Since this is my first time out of the country (Canada doesn’t count), and my first time doing any sort of backpacking sort of adventure thing like this, Andy asked me to write a “very short” piece on the process of getting my shit together for the trip.

Hahahaha.

Leaving aside my 6 vaccinations, and my horrible, horrible passport photos, most of this process came down to packing.

On my very best of days, I am a miserable over-packer. It’s not that I’m high-maintenance necessarily (although I totally am – who the hell uses two different mouthwashes?) – I actually gave most of that stuff up pretty easily for this trip, in the name of Adventure! and Roughin’ It! and Self-Sacrifice – it’s more that I tend to over-consider potential scenarios, and pack accordingly. “Oh, but you never know, I might get a cold on the flight over, so I better bring along all these cough drops just in case.”

Turns out this tendency ramps-up like a thousand-fold when you’re going to be out in the freaking JUNGLE, and the stuff you pick out in the pharmacy aisle could be the difference between life and death. (I mean, realistically, between me and the 7 other people coming along on this thing, we’re going to have so much stuff that we’re gonna be prepared to face pretty much every scenario, but try telling that to My Cool Brain.)

If me in the pharmacy aisle was bad – scooping up bandages and sprays and unguents by the armful (“Jungle rot could be a real concern out there!”) – then me at the camping store was even worse. The wonderful people who work at the REI are very knowledgable, it must be said, but they have a definite tendency to do product comparisons in such a way that you envision yourself as a corpse if you pick the wrong (“cheaper”) selection.

“I dunno, man,” says a dude whose clothing was at least 75% hemp. “That backpack cover is pretty good, but it can still lead to the occasional leakage.” And so I picture every object I own waterlogged in a monsoon, and me down on my knees, crying to the heavens, “WHY DIDN’T I LISTEN TO YOU, TREE (OR WHATEVER YOU INTENSELY SILLY NAME WAS)??”

That, by the way, is how one talks one’s self into buying Survival Underwear:

A steal at $19/pair!

In addition to basic survival terror, there is also the fact that, in my brain at least, not only must every situation be carefully considered and covered by proper equipment, this equipment must also be The Cutest Version Possible Of That Thing. So, like, in getting a headlamp, I could have just gotten a basic, kind of gross clear plastic one. But no. Better spend an extra $20 on this adorable teal one!

Its inherent cuteness will be sure to protect me when I am pounced on by a panther or whatever.

Andy asked me to bring down a few things with me, which I was happy to do, despite the fact that they ranged from mildly embarrassing…

Why yes, Mr. Customs Agent, I *do* need 24 of the hugest condoms available to humanity… for Science, though, I swear!

…to comically illegal-looking…

No, they’re “electronics,” swear to God!

…to the potentially explosive:

I am writing this from the plane, and it has yet to explode, so I guess we’re doing OK so far!

Once survival basics and Andy’s stuff were covered, then it was time to move onto the realm of the ridiculous. I am not sure how much of this stuff is actually going to make it out into the jungle with me, but I wanted to at least have the option, you know?

Andy explained that my role on the trip is as sort of a chronicler / outsider commenter / potential art creator. The sad truth is that my art skills really never progressed beyond the level of marginally talented second grader, however, so I stuck with what I knew:

This sweet set of goods includes such necessities as:

– Teeny tiny little colored pencils!

– 200 peel-and-stick goggly eyes!

– Mac and cheese duct tape!

– Badass butane-powered hot glue gun! (Sadly I didn’t have room for the cool 80’s-cop-movie-style holster…)

I also got this dumb little camera, which – like all Polaroid products – has an appealing gimmick kind of shoddily executed. It’s a digital camera, see, but it can also instantly print out photos! Awesome, right? I fully expect it to melt into a puddle of goo about 45 seconds after landing. 

But look how cute it is, pre-puddle!

Moving down the sliding scale of Packed Item Viability (PIV), we also have…

BADASS CAMP FLASK – There is no universe where I am not getting drunk in a jungle at least one time. Also, this damn thing looks like it’s practically bulletproof, so I might just wear it over my heart at all times for protection.

ASSORTED GLOW STICKS – I don’t know what a Jungle Rave is, exactly, but I want to have one.

PATRIOTIC TEMPORARY TATTOOS – This is the first time I won’t be home for American Independence Day, so it seemed important to bring along some way of honoring the occasion all the same (i.e., plastering these all over my face).

TEAM RINGS – (You’ll notice I have a thing for googly eyes.) I am weirdly focused on encouraging team spirit, so I am going to guilt everyone on our expedition into wearing these the whole time and doing complicated secret handshakes. 

HELLO KITTY PLAYING CARDS – Conceivably to help us while away the long jungle nights together, I mostly got these because they look borderline unusable. I’m looking forward to watching anyone try and shuffle these things.

INFLATABLE PARROT – I have no earthly idea why I brought this. As a mascot perhaps?

COCKTAIL UMBRELLAS – I only drink fancy drinks. Period.

BUBBLE PIPES – What better way to unwind after a long day of backpacking? Besides, too late to kick the habit now!

POOP JUJU – Most importantly of all, however, is this handmade bracelet from Elli. My digestive stability is pretty touch-and-go, even on American soil, and people keep telling me about “travelers’ diarrhea,” so I figured I needed all the good juju I could get.

And that’s it! What an easily manageable, not hugely stupid pile of goods to bring with me!

But then, Andy always did appreciate a good pile. 

Anyway, I am sure I still managed to forgot to bring something hugely critical, so expect to hear about it in my next post, which will probably be just as long as long and pointless.

Until then, I remain your intrepid chronicler, Nate Walsh.

This weekend Gamboa hosts some sort of national ultimate Frisbee tournament. I’ve been told that teams come from all over the country for some reason to play out here in the middle of nowhere.

Peter had told me stories of this tournment from the past two years, but I had been out of town both times. Anyway, when Janni invited me to play on the local Gamboa team, I eagerly accepted.

Our team, the Perros Salvajes (Wild Dogs), was a sort of band of misfits made of local gambodians and some scientists who played pick-up games on fridays. Peter said that our name fit us nicely because the Gamboa teamusually “had a lot of raw talent, but was sure to lose because we don’t work as a team, and just sort of run around.” This seemed to clearly be the case.

I looked around and as the other teams were warming up and running drills, our team was smoking and passing around beers. We lost both games the first day, but showed signs of our skills and took the lead briefly in the latter game.

After the first day’s tournment, our team hosted a huge party in the main part of the little town. It was grand enough to hear from all over gamboa and the jungle. I had to miss the party due to work, but it took quite a toll on our team. When I showed up the next morning to play, half the team was nowhere to be seen. We played almost the whole first game without any subs. The only other person to arrive, was our team captain at the end of the first game, but he was holding his head pretty hard in a deadly hangover sort of way. Despite the missing/hungover team, somehow we were doing amazing. We were leading the first game, which had to be decided by a tie-breaker. The final game, we fought against one of the best teams (who ended in the finals), La Jungla. At this point our team was so tired, they were busting out every dirty trick in the book. We called fouls constantly. Moved incredibly slowly whenever we were in the lead to run out the clock. And tried to ignore when the other team had called fouls on us.

Despite this hard, strange battle, we still lost, but I think everyone we faced ended up pretty well chewed by the Wild Dogs.

Like most aspects of this year’s field mission, one of the strangest continual feelings I have is that of comfort. The previous two years kept me in a mad daze struggling to bounce around scientists and sneak space for myself to setup places for electronics and coding. Now I feel like all these rich crazy experiences of the past years have molded me into a lean machine for this research. Just like I no longer flinch at carrying 90 pound backpacks loaded with batteries and harddrives straight through airport security, getting back into the lab and organizing hundreds of tiny electrical parts just feels familiar. Part of me worries about doing anything that feels easy. I bet people training for marathons experience similar anxieties where despite being able to run for many kilometers more than before, the fact that it feels easier than when they were just starting is a bit unnverving.

There was a cosmic reversal of fortune that has been following me since I got to go to Ben and Kristy’s Lake house a few days before flying down. We spent memorial day there with terrific friends secluded in luxury, lakes, and amazing food in the middle of Alabama. Before, the diminishing time was an angry elephant sitting on my chest and fattening itself on problems compounding before the trip. Despite my Fellow status this year (which I figured would make things easier), STRI forgot to help find me housing. Our new prototype with Comingle was facing new hardships everyday. I barely had anything packed, and what I had was already hundreds of pounds more than what was allowed for a person on Spirit airlines. Also I began to REALLY not be looking forward to not seeing Kitty for 2 solid months. But something magical seemed to have happened by forcing myself to divorce work-Andy from just fun-Andy for 3 solid days, and then things started coming together, and they just kept it up!

These electronics compartments drawers are super integral to any decent workshop. While moving in my gear, I realized that just setting up all this stuff, and getting a hand and a little bit of directed attention to each of these bits was integral to being able to think with them later. This gave me the idea to get the people that I was going to be working with involved in this process. I set up a simple “game” where Peter, May, and Ummat (Zoe jumped in too!) would take markers, pull out the blank drawers, ask me what the hell the parts were in those drawers, and then label them.

I set up a timer for 30 minutes, and we tried to see how many drawers we could do in this short time. The time component of this Labelblitz kept us from lingering too long on a simple article (which was easy to do) and helped these scientist buddy get immersed in the language of physical computing.

Beforehand Peter and I had a talk about other people’s research we encountered that brought about existential strangeness in ourselves, but didn’t seem to affect the researchers telling us about this. Most of this talk seemed to revolve around all the different projects we encountered where people kept brains alive in jars. I remember Liz telling me about frog brains in jars which still sent out mating call signals, and peter mentioned how they could keep fruit fly brains alive for days, and program the larvae to respond to incredibly particular stimuli, like when it is 27 degrees Celsius, or when the color blue is present. Looking back at the pictures, it seems my papaya half sitting in a vat of soy milk may have had some influence on this talk.

Peter and I found the fabled Discovery Center late last year when we went to pick up tools for his experiments and supplies for giant ant puppets in our performance last year.  The store is, more or less, a combination Target / Lowes with a couple of aisles of just strangeness.

It was amazing to see, and an early trip there would be important for me to know what potential materials could be at my disposal. I figured out how to rent a truck from STRI, and grabbed Barrett, Michelle, and Inga who also had supplies to pick up (but also just wanted to see the place).

One of the first things you are greeted with is a giraffe who was lost to some sort of act of auto-erotic asphyxiation. (right next to the pet cages and baseball gloves).

Lots of things are locked up behind those sliding glass drawers, and usually it’s just still very cheap things like $2 soldering irons.  The loaded harpoon gun cabinet was TOTALLY unlocked though!

We might have to get Nate Walsh a pair of these stylish all white jungle boots!

More Solder suckers in stock than any store I have ever been to.

Behind the aisle selling blenders there is a huge zone of medical equipment. You can buy a full gurney or a dozen wheelchairs!

And of course next to the plants aisle there are some sweet jesus-themed biker vests!

We actually had to go to another store to find wood however. And since the truck bed was full of equipment, we needed a volunteer to sit in the parking lot and guard it. A curious parking lot guard came over, and since Inga had purchased some lawn chairs, i pulled them out and offered the guard a chance to take a load off.

Me and him got along great! We taught each other lessons in English, Spanish, and Kuna (the language of a local indigenous people). His name was Dacho, and he was of Kuna ancestry, and he had actually worked with scientists and military people before in Panama. We discussed the finer points of life by translating words into all three languages such as “beer”, “Pistols”, and “Beautiful women”