Both Parties Suck

"When the government's boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence." - Gary Lloyd

Back At It

It's been a long two weeks, but I'm finally doing 10k days again. Back on about the 17th or 18th, I started getting really stuffed up and I could tell my sinuses were filling up. I still walked 15k steps on the 18th, but the next day at work I was feeling bad. I had a meeting with my manager about 2:30 that afternoon and I told her I was probably going home early cause I was completely out of gas at that point.

I got home about 5pm that day, and went to bed by 6. I basically stayed in bed for the next 3 days, and I had a fever that didn't break until Friday morning. I still felt bad the rest of the weekend, and the past week I haven't gotten a lot of sleep because I couldn't stop coughing. By the way, the new Nyquil without the pseudoephedrine is really not very effective. I want to thank all of the drugged out rednecks out there for ruining what was one of the best medicines for me getting over a cold.

Today I didn't wake up until 11, so I slept about 12 hours, but I think I just needed to catch up. I've still got some excess nasal drainage, but it's not filling up my lungs anymore and I'm barely coughing at all now. I decided I'd try to hit 10k today, so I cut the grass early this afternoon just before the game, then sat down at 7pm to watch Bama play Clemson. What a great game! I was on such a high after the first half that I walked a mile during halftime. By the end of the game I was charged up enough to go out and do another two miles to put me up over 10k for the day.

The funny thing is, I didn't gain any weight during all this. I actually lost 4 pounds! I'm at 296 pounds now, which puts me down 19 lbs since June 17. Now I'm just going to keep piling up the days of 10k steps in a row and watch the pounds keep coming off. Another bonus is the 11 days of not walking very much has let my ankles and heel rest up, so they're not bothering me at all tonight after the walk. I did miss my monthly caving trip to Hardins this past Wednesday though, which I heard turned out to be a good one.

The Wild Chesney Glen

So I was out doing one more lap around the neighborhood tonight, since it's only 67 degrees out right now and just perfect to get out and exercise. I was on the back street of the neighborhood, heading back to the house, when I saw something small running down the middle of the street directly towards me. At first I thought it was a dead leaf blowing along, but as it got closer I could tell it was some type of animal. I assumed it was a rat until it got about 30 feet away from me and I could tell it was a really small rabbit.

It ran right past me about 3 feet away, then hung a right at the cul-de-sac and went about 20 more feet before it stopped, right in the middle of the pavement. I walked over to it, and it scrunched itself up really tight, including pulling its ears in. I could tell it was really young, since it was trying to hide from me instead of just tearing ass down the street like a more experienced adult would do. I put my feet around it and bent down to grab it, but I wasn't quite quick enough and as soon as my hand touched its back it shot off down the street again and ran down the side of a house.

I kept going, wondering what would make such a young rabbit panic like that and run away from the nest. A few houses later I had my answer when I saw a rather large opossum sniffing around in a yard near where I first saw the bunny. I didn't try to catch the opossum, but when it saw me it had enough sense to run away.

Earlier in the evening I caught a frog on our back deck sliding door and showed it to Jack. He thought it was really cool, but he didn't want to hold it. We've been seeing them sitting on the sliding door for several weeks now. It's getting to be like a jungle out there.

Six Years

Yesterday was our sixth wedding anniversary. Tempus Fugit was never a truer statement. We celebrated by going out to lunch after church at Sakura, which is Marissa and Jack's favorite restaurant. I have a kid that loves broccoli! How cool is that? When we walked in, Victoria was already there with her Dad and new step-mother, along with several other members of the Dowdy family. It's her favorite restaurant also.

Then it was home for a nap, then back to church for a reception for our pastor leaving after 22 years. Then we went over to Opry Mills for a while and I got about 2.5 miles of walking around while Victoria and Jackson shopped and Marissa read a magazine. Opry Mills is a great place to get some walking in since it's a circular mall and a lot of it is carpeted and of course it's air-conditioned also.

On the way home we stopped by for a romantic dinner at McDonald's off the dollar menu. That's good living right there, I tell ya!

Lucy, You Got Some 'Splaining To Do!

So earlier in the afternoon, Marissa wanted a couple of holes drilled into a board for a craft project. I showed her how to do it, but the battery on the drill was really low so we let it charge for a while. A few hours later she comes into the room where I'm reading and shows me the drill bit, shown here with no modifications having been made to it after that point.


I'm not sure I know how this happened or even want to know. Of course, it's turned into my fault since I'm obviously "not enough of a handyman." Heh.

Cave #22 - Custard Hollow Cave

After I got back to the campground from Overlooked Cave, I put my helmet outside of the tent, leaving it there overnight. Unfortunately, it rained pretty heavily that night while I was asleep, so the Apex got completely soaked again and was back to having the same problems it was having the day before. Everyone was planning on going to Custard Hollow Cave that morning, so I didn't have time to get it all dried out again before we left on the trip.

Fortunately, fellow caver Alan Cook from Birmingham had an extra cheap led light that he let me borrow. I put it on the helmet, thanked him profusely, and climbed into the back of the waiting pickup truck. Custard Hollow is only a few miles from Sinking Cove, but it's on some fairly rough dirt roads, so like true Alabama rednecks we loaded up 30 people in three pickup trucks and headed down the road. It was a pretty wild ride, and dodging the limbs was the primary concern.

Truck #3 Full of Alabama Redneck Cavers

We all got to the parking area with only minor lacerations, and everyone unloaded and got geared up. We took a group photo, then we all headed up the mostly dry stream bed to get to the entrance. After a very short walk we came to the first of three entrances to the cave, which are all pretty close together. Half of us went in the first entrance while the other half went to the second. All the entrances come into the same entry room, which is mostly scalloped canyon with a good bit of water flowing through it.

Group Shot Before Entering Custard Hollow Cave

There was some crawling soon after this room, and the first place you're really required to get wet. This cave has a lot of water in it, mostly in waist deep pools. The water is cold, and the first time you dip your boys into it is not so pleasant, but after a while everything from the waist down just goes numb and you deal with it. There were a few spots that required some crawling and a bit of bent-over duck walking, but most of the cave was big booming borehole that goes on for miles and gets bigger as you go deeper.

As we got deeper into the cave, we split into lots of smaller groups, which changed up a lot as people stopped to rest or one group went off in a different direction. There's a good number of decorations in the cave and I didn't see many broken formations either, even when they were right next to the path like one really pretty piece of cave bacon was. I guess since the cave is so remote and access is somewhat restricted the yahoos haven't gotten in there to break everything.

I went pretty far back in the cave, but didn't push it as far as some people did. I came to another low crawl and was feeling pretty tired at that point, so I decided to turn back with Terry and Van and we exited the cave together. We did get turned around at one point and ended up in a pancake room that may have kept going but I was generating so much fog at that point that I couldn't see far enough to tell.

Also, I really missed my Apex on this trip. The borrowed light was adequate when I turned on my mini-mag to go along with it, but I realized that there has been an arms race going on in cave lights the last few years, and a 15 dollar Walmart light is not going to illuminate much for you when you're surrounded by Sten-Lights, Apexs, and big carbide lamps. When I was away from all of the people with those lights it was fine, but when they were near me my eyes couldn't adjust enough for my spot beam to do much good.

After we got back to the campground, after another wild ride, James and I walked up to the resurgence entrance and rinsed off in the pools. We went back as far as the twilight zone, but we didn't have lights with us. I'm not counting it as a cave visit anyway. I found a pretty large snake skin around one of the pools, but no sign of the snake it belonged it. We had a great meal that night, with Jason Wall smoking up about 30lbs of butt all day and a great buffet of other stuff layed out as well.

It rained again that night, but this time I had all my stuff in the tent. We packed up pretty early the next morning and headed back to Nashville. This cave was definitely a treat, especially considering I had never heard of it until that weekend. There's still more of it to see, so I look forward to going back soon.

If you want to see more pictures, head over to Spelunkologists.com and see the three pages of pictures from the trip that they have up there. All the pictures in this blog post are courtesy of the photographers there.

Hatch and Others Enter Custard Hollow Cave

A Good Week

For the first time since I started using a pedometer about 3 years ago, I've managed to walk more than 10k steps a day for seven straight days. Over the last 7 days, I've put 79,254 steps on it, which is over 36 miles and averages 11.3k per day. I've actually walked enough to lose weight without doing the low carb diet, and pretty much eating like I normally would other than not going to buffets.

I'm going to try to push it out to 8 or 9 straight days this week, although I may rest up some for my caving trip this Wednesday night. The best day this week was when Jack and I went to the Greenway yesterday afternoon. It was really hot, and I burned through almost 2 liters of water, but we walked a little over 4 miles. Here's a picture of Jack on one of the bridges.