Waders Are Not Sexy...Chapter 1 ED

It is not that hate being outside. It is that I hate working outside. The two are totally different animals. I should have learned my lesson after my first experience in the field with Ed. My college years were spent working in a water quality lab. I don’t know if it was the monotony of three rinses in multiple acid baths or the fact that I was stuck in the basement of Borlaugh Hall without even a glimpse of the sun during the best three months of Minnesota weather. Either way I wanted out of the lab and into the field. Don’t get me wrong working at the water quality lab was a great experience. It was the type of job that is perfect for a college student…flexible hours, repetitive tasks that would require minimal amounts of attention and I had some of my best friends there with me. When I requested some experience in the field I was given the opportunity to work with Ed. Opportunity, ha! Someone somewhere was laughing. Ed was your average lazy middle aged single guy…big beer belly, receding hairline and a scorned attitude. When you walked into his office it was so covered in stacks of books and papers that it seemed the path that he had created to his computer chair was a sign of his efforts to “be organized.”

With the truck and ATV loaded we set off one morning from campus and headed west. Our first stop, why breakfast of course. A sit down breakfast at Cracker Barrel no less. We were hardly an hour from the campus when Ed pulls over, smiles at me and says “It’s time for breakfast.” I had already had breakfast but feeling like I should make the best of my first experience in the field I ordered up oatmeal and mindlessly push it around the bowl while Ed talked about his favorite breakfast stops. Finally he fuels up on a huge breakfast platter and we are on the road again. A couple hours later we arrived at our first destination. I couldn’t wait to get out of truck. After several hours of listening to Ed rant about theories in physics and his love of calculus I had had enough.

Ed and I were tasked with collecting GPS points in farm fields in west central MN. This meant I was to carry around a rod and walk between crop rows in the farm field while Ed stood in the middle of the field and made sure the equipment worked. (To this day I am still not sure what equipment we were using). After standing around waiting for Ed to get the equipment working I start hearing him swear at it. He tells me how the equipment isn’t working and that is because he loaned it out to some fellow researchers recently and they change the settings. I now know what he was really saying goes something like this, “Shit. I don’t know how to use this equipment very well and I can’t remember what the settings were. Now this college student is going to think I’m a real idiot and I am totally embarrassed. Damn it. I am just going to blame on someone else. After all I never did check on the equipment before I left the office like I should have. She’ll never think I am an idiot if I blame it on someone else.” Eventually he got it working “good enough” we could proceed. Some weeks later I find out it never worked good enough for the data to be useable.
Adventures with Ed didn’t end there. Soon enough there was the incredibly uncomfortable awkward I have to pee moment. As I am contemplating whether or not to tell Ed of my new predicament I mulled over my options. Remember I was standing in the middle of a farm field. To make matters worse it was spring and all crops had only recently been planted. The corn, scheduled to be knee high by the 4th of July, wasn’t even ankle deep. The field was vacant of any cover, especially any cover required by my feminine physique. To my right side was a wooded area about 100 yards away. With a jogging step I could reach those woods and be back in probably about 20 minutes, too far away for Ed to notice I had stepped away for a second. To my left was a busy highway road also about 100 yards away. I couldn’t see the driver of the cars but they would certainly notice a woman squatting down to pee in the middle of a vacant farm field. Given that my options were limited I disclosed to Ed my predicament. Without a hesitation or a conversation of any sort he looked at me, paused and said, “I’ll turn around” as he proceeded to do so.

I didn’t know what to do next. I was so stunned at the lack of discussion as well as the lack of options I had I stood there. After what seemed like the approximately right amount of time for a young woman to relieve herself I shouted, “okay” to Ed. And he immediately turned around and kept starring at the equipment. Now I had to hold it and I held it for a long time!