That’s how a coworker responded to this photo of helictites I sent him to explain what I had been doing over the weekend in West Virginia.  I don’t eat that much cheese!

I have more or less settled down in my new home and job, but that doesn’t mean that nothing blogworthy ever happens.  For those with a need for specifics, my apartment is roughly beneath the green arrow in the map below.

I am almost as close as anyone can live to the Capitol building!  If my apartment were facing the other way and not in the basement and the interstate wasn’t there, I’d have a spectacular view.

I haven’t included photos of my new apartment with it’s topiary and Murphy bed, but I have had much better things to photograph.  Thanks to Heather Levy for dragging me off to a camp-trip in Memorial Day Cave a few weekends ago, where we got substantial survey footage and I got some good photos—I will upload them to an album as soon as I get done with this post.  I am pleased to have fallen in with an active caving community, and my work schedule gives me every other Friday off:  I could do Gap Cave on one of those weekends and Memorial Day on the other every month, if I think I can handle it.  If I actually do this, I will end up going caving more regularly despite my “real” job than when I had a more flexible schedule.

In addition to the caver crowd, living in DC has other advantages for those with unusual sporting tastes—Capitol Hill is perfect for skateboards.  The barriers in place to prevent unauthorized vehicles from approaching parking areas for the House of Representatives offices create the perfect limited or no-traffic environment.  It is very satisfying to me that the best way to get back from the bar I have chosen as my favorite local hang out is to ride my skateboard down Capitol Hill.  Check out the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GIt21OfNmU

Since the last post, I packed a light load and traveled to DC with the idea of finding an apartment.  Great success!  I have signed a lease on an efficiency with a murphy bed located more or less under I-395.  The good news is that I can walk or commute by skateboard to work.  It ain’t big, but I can keep my car without having to use it very much, and I can also walk to the Smithsonians, the National Mall, and so forth.

I decided that it would be wise not to move in until February 1st, though, as the rent is a bit steeper than the rural Tennesee rent I am used to, and I don’t know when the new job actually starts yet.  I am also fairly good at figuring out what to do and where to crash when I am not working so I decided that I would visit New York while I had a chance.

The most harrowing part of the adventure was driving there in the snow and, having survived, I think I will take the train next time! 

I stayed with my friend Will (see the link to Will’s Blog below) on Thursday night, played rock band, and after drinking a few beers decided to try a genki drink.  These are Japanese energy drinks that come in small, brown medicine bottle-like containers and contain god-knows-what given that the ingredients (and everything else) on the label are usually only in characters.  Will has been excited about discovering these at a local convenience store, and I got over my initial horror (must of had something to do with the beer) and actually drank one.  Despite finding out from a rare drink with ingredients listed in English that some of these things apparently have more MSG than caffeine, I didn’t die, or even feel very unusually–or even exceptionally awake, so I decided that these things might not be so bad and filed this information away.  More on this later. 

Will is an art-history graduate student, and on Friday I had the rare privilege of a high-speed Will guided tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I will have to go back and spend more time checking out my favorites more closely, but Will definitely knows where the cool stuff is.  The armory is awesome, and the following photo of a Japanese helmet is for my friend Bunny, whom I believe it must have been made for.

I shifted scenes on Friday night and visited my brother in Brooklyn.  My memory picks up again on Sunday morning.  That’s not quite true, but close.  Friday night was spent eating barbecue and socializing with Colin’s film-related friends, and we went back to Queens to meet Will for Drinks on Saturday night.  Under no circumstances will I ever drink anything that looks like this again:

More specifically I would recommend the similar product that I consumed which had nothing intelligible on the label other than the picture of a bee to no one.  Unless you want to feel very strange for a few minutes and have some sort of mini-seizure.  I got better, but it was very disconcerting–more so to those observing than it was to me but, well, don’t drink those things.

On Sunday a small group of my brother’s friends and I went out to investigate a classic New York secret–The 6 train headed downtown in Manhattan doesn’t make you get off the train at the end of the line because it loops around.   If you stay on you can see an abandoned station during the ride, which I captured on video with my digi camera:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYgphlFg020

John Morris, another friend of mine is in a show called Fuerzabruta that is playing in New York right now.  I was finally convinced that it was necessary to see this on Sunday evening, and I am very glad I did.  All the superlatives I could muster wouldn’t do it justice, but their website is http://www.fuerzabrutanyc.com/

Now I am back in DC staying with my sister again while I figure out some more paperwork I need to take care of before I go to work. As far as what’s next, this much is certain: I am caving this weekend again at Cumberland Gap, then I am bringing up another load and moving in.  When do I actually start work?  I hope soon, but if they still don’t have it all sorted out, I bet I can find something else to do.

I am back from Mexico, having spent Christmas deep in an enormous sinkhole digging at a stubborn little cave at the bottom.  The purpose of the trip, other than getting out of the house and away from the office, was to look more closely at some large entrance pits in the vicinity of Xilitla Mexico with the idea that any going cave that could be found or dug into at the bottom or sides of these pits would have the potential to go very deep.  If the next big deep cave was not to be found this time, then the pits would be tremendous features worth visiting in their own right—they were, and as usual pictures tell the story better:

The red boxes are there to help you find the caver in the photo that serves to give perspective and scale.

I also made a movie with my digital camera while descending Hoya de Luz, and you can see it on YouTube by following the link: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wPsIQZGQCg

Further documenting the adventure, I have created a photo album that should be available with the rest of the photos posted to the blog under Xilitla 2007.  They are more or less chronological, and when I get around to giving them reasonable titles and captions they will better tell the story of our trip.

Now I need to move all of my junk to Washington D.C.

I guess I haven’t made some kind of rule that says that I must update my blog every time I change geographic locations, but there is momentum behind all of this rushing around that builds up story-pressure.  I am too lazy to write it all down in a way that does the experiences justice, but I can at least provide a synopsis:

I spent a somewhat lonely week in a luxury resort condo on the beach until a very interesting and hot girl with lots of ink and piercings that I met in Kansas but she’s from Virginia and now she is working in Baton Rouge came to hang out and drink and gamble and see Tool in New Orleans.  We are just friends and she is very hung up on her recent ex-boyfriend, but I really like her.

Then, back to Kentucky for Thanksgiving.  The photo that begins this post is taken during “getting the band back together” activities at Jason’s house.  Jason is playing the guitar, my brother Colin is playing the harmonica.  Rather than go into detail as to what “getting the band back together” really means, I will simply provide links to information on the band/s available from myspace. 

Nicotine Jimmy Dog:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=79626012

FERL

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=128886276

DJ Cas Walker

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=116254671

Dinner is actually in Virginia and is prepared by the parents of a friend of my sister’s, both of whom are incredible cooks.  The menu includes turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, green beans, shucky beans, home-made rolls, grits-and-cheese casserole, stuffing, cranberry compote, three kinds of pie, pecan pastry things and I am leaving things out because I can’t remember.  I follow my sister’s advice and refrain from drinking carbonated beverages so I can eat more at a sitting.

On Saturday morning I begin working all of these excess calories off during a 17-hour cave trip in Gap Cave in Cumberland Gap National Park.  Gap cave has lots of oddly-shaped rooms that tilt with the dip of the rocks and may be hundreds of feet wide and long, but only just tall enough to stand in.  There are slickensides on everything, and the brecciation from the faulting has made parts of the cave into a terrifying breakdown maze where rocks weighing many hundreds of pounds may be shifted by a misplaced hand or foot.  This is the part of the cave we end up surveying.  I have never met any of the people I am surveying with, but they are the best crew I have ever worked with and we get just under 1,000 feet of hard-fought survey, exiting the cave at about 3:30 AM. The caving world is a small one, and over the course of the trip we find that we are all connected in various synchroncitous ways.  The CRF fieldhouse in Pineville is in the attic of a movie theater and is the best appointed field-house I have encountered, with hot showers, fancy bathrooms, and wireless.  Which is good, because we are all very tired. 

So now I am back at Sewanee, but I will spend the next week or so in Kansas City, then fly to Austin, and from there drive to Mexico, then drive back and move to DC (whew!).

So I took a job at Headquarters.  Will I survive a "real" job?  I don’t know how I convinced myself to do it, but I guess I have this notion (likely faulty) that there is value in delayed gratification, in small sacrifices for greater rewards.  Because there is no question that living in Sewanee (see caption photos) is far superior to living just about anywhere.  I will probably be back.  In the end some wise friends pointed out that one can’t quit a job one doesn’t have, so I decided to take a chance. 

There are some mitigating factors too.  I am excited to be able to hang out with my siblings far more frequently–I am pretty sure I have a family, I just don’t see them very often.  I am also excited about living somewhere with culture and things to do (indoors when it’s cold).  And maybe the good things I do at work will benefit a wider audience. 

I really don’t want to grow up though. Click on the link below to see a video of skateboarding down South Carolina Avenue, past Cannon dorm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aiGEeYJhIg

No more month long stints in Mexico or South Dakota, no deciding on a whim to go wherever I feel like it for weeks.  Well at least not for a while.

I probably won’t start work until early January, though, so there are a few more days of freedom. Anybody making bets on how long I last?  Long enough to get benefits, I hope.

Actually I am already here.  I usually prefer to start each post with a photo, but this time if I am going to manifest the main purpose of this thing, which is to let everybody know where I am at and what I am up to, I need to just sit down and do some writing.  And there’s nothing that photogenic around just right now.

Since the last post, I went back to Kansas for a while.  I can’t say this was entirely a pleasant experience–I was only there for a little over a week but the main memory I can take with me was going to a party on the first Friday I was there.  After paying 5 bucks for a wristband to get in, someone decided to uninvite me. "No one knows you here" this guy said, which was more or less accurate, but several folks I had recently met and knew on a first name basis had told me about the party or I most certainly wouldn’t have been there in the first place.  In all reality, it wasn’t that exciting, and I wasnt’ sure I really wanted to stay anyway, and then, with no provocation whatsoever, this asshole hit me in the face.  He could have just asked me to leave, but that wasn’t dramatic enough, apparently.  So, sporting a fat lip, I spent most of my social time for the next week in the hotel bar, which I have to say, was far above average for these kinds of establishments, especially considering the quality of the rest of the hotel. 

I guess I am going to be bouncing around a lot these days, but right now I am in Jackson, MS where I am taking Oracle training.  I guess my slide into total geekdom is almost complete.  Thankfully I will be home in Sewanee next week, but then it’s back to Biloxi, MS for more training, SQL server this time.

Then back home, then to KY for Thanksgiving (I am excited about the possibilities for some serious caving in Gap Cave over the weekend).  Then back to Missouri/Kansas to finish what I started so long ago in Greensburg.  Then who knows what.  I apologize for what I have to consider the most artless and least interesting post in a while, but that’s what I’m doing…

I have started to write this post and given up several times, because so much has been going on in so short a time-span.  Here are the highlights:

To begin with I went with option 2. from the previous post and visited friends in Colorado.  This was a good choice, as I had just the sort of wild and outrageous adventures that I was looking for (enough so that some details will have to be ommitted to protect the innocent).

I stayed with a friend that has caught long-skateboard fever and we rode mine and another one belonging to his roomate very hard and with mixed success.  I am pleased to announce that I am not too old to fall off a skateboard at extreme speeds and get back on it and do it again.  A long-boarding run at the Red Rocks early in the day on the 29th was possibly the dumbest thing I have ever done (always, always, always scout the hill and start working your way from the bottom up!) but I lived to tell the tale…

For anyone who has ever been there, it is apparently possible (I am not sure how I managed to stay on top of it) to skateboard from the upper north lot, through the tunnel, around the curve, and then 90 degrees to the left up the scenic drive to scrub off speed.  I must have been going nearly 50, and I have not been that scared in recent memory.

Later that evening I camped out on the "Sugarloaf" outside of Boulder with a mix of friends and new acquaintances.  A grand time was had by all, and in spite of some overnight inclement weather, Colorado was at it’s early Fall, golden-aspen, sun-shining best the following morning (as attested to in the first photo).  I went back to Red Rocks to catch a Smashing Pumpkins show the following night, and with very little sleep, struck out for Tennesee and home.

After spending a couple of days sorting through the mail, removing stuff from my car, and trying to find the floor in my apartment, I packed up for a weekend of camping and caving in North Georgia at the TAG Fall Cave-In as seen in the rest of the photos.  None of my own photos were worth posting, so thanks to Cara for putting hers on facebook where I could grab them.  I ran into many friends, old and new, and wore myself out with caving, boozing, and telling tall tales.

I spent a couple of days recovering from all of this, and I am now writing from Harlan, KY, where I finally arrived to pick my Dad up from the hospital.  He is doing much better, and the whole experience has not been the ordeal that I was afraid of.  At the moment, I am contemplating going back to Sewanee for the weekend to squeeze in just a little more fun-time before going back to work in Kansas next week (yuck). 

The featured photo is of something called a gypsum beard–a delicate network of selenite needles clinging to the walls of a cave.  Please right-click and save it to your computer, then zoom in until you can see the detail.  In reality, this thing is only about three inches in length, and you can’t see the detail of the crystal pattern with the naked eye.  They are like crystal spider webs.

So the news with me is that I am done with South Dakota this year.  I have had mixed success: 

My ex-girlfriend doesn’t "actively" hate me, and I feel that an appropriate closure has been achieved–it wasn’t very much fun, but then I guess I didn’t expect it would be.  My motorcycle runs like crap, and refuses to respond to even the most expert diagnosis and fiddling–I don’t know who originally coined the adage "If it’s got tits or wheels, it’s trouble", but he was clearly a wise man.  The volunteer work I have been doing has been enjoyable and appreciated, but not appreciated enough to change the fact that the powers that be are dropping the entire GIS program in the Park, denying me an opportunity to do what I am most creative and passionate about for a living, and demonstrating that they are all idiots.

I will get in the car and go somewhere on Friday, I think, though I have a lot of crap competing for my attention: 

1.  My father is having a crazy episode.  He is crazy all the time, but sometimes it reaches a more serious level and he needs some extra help, and, as I don’t actually have to work right at this moment, I feel like I should be the one to get a shovel and clean out his apartment, and this time maybe figure out how to get him a social worker to help him from having these issues (I will refrain from posting them to the web) again.

2.  It’s my birthday on Saturday, and I would like to have some fun.  I have identified that I will not have sufficient fun here in South Dakota, because I don’t have enough properly trained drinking buddies to celebrate properly (and safely) with, and there are not enough available and interesting women to fail to hook up with.  I don’t think I have time to make it to Tennesee either, so maybe I will look up some friends in Colorado, which is not really on the way, but could be.

3.  There is a large caver party in North Georgia next weekend, and I have inside information that there will be interesting and available women there.  I want to go, but I also haven’t been home in two months and I wont be able to get back until early next week–and then there’s item 1. to worry about.

4. If I were really irresponsible I could blow off all of this and  go on an 18-hour cave trip that I am not physically, psychologically, or otherwise properly prepared for in Jewel Cave on Saturday instead.

I haven’t been at work in a month, and I still need a vacation.

I travel so much, yet I habitually return to some places.  This will be the fourth year in a row that I have spent at least some time in the Black Hills of South Dakota, a place that restoreth my soul, so to speak.  This year I am staying with friends in Hot Springs, who have recently renovated a small home, freeing up their motor home for wayward travelers (left hand photo).  Our bikes are out front, but the photo doesn’t do them justice as an exercise in contrast–perhaps I will have to expound more on this in additional posts. 

As I write this, I am recovering from the after-effects  of a 12-hour cave trip into Wind Cave, where I took the right hand photo.  This second photo is the best expanation for why I am here, as this is otherwise not the best timing for me–The last two years I stayed with a girlfriend, having met here here during the summer of the year before that. This year she is an ex-girlfriend, and a small national park is unfortunately a petri dish for intrigue and drama I could do without.  I did not come here to repair our relationship, but I would like to balance my karma–without making the drama worse by posting it to the internet, I hope that she might be able to overcome her anger towards me and do what she thinks is best for her without having to hate or blame me. 

Thankfully I have plenty of other things to do:  The Park lost a GIS specialist to the Forest Service, and since they have foolishly decided that they can do without hiring another one, there is a lot of interesting work for me.  Mostly I am working with the cave survey data, hoping to come up with a poster or short paper to present in an international confeference on paleokarst that will be occuring in Rapid City next year (meaning I will be back again, I suppose).  I am also doing resurvey in the cave, plotting the locations of elk recorded by GPS collars, and sorting sediments to retrieve fossils of Eocene mammals from a major paleo site in the park.

I am also spending as much time as possible riding and tinkering with my ugly Honda motorcycle–riding in the Black Hills really does restore my soul, no matter what else is going on.

So the blog has languished for a while.   You know: To use an attribute to show that attributes are not attributes is not as good as using a non-attribute to show that attributes are not attributes. To use a horse to show that a horse is not a horse is not as good as using a non-horse to show that a horse is not a horse, Heaven and earth are one attribute; the ten thousand things are one horse.

I go swimming regularly with a lot of attributes, and I am ready to dispense with them for a short time (as attractive as they may be). I leave Kansas on Friday.  I apologize for the fact that my blog is not real, i.e., you must be on Friendster to post to it.  If you do happen to be on friendster, I have to ask:  Ice, rice, or christ?  Or, if you wish, Atlanta, Orlando, or Washington D.C.?   I don’t know, but I am going to South Dakota and have me a Hot Springs Burger.