Craig Malcolm Crowe McClain On Long Island: First week

My house and Vehicle for the next 6 months

Hey, well this week has been a long and interesting one. I started the week on monday meeting our project leader, and then the next day she decided to quit, so that was interesting. And tuesday we started our training, which consisted of two other project teams, and the higher ups to come out to our house and meet each other, before we went into Farmingville for our training. So we went to the Hampton Inn and stayed there for 3 nights to do our traing, and we meet up with another team in central long island, and another one in Massachusetts. All the people seemed pretty cool, and it was fun to meet and talk to other people and discovering were they are from, and other interesting facts from people who are doing similiar things as us. So we went over many power point slides, driving test, teambuilding workshops, the maritime museum, and other activities to get to know our roommates, and other team members. After Friday we headed back to our House in Montauk. The next day we went surf fishing on the beach, never caught, or had a bite on anything, very hard to get the line out far, still working on this. So instead we bought soft shelled crabs, weakfish, and swordfish, which we fryed, and grilled, accordingly. That night went out to the local bar scene, interesting bars nonetheless, and the place called nicks reminded me of Sports back in Bloomington. The crowded bars reminded of me of the places I didn't like in b-town, with new yorkers, and frat guys. and here everyone's a new yorker. The most interesting day came on Sunday, i went to a local park wich is helped run by The Nature Conservancy, and i did some mountain biking, and i went down to the beach where there were tons of surfers, and i watched them for awhile before making a journey up the beach. Now the beach here is very different from most beaches, such as on the east coast, it reminds me of the west coast beaches. there are high bluffs and rocks out in the water, and some parts mainly rocky beach. I have pictures of this below. I went a couple miles down the beach until it started to get cloudy, now the day started out sunny clear skies in the lower 90s, and after i saw these clouds about an hour later there were hurricane force winds, lightening, storming rain, and i was out on the beach running back to my bike, and then i had about a mile or two more to ride to my truck, this was a very scary storm to be out in the middle of,( and today i heard that some one in Rhode Island had been struck by lightening, and died). Lucky enough i caught up to this couple who had been surfing,and were just leaving when i got back to the parking lot, and they gave me a ride back to my truck, so thanks to Pete and Vera, i made it back safely. When i got back to the house the screens were blown half way into the living room, and fans knocked over with the power out. This was a very interesting day where it was gorgeous to an instant mini hurricane. Today Monday We went into work at the Nature Conservancy Center in east hampton and on our way there we saw numerous trees down along the roads and many workers our sawing and cleaning up the downed trees. Today was my first day at work and we only worked a couple of hours besides getting paperwork and other important things done for the SCA. We
Helped put back up an Osprey Nest which was knocked over last night and one chick died, but the other was saved and taken to this lady who takes care of animals. Well we went here and stabilized the nest a tree working put up a ladder and climbed up and we gathered the nest back up and he put it back together on top of the platform. Then the lady came with the chick which was in this box, and so little starting to chip as the mother came flying around us. the guy put the baby back on the nest and we left and watched as the mother circled and eventually perched back on the platform. This was a really cool experience and one that i could opnly experience out here, where i get to help nature and reunite a n Osprey Family. So this next weekend i get to travel to Pittsburgh for wilderness First Aid training, so that will be a good long trip. But i'm have a good time out here, and learning to live with people from other walks of life. I'll be back next week until then see ya till i see ya.

Boats in the Boat House at the Maritime Museum

SCA Native Plant Corps at the Maritime Museum

The Commodore a really nice old wooden boat in the Boat House

grilling Swordfish, and weak fish (aluminum foil)

Fried Soft shelled crabs

Devin Casting (Just to show you how we surf fish)

This is Jon, and Devin out at the Beach getting ready to fish

Some cliffs and the ocean near Montauk

A veiw of a nice house over looking the Atlantic Ocean

Looking down at Ditch Plains Beach where the surfing is good, but the beach is better. This is From a Nature Conservancy site called shadmoor, this is before the Storm.