Down for the Count

My latest tour was an 8-day back out to Pioche working with the BLM to restore the Sage Grouse habitat. However, because it was so cold the tour before, the NCC sprang for a hotel! Well, motel rather. Going from the Mandarin Oriental to the Midway Motel was quite the shock. It took me a while to understand that I had to get up to turn out the light and that there was no TV in the bathroom!! Can you believe that?! ;) Even though the Midway Motel was no Mandarin, it was so lovely being able to get dressed in a heated room and know that at the end of the day, I could curl up in bed with a hot cup of tea and relax.


Unfortunately, I caught a cold mid-week and was bed ridden for two days. I was really happy that I got sick during this week in the motel, instead of being stuck in a cold tent. Those two days were spent sleeping and trying to get better. I must note how amazing my crew was! The guys were great! While they were out working, I'd receive texts asking how I was feeling and to get better soon - they didn't like being without a girl! While they were back at the motel, everyone knocked on the door and poked their head in to see if I needed anything. They brought me hot tea, dinner, chocolate and even went to the pharmacy to get me some medicine! The guys were amazing and I am so thankful for everything they did for me! Thanks guys!

We ended up having to leave a day early because the conditions were too bad to continue working. It was raining, snowing, extremely foggy and muddy. Our work site was about 30mins down a dirt road and once the rain hit, it was near impossible to get out of it. On our way out, we stopped to take this pretty cool crew photo:

So, it's Sunday and I am home already. It's weird, but I do have to work tomorrow still. Somehow they're going to find 8 hrs worth of work for 20 people to do at the office. I'll let you know just how mind numbing it was..

One thing that I am just SO excited about is going home for Christmas!!! I am flying out Tuesday night and get to CT on Wednesday morning. I cannot wait to see my family and friends! These past 8-days have dragged by in anticipation of my trip home. I honestly cannot wait to hug my family!! :) See you soon guys! Xoxo!

Burrr!

After our local desert clean up tour, we were sent back out to eastern Nevada near a tiny town called Pioche. Because a few different projects fell through last minute and this is an on going-project, the NCC sent us back out east. Not the typical work location for the winter months. This is the same project that I started with, the Ely BLM Sage Grouse Habitat Restoration, way back in August. We were sent out with another saw crew of 10 people to cut Junipers and Pinon Pines. I'm not really going to go into detail about the project. If you're interested or forgot, you can refer to some of my earlier posts.

This tour was pretty chilly. It seems I just cannot escape the cold and/or winter no matter where I go. I figured I'd be pretty safe in the desert - guess not. Most of our nights got down into the 20's. Every morning, my tent flap was frozen solid. The days got up into the 50's or so but just plummeted at night. I didn't really enjoy it at all. We had to huddle around the campfire each night before sprinting to our tents and jumping in our sleeping bags.
Since we were working and camping with another crew, pranks were bound to happen. It started when the other crew placed one of my crew members' tent in a tree! We didn't even get a chance to retaliate before they hit us again! They moved all of our kitchen stuff - food bins, dishes, stove - to the farthest tent. Later that night, we also found out that they had dug a hole under my supervisors tent so when he got in it, he sank. Pay back's a b*tch. :)

To get them back, we (mainly one unnamed member of the crew) proceeded to put dirt in their clean dish bin and then added water. Took all of their silverware and stuck them in the ground, unstaked all of their tents and hid them and took all of their camp chairs. After they returned to camp, a truce was declared. It was all in good fun and lightened the mood of a rather chilly tour.

So THAT's Vegas!

One of my best friends from Boston came out to visit me in early December. We used to live together when I lived there and she works for the luxurious hotel, Mandarin Oriental. She was able to get us an amazing room at the Las Vegas location for a great price and we lived it up! We saw Vegas how you're supposed to see it. ;) Technically being a local, I hadn't yet seen that side of Vegas. It was so wonderful to see her and get some seriously needed GIRL TIME in. She landed on Thursday night, right after I got back from a 4-day tour out near Pioche, NV. I was kind enough to shower before picking her up and we headed to the strip to check into our hotel. We decided to make that night a girls night in. We put on our robes and slippers, ate some chocolate and had some cocktails and caught up. Perfect way to start the weekend!


We walked most of the strip on Friday checking out the casinos and trying to sort out the scam artists and legit club employees. We were able to get ourselves on a few VIP Guest Lists to clubs, which allowed us free admission and free drinks. It really pays to be a girl in Vegas!


One of our friends from our old job happened to be in town as well. He has a few connections in Las Vegas so we were really able to live it up! We met up with him and his friend and spent most of the night in the club Tao, which is in the Venetian. We had free table service and pretty much unlimited anything! There was even a mini-fridge at our table filled with beer and waters. It was such a good time.

The next day we spent in bed, living the life. We got room service and much to my surprise, my parents treated me to a WONDERFUL spa appointment. It felt great after camping in 20 degree weather on frozen ground and sawing all week. Thanks again, Mom and Dad!! The hotel was amazing. The room was so high tech! (Todd, you would have had a blast with all the buttons!) There was a little touch screen on the night stand that controlled EVERYTHING in the room. I mean everything. You could open the curtains, change the temperature, call house keeping, control the TV, radio or iPod etc. We had a little trouble with the TV, since it was so high tech, and an IT guy came up to fix it immediately. He noticed our beers weren't being chilled so he brought us a mini-fridge! What service! There was even a TV in the mirror in the bathroom!


One of Andi's friends from high school lives out here so we met up with her for dinner out in Henderson. It was a lot of fun and she and her fiance joined us out later that night. That night we ended up meeting our friend out at Caesar's at a club called Pure. Here we were able to skip the line, cover charge and had a table and bottle service, too! It was a lot of fun but I think I like Tao more. We later walked over to O'Shea's. This place might be my favorite on the strip. 99 cent beers and had a good Irish feel to it. It was kind of like a cross between an Irish dive bar and casino.
On the last night before her flight out, we met up with two guy I used to work with at State Street. They were in town on vacation as well. It was good to see them and good to catch up. We had dinner at a local brewery and then I brought them to Freemont Street (the original Vegas strip) before their flights out. I had so much fun and am so glad Andi was able to make it out to visit!!

It's Been a While..

Many apologies for the delay in posts! It's been a crazy month or so, but I'll try to catch you up on my past tours and breaks.

After Thanksgiving break, we had a local 4-day tour. This was our first local tour which allowed us to go home every night and SHOWER! Being local was nice for that fact, but this tour was less than desirable. It was a desert clean-up tour. We went to the city limits, literally where the houses stopped and the desert started, and picked up trash. This time we worked with the local BLM and they had 4 massive dumpsters dropped at the site we were to clean up.

Most of my tours really don't relate to the general public, however, this one tied closely with them and it really gave me a different perspective on humanity as a whole. Use your imagination to think of something that might be dumped out in the desert...it was there. We came across everything from stuffed animals to drugs to sofas to porn. People just use the desert as their own landfill. It's not a lush, beautiful, wildlife filled environment but it still is an ecosystem that needs to be taken care of and not trashed. I was completely disgusted by how much trash is out there. Our project partner said he could station a group of 20 people out there every day for a year and not put a dent in it. It's appalling.


Art in trash?

The worst part, and the part that affected me the most, is all the plastic that is out there. After plastic sits in the desert for so long, it doesn't disintegrate, it just becomes fragile. When volunteers or workers go to pick it up it just breaks into hundreds of pieces become micro-trash, making it near impossible to collect all of it. Now, I know Nevada isn't on the coast, but you'd be surprised by how far litter can travel. These tiny pieces of plastic eventually end up in our beautiful oceans and contaminate the marine life and just add on to the pollution in the waters such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It drives me nuts and I wish, so badly, that people would start becoming more conscious of how much plastic they're using in their every day lives and try to reduce it. A good place to start is to stop buying bottled water! Get yourself a good, sturdy, BPA free water bottle to refill. That's a huge step in itself. Do your part! Okay, rant over..

Another disturbing part about the desert clean-up was the animals I came across. :( I was warned and tried to mentally prepare myself for it, but I don't think any amount of exposure or mental preparation would allow me to handle what I saw. On the first day, I came across a pile of empty dog food bags. As they were picked up, it became clear to us that it was covering up a dog. Someone had dumped their dog in the desert. I don't know if the dog had died before being dumped or vice versa, but either way, NO ONE should just dump their dog! It hit me pretty hard because I started thinking about it's life and how it was once someone's pet. If you don't know dogs, well, they're the most unconditional animals! They'll love you no matter what. How could someone just drop their dog off in the cold lonely desert?! I'll never understand it. We also came across the carcuss of a horse that seemed to have been shot in the head numerous times. I think, seeing these two animals just deserted and killed out there, got to me the most since I started this job. I just don't understand how some people think that is okay to do. For this reason, I prefer the tours that really don't cross paths with humanity and just deal with nature.