Poems, Prayers and Promises

So I guess it's a good thing we don't learn dating skills from personal finance class. This is a direct quote from the reading for that class. I could just see some nerdy little guy sitting across from a girl on their first date trying to squeak this out lol.

"Offer your partner a copy of your own credit report. "Say something like, 'I'm excited about our life together, and I realize money is a part of our life. I've made some mistakes in the past, and I have some student loans, and I just want to show you my credit report so that you can see how I manage my debt,' "

A quick pic from spring break. Philip and I went mountain biking. Got to watch out for those corners or ya might end up in a tree. 

Eric had been saying he wanted to get out and take a break from school for a weekend, so we chose a weekend and decided to go with it. That lead to the adventures of this past weekend. Steve came along as well. I ended up taking down to this pretty sweet cave in Lawrence county (southern Indiana) I had been wanting to check out for awhile since we were going to be down that way. Why not right? We didn't make it really far into it because we didn't have all the right equipment with us, but it was enough to make me want to go back. It's a little shady getting back to the cave, because I wasn't able to get ahold of the owner of the land to get his permission before heading back to the cave. So we tried to keep a low profile as we crossed the hill to get to the cave and not cause that much of a ruckus. That's kind of hard when your that far out in the country though and just the fact that you're there is causing a ruckus. The entrance was the typical collapsed sink hole type that pretty much acted as a drain for the cow pasture above. Just a lovely thought. Once you made the plunge and climbed down in, it was totally worth it. The bacon formation in the picture was towards the start of the cave. These are just a few pictures from the trip. Actually there were alot more, but I was having trouble with the battery in the camera and I think I lost some pictures. I might be going crazy, but there were some pictures I knew I took and they were not to be found on the camera when I got back. Anyway, here's a few that survived.  

Root growing out of the rock near the entrance of the cave. 

Dome room towards the end of the upper level. 

Waterfall in dome room 

This narrow crawl led out of that big room in the last picture and down into the intermediate level of the cave. It was a pretty long crawl, a little over 200 feet I would guess. But the cave beyond was worth it. This is one cave I that will be on my list to come back to and explore more seriously with the right gear and caving party. 

After we were done with cave number one, we loaded up the truck and headed over to HNF to find patton cave and then spend the night. The night hike was seriously awesome... not to cold, not to warm, the stars were clearly visible in the clear sky..... very enjoyable. The trail was pretty well packed down by all the horses that had come through there, so it wasn't to hard to follow. But when it came time to start looking for the cave.... that was a little different. All I had was a shady general description of where it was, the topo map, and the compass. I think after awhile Steve and Eric were starting to get annoyed at how often I stopped to cross check the map, but hey I really wanted to find it with as little wandering around as possible so I could hit the sack. Well, we walked right too it pretty much and it was covered in boy scouts, so we headed to the hills and found us a nice little ridge to camp out on. This picture is late the next morning and I had just come back from hiking up the trail a little further to just kind of check it out and give those guys time to get all their sleeping in. Well when I got back they were still sleeping. I mean this is like probably 11 in the morning now; how can anyone sleep in that long while camping? I don't know, but after sitting on my hammock thinking and staring at trees for about 20 minutes I couldn't wait any longer, so I packed up, hung the sleeping bag out to dry, and headed out to explore Patton cave.  

Entry to Patton cave. Outside that entrance is a large box canyon. Notice the stream that's running out the entrance. It was pretty wet up in there but it was totally worth it. That same water helped to form the oodles of awesome geodes that were all around in the cave. Stuck to the walls... everywhere. For a small, overvisited cave this place turned out to be pretty cool. 

After following the fairly elliptically shaped entry passage back for about 180 feet or so, you come to a larger dome room that has this canyon like passage leading out of it. For scale, the passage in the picture it about 10 feet tall. 

Cave critter 

A flowstone formation. The belly crawl that makes up the rest of the cave starts at the bottom of this formation. 

The exit at the other end of Patton cave. There's a little bit of light coming through the hole at the top of the passage. Once you go up through that hole you end up in a collapsed sink hole on the surface. 

The sink hole that the exit comes out in. 

Hey y'all. I just rediscovered that I have a blog. It's funny how some things are totally forgotten when you get busy. Actually I had to look up the address to my own blog because I couldn't remember it if that gives ya some idea how crazy it's been. And the sad part is all my times has pretty much been spent in school, work, and job searching. But I will rebel! My goal is to become totally distracted by the end of the semester. I don't really know what that means but it just kind of came out and it sounded cool as I was writing it so there it is. I would like to promise that I'll post more, but for the next few weeks at least I think that would be a hollow shell of a promise. But I'll try and post pics or something. Honestly anymore when I find any little bit of free time I would much rather spend it talking to a real person that broadcasting into the blind here. So if you really want to know what's up feel free to just give me a call or send an email or something. Sometime my phone isn't much more than an expensive answering machine, but I promise I'll call back if ya leave a message lol. Well, I better get back to critiquing technology, memorizing lines of my scene, creating a presentation on personal investments and ...... ahhhh! It's ok. I think I'll be alright. Maybe.

Here's a kind of scary picture of Kathryn and me. Well, scary picture of me; Kathryn is cute as ever in it. By this point I was exhausted. I had been going with school and work since about 5:30 that morning and this was friday evening around 10:30. Kathryn had come up to see a play with me in the new Purdue theater. It was called "The College Widow", and although alot of the other people that saw it thought it was terrible and had no point, we thought it was hillarious. I think the people that didn't enjoy it were expecting some kind of deep performance and this play was far from that. It was just a light hearted look at the college scene in the midwest. It was actually written by George Ade as in the Ade of Ross-Ade stadium, a famous Purdue alum, and was much liked in it's time. I guess times change. We just don't know how to have fun and watch a play anymore. We can just blame it all on technology! dvds and things! Sorry, I'm getting in the mood to work on a speech I have to do that's supposed to be a critique of technology. 

Tomorrow some of us 'll be heading down to the southern half of the state to go caving. So in honor of this proposed activity, here's a pic of a cave I actually found here in Lafayette. I didn't make it very far in because it looks like the sediment had blocked up the entrance over time. But with a little shoveling, it looks promising.