I belong in a cave

So I actually didn't go to sleep right away Friday night.  I ended up going into Ivan's room for a minute and before I knew it I was sucked into playing games, then we watched Night at the Museum 2 in the lobby and Alvario heated up some left over chicken and we ate that.  I ended up going to bed at 3:30.

I slept in and after lunch I spent all my afternoon working on my 210 paper.  Then I went to dinner and at 7 I met Johnathan, Ben, and Brian outside Dana.  They were taking a small group of people caving.  And they asked me if I wanted to come along.

Like usual, caving was simply amazing.  I got to explore some new passages, visit ones I wanted to see, and climb some new routes.  I am getting to know the cave pretty good.

                               (This "canyon" is only a foot high.  I got down and took this picture.)
It was really cool when we reached the usual big room after we squeezed through a small hole.  We all turned our lights out and we sang As the Deer.  Then Ben did a little devotional.  It's so cool to hear a praise song to God echoing through a cave.  And we can know that he still hears us even though we are deep underground.

                           (A view of some room, looking up)

                                     (One of the many tight squeezing passages there are 20 feet tall or more)

              (Looking down into a 50 foot crevasse.  Some of the RAs didn't know it existed until me and a couple guys found it a couple caving adventures ago.  You can faintly see a blue glow stick at the bottom that Ben through down.)

So I went to bed around 12 after we got done caving.  And I slept until 12:30.  I caught up on sleep for the past three weeks or so.  It felt so nice.  So I went to lunch and then headed to the library.  I met Cassy in there and we just sat and did homework.  Then Daniel just randomly waltzed in and saw us.  He stuck around for a while and then we all parted.  Except I went with Daniel.  We went to his apartment and we hooked up our computers and played Cabela's Big Game Hunter.  We hunted coyotes together.  I was bagging them quickly.  While Daniel was trying to shoot one with his shotgun I would kill it with one shot with my .308 rifle.  I stole several of his coyotes that way.

Daniel brought me back too late to go to food service so I had to resort to getting a sandwich, chips, and a drink from the cafe for dinner.  Then I went back to the library and I finished the rough draft of my 210 paper.  It is around 500 words short still, but I got the bulk of it done.  My professor will help me out with revising and giving me some more ideas to lengthen it.  But I am glad I am past the worse of this paper.  Two days of hard worked has paid off.  I now feel I can make the final push to mid terms and spring break.

Nice Warm Day to be hunted by Bigfoot

Today, officially started when I had finished caving.  But I slept until 11.  Then around 12 I went to lunch and then came back to my room deciding how to spend this nice warm day we had.  I talked to a few friends to see if they wanted to go hiking.  Most of them couldn't.  So it ended up being two guys that live on my floor, Benjamin and Critter.  Both of them went caving last night.  So at 2 we set off on the cross country trails and then went on the farthest trails up along some of the ridges.  We didn't stop there.  We set out on our own and hiked up two more ridges to the point when we reached the top of the third one we could barely see the campus way, way, way off in the distance.  We had a great time talking.  Benjamin is a Christian.  Critter, I am not sure.  He is open to the Bible and being a Christian.  he is showing promising signs.  But overall we had a good time. Critter even asked me to bring my Bible so we could possibly do a little devotion or something on the hike, but we forgot to do it.

We finally got back over the second two ridges and made it back onto one of the paths.  We hiked the rest of that and got back to campus by 6.

Now, where does this "Bigfoot" come in?  Well when we were way out there in the middle of nowhere and off the path in the forest, we started hearing leaves rustling.  Benjamin said it was probably just a squirrel, but there was no life out there.  Well it turned out it got louder and more frequent.  So we investigated the noise.  Soon it sounded like something was running through the leaves and we could hear it quite loudly.  We looked for people or deer, or even a dog.  But Benjamin and I couldn't see anything through the trees from our positions.  However, Critter was in a better vantage point and saw something big and black with a white face run up the side of the ridge.  It was going pretty fast.  Benjamin and I probably could have saw it, but the hills and ridges played games with the noises and it was hard to tell where the sound was really coming from.  So we now have a Bigfoot that roams the local forests around Berea.

Later on after we tried to chase whatever had ran up the ridge so we could get a better look we began to smell smoke.  It was a wood fire and it smelled good.  We began thinking.  It was not cold enough outside for a fire to be built in a house, and there wasn't a house around anyways.  Then soon we came across some orange tape around trees.  It formed a line.  We figured it was a property line.  Then the thought of possibly stumbling upon somebody's still wasn't worth getting shot so we decided not to press it.

And so that was my adventure for today...

The Critter

Today in health class we learned some self defense moves.  It is basically a wimpy form of martial arts.  I wasn't impressed.  If I am going to learn martial arts to defend myself I want to teach the guy to never think about messing with me again.  I don't just want to do enough so I can escape.  But then I went to work and I got the privilege of using the wood chipper!!!!!  Lunch was good.  I talked to Esther a little bit and some others before I went back to work.  For the afternoon, I spread mulch around trees until class time.  In class we went over electrical wiring in a house.

I had a good time at dinner and then I basically did nothing much except watch episode 2 of Band of Brothers.  Finally, 9:30 came and we met a group to go caving.  At the last minute they decided to switch caves so I went to Sinks of the Roundstone for my 3rd time, now.  But it was still fun.  Even though we rushed through more and didn't get to do as much exploring, I still had a good time.  So did Ivan.  He had never went before.  Since I knew a lot of the cave I left the group sometimes and took little detours and sidings to go to an area so I could see more.  And I did a lot of climbing and jumping tonight, for some reason.  When we got near the entrance I jumped off a 10-12 foot ledge into some mud and gravel below.  And I sort of had to as Jacob and Lydia made a big deal about it and told me I had to.  I got complemented on my landing as I did it right but then when we got back to the dorm I really am paying for it.  My left foot is throbbing and it will be bruised for a while.

                                         (Critter, before we entered the cave.  His first caving too)

I guess out here in Kentucky, so my friend Josh (he goes by Critter) told me, the bigfoots are called Critters.  So there was some joking about The Critter lurking through the cave and the woods.  When we exited the cave I went ahead on my own and had fun doing a video clip of me in the dark being used by the group as bait to lure The Critter away.

                                    (Jacob, going out of the entrance to the cave.  It was mostly coated in ice)
So that's about life right now.  I could go and live in a cave...

 

(Ivan, happy about his first caving experience)

  

(Wes sitting on a very nice ledge)