Surfs Up

This morning I awoke to the stunning realization that my bike wasn’t among the bikes in the bike rack. This could only mean one thing; that last night in my fatigue I had forgotten to lock my bike and it had been stolen. I was planning on going down to the beach and see about surfing in the early morning, so I did on foot. When I arrived at the beach, the sun was just cresting over the point of Diamondhead Crater, which made a beautiful sight for my paddle out to the break. Over the next hour I managed to catch three waves as well as a nasty rash on my chest and inner arms so I decided that I had completed my goal and it was time to start trekking back to the lab. When I got there, I started on drying the remaining soil from the samples I collected yesterday for the calculation of Enterococci bacteria. After those were put into the oven for an overnight roasting I tried to start scanning a batch soils that Greg had been sent from Florida. Unfortunately I was unable to get a proper scan on the control, which we decided was due to moisture content. That job will have to be saved for my next trip out here. Greg then showed me the results from the scans I had already completed and it turned out that we could predict significantly well some of the elements of the soil just by running the scans in the Manoa Valley. By the time he was done explaining me the ins and outs of the results it was time for me to check my results from the Enterococci test. This consisted of looking at the trays I had made under a black light and noting how many of the wells fluoresced. Tomorrow morning will be analyzing those numbers, but from a preliminary look at them it looks that I might have gotten some convincing data. Well I have one more day left and then it’s back to South Carolina. I’ve had a great trip so far and will conclude it tomorrow.