Mastering Anger with Stoicism: Finding Calm in the Unknown

In today's fast-paced world, it's not uncommon to find oneself grappling with feelings of anger without a clear understanding of the source. The confusion and frustration that accompany these feelings can be overwhelming. However, the ancient philosophy of Stoicism provides a roadmap to navigate these turbulent emotions, offering tools and insights that remain strikingly relevant today. Drawing on Stoic principles, let's explore how to manage and understand unexplained anger.

1. Focus on What You Can Control

One of the foundational teachings of Stoicism is the distinction between what's within our control and what's not. When anger arises without a clear cause, remember that while you may not control the emotion itself, you can control your response to it.

2. You Control How You Respond

Your reaction to anger is a choice. Instead of being swept up by the emotion, take a deep breath, and decide how you wish to proceed. As the Stoics believed, our power lies in our reactions.

3. Interrogate Yourself: Put Yourself Up for Review

Ask yourself: Why am I feeling this way? Is there a hidden trigger? Self-reflection is a powerful tool in understanding our emotions. Delving into your feelings can often illuminate the hidden sources of your anger.

4. Don’t Suffer Imagined Troubles

Sometimes, our mind amplifies situations or creates scenarios that don't exist. Recognize if your anger is stemming from imagined slights or hypothetical situations.

5. “The Best Revenge is Not to Be Like That” – Marcus Aurelius

If someone else's actions or words have triggered your anger, remember that responding in kind only perpetuates the cycle. Choose a higher path.

6. Focus on Process, Not Outcomes

Anger often arises from unmet expectations. Instead of fixating on outcomes, focus on your actions and behaviors, which are directly within your control.

7. Find a Way to Love Everything That Happens (Amor Fati)

Embrace every experience, even anger, as a part of life's tapestry. Each emotion is an opportunity for growth and understanding.

8. Journal

Writing can be therapeutic. Documenting your feelings can help in understanding and processing them. Over time, patterns may emerge, providing insights into triggers and effective coping strategies.

9. Prepare for Life’s Inevitable Setbacks (Premeditatio Malorum)

Anticipate challenges and setbacks. By mentally preparing for difficult situations, you can face them with equanimity and grace.

10. Ego is the Enemy

Recognize if pride or ego is fueling your anger. By keeping our ego in check, we can approach situations with humility and openness.

11. Stillness is the Key

In moments of anger, seek stillness. Whether it's through meditation, deep breathing, or simply taking a moment to pause, finding inner calm can dissipate the intensity of anger.

In conclusion, Stoicism offers a rich tapestry of wisdom for managing the complexities of human emotions. When faced with unexplained anger, these principles guide us towards introspection, understanding, and ultimately, peace. Embracing the Stoic way doesn't mean suppressing emotions but rather understanding and channeling them effectively.

Hatch's Cave List

I almost lost my cave list a month ago when Google did something strange. I was able to recover it after spending several hours looking at the cache. It's backed up at several spots now, so hopefully that won't happen again. 

I haven't been to a new cave yet this year. I need to change that soon.

  Hatch's Cave List

New Book: Acetylene Gas

 At the recent NSS Convention I met several authors who are also cavers. One of them was Dwight Livingston, a caver from Maryland. He read an excerpt to us.

From the Description:

"Young teacher and historian Terry Potzlikowitz suffers an unlikely home improvement accident and finds himself pitted against a gang of desperate project cavers deep inside the largest cave in the world. Alone, offline, often close to death and worse, he improvises and perseveres in the harsh underground. For Terry, gear and technique go only so far, and survival is more a question of spirit and resolve.

A caver's fairy tale, this humorous novel explores a fictional world, one that pushes the envelope of nature to extremes but stops well short of the supernatural. The fairy here is a small mammal. The monsters here are humans with suspect motives, and a cold and indifferent universe. Can Terry learn to survive in this odd and useless place, and can he win the respect, and perhaps the hearts, of the caver community that inhabits it?"

If you're interested in a book with a lot of caving, written by a real caver, check it out.

Choose Fulfillment Over Happiness

In our journey through life, it's important to reconsider our aspirations and shift our focus. During this time of reflection, we often receive well-intentioned yet outdated advice, particularly when it comes to our careers. The idea that happiness should be our ultimate objective has been ingrained in us, but some experts argue that setting our sights on fulfillment is a more valuable pursuit. Here's why. 

The Pitfalls of Chasing Happiness 

The conventional notion of happiness is often tied to achieving specific goals or reaching significant milestones in life, such as landing a dream job, owning a home, or getting married. The problem arises when we associate our happiness solely with these external factors. This mindset can lead to disappointment because our happiness becomes contingent on acquiring and maintaining these conditions. In reality, true happiness cannot be constantly pursued—it's already within us. 

Why Choose Fulfillment Instead Contrary to happiness, fulfillment is not a finite destination. It is a continuous journey that involves living a meaningful life aligned with your values. Pursuing and engaging in things that you're passionate about and truly matter to you, such as traveling, cultivating hobbies, contributing to causes you care about, and nurturing meaningful relationships, can bring fulfillment. 

The Pursuit of Fulfillment Opting for fulfillment rather than chasing happiness offers several advantages. By embracing fulfillment, you can better cope with a range of emotions, including disappointment, sadness, loss, and anger. The ability to experience a wide spectrum of emotions enables personal growth and resilience. Instead of fixating on an elusive state of perpetual happiness, you can appreciate the richness of life's ups and downs. 

Embrace the Journey When you focus on fulfillment, you can create a more gratifying and sustainable life. By dedicating yourself to what truly matters to you, you'll find a sense of purpose and contentment. Embrace the diverse array of emotions that life presents, from joy and excitement to boredom, disappointment, sadness, fear, anxiety, and even embarrassment or shame. Remember, fulfillment is not a fleeting destination; it is the ongoing pursuit of a life well-lived. As you navigate through your own personal journey, consider shifting your perspective from seeking happiness to prioritizing fulfillment. By doing so, you'll embark on a path of self-discovery, growth, and genuine satisfaction.

Important Note: There are people in life for whom the Destination is more important than the Journey. If you are one of those people, embrace who you are and ignore all of the advice I gave here. Being true to yourself is ultimately more important.

Cave #42: Snail Shell Cave

Jack and I woke up at 7:30 this morning and headed out, stopping first at Waffle House in Hermitage for a quick breakfast then heading down 840 towards Murfreesboro to meet John, Joe, and Mason at the SCCi Snail Shell Cave Preserve. John had organized the permit, and we all made it to the parking area at roughly the same time. After taking about half an hour to get ready and get our gear together, we started toting kayaks down the trail to the sinkhole entrance, which is several hundred yards away.

I had been to the edge of the sinkhole late last year just after dusk, so I didn't get a good idea of the size of it back then. It's about 125 feet across and drops about 90 feet into a large open area at the bottom. Basically a large section of the cave collapsed here a long time ago, and so you can go upstream or downstream from here. Both ways go for miles.

Our goal today was to go upstream. So Jack, Mason, and I headed down into the sinkhole while John and Joe stayed up top to lower the kayaks down. To walk down to the bottom of the sink you go down a narrow trail counter-clockwise around the sink. I wouldn't call it dangerous, but it was a little intimidating to Mason, who just turned 8 yesterday, but once Jack started helping him out he quickly got the hang of it.

Once we got down there Jack and Mason explored the downstream passage a bit, and reported seeing a lot of crayfish and almost a dozen black and spotted cave salamanders.

Jack and Mason at the Upstream Entrance

John rigged up a rope along with a rappelling rack and the the five kayaks started coming down the side, along with a large canvas bag of oars, life jackets, and other assorted gear. While we were getting the kayaks positioned in the water just inside the upstream entrance, I pushed Mason's kayak along a rock channel and it slid just enough that it hit the water and started going down the passage. So then I had to get mine in the water and go fetch his. It was the first of several misadventures for Mason and his kayak that day.

Soon we were all ready and we took off down the passageway. I've been on almost seventy cave trips now and this was by far one of the best experiences I've ever had. The passageway is 8 to 10 feet wide and about 15 feet over the water, which is not super deep. There's almost no current in the water right now since the water level is down, and it made for a very easy float. It twists and turns a bit so you have to watch out constantly or you'll get too close to a wall, but it goes for about 2400 feet with no obstacles whatsoever.

Jack, Joe, and John getting ready at the entrance.

Eventually we came to a small pile of breakdown in the water so I stopped and scouted it out since I was in front. It looked to keep going so we started portaging over it at that point. As soon as I got in on the other side and went about 10 feet, I could see we probably weren't going much further in the kayaks since there was a solid wall of breakdown ahead. While I was waiting on the others, Mason suffered his second incident of the day when Jack accidentally hit him in the lip with a paddle. Fortunately it was not very hard and no real damage was done.

Once we got to this second point, since I had already slipped once and gotten pretty wet I got out in the waist deep water and helped everyone else get out and was marshaling the kayaks down below. At one point John started calling me the Harbormaster since was trying to get kayaks stacked up and tied off to something. I eventually got them grouped up and roughly tied off and we started exploring beyond the breakdown.

The Harbor

At that point in the cave it makes a sort of loop, and Joe and I went off to the left where there was some really nice flowstone formations that Joe took this picture of me in front of.

Alan admiring a really pretty flowstone formation

Eventually we reached another deep stream passage with no other ready ways to go. It probably would have been possible to portage the kayaks to this part of the stream, but it would have been pretty labor intensive and gnarly at best. So we decided to rout at that point. I got back into the water at the harbor and helped everyone get into their boats, then just decided to wade my kayak across. Turns out there was one deep spot and so I was swimming with my kayak and Swaygo pack for a bit.

Once we were headed out Joe wanted to snap a picture of us so we all turned out our lights. After that we all left them off for a long while except for Jack who was in the lead. It was pretty cool paddling for so long in the dark. John had something on the back of his helmet that glowed slightly so that helped as well.

The picture Joe took as we were heading out. It is a great representation of the size and appearance of the passage that goes on for almost 2400 feet back to the entrance.

Once we got back to the entrance, Mason and I explored a bit of the downstream side of the cave. He was trying to show me something in the water and I slipped and we went down together on a flat rock. I did all kinds of contortions to keep from landing on top of him and managed not to, but he still hit his knee pretty hard and I could tell he was in some pain. He's a real trooper though, and we after we got back on our feet we explored another 100 feet or so before we came back. That side has some really nice semi-dry rimstone dams.

Jack started heading out of the sinkhole almost as soon as we got out of the water, and John and Joe headed up to get ready to do some hauling. Mason stayed down in the sink with me and pretty soon the rope came down and we started hooking up the kayaks. The first three went up just fine, but while Mason's blue kayak was on the way up and we were hiding under the ledge we heard someone yell something from up top and then a slight thump. Then a blue kayak fell out of the sky and hit the rocks almost in the center of the sinkhole, landing with a loud thump!

I looked right at Mason after it landed and his eyes were wide and I thought he was going to be really upset. I walked over and looked at it and it only had a dent in the keel near the bow. He was relieved and I shouted up that everything was OK. Joe was about to come back down but I yelled up and told him there was no reason to come back down, but just send something else I could use to attach the rope to the eyehole since the handle was now missing. They sent down some extra webbing and an extra locking aluminum carabiner. I ended up using the carabiner to attach the canoe to the rope, which was probably the safer option anyway.  We later found the broken handle and the small rope had just snapped. Joe and John told me later that the kayak got stuck at the upper lip and when they yanked on it hard it came up and stayed on the ledge for half a second before going back over the side. John was quick to yell "Roooocckkkkk!" which is what we heard but couldn't make out.

Soon enough we had the rest of the kayaks and the bag of gear headed up and we all got back to the vehicles safe and sound. Joe, Jack, Mason, and I had the traditional Mexican food after the trip in a nearby restaurant.

Cave #18: Camps Gulf Cave (Second Visit)

The Nashville Grotto had originally planned to visit Camps Gulf Cave in Van Buren County, Tennessee on July 13, 2019 but the trip leader decided to change the date to the next Saturday. I had been looking forward to going and had already gotten a permit for that day online, so when my friends Zeke and Calla told me that some people from the Spencer Mountain Grotto were also going to go that day I decided to go with them and still plan on going the next Saturday as well.

My trusty "Cave Mule" Jack decided he didn't want to go to the same cave two weeks in a row, so I headed out of the house by myself about 8 am and met up with the group at the parking area just after 10 am. Marion O. Smith, Zeke, Calla, and four other people from the area nearby were already there. They waited patiently while I got ready, then we headed up the 3/4 of a mile trail to the cave entrance.

I had visited the cave over 12 years earlier, and the path up to it seemed to be less of a road now and more like a well hiked trail. We knew there was a group of people from Georgia Tech somewhere ahead of us, but we didn't see any sign of them on the way up to the cave.

We wasted no time heading into the cave, and were soon headed up the hardest part, which is the climb up through the breakdown to the first big room. The Georgia Tech group had left a hand line at one of the more exposed climb ups, so that made things a bit easier. It wasn't nearly as hard as I remembered from 12 years ago when I was about 35 or 40 lbs heavier and in worse shape than I am now.

The relaxing sounds of Marion's grumbling followed us up through the pile of breakdown, and some of the folks were having more trouble than others. At one point while he was about to come up through the narrowest spot Marion said "whose blood is this?" We didn't know, but that part of the cave is basically a cheese grater, so it could have been anybody's.

Eventually we all made it up to the top of the breakdown in the first room. Off to the left and down below we could see the Georgia Tech people sitting around near the stream passage. We never got any closer to them than that. After a while Marion and his friend June headed back out of the cave, and the rest of us continued on towards the register and the second room. We spread out a bit but eventually we all made it to the third room, which is the furthest I have now been in the cave. Once I got to that point I felt like I was probably approaching my limit for the day, so I sat about halfway up the huge pile of rocks in the third room for a bit while Zeke and Paul and his son went looking for something they were calling the Tennessee Rock.

Zeke takes a break deep in the cave to try to call John Hoffelt for directions.

After we made it back to the second room, which has a large stream passage on one side, I decided I wanted to try to make it back to the first room by going that way, instead of climbing back over all the breakdown again. Zeke opined that he thought it might have a good bit of water, which might even require swimming. I decided to give it a try anyway, and Zeke also decided to come along since he had never attempted it either.

We headed down towards the stream, crossing over a large patch of mud which contained a lot of organic debris like dead leaves and the like. We looked out over a long lake that stretched down some large borehole. It wasn't clear enough to see how deep it was, so Zeke said "I'll head down there and see if I can tell how deep it is," and started climbing down the rocks.

I decided to just come along myself and was following pretty close behind him. As I was hopping over some rocks right on the edge of the water, I slipped and went feet first into the water.

"You ok?" asked Zeke.

"Yeah," I replied. "By the way the water is deep. And cold."

I just started swimming at that point and a few seconds later Zeke jumped in and immediately started complaining how cold it was. It's not like I didn't warn him or anything.

We swam for about 50 yards, occasionally running into rocks under the water and sometimes just barely being able to touch the bottom. We hauled ourselves out of the water on a very large bank of mud. Zeke was able to climb up it fairly easily, but it took me a while to traverse along one bank and reach a much larger mud bank that lead up to a horizontal crack that presumably led towards the first room.

At this point things got pretty comical. I spent the next 15 or 20 minutes trying to get up this bank of mud, but my legs were getting weak and I was wet and it was one of the most miserable, slippery situations I've ever been in. At one point Zeke found a triangular rock and we tried to dig out some foot holds, but it was so slippery that I couldn't even stand in one place without slipping and sliding back down towards the water. Eventually I made the decision that I was wearing myself out and I'd better conserve what energy I had left, so we made the swim back across the lake and back up towards the first room.

It had been quite a while since I had to swim in a cave, and it wasn't until the second trip back across the lake that I remembered the best way was to grab my Swaygo pack by the closing buckles with my left hand and stretch it out in front of me and kind of side stroke with the other hand while kicking as best I could with my boots on.

I had to stop a few extra times on the way out of the cave because the arches in my feet cramped up, but eventually we made it out and that 3/4 of a mile hike feels like 3 or 4 miles when you're coming back down after a long cave trip.

Marion and most of the others were waiting impatiently for us at the parking area. They had just about decided to take Zeke's truck and drive over to Rumbling Falls to pull some rope, but we got there just in time to stop their dastardly plan.  Calla, Zeke, and I headed back into Sparta for some much needed Mexican food and Dos Equis.

I got home and I was bruised, sore, bleeding from several spots,and my feet were still cramping pretty badly. What a great freaking day it was! I can't wait to back again this coming Saturday.

Cave #28: Kennamer Cave

I've been easing back into caving the last few months, taking Jack to some of the caves I've visited before, but itching to get into some new caves. I had been in contact with my old friend Gary Barnes from the Birmingham Grotto, who took me on my first wild cave trip to Sinking Cove back in the summer of 2000. We had planned to go to a few caves, and the destination changed a few times until we settled on Kennamer Cave in Jackson County, Alabama.

Gary pulled a permit from the SCCi website, and we decided to meet up in Woodville sometime before 11am on Saturday morning. Jack and I left the house right at 8am and after only one stop we made it to Gail's Diner in Woodville about 10:20. Gail's Diner is not much to look at, but the service was fast, super friendly, and not very expensive.

After a quick breakfast and a few cups of coffee, we loaded up and headed up to the SCCi Kennamer Cave Preserve a short distance away. The road is pretty rough and probably in worse shape after all the recent rain. My truck is not 4WD, but it had no trouble getting up to the parking area. I probably wouldn't take a car up that road, though.

After we parked, we spent some time gearing up and I loaded up my Cave Mule with most of the stuff. Gary joined in on the fun and gave the Cave Mule about 75 feet of rope to carry as well. About 100 feet from the kiosk there was a pretty loud waterfall and we went over and took some pictures of that.  Then we got started up the trail right at Noon.

Now before we started the hike, there was some question about the length and difficulty of the trail up to the main entrance of the cave. Gary thought it was about a mile with 1000 feet of elevation gain. Mark Ostrander who is the property manager told me it was about a mile with 300 feet of elevation gain. By the time I got back to the truck, my pedometer was reading me having walked 4.75 for the day, and I did very little walking before I got there. When I got home I did some research using the topo map mode on Google maps and I think the parking area is about at the 600' line and the cave entrance is roughly at 1100', so it's about a mile and 500 feet up according to the map. I think my pedometer read higher because I was taking shorter steps slogging up the trail which was covered in wet leaves.

So the upper-middle-aged guy and the two old farts trudged up the old logging road/trail, while Jack the Cave Mule set a blistering pace and pretty soon disappeared from sight. After about an hour and two short rest breaks we made it up to the hollow where the main entrance is and I started yelling for Jack. The trail, by the way, is very well flagged so it's pretty hard to get lost going up there.

Jack came back down the trail and said he left the pack and the rope next to a hole in the ground, but he didn't see the cave entrance. When Gary and Andy caught up they told us the hole was, in fact, the Dug Entrance, but that the main entrance was just around the corner of a bluff where the stream was flowing.

Jack and I went to check out the main entrance, which was taking a lot of water. It looks vertical but Gary said it can be climbed down but he probably would never try it with that much water going in. I can tell you the entire area around this entrance is amazingly beautiful. It's worth the hike up there just to see that, regardless of whether you go in the cave or not.

After a final gear check and a quick snack, we got ready to go in through the Dug Entrance. It's a hole that's about 2.5 feet in diameter, and it drops down a few feet then turns a bit then goes down about 4 or 5 more feet before it takes another sharp bend. It's tight on me. Not super tight, but enough that I was having to squeeze a bit at a few spots.

Gary went in first and then I went in, followed by Jack. Andy came in last. At the bottom the slope levels out for the most part, but it's very low passage that's about a yard wide or so. It's covered with fist size and smaller rocks. In some parts I could crawl on my hands and knees, but a lot of it was belly crawling. Also, about 10 feet down that passage a stream comes in so you're crawling in about 3 inches of flowing water that is very cold. My first thought when I hit that spot where I had to belly crawl through water was "Oh man, this is gonna suuuuck."

The problem is that I usually cave in shorts and a t-shirt and I never got any real caving knee pads and I've never used elbow pads. My knee pads are just carpenter knee pads that have a solid outer surface and some nice gel packs on the inside. They're usually pretty good for a short hands and knees crawl, but they don't stay in place very well.

So fairly quickly I realized that I was going to get very cold, and my knees and elbows were going to suffer greatly. As we pushed on down this tunnel of misery, Jack said he couldn't see Andy anymore behind him. Apparently Andy saw that belly crawl through the water and decided to rout then and there. He's much wiser than I am.

After about 75 feet we got to a spot where it opened up a bit, and there was a small dome off to the left that also had a small stream coming out of it. Ahead of us was a short serpentine section and then a hole that Jack said looked like it went down 20 to 30 feet with all the water going with it. This area of the cave was also covered in huge cave crickets. I told Jack they were just waiting on one of us to expire so they could feast like kings.

We had a quick pow-wow there and decided we were already getting cold and we weren't really equipped or ready to deal with a tricky climbdown so we decided to rout at that point. Gary and Jack went ahead of me and I started the crawl back to the entrance. This was the point where it really started to suck.

On the way in I was headed slightly downward and the water was helping me slide along a bit. Now I was going back against gravity and the cold water was really starting to get to me. I would snake my way up a bit and at the tightest, lowest part I just kept telling myself "six more inches. Just go six more inches. Now go six more inches." I wasn't in any real danger, but it was hard. I had to stand at the bottom of the climb-up after I got out of the water and get myself together for a minute or two before I got out. My arms from the elbow to the wrist looked like ground hamburger at this point. Will definitely get pads before I go back. Jack just planked the entire way up and down the tunnel and emerged completely unscathed.

The wind had picked up a little outside by then and it never really got into the 50's like they had predicted in the weather forecast. I just got my stuff and started walking down the trail so I wouldn't lock up too much. Again, I'm in much better shape now so it wasn't really a problem, but I did wish I had a light jacket at that point. I guess losing 118 lbs of insulation has made me a bit more susceptible to the cold than I used to be.

After we got back down to the vehicles, we changed and followed Gary back towards Guntersville. We made a quick stop at Sauta Cave which I had never been to before. It's a short walk back to the viewing platform they've built outside the closed and gated cave. During the summer you can stand there and watch a large number of bats exiting the cave, but when we were there it was quiet and peaceful but the stream was flowing pretty fast out of the cave.

Then we headed over to Camp Maranantha to eat dinner with the rest of the Birmingham Grotto. I saw some old friends and made a few new ones. It was a great day, even without seeing very much of the insides of a cave. On the way home Jack and I enjoyed a radio show we found that was playing Blue Grass music.

Jack at the main entrance of Kennamer Cave.

Cave # 5: Cedar Ridge Crystal Cave (Third Visit)

I've been working hard over the last year or so to lose weight and get back into caving shape. In that time I've lost over 100 lbs and walked almost 200 miles in September of this year. Unfortunately, near the end of that month I developed some severe pain in my left arch that left me walking about half as much every day and stalled out my weight loss. I really wanted to go back to Cedar Ridge though, so I planned on going, even with the arch pain, this past Saturday. Fortunately, my doctor called in a prescription for Indomethicin, which has been a miracle drug for me several times over the years. By Saturday morning the pain was almost completely gone, so I loaded up Jack and my caving gear in the truck and headed down I-24.

Since it had been so long since I was last caving, I discovered a few weeks back that my Princeton Tec Apex headlamp was still working, but the rubber covering the buttons had stiffened up so much that it was almost impossible to turn it on and off. I contacted Princeton Tec and since the light has a lifetime warranty I shipped it off to them to be replaced. In the meantime I needed a main headlamp and so did Jack, so the night before I went to Walmart and purchased a pair of Energizer 315 Lumen headlamps that use AAA batteries.

These headlamps are "water resistant" and a 1 meter impact resistance, which doesn't sound that great, but they did fine in this small cave and we had other backup lights as well of course. They are very bright, but the throw distance is not that great on them and I ended up using the small tactical LED flashlight on the side of my helmet as the spot light for most of the trip.

So after filling up with gas, grabbing some coffee and a sausage biscuit, Jack and I headed down I-24, thinking we were running a bit late. Johnnie Gatlin was leading this trip and said he'd be at the cave to open the gate at 10am. We pulled into the parking area about 10:15am and were the only ones there. Johnnie had formed a texting group a few days earlier and I told them we were there and the rest of the folks said they were close behind.

I had been looking at the map of the general area and saw that there was a spring marked on the USGS nearby called "Bible Spring". It looked like it was across the road and next to the interstate, so we decided to walk over there while we were waiting on the others. Just as we were about to cross the road, a pickup with a camper shell and an NSS tag blew by us headed west. I waved but they never slowed down.

We started bushwhacking down the hill with me in the lead. I had on shorts and sneakers with ankle socks on, so I tore up my lower legs pretty good on some briars because I kept slipping on the very damp slope. We finally reached an old road bed and found a large pile of tires and from a small bluff we could see a pool of water that I assume is the resurgence of Bible Spring, and I took this picture of it.

The USGS site lists this as Bible Spring.

Everything was pretty damp around the area and I didn't want to get too muddy before the cave so we didn't go down and explore around the water. Nearby just off the old road bed we found a large crack in the ground. It's hard to tell in this picture, but it goes down about 10 feet or so and then has a small pile of rocks. I couldn't feel any air moving from the top, but we didn't climb down into it at all.

We walked a little further east down the old road bed and then climbed back up the small bluff and discovered we had to go a little further east to find a lower spot to slide down back to the paved road, which we walked along back to the parking area. A few minutes later everyone else showed up and we started getting ready for the caving trip. I then remembered I had left my boots at home, so I decided to just go in my sneakers.

I started making the same old lame jokes with the people that hadn't been there before. "Yeah, it's a beautiful cave, but the four mile hike up this mountain to get to it is a real pain." Frank P. Lavarre had stopped by Jody's house to pick up a bunch of extra lights and some big batteries, which John Baker loaded up in a big yellow caving pack that must of weighed 30 lbs with all that stuff in it. It was more than I wanted to carry, anyway.

Also joining us on the trip were Brandon Beard, Caralynn Strand, and her daughters Annabelle and Lillian, a.k.a. B-Dog and L-Money. We geared up and made the long hike down to the entrance, where we paused long enough to take a group shot before we got the gate open and crawled inside.

B-Dog went in first and I crawled in right behind her. Since it had been over 10 years since I had been to the cave I of course went the wrong way immediately and climbed down into the hole to the left along with B-Dog. While the rest of the folk were coming in we climbed back out of it and then I followed Jack and B-Dog through the semi-tight squeeze through the old gate.

Following those two, I traversed along the side of the small canyon that has what would be a lot of decorations in any other cave, but it's really just a taste of what is to come. There are some great examples along this passage of where the top of the cave is moving towards the road. There are several columns that have snapped in half and the top half has moved several inches closer towards the side of the hill. It might be interesting to measure a few over time to see if it's still in motion. 

Eventually we came to the big room and Jack got to see it for the first time. It's always an amazing sight. There's a large column in the middle and the ceiling is covered in soda straws. John setup Jody's lights and that helped set the stage for people behind us coming into the room for the first time.

Johnny Gatlin and Jack Hatcher in Cedar Ridge Crystal Cave

I thought we'd be in the cave for an hour or so, but it took us almost three hours before we came out since several people in the group spent a long time exploring every nook and cranny. John and I went over to the climb down on the east side of the cave, but I didn't go all the way down since the crack was a little tight for me and I wasn't super comfortable about being able to pull myself back out.

Several of us ended up sitting around the main room taking pictures while others explored the cave to the bitter end. I ended staring at this one area of the cave just off the main room where a huge piece of rock broke off the ceiling and dropped about a foot, leaving a large flat area that has been completely decorated by soda straws and small columns. It's like someone built a miniature cave inside the cave. It just needs tiny elves or gnomes playing in it to make it complete.

There's less than a foot separating the two layers you see in this photo.

After we finally exited the cave, we all loaded up and Johnny took us down the road just around the corner and showed us what he had been told was Bible Spring Cave. It's a tight cave entrance right next to the road and there's a false entrance just to the right of it. No one really wanted to go caving any more that day and it was probably a very wet cave so no one went inside. 

The entrance to Bible Spring Cave.

After that Jack and I headed back to Hendersonville after stopping for some carbs in Manchester. I showered and then slept like the dead for about two hours before the Alabama game.

Page Factory in C# - Dealing with Frames and Latency

One of the issues we've been having with our new C# framework that utilizes PageFactory is that the pages did not automatically check to see if they were loaded with an IsLoaded() type method. We tried various schemes to alleviate this, but in the end after a lot of online searches I discovered that the PageFactory.InitElements() method can be overloaded in multiple ways:

PageFactory.InitElements Overload List

This allowed us to implement the following InitElements() in our framework:

PageFactory.InitElements(DeviceMainTab, new RetryingElementLocator(Driver.SwitchToInnerFrames("main>tabPage"), AutomationConstants.DEFAULT_OBJECT_TIMEOUT));

The first argument is the object or class that is being initialized, the second parameter is another method that implements the RetryingElementLocator class. We gave it the Driver.SwitchToInnerFrames so that it would always switch to that frame set on that page in our application in order to find the defined elements.

The second parameter to RetryingElementLocator() is just a timeout, which we set to a constant that is 20 seconds.

This eliminated the majority of the latency and subsequent Element Not Found errors we were experiencing and was much simpler than trying to implement LoadableComponent pattern which we found did not work well with PageFactory.

Thompson Falls

We had dinner with my mother at Top 'O The Lake in Guntersville on Saturday afternoon, and when we finished we still had several hours of daylight left so I pulled up Google Maps on my phone and searched for "waterfall".  It brought up several that were nearby and I picked Thompson Falls on Mink Creek and we headed that way. It was about a 15 minute drive and the "road" to turn off to get to the falls is only marked with a No Dumping sign.

If you go here, take a vehicle with high clearance and you shouldn't have any trouble driving right up to the old bridge that is just above the falls. The road is bumpy but is mostly rock so there shouldn't be any issue with getting stuck. 

We weren't ready to do any real hiking since I had my new sneakers on and Jack only had flip-flops, but there is a trail that leads down to the lower two cataracts.

Two Years?

Heff! It's been two years since I updated this blog. I miss the old days of the Blog Wars. I even miss Big Bill. Ah well, life goes on.

I'm a grandfather now. My little Leo is a little over 12 weeks old now. I'm still incredibly fat, but I'm also working on that.

This week also featured the passage of a small kidney stone on Tuesday morning. It started late Monday night and I finally passed it about 8:30 the next morning. It must have been pretty small since I couldn't find it afterwards in the bowl, but I wasn't looking too hard.

Tension, Apprehension, and Dissension

Last night I finished reading The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester for probably the third or fourth time in my life. For some reason I never really remember all the details of this book when I start reading it again. It's like a Level 1 has gone in and "demolished" that part of my memory. As always, it was an excellent read. I'll need to pick up The Stars My Destination for another reread sometime soon.

Kaijudo Tournament #2

I showed up at the Game Cave again tonight for the weekly Kaijudo tournament.  I was using the fire/nature rush deck again, with a few more twinks made to it.  I won the first round 2-0 after teaching someone how to play.  In the next round I came up against a tough control deck but managed to win the second game after I got some cheap cards out quick.  I still lost 2-1.

In the third round I played an all Fire deck for the first time and lost quickly to some Drakon Evolution cards that he managed to summon fairly rapidly.

So I ended up coming in #7 out of 12 again.  Fun night and Dave at the Game Cave even gave me a free demo deck that should help beef up my rush deck some more.

Kaijudo Tournament #1

So last week I bought Jack and I each a starter deck for Kaijudo, which is a recent game put out by Wizards of the Coast, who also produce Magic: The Gathering.  A new gaming store called The Game Cave has recently opened up very close to my house, so I decided to head down there tonight and check out the Kaijudo tournament.

I took my Bull Rush deck, which is primarily an aggressive deck featuring the Fire and Nature civilizations.  It was mostly just the starter deck, but I borrowed a card from Jack's deck and had a few cards from a booster pack also in it.  I wasn't expecting to do well, since most of the guys there have worked diligently on building good decks, but I was hoping to win a few games if the right cards came out early for me.

Round 1

Twelve players showed up tonight, and in the first round I played a guy named E, who eventually won the tournament.  E had a deck that he said had about $250 worth of cards in it and was primarily a Control type deck.  I didn't really draw many of my cheap creature cards very early, so after about seven turns it was quickly obvious that I was going to lose.  I managed to get him down to one shield in the first game, but since he had a lot of gold cards he just restored them and then brought out several very large cards that I literally had no chance to beat or defend against.  I lost 0-2 in Round 1.

Round 2

For round two I played my friend Richard, who is also a relative novice at the game.  He was playing a combination of Water and Darkness cards.  Unfortunately, most of his cards required 5 mana or more, so when my cheap red and green attack cards started showing up early there was little he could do to defend against them.  I won 2-0 in Round 2.

Round 3

In Round three I played a guy named Nate who also had a fairly expensive deck that featured a lot of Water and Darkness cards.  I lost the first game pretty quickly, but managed to get some good draws early and beat him on the second game.  I lost the third game fairly quickly though.  I lost 1-2 in Round 3.

We were going to do four rounds, but the software wouldn't let Dave do that so we stopped at three.  I came in 7th place out of 12 players, so not too bad for what was mostly a basic deck.  When it was over Dave from the Game Cave had each player choose a booster pack type and then he opened them all and put the rarest card on top of each stack.  Then we chose from 1st to last which stack we wanted to go home with.  E the player from the first round also gave me some common cards from a pack he had opened earlier.

All in all I had a lot of fun for 4 bucks.  The game plays fast and although you can spend a lot of money on it, I had a lot of fun for basically a 12 dollar investment.  I look forward to tweaking my deck to be even more aggressive and see what I can do with it.

Legendary: Marvel Deck Building Game

I showed up at the new gaming store in Hermitage called The Game Cave this past Saturday and thanks to my friend David Lowry I got to play Legendary: Marvel Deckbuilding Game for the first time, which also included the Dark City expansion.

I'm not normally much of a card game person, but it's hard to avoid them these days.  I did enjoy this game however, and five of us managed to beat the Red Skull in a close call. I scored enough points to come in fourth.

I haven't played it enough to write up a full review of the game yet, but I did enjoy it a lot and look forward to playing it again soon.

Why, Bucky, Why?

It's been quite a while, but recent events have led me to the conclusion that a new round of Bucky Bombing may commence soon.

Lookout Mountain Hiking

Wow, my first post of 2011. I tend to do small posts on Facebook more now, so feel free to look me up there.

I was working in Chattanooga last week and staying at the Marriott. I've been doing a lot of walking for the last two months, and I've gotten my daily average up to about 6 miles, and have hit 7.5 miles on several days during recent weeks.

Since it doesn't get dark in Chattanooga until about 9pm this time of year, I have a lot of time right after work to go walking. Earlier last week I did a lot of walking all over downtown, but eventually I got tired of avoid panhandlers in certain parts of town, so I drove over to Lookout Mountain and parked just below Cravens House.

This home was built before the Civil War and by the end of it was mostly demolished, but the owner rebuilt it afterwards and it sits on a big ledge a few hundred feet below the summit. Several trails branch off from it and I chose to go down the Rifle Pits trail until it intersected with the Upper Truck trail. My legs were feeling pretty rubbery from the walking earlier in the week, so I avoided some of the other trails that had a lot of elevation change.

The Rifle Pits trail was a bit rough, and mostly downhill from the Cravens House, but was not too difficult. The Upper Truck trail is basically a dirt road, but is maintained as a bike path so it doesn't have too many ruts and is fairly level. It was really pretty, but unfortunately you can still hear the traffic from I24, at least on the section I was on. I went down to the trail that goes up to Sunset Rock, but turned back there since I was trying to avoid going up the mountain at that point.

On the way back I kept going past the Rifle Pits trail head, and the trail ran into a road that led right back to my car. I ended up going about 3 miles total and still had plenty of daylight. I'll be back in Chattanooga next week so I'll probably try to go a little further next time since I know the basic layout of the area now.

Weird Fortune Cookie Message

Seen this past weekend in a fortune cookie at Swin on The Strip in Tuscaloosa:

"Greed rips the bag."

Your guess is as good as mine.

Cave #25 - Long Island Saltpeter Cave (Chasing Old Rosy)

In early September, 1863, William S. Rosecrans was doing well in life. He had risen rapidly through the ranks of the US Army and was in command of the Army of the Cumberland. He had recently defeated Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg at the Battle of Stones River and during the Tullahoma Campaign, and was now closing in on the city of Chattanooga.

On Sept. 5, 1863, the day before his 44th birthday, Gen. Rosecrans was in extreme northeast Alabama, across the Tennessee River from the town of Stevenson. There was a saltpeter cave in the area and Rosecrans and many of his staff visited the cave that day.

The morning of July 24, 2010, I woke up about 7:30 and was in the process of going through my second snooze button when my cell phone rang. I had originally planned to meet Gerald and Avis Moni at 9:00 to head down to Jackson County, but Gerald wanted to move it up to about 8:45. I said I could probably do that, and I quickly got dressed and finished loading up some things. The night before I had dutifully scrubbed all my gear with antibacterial spray to meet the WNS decontamination protocols.

The SCCi was hosting an open house at their newest cave preserve at Long Island Cove and I was looking forward to some good caving. I pulled up to Shoney's at 8:50, and Avis, Gerald, and Joe Douglas were all ready to go. Gerald had promised we'd stop "somewhere better than Shoney's" to eat, and I was all for it since the last time I had eaten there everything on the breakfast bar tasted like fish from the night before.

Now for the last six months I've been eating right and exercising a lot and have lost 50 lbs. I normally eat a bowl of Kashi Good Friends cereal for breakfast, which has an insane amount of fiber, or I have a quick turkey sandwich on high fiber bread. The point of this is that Gerald picked a small breakfast buffet near Manchester that had lots of greasy food. It was really cheap, but I ate a little too much grease which I wasn't used to at all anymore, which sat on my stomach like a rock the rest of the day. Next time Avis or I will pick the restaurant.

We got to the cave preserve about 11:30. I had a little bit of trouble getting my Civic to the camping area since I initially dismissed the sign pointing out an alternate route for cars vs. trucks. Once we got there, we found Buddy Lane was working the sign-in area and that a fairly sizable group including Marion Smith had just left, headed for the cave. After chatting a bit more we got our gear on and hiked up to the cave.

The cave entrance is about 100 feet up the side of the hill, and has been dug out a bit, but it's still a fairly small opening, as can be seen in the photo below. The entrance had lots of cool air blowing out, which was nice since we'd picked the hottest day of the year to go caving, and even the short hike up to the cave entrance had everyone sweating profusely. After a short rest to cool off, I took off my Swaygo pack and started into the cave, feet first.


Entrance of Long Island Saltpeter Cave
(courtesy of Joe Douglas)

Now up to this point I hadn't looked at the map of the cave yet, so all I knew about it was that it was described by everyone as "mazy." A gate was put on the cave back in 1990, with the cave being pretty much closed since then. The frame of the gate is still present, and it's taller than it is wide, so I had to lay on my side and wiggle my way down through it. Once I slid in, there was passage in front of me, so I headed down it a bit, first crawling, then stooping, then finally standing up before reaching a three-way junction.

I heard Gerald and Avis coming in behind me, so I stopped at the junction and rested a bit. After a few minutes I didn't see them so I yelled back up and asked where they were. It turns out that when I slid in, there was another passage behind my back which I had not seen at all and that was the way Gerald wanted to go. So I went back to the entrance and headed down that way, followed shortly by Joe.

Mazy is definitely the right description for the front of this cave. It alternates between crawling and stooping and turning sideways a lot to get through the passageways. On the map, we were headed towards the room labeled "First Room", and we eventually found it after helping one poor fellow find the entrance who had been wandering around lost for a bit. The cave had a lot of people in it, so every few minutes there would be small conferences of folks comparing notes about which way to go. We'd run into a group, say from Ft. Payne, then we'd see them again 10 minutes later, with both groups having taken separate routes to get to the same place.

The cave itself has a lot of mud on the floor. In fact most of the cave floor is made up of mud. It had about the same consistency of the clay you play with in elementary school, so it actually made the crawling a lot nicer than it could have been. The breakdown also has a lot of mud on it, so it made climbing up those areas a little more tricky.

Eventually we got oriented on the map and headed south, making our way into the "Big Room". This room had a few nice decorations, and a lot of 19th century signatures of Union troops. We caught up to Marion Smith in this room, who was writing down all the signatures he could, and even pointing out a few he recognized.


Gerald and Hatch in the "Big Room", looking West.
(Courtesy of Joe Douglas)

After listening to the always entertaining banter between Gerald and Marion for a while, we headed east and south deeper in the cave, doing some more crawling for a bit before coming to a large room filled with breakdown on one side called the "Avalanche Room". This is about a 70 foot tall pile of breakdown that looks like the leftovers of an avalanche, hence the name. This area of the cave looked like it probably flooded on occasion. We went down another small passageway and crawled up a bit and came into what is called the Register Room.


Hatch, Avis, and Gerald resting in the "Register Room" of Long Island Saltpeter Cave.
(Courtesy of Joe Douglas)

In front of where we're sitting in the above photo, there is a 6 foot climb-up that leads to a 70 foot tall dome. On a rock just past the climb-up are the following signatures:


Signatures of Lt. Col. Calvin Goddard and Maj. Gen. W.S. Rosecrans.
(Courtesy of Joe Douglas)

Lt. Col. Calvin Goddard was born at Norwich, Connecticut on 9 Feb, 1838. By this time he had been with Gen. Rosecrans for sometime and served as Assistant Adjuntant-General and Chief of Staff of the Army of the Cumberland. He resigned from the US Army in November, 1863 after the Battle of Missionary Ridge and returned to civilian life. He passed away in San Francisco, California in 1892. More Info on Goddard

Two weeks after they left these signatures, the Battle of Chickamauga began, the loss of which effectively ended the military career of both these men.

I didn't like the way the climb-up to the signature was exposed, and I'm still a little big to wedge myself into the crack and pull myself up with my arms, so I didn't go right up to the signature, but I could see it clearly by standing at the climb-up.

After resting in the Register Room a bit and letting Gerald squirm around in one of the small passages off of it, we headed back to the entrance, leaving Marion in the room still writing down signatures. We took our time heading out, and continued to run into small groups of cavers wandering around. We exited the cave after about 2.5 hours spent inside. I think in all we saw about 1/3 of the cave, so I definitely want to go back and see the rest of it.

As we came out of the cave, we ran into Lin Guy, who mentioned there was another small cave nearby, the name of which escapes me. We did a little bit of ridge-walking on the way back to the camping area. Lin and another fellow found the cave but didn't go in. He had visited it about 20 years ago. Apparently I walked right by it on my way down the hill. Maybe I can find it next time.

Back at the parking area, we cleaned up a bit and visited with friends. Milo Washington and Andy Zerbe showed up from the Birmingham Grotto, and I finally met Bill Torode after Gerald introduced me to him. There was a quick SCCi meeting then we ate hamburgers and hotdogs before I headed back to Nashville. The cave tired me out pretty good, because I slept for about 11 hours, then woke up on Sunday morning for about an hour then napped again for about 4 hours.

One last note. You have to be a member of the SCCi to visit this cave. Please don't ask me about how to get there or for maps. You'll have to join the SCCi and arrange a permit to visit the area, which is leased by the SCCi from a private land owner. Visit the Long Island Cove Preserve Page for more information.

Also visit Joe Douglas' Flickr Page for more photos from the trip.