Out West

Hi All,
I hope this note finds everyone doing well.
I am now sitting in Durango, CO at Lyn Boyer's house. I have been hanging out with Ben, Amanda and their families leading up to their wedding on Monday. I will not be able to attend because Janice and I are getting married Tuesday. :) :) But it has been great visiting and meeting all the members of their families. I can finally put a face to people I have heard so much about over the years.

We are going to be having an adventurous next couple of days. Yesterday Ben, Amanda and I went bouldering with Bill and another friend(I can't remember his name) a couple of their friends. It is always fun climbing with them. Today a bunch of us from the families are rafting down the Animas River. It is a section I have not done before but am told it has class 3 rapids. YEA!! Then Saturday before I leave to head down to the Grand Canyon Ben, me and few others are going to Lemon Reservoir to climb. I can not wait. I hope to have some good photos to come.

Most of you know about the flooding that is going on in the midwest. I had a very little taste of that on my way down to MO last Saturday. I take I-57 south out of Chicago. Here is a photo of one river up to the bottom of the highway.



The next one is a simi and SUV plowing thru the water on north bound I-57.



The water was up everywhere and this was before the next big storms came thru. I wish the people going thru this luck.

My next travel story is as I was leaving John and Marcia VanEden's heading to Durango on Wednesday. Just look at the video and it will tell all.



It was kind of cool but also I only brought one pair of long pants. :) :)

For those of you who have not heard my mom took a spill last Wednesday night. She broke her ankle in two places and just had surgery yesterday late afternoon. This means her and Dave can not make out for the wedding. I know they are disappointed and we are too. They will be missed. I hope everyone sends mom good thoughts and healing thoughts.

More to come later.
Peace Out,
Geoff

Telemetry

Hi All,
I hope this note finds everyone doing well.
I will be heading out west in a couple of days. Jancie will be meeting me in a little over a week so we can get hitched. We are both excited about the trip. There will be more info and pictures as time goes on.

About a week ago I got to go out with Janice so she could start the process of teaching me telemetry. For those who don't know telemetry is one of the ways Janice is collecting data about the deer she has trapped and collared the last two years. How it works (I will do my best to explain it) is Janice drives around Mason and Manistee counties and finds the signals coming from the collars and ear transmitters she put on the trapped deer. This is the telemetry truck.



As you can see there is a big antenna coming out of the top of the truck. You can control the direction of the antenna from inside the truck.



On the bottom of the pole you can see the directional, which is in degrees, like on a compass. I won't go into how you have to change this every time you move. Once you find a signal from one of the animals you stop the truck, enter the GPS coordinates and find the point where the best signal is coming from the animal. I won't go into what you have to do to get that point. Then you drive to another location and do the same thing. At least three points per animal. As you are collecting these points you are entering the info into the computer.



After you get at least 3 points, you have to check to see if you can use the points. If the points are too close together, to far apart or many other issues that may come up, you have to get more points until there is no error. Oh, and you have to do all this within 20 minutes for each animal or you have to start over. Then you move onto the next animal. Talk about multitasking. This is usually done by one person. Janice does this usually five days a week. It takes anywhere from 6 to 10 hours, depending on issues that may come up. After one day of doing it, I am hear to tell you my body felt like it had been beat up.

As we where driving around tracking a deer, we saw the one we where tracking.



This happens from time to time but not very often. If you look close you can see the ear transmitter.

The day we went out, we also saw three very tiny fawns. This one must have just been born. It could hardly run to get away from us. Its little legs were wobbling trying to walk across the road. When it got across the road it just dropped where you see it in the picture. Mom was not very happy we stopped to take a picture.



It was a lot of fun for me to take the first steps in learning how to do telemetry. I am going to go out with Janice more this summer when I get back.

I hope everyone is doing well. Please let me know how you are doing.

Peace Out,
Geoff