Todd is a pretty physically fit guy and likes to inspire fitness in his students, so every other day he brings the willing students up to the research centre to do what he calls Dr. Todd's Boot Camp. It involves lots of pull-ups, pushups, ab work and then sprints. Although it's pretty challenging, it's fun because Todd is such an enthusiastic and supportive guy. Whenever I do all of these things with Todd, I am so grateful that he is my advisor. He's super intelligent, but he also loves life and see the importance of things outside of academia, and in fact, I think he leans away from it (he keeps talking about starting up a fishing guide company in Montana, but he's just waiting until he has some unsuccessful years, which really isn't likely to happen), which is good for me since I'm not too into academia either. His bootcamp is a tamed down version of what he used to do when he was out here as a grad student, back when things were less regulated. He used to regularly run up to the big airstrip (I think about 6ish miles from here) and mountain bike around, which of course now they wouldn't let you do b/c of all the wild animals. But as he says, "it just made me run faster". He still has a bike out here that he puts up on a bike trainer so he can pedal stationarily by the river outside of his river camp tent. And the local guys around here still tell me they see Todd up at the big airstrip (having driven this time) jumping rope or riding his bike on the long dirt runway. The animals are quite plentiful on the airstrip (that's where we saw the cheetahs), but it is more open, so you can see if there are elephant or buffalo around.
Todd also does something called Spooky Tuesday, which as it happens, never actually takes place on Tuesday. He does it back in Gainesville, and it is an event he hosts where they watch a horror film and then make a signature cocktail. He has brought Spooky Tuesday to Kenya and last week we he showed "30 Days of Night" in honor of Elisha and I as it is a vampire movie that takes place in the Arctic during the winter when the people are isolated, similar to the Antarctic. We actually missed Spooky Tuesday last night because it was the Taiwan team's last night here at the Research Centre, so the centre hosted a cool Karaoke event.
A couple of days ago was my day to lead a teaching module for the UF undergrads. I thought I was going to get away with Todd, Wayne (the other field instructor) and Kirsten (Todd's post-doc) not going as I told them to take the time off and rest, but they did come, so that made me quite nervous, though Elisha told me I did well. But still, super scary to lecture in front of your advisor. I took the students out to the Hippo pool to do the lecture in the grass under the shade of the yellow-fever acacia trees. I lectured on biodiversity and conservation and then introduced the UHURU project and my project. I then took them to the exclosure and control plots in both the North UHURU and South UHURU and had them do little field exercises to compare the different treatments and rainfall gradients. On the drive between the north UHURU and south UHURU, the van I was driving got lucky to catch a good look at a leopard!
Yesterday, I had field work to do, but Elisha went with the class to an animal orphanage. One of Todd's TA's took the vans up to the research centre in order to get gas for them and managed to flip the van on the rough roads. These roads around here certainly do a number on the vehicles.
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| Mount Kenya looming in the distance |
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