If you answer, “I am a an accountant”, that is usually the
end of that line of questions.
If you answer, “I am a fireworks engineer”, there are some
exclamations of awesomeness, and maybe a question about how they too might
become a fireworks engineer.
If you answer, “I am an expedition coordinator for a dude
that walks alot”, there are endless more questions. Always in the first four,
though, is “and so--- what do you Do?”
This time they are not asking what is your job, how do you
make money, how do you contribute to society. They mean – literally- what do
you Do?. How do you spend the hours
between breakfast and lunch, between lunch and dinner.
This is not an easy question to answer. The tasks that fill
my day vary so vastly they rarely fit in the listener’s attention span. And in
a few weeks, that list will be done and a new chapter of the project will
commence, altering my answers even as I speak them.
And yet here I am. What can I say, I like to appease my
readers. Here is “a day in the life”, based (very) loosely on the last week or
so out at the remote cabin, as we prepare for the expedition.
It is light enough to read a book at 3:15am. Luckily that
doesn’t stop anyone around here from sleeping in. When I wake up, I watch the
baby sparrows in the nest just outside the window, cheep and duck and tussle, as
Mom Sparrow swiftly darts here and there, pausing only long enough to lovingly
feed her chirping babies before dashing off to find more food.
In the morning we answer emails, order airplane parts,
camera equipment, tools, and electronics, research and brainstorm solutions to
pressing issues like how to keep the camera dry in the rain, which tablet to
buy, who manufactures the most dependable camera card, how to increase the
battery power in the plane and still be within regulations.
I usually spend some time with the budget and expenditures,
organizing receipts, restructuring the ‘to do’ list, providing Mike with
spending reports (hey Mike- we’re definitely not spending enough money.)
During and after this, we work on the plane refit.
Strategically placing the mounts on the wing struts, measuring, bolting down the aluminum plates, measuring again, constructing waterproof containers for the cameras
out of pelican cases, PVC pipe, and 4200, grinding bolts down.
Then we go flying. One person flies with Mike, practicing
shooting out of the window, getting accustomed to the experience, sorting out
where the equipment will go, enjoying the scenery. The other people
film the take off, the fly-by’s, the landing, and swat at mosquitos.
Once the plane is tied up and put away, we hop in the jet
boat with crab traps, fishing poles, cameras, and rain coats, and tool around in
the river and bay, always hoping to bring home dinner. (If this doesn’t sound
like work, you go manully haul in a crab pot 200’ down over the side of a tippy
jet boat with your bare hands….No, wait, that doesn’t feel like work either…)
The evenings are for brainstorming- designing the layout of
the support van, devising a way to securely attach a gopro to the tail of the
plane- and for uploading. In any given day, we take 20-80 GB of images and video.
It doesn’t take long for the backlog to become overwhelming, so it’s a daily
requirement. We upload all the data to lots of 1 TB harddrives, organized by
day, camera, location, event, and file type. Then we sort through each one
and pull out the selects from the day.
Try as we might, we can’t seem to sit down to dinner before
9:30pm, there’s just too much usable light. At 11:30 there is still blue in the
sky, and it’s hard to start thinking about bed. We read, write, drink tea, get
sucked into facebook.
I know, it sounds like hard work. And sometimes it is. This
is not a 9-5. We’re at work when we wake up, and we’re at work as we’re
brainstorming before sleep takes over. But we also find time to wrestle with
Chaco, do yoga, take naps in the sun (when it’s out), take long walks through
shoulder-high grass, read a novel, hold lengthy debates over the best brand of pocket knife, go for canoe rides.
So, what do you Do?
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