DAY 3 & 4 on MIDWAY

Sunday December 17th

            Our schedule is a little different on Sunday as brunch starts at 9:30 with no lunch.  We are to start work at 10:30 and we packed a lunch from the buffet after eating breakfast.  Since we started later, Gil & I rode out to the old cargo pier to look at a possible snorkeling site.

Gil took this shot half way out the old cargo pier  
Note the shower caps on our bike seats: protection from the morning dew!

            Once we started working we encountered many burrows today.  Everyone on the team experienced pulling a petrel from a caved in tunnel, probably one bird in the average six we stepped into.  These sweet little guys are black & white and always seem startled.  At dusk hundreds fill the air – they land anywhere to rest for the night, often in the road or in the grass between albatross.  They are attracted to light so we have to keep our block out curtains closed or they run into the windows!  Thank goodness we will be gone by the time they lay their eggs.

            The Christmas tree is up at the Clipper House.  Sunday dinner is at the regular time but the real Sunday treat on Midway is the bowling alley.  It is an incredible antique with mechanical pin setters and 50 year old score sheets and shoes!  One of the veteran volunteers lived here when she was 10 years old and gave us the backstage tour.  Too fun to see but we are not very good at bowling . . . Gil finally got a strike and we quit with that.

Midway Bowl

Monday December 18th

            We got up and jammed out to walk the beach before breakfast.  It is still dusky dawn so pics are difficult.

AM beach

Each day we take off from the Empire Café on our bikes with our paint guns and head out to a sector.  Each day we have different terrain and today we worked open fields where old buildings had been torn down and then around existing buildings.  

Gil loading paint for the day, team mate Karen sorting empties from full cans

          Albatross behavior is the same whether they are in a field of thousands, in the junkyard, in a forest of ironwoods or between houses.  We loved them before we got here and love them more each day.  

Two juvenile birds courting, then a pan of the area around the Empire Cafe

            The front passed, we were hot after work and the water beckoned us.  We rode straight home to get into our wet suits and snorkeled at the pier.  The coral sand is pure white and chalky.  While we were looking at coral growing on the pilings, the biggest turtle we have ever seen swam in between and around us.  We lasted 20 minutes in the water as it is cold and stark.  We hope to go farther out on Christmas which will be our first day off.

We snorkeled right here under the pier - the fish like places to hide from bigger fish

            We had to hurry back to eat dinner before they closed the buffet and then rushed off for the store which is only open from 6-7pm weeknights.  We need wine for a group meeting tomorrow night!  What a hoot this place is.