Second Week of Field Work Recap - 9/11-9/17

Hello good friends and buddies. It is I, Alyson, writing to you from Virginia. We have found a great many crickets. They send their regards.Last week our story left off in Massachusetts, with little luck to be had where crickets were concerned. Alas, that transect’s crickets all preferred private property over TJ’s highly revered baseball fields. Our MA sites included the garden in front of an antiques business, an abandoned old house the size of a shed, an apartment complex bordering a railroad, and a huge property owned by a little old woman who was very intimidated by TJ.The coolest site by far, however, was one we went to with Luana Maroja (Williamstown University). Just across the border into Vermont, there is a former office building turned horse racing track turned greyhound racing track, which finally shut down in the 80s and has been old and abandoned ever since. This site featured river access, a solar panel field, old horse stables, and a Civil War era graveyard. The graffiti was enlightening, the vibes post-apocalyptic, and the crickets plentiful.Monday saw us on a drive back to Pennsylvania after prepping our new pops for shipping. We sampled some along the way with little luck aside from a few V. micado (invasive). We made it to PA in about seven hours, then I had a lovely rest day filled with cat snuggles, studying, and relaxing while watching TJ run around and “not work”.On Wednesday, we drove out to New Jersey to collect another live population of beach crickets before continuing south. The car decided it thought it might be dying somewhere in Delaware, so we took it in to a Virginia Beach Subaru dealership the next morning. We were carless for a full day and walked nine miles on and around Virginia Beach. On an unrelated note, the next day I unintentionally took a four-hour nap. I’m sure I’m fine. Everything is fine.Yesterday may have seen me curled up in the fetal position at the foot of the bed in a Virginian La Quinta, but things are looking up. Our car is back and we are moving on to Petersburg today. May the crickets of Virginia come to fear our names.

In other news:

I made a hotel waffle this morning. It turned out oddly shaped and stuck to the top of the iron. There were three young children watching as I took a full forty seconds to pry my waffle away from the hot griddle with standard issue Cheap Plastic Tongs. I curse this waffle.