West Palm Beach Adventures
I just returned from a five and a half day trip to Florida. I was there to attend a conference for work, but I had some time to go geocaching and to the beach as well.
What can I say about West Palm? Rain, rain, and more rain. As soon as I arrived, the storm clouds began rolling in. I realized early on that I was going to have to adapt and lower my expectations about how much I was going to be able to fit in.
The first half day, I had time to find two microcaches and hunted for two other caches that appear to be missing. I had noticed while researched nearby caches that many in the area I was staying in were poorly maintained, so I had concerns. About half the caches I had bookmarked had at least one, and some several, DNF (Did-Not-Find) logs on them. That would include the one in the location above, which was disabled while I was there (owner of the hide officially marking it inactive until it can be checked on). It was a great place to check out the beach, though, and take pictures of travel bugs.
After this, I was famished and looking for a place to eat, and I found Testas, which I found to be vaguely overpriced. I was quite full after, but I think $25 for a salad, soup, and soda was a but unreasonable. The bread served tableside is awesome, and the service was okay.
At this point in the evening, it was a lull between storms and I managed to make it out about five miles west to a regular sized geocache down a nature trail, where I was able to drop off two of the fifteen travel bugs I brought with me. Then it started raining again and I relaxed the rest of the evening in the hotel and attached bar.
The next day, first whole day in the location, I got out in the morning to head down south to some of the beach areas on Highway A1A. I was so focused on the afternoon hiking I was going to do that I was dressed completely inappropriately to be walking down the beach, and had forgotten the rule about "when in Rome". I should have brought my bathing suit. I was really kicking myself for that but I was on a roll with geocaches and didn't want to drive all the way back to the hotel. I kept looking for a surf shop but the only one I saw wasn't open yet.
The highlight of the adventure was the second of the three caches I found, and a DNF. At the second cache, an older gentleman gave me a nice seashell as he came up the boardwalk. He told me he walks down every morning and gets the seashells, so he has no need ot this one. "It's my therapy," he grinned at me, and I thought hey, pretty cheap therapy! After he left, I was looking on one side of a boardwalk for the ammo can and spied a large black snake making its way into the foliage on the other side. Then I realized the cache was right there, near where the snake had originated. I left two more of my travel bugs at this spot.

Very soon after this, I went after a cache in a very nice park in the Boynton Beach area with a lovely marina and cool shady benches. I really enjoyed the park itself, but I didn't find the cache. I was having my Indiana Jones moments looking for it, back in the wet tropical forest in the rear of the park. The plants were huge and
wet, and everywhere I went I was hypervigilant of snakes. Like Indiana himself, I hate snakes.

After this little adventure, I really wanted to go change my clothes and I was a bit overheated, and I had a strong desire to sit in a cool restaurant and try some local cuisine. On the way through Lake Worth, I found South Shores Tavern and soup and a burger there. It was decent food but I only ate half.

I started back to the hotel, and struggled with a couple more caches. I bet over the time I was there I only found half the caches I actually looked for, like this one near the fountain in the heart of Lake Worth's city center. I looked for another one in the Lake Worth area and didn't find it, but did stumble upon this benchmark.

The storm clouds were rolling in by now and the air had cooled, so I decided I should make the most of the time I had left and headed to Okeeheelee County Park, where there was a cluster of caches. I grabbed one cache as the storm rolled in, with booming thunder and high wind. It started raining as I got into the park, and I decided to wait it out in the park's Nature Center. I bought some items for the children and checked out the displays, and finally the rain calmed down, enough for me to make it down one of the trails, despite the concerns of the employees about lightning (I have had advanced lightning training in my years on scouts, and what I saw wasn't worrying me). I dropped off another coin and made it back to my rental car just as another downpour came.

I managed to find a quick park and grab micro in the park, but the heavy rain didn't appear to be letting up. I went to a nearby Applebees to wait it out, but when it was still coming down hard after I ate, I just went back to my hotel to prepare for the evening's festivities.

I thought I would have some opportunities to still get a couple close caches once my conference started, but once again I adapted, this time to spending all my time at or near the conference center, talking and learning. Right across from the conference center was the City Place, a shopping area with restaurants. I ate lunch there at a place called Brewzii's with a group of people I met from a local foundation, who happened to have an open position at their company and who encouraged me to speak to their boss. I did eventually, but never mentioned the job vacancy, as my agenda with her regarding something else.

Although my conference was geared to a specific audience, there was a wide spectrum in interests within this audience that ranged basically from field to lab work. The presentations involved current research within this wide range. During one lecture on field conditions and species in Madagascar, I found myself missing a very close friend. I suddenly saw her through the impressions I had when we first met, of us together at an ethology talk and being enthused on the same level, of her interest in conservation biology and traveling to exotic places. It made me sad in a way because of how we drift, as people, further from who we were in the past. I want to cling to my idea that people don't change, but it has been so long since I have seen my friend at my side in these types of talks. I had forgotten that part of her, but finding the ghost of that memory here made me nostalgic.

Although I haven't achieved the academic aspirations I had during that time, I have never left this field. In some ways I have continued to be a student of animal welfare my whole career, in varying capacities. At this conference, I was surrounded by the big names in this little field, and the people who I met right off the bat where the folks writing the papers that I in turn plan to reference in my paper, those PhDs and DVMs who work in the little field of behavioral research that is highly applicable to my job. These are the movers and the shakers in my world.

I found them to be highly accessible and enthusiastically helpful. They all pushed me on different levels to get my data out into the world and hoped I would do a talk on my subject next year. I got promises to sent me references, methodology, and offers to edit my paper or assist in some way. In that respect, I was serving my personal agenda.

At the same time, weighing on the back of my mind was the ticking clock of the promise of a great new job that came my way. I have been in what I would characterize "enthusiastic talks" with another company that is offering a higher position and higher pay, in the area of the world we want to live in.
Most of you know my husband's great desire to move to the Pacific Northwest, and a company is up there with an open position for a great job within my skill set. The nagging problem is the fact that the job would not be focusing on the area of behavioral research that I find so fascinating. On one hand, it would be a way in so that when the ideal position opened up, I would be at a close angle, or could use the job as a stepping stone to the national centers nearby.

On the other hand, once I leave, I give up the rights to my data. Right now I have stumbled upon some success in solving a problem that hasn't been successfully solved. Putting my data out in the world could help me achieve some of my academic goals. Suddenly, it becomes very pressing to get my work out, and at the same time use it to serve my career in the best way. I asked a lot of questions about publication turn around times at this conference. I confirmed my decision while here that I still wanted my place in behavior research, and that I really need to slow my stroll with the new job.
On the second night of the conference, I went to dinner at Brewzii's with a small group that included my colleague from the Reno site, the woman from Bastrop who had told me she wanted me to work for her, and her friend who did a very interesting talk that afternoon.

Over drinks and dinner, we were talking about a book. Eat Pray Love.

The context of the story a woman rediscovering who she is, reclaming her individuality after divorce. I mentioned how my friend's mother who works at our church has always counseled us about maintaining our individuality, and warned about friends of hers who got divorces once the kids were raised, because the women had forgotten who they were without children. Without that individuality, she warned, you will be left in the lurch at some point down the road. I commented that I thought that happened to these women because most were stay at home wives with working husbands who just grew apart over the years.

The woman from Bastrop says "it's interesting that you see it that way," which I think was quite a tactful way of saying "I disagree with you." She believes it is the common experience of women to sacrifice their individuality in relationships to men. She and her friend agree that as women, they always plan their lives around the men in it and have difficulty in making individual plans. In my life I have the opposite problem in that I strongly retain my individualism at the cost of intimacy in the relationship.

We all decided this was probably adaptation to spending three of the nine years of marriage with him away with the military. It was a survival technique to absorb myself in hobbies and social groups while he was gone, and naturally there would be a struggle when he got back with how much he was willing and able to be a part of this life I created for myself.

The third day of the conference ended early, and my Reno cohort and I went to explore the beaches. I put sunscreen on all day but still ended up with a nasty sunburn. I ended up taking us to two of the beaches I had discovered while geocaching.

I have always said that my idea of bliss was riding on a horse bareback, cantering, and letting go of the reins to reach up to the sky in connection with the universal and divine creator. Today I remembered another kind of bliss - to float spread eagled in the ocean water, eyes closed, warm sun radiating along your body, to rock in unison with the waves and in connection to the universal and divine creator. I was "at one with the universe" during our hours at the beach.

We had lunch at an Asian fusion place, Thiakyo (I think, funny that I am unclear on that now), that blended Japanese, Thai, and Chinese in the same location. The food was good, though. I had the shrimp pad thai. After this we went to another beach, and talked all afternoon. I was so relaxed when we got back to the hotel, but I had sand in all kinds of places and painful pink skin. We prepped for the banquet and met downstairs to head out to the venue, the Palm Spring Zoo.

They put on quite a party. Zookeepers were on hand to bring out animals to show off. We were served cocktails and hors-doeuvres within the zoo near some exhibits, then taken over to the Tropics Cafe for food, dancing, and more wine. It was a great chance for people to put their hair down. Dawn and I started out singing along to Violent Femmes, and ended up on the dance floor busting moves, along with all the other mad scientists. I had a great time making more friends and talking to friends I had made earlier, but then we left about midway through, tired from a long day. Dawn needed to get up early to catch her flight and I didn't want to drink anymore.

The next day was my last day there. I returned in the morning to the Okeeheelee Park to go after the caches I wasn't able to get in the rain. They were all decent hikes of at least 0.2 miles, and I grabbed five in two hours of hiking. I dropped off all my remaining travel bugs. I left fifteen on the trip and came back with two.

Before checkout time, I got back to the hotel to grab a shower and pack. I am so glad I took a shower then because it left a nice cool, clean residue for the rest of the day. I grabbed a quick cache in downtown and headed out for Apoxee Park, where I was going to do some more big hiking. Turns out Apoxee Park was closed, which was fine because it started storming right then anyway. I was looking for a place for lunch and some more caches, and ended up at the Riviera Beach Marina, looking for Captain Joe.

Captain Joe runs a boat taxi that will take you over to Peanut Island, a man-made island paradise recreation area. He almost didn't take me due to the weather. He asked me what I would do there, and when I told him "hiking" he seemed okay with it, and by the time two other people got on board, it turned sunny after all and it was quite a nice walk. It was 1.3 miles around the island, and I found one cache and took pictures. This brought my trip total to 16 geocache finds, and I dropped all fifteen travel bugs.

By the time I got back to the mainland, I was about a half hour behind schedule to get to the airport, but it turned out to be all right. It was starting to storm as I pulled up to the airport, and as I sat at the bar, the locals and tourists aliked joked about the relentless rain.

In the end, it was one moment during this trip that seemed most memorable. At the closing banquet, as we walked into the rustic porch area of the lodge, another storm was rising. Lightning lit up the dark blue background as hundreds of white birds, egrets, flew swiftly in circular patterns over the lake, or landed in nearby trees. The DJ booth was playing a song from Lion King, the song in the beginning scene, and it seemed to blend perfectly, and I could feel the energy of the birds in the air. All around me were gathering researchers and scholars, world class primatologists. It reminded me of a part in a letter I wrote a former boss recently, about how at this job I have now, I had learned to fly. At this moment, I was. I haven't lost me. I know exactly who I am.

Who I am Is

A bird soaring

A body floating

A person dancing

A woman smiling

A student learning

And I am

Still Here.