I'll bet you don't own a pair of orange chaps

(Before and after I took the chain saw safety course.)

Have you ever had a close call while riding on a bicycle or motorcycle?  You know the kind I mean.  You start to turn left and the car behind you slams on its brakes and blasts its horn, nearly skidding into your left leg.  Or, you are swimming alone offshore, the currents seem much stronger than normal, and before you know it, you are 300 meters from the beach where you started, and you make it back to shore only after an intense struggle.  Later, you learn that if you had just had a simple rear view mirror on your bike or you knew more about ocean tides, you would have been much less likely to be in peril.  A little preparation ahead of time would have saved you a possible knee surgery, or prevented you from ending up like a drowned rat on the beach in Bermuda after entering the water near Miami the week before.

About a week ago I took a 5-hour Chain Saw Safety and Productivity course taught in Candor by Jim Signs.  What an epiphany!  How I managed not to cut off my right ear or my left foot all these years is beyond me.

I thought I was being safe:

1.  I only drank beer out of a can while using the chain saw, never a bottle, which could break and cut you.
2.  I wore Crocs so that if I ever cut my foot badly with the saw, I could remove my footwear quickly.  Plus, with all the holes in the Crocs, blood would drain from my shoes rapidly.  This makes Crocs much easier to clean than leather boots after an accident.
3.  I never wore ear protection, because I wanted to hear my cell phone if it rang. Robin often calls me on that phone when I am in the woods to tell me dinner is ready.  If I missed meals, I might become light-headed, and this is dangerous when using a chain saw.
4.  I never smoked cigars while cutting.  I only lit up between cutting sessions, while I was refilling the gas tank of the saw.
5.  I never used the chain brake when walking among the trees, because I didn't want to wear out that mechanism (repairs can be expensive).
6.  As mentioned in a previous blog, I always take the landline phone from the house with me, because of its intercom feature.  If my wife is ever off the phone with her sister in Ohio, I would be able to call her for help.
7.  And finally, I always wore shorts or a bathing suit when cutting to avoid overheating (I hate sweat).  I especially like to fell trees on windy days; the wind keeps me cool.

Man, I took that safety course and now I realize how wrong I was.  One of the biggest dangers in cutting is "kickback", which is when the saw flips back toward the person holding the saw.  This is the accident where you can lose an ear, or worse.  The saw comes back in 1/10th of a second.  I always had pretty good reflexes (you know, I am an ex-tennis player and all that), so I have been dodging that damn saw for years.  But now I know that it is the upper tip of the saw that causes kickback when it hits the log. Plus, I also learned that the chain saw users' mantra is "Stay out of the kickback plane".  Whenever possible, stand slightly to the left of the plane through which the saw would pass if it kicks back.  See, that 10th grade geometry is coming in handy, finally, to save an ear or two.  Remember what a plane is?  Thank goodness we didn't have to do anything with a rhombus, or I would have stitches all over my body.

But the main lesson I learned was that you have to wear the proper clothing and protective gear.  I went back to Jim's store for three days in a row after the course to buy stuff (see photo).  Helmet with shield and ear protection.  Check.  Boots with steel toe, made from a material that protects against the moving chain.   Check.  Did you know that 22% of all chain saw accidents occur to the feet and ankles?   Proper gloves that really grip the handle of the saw.  Check.  And my favorite--wrap-around chaps that protect your legs from cuts.  Check.  Did you know that 52% of all chain saw accidents occur to your upper leg?  These chaps stop the saw dead if it hits your leg.  Plus, they are blaze orange, so if a tree falls on you in the forest, the rescue squad can find your body more rapidly.

So now I feel better informed, better protected, and I am more productive in the woods.  I also learned a few tricks on cutting and moving wood that should save me time and energy (I hate sweat).  The more free time I have, the more I can write blogs.  The more blogs I write, the more time you waste reading them.  I guess in the grand scheme of things, my increased productivity in cutting wood is a global zero-sum game. 

(If interested in taking this excellent course from Jim Signs, he can be reached at http://www.powerandpaddle.com/.)

When a snake bites your student on his buttocks

(Would you check the white Swiss butt of this biologist for a snake bite?)

When you do field work in places where there are venomous snakes, you think about it. Because you see these snakes only rarely, you become somewhat habituated to the fact that they exist in your location, but it is always in the back of your mind. You think about where you put your hands and feet, where you sit down to have your lunch, where you go to the bathroom, and how you pick up a backpack that has been on the ground for several hours.

We know that humans actually do get bitten by venomous snakes. I have had two colleagues receive serious bites from snakes, and it is not pleasant. You spend days or weeks in the hospital receiving doses of anti-venom and other drugs, battle pain and nausea, and often undergo reconstructive surgery to repair the muscles that experienced necrosis and atrophy near the site of the wound.

It was a tense moment when one of my graduate students appeared unexpectedly at the door of our little house in southern Costa Rica one evening and announced to me: “Tom, I think I’ve been bitten by a snake.” I was studying birds, so my schedule was that of an ornithologist. I got up at 4:30am, went to the field at 5, came home about noon, and went to bed at 9pm. Martin, who is the focus of this story, was studying frogs and lizards. He went to the field about 2pm, but never returned home before midnight. We rarely saw each other until the weekend when we took some time off. But on this day, I heard his car pull up to the house in the dark about my bedtime, saw him trudge past the window in his yellow rain gear, and watched him make his startling appearance at the back door. He was slightly hunched over, his face was pale, and he stared me straight in the face as I digested the words “…….bitten by a snake.”

He explained that he and his assistants were sampling lizards after dark in a pasture next to the forest. This technique involves crouching low to the ground and, using a flashlight, searching every square meter of your assigned area, capturing all lizards you see by hand. The individuals were then taken to a processing “station”, where they were weighed, measured, and marked, before being returned to the area where they were captured. At one point, the student felt a sharp “prick” on his buttocks and at that very moment a small snake, striped red and black like some coral snakes, crawled between his legs. The temporal proximity of the prick and the presence of the snake led him to conclude that the snake had caused the prick. Not an unreasonable conclusion, in my opinion. The snake was definitely NOT a fer-de-lance, which we feared the most. But there are many other venomous snakes in Costa Rica. He waited a few minutes, felt nothing, and assumed that either the snake was not venomous, or it had not really bitten him, or, or, or. But the student was about an hour from any medical help, so his Costa Rican assistants demanded that he return home, just in case he needed to go to the hospital in town. He would be that much closer.

So Martin returned to our house and appeared at the door as described. The next question out of his mouth was almost more shocking than the statement that he might have been bitten. “Tom, would you check my buttocks?” I explained that this might be going further than the faculty-student contract, that this was not in my job description, that I needed to go to bed to get my sleep, but, geesh, this had to be done. He dropped his trou and I put on my examination face as if I had done this a hundred times before, and not at all sure what I would find. I looked it over, carefully, but I could see absolutely nothing—no wound, no mark, no swelling, no redness. I pronounced that he would probably live, although the scientist in me was quick to point out that I had no baseline data with which to compare. I could only assume that what I was seeing was a normal-looking, very white, pasty, Swiss butt (the student was, in fact, from Switzerland). We both laughed and the incident ended.

I got a lot of mileage out of this anecdote. I repeated the story when I introduced Martin to an audience before he gave a presentation on his research. I emailed everyone I knew and told the story. My son Matt replied to the email with a sobering thought: “Dad, it is a good thing he had not been bitten. You would have had to suck out the venom.” What could have been a really serious event turned out to be nothing but fodder for an amusing anecdote. But our fascination with snakes continues, and we think about them, and we watch for them, and the stories about them are remembered for a long, long time.

Punk's Place: Did we make it home?

(I hadn't used this move on the dance floor in quite a while.  Everyone at Punk's Place was impressed.)

On Saturday, Robin, Mark and I went to our new favorite bar/club in Candor, NY--Punk's Place.  Mark had gotten there before us and reported that the 2-7 crowd had just left.  You know what I'm talkin bout--the guys who sit in a bar all afternoon on a Saturday and drink.  A few scary characters, but nothing we haven't seen in bars from Korea to Costa Rica.  I will join them some Saturday for a while; has to be some good material for a blog there. 

But by 8, an entirely different crowd appeared.  I was completely surprised that the average age of this clientelle was about 45.  Maybe I was wrong about all the senior citizens being locked up in abandoned buildings in Syracuse by younger people.  Maybe it was the other way around.  Or, the older group made the younger ones stay home and babysit.  Or, there are no longer any young people left in Candor; they all moved to Ithaca.  Maybe Candor is comprised of people under 18 and over 40.  I will explore the demographics of Candor further when we attend the Fall Festival there next weekend.  I should have pumped the lady who cut my hair last week for this information.

Almost everyone there came as a couple.  Where are all the swinging singles you are supposed to find in a place like this?  What if I had been single and I wanted to dance with someone?  Mark came stag.  What in the world was he supposed to do?  We ate our reubens, drank some beer, and listened to one set of the band, which was excellent, by the way.  I hate about 90% of the bands I hear these days, but these guys (Giant Steps) were really good musicians.  I barely had to breakdance at all, but I understand why the word "break" is included in the name of that dance form.

Robin and I left about 10:30, so maybe the youngsters came after that.  Babyboomers, the custom these days is not to even go out until 11 or so.  If you come before that, you look desperate.  You have to walk into these places like you don't really care if you are there or not.  Then, order a beer like you were asking to borrow a pencil.  No big deal.  You don't really care if you drink or not.  Look around like you don't really see anyone but, in actuality, you are scoping EVERYONE out. Very kewl.  You might leave at any minute, and they would hate to see you go.  Your leaving would be a big loss.  Everyone would follow you out the door, bar revenues would collapse for the night, and the band would take an extra long break.  In the old days, you could smoke a cigarette during this initial phase of your night and you would look very James Dean-like.  Now, you have to chew gum and you look very Goldie Hawn-like.  But these are the times in which we live.

Saturday night at Punk's Place

(Punk's Place, Candor, NY.  Where everybody knows your name.)

This will be only our second visit to Punk's Place, and our first Saturday night.  Live music.  Drinks.  Food.  I've showered for the first time in two days, and I shaved for the first time this month.  Kind of an autumnal equinox celebratory shave.  Not thinking so much about what I might drink there (they seem to be a little shy of single malts), but what I might eat.  I noticed last time that the menu had reuben sandwiches, so I have been thinking about that all day.  But you know, anticipating going out to a place like this is just not what it was 30 years ago.  It takes effort to get presentable and, besides, I normally go to bed about 10pm.  Have to feed the damn dog at 5am.

Robin and I will almost certainly be the oldest people in the joint, but we are getting used to that.  It seems it has been that way for a long time.  When we visit our sons in Denver, they take us out to tequila bars, latin dance clubs, or parties at their friends' houses; we out-age everyone in the room by at least a decade.  Did we just not do enough partying when we were younger?  Are we trying to make up for lost time and the fact that we had children when we were in our early 20s?  Did all the other baby-boomers get kidnapped by the x-generation who think our age group has a lot of money?  (We were spared, cause they know we don't have any.)  If so, where did they hide all those senior citizens, in those old abandoned brick buildings in Syracuse?

But we are meeting one of my former students there, Mark.  Mark is 21, so he can guide us through any social nuances we may have missed during our previous encounters with younger adults.  Do men still shake hands?  Does the old guy buy the younger one the first round, or is it the other way around? 

Plus, do they have any strange customs in Candor, NY that we have not seen?  I've never been there in the dark. Do you have to drink beer there or would a nice chardonnay be out of the question?  Am I expected to breakdance to any Michael Jackson music they play, or can I beg off?  I'm wearing cords; am I overdressed?  I just don't know.   Maybe Mark doesn't know either; he's from Syracuse.  We don't want to offend anyone.  In hindsight, I probably should have arranged to have the white-haired lady who cut my hair in Candor last week meet us there.  I tipped her $2, so she would help.  She would know everyone and could introduce us around.  Man, now I am really nervous.

several hours later.........

We went, we saw, we conquered.

to be continued..........