Caving Trip

Well, Thursday Brandon and I went into work earlier with my supervisor, Tony.  That way all three of us could get off at 4 and go caving.  So we got off at 4 and then began on our journey.  We were going to try to find the art room and maybe the Hurricane Pit Entrance.

  (Brandon and I standing in the entrance)

We made our way to the passage to get to the 2nd level in order to go to the skylight dome.  Tony began to have a little trouble.  He was nervous about looking down.  But he kept going.  But then we got to the birth canal.  Tony made it most of the way, and then decided it was too much.  So he turned around. Brandon and I hurried to the skylight dome, got a video clip, and then went back to join Tony.

So we turned around and went out.  We ended our trip really early, but it was okay.  Next week, which will be our last caving trip of the summer, will be awesome as we'll hunt down these places.

We were starving (we realized that we hadn't ate dinner).  So we stopped by the McDonalds as a girl we worked with on grounds this summer also works there.  It was her last night, and we came through the drive through to get our stuff and said hi.

You can view all of the pictures from our trip here http://picasaweb.google.com/jholcomb8/PineHillCaveTrip#

Judgement House

Thursday night I went to Westside Baptist Church with Daniel for Judgement House.  Daniel's wife, Lauren, was acting in it.

We were put into a small group.  We went from room to room viewing a scene that people acted out.  The first scene was the final moments of a convicted murder.  A preacher was trying to convince him that it wasn't too late to turn to Christ.  But he refused.  Then we went back in time to see what caused this man to murder.  We were shown how he viewed pornography and stalked young girls on facebook and he got pleasure out of that.  We were also shown how this one girl was tricked by this man and they ultimately met at a pizza place when she snuck out of the house.  There she met a youth group who tried talking to her about Christ, but she wouldn't listen.  She went and met this man from facebook and it turned out he was not what he said he was.

The girl's father burst in demanding the man get away from his daughter.  The man then pulled out a gun and shot the girl, and one of the guys in the youth group as he tried to save the girl.  Then the police arrived and subdued the man before he escaped.

We then went to "The Throne of Judgement" before Christ.  We saw the guy from the youth group give an account of his life and he entered a gate into heaven.  Then the girl came before Christ and she insisted she was a christian because she had played all the "moves".  However she wasn't found in the book of Life.  She was ushered into the gates of hell. 

Our group was then told it was not our time to go yet, but we could view the two alternatives.  First we went to hell.  And I must say, I was scared and wanted to get out of there.  They had made it eerie, the actors were screaming in agony, it was dark, they had the heat turned up, there was mist, horrible sounds, and you could feel separation and the sense of being alone.  There we watched a scene of when the murder and the girl arrived in hell.  They both begged for mercy, but they had lost their chance.  They were bound for eternity in hell.  I hated that scene so much.  It was as real as you could make it. 

After watching the 10 minute scene and enduring what it felt to be in there, we were shown a small glimpse of what heaven would be like.  It was much more peaceful.  And then we ended with people have the opportunity to accept Christ as their Savior.

I think the hell scene affected me the most.  I've read and heard what hell will be like.  And yes, the Bible's description is not a pretty thing.  But to actually feel a small taste of what hell will be like, it really gives you a wake up call and I thank God so much I am not going to hell and I want more than ever to help people avoid it.

Pine Hill Cave Trip

Tuesday evening was our biggest cave day ever.  Brandon, and his cousin, came up from his place (He's been on vacation), and my cousin Ryan came down.  Also Tony, Hannah, Hannah, and Esther came with us.  So it was nice to go caving with just a bunch of Christians.

Anyway, when we all finally got together we drove down to the entrance and got underway.  Our first stop was the skylight dome.  We went through the Birth Canal and right before we entered it we stopped to get a group picture.  However, Tony and I got cut out.  But everyone else is in it.

(Left to right: Ryan, Hannah, Esther, Hannah, Josh (Brandon's Cousin), Brandon)

The crawl was interesting but everyone really loved the skylight dome.  So far they had been having a really good time.  And I was surprised that the girls didn't care about being wet.  I guess they are some of those "tough" girls.  Anyway, the skylight dome was even better for me because for the first time we could see light streaming through the top, 125 feet above.  It was about 8:00 in the evening so there was still light out.  It was fascinating.


We didn't spend too much time in the dome.  We then exited and went back to the main passage.  I gave Ryan my camera and he was able to get a couple pictures before the lens started to fog up again.  I hate having that problem.

We continued on the left fork and entered the waterfall area.  Everyone really loved it!  And I am still awed everytime I see this section.  We went all the way to the biggest one.  And everyone but Hannah made it across without falling into the deep pool.  We then went right upstream to the Rain Dome.  We stayed there a minute and then turned around and exited the cave.

It was a fun night, especially with all the people we had.  Some of them I'm not good friends with (*cough *cough), but I'm working on it, slowly but surely :D 

(Left to Right: Ryan, Brandon, Josh, Josh, Tony, Esther, Hannah, Hannah)

King's Island

My friend Tony and I got up at 6:00 and then went outside Boone Tavern.  The college bus was supposed to be there at 6:30 and we would load up and then leave at 7.  As it turned out, the bus did not show up until 7:15.  But we finally left Berea, a good 30 minutes late.  However, it wasn't that bad as the park didn't open until 10.

On the way up we stopped in Dry Ride at a McDonald's.  I got a couple egg bacon biscuits and then we continued on.  After we turned onto I-71 we got bogged down for a while because of construction.  But we finally made it to the park at 10:30.  We didn't have to wait long for our tickets as the college had already bought them.  The trip leader just picked them up from a different window.  And when he passed out the tickets we were free to do whatever we wanted until we had to be back at the bus at 8:30.

So Tony and I went in and looked around.  We decided to go to Drop Zone first.  We got in line with some other Berea students.  I didn't know any of them.  To pass the time we started an estimation challenge.  We would each guess how many rotations the ride would go through before we got our turn.  It turned out we did this on every ride.

When it was finally our turn we got strapped in.  The Drop Zone is this tall 300 foot pole.  40 people strap into seats on the outside of this ring and you are hoisted up to the top of the pole.  The ride up was a nice ascent.  We could see the whole park.  A girl in our group, Zee, was freaking out.  We finally reached the top and looked down 300 feet below us.  We did not know when we were going to drop.  It ran on a random pattern.  So all we could do was wait.  At this time I was thinking to myself why I got on this ride.  It wasn't the height that I hate, but the sensation of falling.  When it finally dropped us I just waited to get to the bottom.  Some huge magnets slowed us down and at the bottom I knew why I had got on the ride.  The adrenaline rush is worth it.  When we unhooked and started walking around our legs and hands were tingling.  Falling that fast must have done something to our blood circulation.  I'm not sure what it is.

Our next ride was the Diamond Back roller coaster.  When it was finally our turn we piled in and started ascending up to the highest point, 230 feet up.  When we reached the top I again asked myself why I got on this thing.  The first plunge was the worst.  But it was a smooth ride.

We were hot by this time so we stood in line for The Crypt.  It was inside a "tomb" or something and was air conditioned. And really, the AC was the only thing worth waiting for.  The ride was really short.  There were two rows of seats on a platform. This platform was swung around on a bar that was swung around.

Next, we went to Vortex.  This coaster wasn't that bad in drops.  There was only one drop that was bad.  And it wasn't as high.  But it was a rough ride.  It snapped you around and was uncomfortable.  But we did go upside down several times and we looped around as we spun.

After that we were tired and hot.  So we took the train over to the other side of the park and entered Boomerang Bay, the water park.  We walked under some fountains and then went into the Endless River.  The recharged us.  We felt so much better.  However, they make you get out after one loop because there's so many people and they're waiting for tubes.

By this time our group split in half.  Some of them didn't want to get wet so they went off to do something else.  The rest of us stood in line for a water slide that had three tubes.  However, when Tony and I got up there they told us to go back down as our swimming trunks had metal rings holding the pockets on.  We didn't get what the problem was.  They were smooth and we're going to scratch the slides.

Then we went and stood in line for Tasmanian Typhoon.  That was a fun ride.  We got to go down in a tube, so they didn't turn us away.  Before we dropped into this big funnel we went over a really steep drop.

After this we were took the train back to the other side of the park.  For about the next two hours we tried to get in touch with the other half of our group who had most of the other people's wallets.  We were starving, and beginning to get cranky.  All I'd had all day was two biscuits.  Later, Zee Tony and I went to the park entrance and got our wallets from the locker we'd rented.  Zee then split up to go find some "cheap" food.  Tony and I split the price for a pizza.  It was 20 bucks.  We also got some bread sticks.  We sat down and didn't utter a word until the whole pizza was gone.  Oh, and we also savored our $3.75 bottle of water.  Then we went and got a smoothie from an ice cream place.  By that time it was just about 8:00.  We had agreed to meet our group in front of the 1/3 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower.  And then, we went and loaded back up on the bus.

I went in and out of sleep.  I'm glad I did because it helped pass the time of the long ride.  We got back at 11:15 and I crashed in bed.