September 19, 2005
Speleofest 2005
Stephen, Laura, and I packed up the woman's hybrid and drove out to Schoharie, NY, for a little thing called Speleofest.
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| Schoharie Cave lit up by a hundred thousand tea lights (photo courtesy of Eric Porter) |
The National Speleological Society has a cabin over Schoharie Cave, which we explored Friday night. As New York caves go, it's the most spacious I've been in. While not nearly as massive as TAG caves (like Limrock Blowing Cave), it was pretty much a walkabout the whole way (which was roughly a mile in). The cave was also full of bats, and those bats were also active since we left sometime around 11PM for our caving adventure. I've never seen so many furry flying mice in my life; it was very cool.
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| Dante, checking out the bats |
After a good night's sleep in my tent, Kevin, Stephen, Laura, and myself were ready for some more caving action. We went to End of Gulch cave, a short semi-wet, not-too-crawly passage that ends in a pool of water (which presumably feeds some lake's coldwater spring somewhere). We also re-checked-out Onesquethaw cave, a tight, wet, smelly, massively long ordeal that includes a semi-sump duckunder and an area affectionately referred to as "the barnyard." On my last trip there, we didn't get to experience the full affect of the aforementioned; unfortunately on this trip, I did. See, there's a part of the cave that sits under some sort of animal barn. The animals above tend to do things like poop and pee and do other things that animals do, and eventually that stinky stuff works its way down into a foot-deep puddle in the cave. That wouldn't be so bad, except that the foot-deep puddle happens to be in a spot that where the floor and ceiling are only about 3 feet apart. So, you guessed it, you get to crawl through water that smells like shit.
Bad smells aside, Onesquethaw seems to have bad luck for joint pain. I started feeling a little sore in my knee during the Schoharie Cave exploration, by the end of Onesquethaw my knee was making odd sounds and hurting quite a bit as I crawled and scrambled and did other maneuvers. Not fun, so it's time to take it easy on my legs for a while (and maybe go paddling instead).
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Previous Trips...
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Hiking Mount Whitney, 2007 
Spring Break in West Virginia, 2005
New Year's in Paris, 2003-2004
Coming to America, 2003
Protesting in Berlin, 2003
Prague Bier-Tour, 2002
Dresden, 2002
Recent Reading
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Close to the Machine
Ellen Ullman is one of those authors that somehow avoided my radar. Until now...
Close to the Machine is less a book than a collection of loosely related personal anecdotes from Ellen's time as a very rare thing -- a successful female bisexual independent computer programming consultant.
In the course of her work and relationship life, she learns hard lessons about programming, running a business, being lonely, and loving the wrong people. I found it particularly poignant being a crypto-nerd with difficult times in relationships and a more-or-less NDA'd, secret work life.
This book is a must-read for anyone into running their own business, programming, or anyone dating a person that is a business-a-holic or programmer.
Rated 
by reid
on November 23, 2009
by reid
on November 23, 2009
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The Long Trip Home
I had the joy of dining with the author in Florida. We went to a little Brazilian BBQ where he spoke with our waitstaff in (what I can only assume was) flawless Portugese.
Brian Wyllie spent 1969-1971 living in Brazil working for the Peace Corps. His recent book outlines his trip back to the United States via Bolivia, Peru, and the Carribean chain, by way of bus, train, and sailboat. The format comes spattered with observations from the modern day, and makes me think, "this must be what John McPhee's journal looks like."
The trip sounded like a fantastic one, but I was left wanting more detail...where did the gun (being snuck through customs in a variety of places, no doubt) come from? And how did Geneve's hair smell? Alas, we'll have to wait for another book to find the answers.
Rated 
by reid
on April 16, 2009
by reid
on April 16, 2009
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The Curve of Binding Energy
John McPhee follows famous physicist Ted Taylor in this piece that was -- and probably still -- ahead of its time.
Originally published in 1973, McPhee outlined the coming security and environmental issues surrounding the plutonium enrichment processes. For the most part, though, McPhee invites the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, although he does point out the ease with which any number of people could obtain the material (though not necessarily the manufacturing prowess) to make an atomic weapon.
The question still sits in my mind after reading -- are we being too paranoid, or not paranoid enough?
Rated by reid
on October 01, 2007
by reid
on October 01, 2007