors flags to help find them again but you can't always trust those - deer sometimes eat the flagging, or people who go out there to get fishing access see them and pull them out even though they know people do research out there. It would be nice to sit for part of that so I tried again with the camp stools we keep on hand for this kind of thing. I tried them in March before trying to do a field lab - that was back when my knee hurt MUCH worse, the bone bruise was still not well healed - and I couldn't bend my knee enough to get down on it, and I was afraid I'd not get back up. But today, it was fine. So I'm going to take it even though it's another thing to carry, it will be good to be able to sit to reduce fatigue on my knee.

I have been doing workouts and the PT stretches and that does make it better, and walking distances is more tolerable then, so I think it's mostly a matter at this point of strengthening the muscles and keeping arthritis at bay. 

I admit, I'm still apprehensive - I don't have anyone to go WITH me. My SOP for this is to text a couple people (including our AA, who has a son who is a sheriff's deputy in this county) and tell them "if I don't text you by noon, send someone after me" though it's a big area and I could be hard to find if I was DOWN. (Though if I was down but okay - just hurting knee - I could probably direct people to where I was, or even wave my hat and maybe someone could see. I wear a brightly colored field hat for visibility).

Nothing has ever gone wrong before, but yeah, I worry about my knee now.

I did have to get a few other things prepared. I got out the "funnels" (really: aluminum foil pans with the bottoms cut out and a piece of mesh inserted, and got out the large beakers I use to catch what falls out.. I realized I didn't have any isopropyl (the standard preservative we use) but that's easy, a trip to a chain pharmacy will obtain that. (And I also needed new repellent and sunscreen). 

And then I walked to the storage building to look for any of the remaining specimen cups that I put the samples in after they're extracted. I had forgotten the colleague who oversees that retired, and as a result, he had rearranged stuff (and removed the stuff that belonged to him personally). I couldn't find my remaining cups (If there WERE any remaining ones; I may have given the few I had left to a student doing a research project). I did find my Conetainers so if I need them again, they're there, along with the racks for holding them. 

But that was a simple enough fix - since I don't have a grant for this it's on my own dime but it also makes getting stuff on a quick turnaround easier, so I ordered a set of "non sterile" (they don't need to be) specimen cups off of Amazon; something like 100 for $30 which is cheap enough.

Yes, these are the urine-specimen cups but they have lids and stack well and hold the stuff I need them to hold. 

But I will admit it slightly annoys me that in the name of "tidiness" (this is partly a dictum of our safety folks) all unused supplies have to be put in a storage building, where you then have to go hunt for them, and it's sometimes hard to remember what you do have. (As I said: I may have given away the remaining specimen cups and that's why I couldn't find them, and only remembered that I still had some).

Then again: another colleague who had commandeered ALL the drawer space in the lab I use retired two years ago; I might be able to stow the rest of the cups in one of the drawers, which would be good, because I will need some each month through perhaps October, and then again next year if the results I get are interesting. 

I just hope Amazon comes through in time and these don't disappear in the system like stuff sometimes does; I can leave the samples in the beakers for a BIT but the alcohol does evaporate if it's not sealed up. If they do seem to get lost, I might just go out and buy the small canning jars and lids, which would be heavier and more expensive, but whatever. I didn't plan as well as I should have for this. 

I also bought new boot socks; I can never find a matching pair but now I can. 

I just hope it goes well. It probably will go fine; I'm leaving before it gets really hot and walking on a softer surface like vegetation or soil is much better than walking on sidewalk, but I still worry a bit.