mycelium running

THE MYCELIUM IS RUNNING!

Our mycotour in entirety was completely together by Friday: 12 people who are doing the 3-week tour in full, 18 people total who{ll be doing the Galapagos leg. We met some of the folks at a big shrimp boil held at our house in Guapulo, where I had the pleasure (re)meeting some pleasing Reedies. Then on Friday we all had dinner at the big hotel in Old Town where everyone is staying. It is good having grown-ups instead of teenagers in the tour group: there is no need for me to give my speech on the dangers of purling (“if boys re blue, and girls are red, then together, they make PURPLE, and we don{t want any purple here during our time together!”). Everyone can pretty much take care of themselves and is very low key and chill.

I cannot emphasize enough how much we lucked out on the group we have. Everyone seems really varied in terms of age and ackground, ranging from two Lewis and Clarkie soph-juniors, to an adorable Scottish-Irish-Canadian couple in their late 70s and early 80s respectively. But then again, everyone is from the West Coastish (California, Vancouver, Portland, Montana), everyone is liberal and of course everyone is fascinated by fungi to one degree or another: some casual hunters, others members of mycology clubs and two involved in remediation as a career).

On Saturday (the 12th) we left to the airport to Lago Agrio and the journey contained relatively little drama. We spent the afternoon in Lago giving a tour of the experiment site which hopefully Corey will have time to write about in more detail later, when Im not rushed to head off for dinner.



Oysters peeping out from the yummy substrate of petroleum and sawdust!