Rainstorms


All day was spent in structured wandering. At least, that’s one way to phrase exploring. For Day 1, James and Mark explored around the landing point to check the surrounding terrain while staying within eyesight of the others. Cole followed along while recording coordinates and taking pictures. The Doc and Juan, the local biology specialist, stayed at the landing spot observing the surrounding wildlife and taking detailed notes of the colorful plants, tall thick trees, and curious bugs and small mammals they saw, experiencing what I would say was the most interesting job. As for Joe, he placed a infrared scanner on a tripod, which he very carefully monitored through his MacBook Pro, to watch for any approaching life that could prove hazardous to their safety.
After the morning had past and afternoon was coming on, everyone gathered all together for lunch and to chat about their progress.

“Well,” James said while chewing, “I’m pretty certain that we can travel farther north as planned tomorrow without any worse challenges for now.”

“Perfeito!” Juan replied, “That means we will have time later for me to study the canopy layer.”

“That’s great!” James said, remembering that part of the mission was for Juan to explore the canopy of the Amazon Rainforest while the others continue to explore the surrounding area.
Swallowing his food, The Doc commented, “You know, Juan was describing to me earlier this morning that the canopy layer was actually almost untouched as regards to exploration until the 1980s. You could consider it a whole continent above the air waiting to be entered. The Treetop Frontier.”

“Well that certainly sounds very G.U.L.E.A.,” Cole said in amazement.

“But of course the ‘80s were over 50 years ago. Wouldn’t have exploration techniques improved by now?” Joe asked.

At that point a series of surprise raindrops came flooding upon them.
“Ain’t called a rainforest for nothing is it?” Mark chuckled, “Glad I set up our canopy earlier.”
After everyone laughed, Juan continued to talk about the recent developments to canopy exploration. As the conversation continued, the rain came pouring harder and harder. Thunder rumbled like a rolling boulder.

“Uh oh,” Mark said, “Looks like we’re going to be stuck here for quite a while. The ground is going to be super muddy for a couple of days.”

“No one said this would be easy,” Cole commented.

For an hour the crew huddled under their canopy hiding inside soaked ponchos. The air seemed to be turning into water as the harsh storm progressed. Thick, grey clouds covered the sky so much that not a bit of sunlight could enter the already usually dark forest floor. It was soon realized that nothing could be done other than to try to sleep through it no matter how uncomfortable. Everyone as quickly as possible set up their mosquito-net hammocks and hoped to doze off soon. To make matters worse, Joe’s equipment set on an alarm.

“What’s going on now??” Mark asked gruffly.
Joe very unwillingly got up to check. “The laptop went out,” he mumbled, “I don’t get it. I had a heavy duty cover on it.”

Mark rolled his eyes, “Hmmf, MacBooks.”

Joe glared at his anti-Apple companion, “Hey, Mark! Ya know what PC stands for? Poor Capabilities.”

“Guys! Guys!” Cole called out above the roar of the rain, “Don’t the storm outside get to you on the inside. We have more to handle with then arguments over computers.”

“Okay, fine,” Joe grumbled, “I’ll run a test scan with my System Utilities Device. We need this thing to run for the rest of this expedition.”

Joe tried his best to stay up and figure out how to fix it while everyone else fell asleep.

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