man o' war mussels

This weekend I got to go on the most epic awesome camping adventure ever. We left Saturday morning, met up at the Greenpeace warehouse and took a full two hours to pack the van and prepare everything to go. We were taking Byak, one of the Greenpeace zodiaks, with us along with a van full and two cars full of people and a troupe of six bikers (only 43 miles. no sweat.). The ride getting out of the city alone took about an hour, and then another couple hours up to Point Reyes brought us there at around 3 in the afternoon. But the ride up was really interesting. Along with all the interns Lindsey Allen (Forest campaigner) and Casson Trenor (Oceans campaigner) were in the van and were talking a lot about their campaigns and what not. Super cool stuff.

We unpacked our absolutely ridiculous amount of stuff and spread it all out on the dock (facebook for pictures) and started shuttling people to the boat-in campsite across the way. I have now ridden in a GP boat. Pretty exciting! We had a little beach all to ourselves and right away Casson discovered man o' war jelly fish and sea nettles all over the beach so him and I went around and cleaned them all up. Once everyone else was shuttled in and our make-shift bucket for a toilet was set up we started the fire and enjoyed some bocce ball and greeted the arriving bikers.

Casson went on an adventure and brought us a bunch of wild mussels which most of us took the risk of trying a few of (three did end up with food poisoning a couple of days later, although we aren't sure if it was from that or not.) And then the fun and drinking started. It's really interesting partaking in such things with your boss... and everyone else you work with. But it was awesome fun. Some crazy times.

In the morning we slowly woke up and got ready and made out way back (it took four boat shuttles to get all of us and all our stuff back to the mainland) to the van. We drove over to the picnic where about twenty other people, some Greenpeace some family and friends of Greenpeace, were waiting on a beach for us with food! It was lovely. What a spread :) Totally worth the mile hike in. And a gorgeous beach too. Just no sun :( But oh well! And we even saw a bob cat on the drive out dashing through the brush!

We didn't get back until late in the evening, and I helped spray down the boat. (And I got to start a Greenpeace boat engine.. yeah yeah I know I'm milking this for all it's worth). By the time Jules and I finally got to her stop we realized it was way too dark and sketchy for her to walk alone in her area of town at night so we went to my place, fed my cat, and then bussed back to her place and both stayed there. Safety in numbers.

Pretty radtastic. At work we spent the morning starting to mail out 4500 Costco stickers to everyone who has downloaded the Costco toolkit in the States. Craziness.