St. Genevieve - 5/7

I had a nightmare.  I was driving down some back street at night when a figure emerged from the shadows ahead of me.  Without any warning the man drew a gun and began firing.  I took the only turn available to me on my left.  Immediately after turning I was forced to take another—this one bringing me to a wall of concrete rubble.  I looked behind me to see where my assailant was… and then I woke up.

This dream terrified me.  I want so badly to leave my mark on this world and if I have to make an early exit, I want to do so heroically.  Nothing epic about being shot down in an alley… It’s just… our lives are short enough as it is.  Who or what would have the audacity to rob someone of that brief shimmer in time—that chance to leave a lasting legacy?  Gah, now I’m feeling even more rushed to try and make it through my bucket list, which has 65 objectives (and counting).  A lot of it requires money as there are very few means to get around these days without it, but maybe I will find a couple of loopholes down the way.  I do like looking for secret passages of sorts. 

Moving right along to the AmeriCorps portion of this entry, Chelsea thought the same thing I did yesterday about chemical usage so we toned it down.  We ended up needing to mix a little extra at lunch, but we used up all of the chemical on things that needed spraying!  Felt a little better about that.  I also saw my first water snake on this journey while fording a river.  It swam up and took a good look at me before scurrying off.  Guess I don’t smell that good or something.

Well that about wraps up my day; more spraying, better accuracy, and lots of walking along the highway.  Oh, and uh, I may be sun burned.  Good night all!

St. Genevieve - 5/6

The miles we are currently on are very sparse in terms of Teasel and Knapweed.  Truth be told it has been a week since I saw any Knapweed—but that could be attributed to the fact that I am not that great at identifying it.  Teasel, on the other hand, I have started to call Nirnroot because, like the plant in the Elder Scrolls games, it is rare and it will often times be found near a water source.  This is not to say it is only found near water as we have found it covering entire hillsides, but in the past couple of days that is primarily where the menace has been found. 

Lili and I hiked about 3 miles before lunch and only found 3 Nirnroots in that stretch.  After our meal, we switched up the groups and I joined Will on the UTV.  I was able to point out 2 patches of the invasives for him to spray before we hit the half hour mark after our intended stopping time.  From what I hear the weeds will pick back up around Appleton, but until then I think we will need to decrease the amount of herbicide we are concocting since our contacts want it all sprayed out of the UTV by the day’s end.  Chemicals aren’t cheap! It would be best that we spray them on the threat rather than spray it all over as a preventative measure—but that’s just me thinking aloud.

Oh, another thing, it is HOT in Missouri! We are supposed to wear long shirts, pants, boots, gloves… basically our PPE when spraying chemical is to be completely covered up.  I don’t know how they do it overseas.  I felt like an oven.  I resorted to cheating a bit and rolling the sleeves up on my jacket.  Hopefully the sprinkles of chemical that drifted upon my person won’t have any lingering effects—unless those effects are super powers, then please by all means. 

Bed time!  I just finished watching our host’s puppy.  Daisy snuck over here when she was putting a load in the laundry and stayed with us for dinner.  I tried contacting Donna next door but knocking, door bell ringing, and even calling proved ineffective, so, I just played with the dog.  It’s never a bad time for a little pet therapy.  Anyways, I will catch you all later.  

St. Genevieve - 5/5

Lili stole Chelsea’s thunder today.  It is Chelsea’s Birthday, but Lili is now the talk of the town because she left a note at the restaurant we celebrated at, the Anvil.  In this note she broke the news to the waitress that the cheese they served her was, in fact, American and not Cheddar.  Lili did add that the service was very nice, so it wasn’t just criticism, and signed her name to be polite.  Later when we were heading home from the Sand Bar where we toasted Chelsea on her name day, a car stopped ahead of us and shouted something that took us a couple of moments to comprehend.  They said, “The Brick House’s Cheddar is real cheese.”  The Brick House is the other restaurant in town we considered going to and, according to a sign, was the first brick house erected west of the Mississippi.  So yeah, within the course of a couple hours most of the town heard about Lili’s note and can pick us out in a crowd.  Hopefully this doesn’t prove poorly for us on future St. Genevieve excursions!

In terms of service, we just took a course in safety involving UTV’s and off road vehicles.  It was an online course so nothing spiffy, but I think it makes the MDC folks a little more comfortable after a couple of rough weeks.  Good news is that we have a new UTV (new as in I haven’t used this one yet)…bad news is the one we were using last week needs to be checked out because the front right tire suspension was acting funny.  So, we’re still at 1 vehicle, but hopefully another one will be ready for action again soon.  Regardless, it is back to highway work tomorrow!

Good night all and a big Happy Birthday to you Chelsea Catalano!

A throw wayyy back to when we did Quest.

St. Genevieve - 5/1

Average snake sightings a day?  3!  Today Sean and I saw 4—2 milk snakes, a rat snake, and a copperhead.  I’m becoming more and more paranoid walking through the brush, like, at any minute a wild creature will appear and I’m not talking about an adorable pokemon.  The hills are riddled with holes and every time the wind blows the tall grass makes a hissing sound.  I think infrared goggles should become part of our PPE… although I don’t know if they will work on snakes… cold-blooded abnormalities that they are.  I guess we will just have to continue being cautious!

We got a couple more miles done today, but I’m beginning to fear that our method is not the most efficient.  Everyone isn’t clear on the spraying protocol when it comes to how much and where our boundaries are, including me.  I kind of blame the constant fluctuation of team members on that, but that is always going to be an issue so we’re going to need to find a solution for groups to come.

Anyways, to celebrate a hard week’s work we went out onto the banks of the Mississippi River.  On our way we passed a decrepit building that looks like something you would find in the Fallout video game series.  There were the remains of a gas pump and several parking lot lights that have long since lost their illumination.  The structures near the lot had shattered windows, litter covering the floors and graffiti murals on most of the walls.  In short, the place has seen better days.  Upon arriving at our destination we got a fire going on the shore and just sat around and talked for hours.  It’s moments like these that I cherish in this program—a little calm in a sea of chaos.  What a lovely night.

Good night for now friends.

St. Genevieve - 4/30

I may be Legolas’s equivalent in the realm of chemical application.  While the rest of my team averages 2 to 3 refills a day for their backpack sprayers I never have to reload.  I sprayed constantly today, determined to exhaust the pack but to no avail.  The only reason I ended up getting more chemical was because the UTV stopped by and the crew wanted me to have a sprayer with a larger capacity… They were unaware of the enchantment placed upon it, but I parted with Teasel’s Bane (I may have named it…) with only a moderate amount of fuss.

We knocked out a couple more miles today and I volunteered to join the fight on foot so somebody else could experience some variety here in St. Genevieve.  There were a TON of snakes.  One of them was 5 to 6 feet long.  Another one that I nearly stepped on was shaking its tail violently.  All of the poisonous snakes in this region have a diamond or leaner head with narrow eyes, but this one had a rounder head with eyes to match so we knew it was just an imitator.  Lili insists that somebody is going to suffer a snake’s wrath before this project is through—here’s hoping that’s not the case!

Well our chef tenderizing the meat disappeared so I better swoop in and rescue our dinner that consists of braughts, burgers, and a fruit salad.  I am not familiar with cooking any of these… so here goes nothing!  Later all!

St. Genevieve - 4/29

It looks like my team won’t be called out on disaster so long as things proceed as expected for the remainder of the week.  Due to a relatively calm winter there are a lot of people just itching to volunteer so unless the disaster is catastrophic it is unlikely that we will be needed.  Still, we have two other groups on standby in the event that they need a little assistance.

As for us, Team Green, we continued our assault on the Teasel and Knapweed that are invading Missouri’s right-of-ways.  Will and I manned the UTV and we had two other teams take backpack sprayers to cover more ground.  Honestly with all of the water ways and bluffs it would have been more efficient for us all to go on foot—except for one field.  I think we had to make 3 passes to get everything in there.  Everyone did well though and we made it to the next exit before we got word that rain was headed in our direction.

On our journey home we saw a flipped semi right where we had been working the day before.  I’m not sure how many people see it as such, but working the highways is an extremely dangerous job.  The lips of the road are usually small and the land beyond that often times is unforgiving.  Bluffs, ravines, hills—if a driver was distracted or sleepy there is very little room for error on both our parts to avoid a calamity.  We were lucky this time, but the accident does make me wonder if our task is one that AmeriCorps should be doing.

Anyways, we’re back at the Creole House.  I am pretty exhausted and laying down anywhere sounds like a good idea.  An early good night to you all!

St. Genevieve - 4/28

This week is going to be interesting.  In the event that we stick around St. Genevieve Wes only wants Will and I to drive the UTV.  Don’t get me wrong, I love working the vehicle, I just feel bad because everyone else is backpack spraying.  If Wes sticks to his guns maybe we can switch out the gunner so everyone will get a break from the packs.  But yes, there is also a chance we will get called out on disaster to Mississippi or Alabama.  Several states have been ravaged by tornadoes and some are being hit as we speak (Arkansas is a big one).  We do not have access to the internet here, but through a couple of phone calls we know one of our teams was called back to the office and that we are on standby.  While I hope nobody has been seriously hurt, I kind of want the call as I would love a little experience in the disaster field: it was a key factor in my joining the Emergency Response Team.  We may even get the call later tonight…hmm, I suppose it would be wise to get some sleep just in case.  Good night all; I hope you’re all safe.