The Black Hole is where you slide down from the bottom of the walking tour route that’s about 170 feet deep. You end up in the Upper Mudflat area where you all regroup. Then you slide down to the Lower Mudflat area where you can peak into a big nook and view a huge stalactite and stalagmite that have grown together.

The next stage is Joe Adventure. This is where you get your first encounter with a tight space. You have to squeeze up and over a large rock formation and then slide down into the breakdown room. The Breakdown Room has a small offshoot that is called the Conference Room that fits about four people. I didn’t bother going to see, I was too busy recovering from my initial encounter with tight spaces! The Breakdown room is the lowest point of the crawl.

From there you up a series of steps, take a left and head through the Meat Grinder. If you were feeling especially claustrophobic after Joe Adventure, then there’s an escape route out through the Mushroom Patch that leads right back into to same area as the Black Hole where you start. Of course, Jessie and I headed left, with just a little bit of trepidation on my part. The Meat Grinder is so named because it goes up and down over a series of stalagmites that force you to crawl up and over them multiple times. I came pretty close to getting stuck here when I slid down to the right of one of the stalagmites. I had to pull myself around the side and earned some pretty good sized scrapes on my shoulder. From there you slide down into the pancake room. The tour guide jokingly told me that there was a pancake there waiting for me. He wasn’t exactly lying, but let’s just say I was disappointed.

Inside the pancake room are a couple of offshoots that you can explore while you’re waiting for the people in front of you to make their way out. One is the Roach Motel, which is about ten feet below the pancake room and has just enough room for you to turn around. There’s also a little spot where you can view another column like the one off the Lower Mudflat. Turns out the “pancake” was a large flat rock that was bridging a gap that was just big enough for you to slide through on your back. It’s about no more than a foot tall and about seven feet long. You can push your way through most of it with your feet, and then grab a ledge on the other side to pull yourself the rest of the way through. Then, you’re faced with the long narrow tube leading up to Godzilla’s Nostril. This tube is called the Birthing Canal. You have to slide up it sideways using your feet to kick your way up the tube while holding a rope. When you get to the top, there’s no hand-holds. You have to pull yourself out using the rope and bracing yourself on the sides with your feet and knees. This was definitely the tightest and most difficult part of the crawl.

At Godzilla’s Nostril you’re faced with a choice. If you’ve had enough, you can climb up about ten feet out of Godzilla’s Nostril and you’re back to where you started. The more adventurous people in better condition can go a little further and use the Chimney exit. You crawl up another 40-50 feet, and then you’re actually about 30-40 feet above the place where you start. Then you use a rope to slide down the side of the cavern to the place where you started. Jessie and I both were exhausted after the Birth Canal, so we exited out Gozilla’s Nostril, stripped the gear off, and collapsed on a couple of benches that are available.

All in all, we were underground for a little better than an hour. It was a fascinating, exciting, dirty, and challenging experience. If you don’t know if you’re claustrophobic, then you’ll figure it very quickly when you go through Joe’s Adventure.  I had a couple moments of panic when I went through, but it turns out that was mostly because I had my chinstrap on my helmet so tight that I was choking myself when I’d look up to see where I was going! After loosening the strap I only had some mild moments of butterflies when I’d get ready to attempt some of the smaller spaces and it was easy for me to mentally push them aside and focus on the task at hand. It’s not like you can just bail out at any time. Once you go through the Meat Grinder you’re committed and you have to go through the rest, so the butterflies and panic don’t help you.

Would I do it again? Well…

We set off from home and went south to the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Fair.  This particular fair is held in Buckley, Washington, which is only a couple of hours away from home. It was nice though, because it was just a little bit out of the way of our trip south.

The Pirate Captain reads the charges against his crew

It was opening weekend, and the theme was Pirates. As you can imagine, this fits in well with our interests. Jessie dressed up, and we wandered around the fair. We watched a group of pirates “raid” one of the pubs on site, where the captain introduced the members of his crew by reading the wanted posters for each of the crew members. The charges were fairly amusing, ranging from old standards like “Thievery, Skulduggery, Wenching, and Pillaging” to more amusing and creative crimes such as “Impersonating a Priest”, “Stealing a Confessional”, and then the follow-up “Running an unlicensed Fly-by-Night, Pay as You Go, Confessional”.

Then the pirates broke out into song, and sang a variety of fairly well known tunes that the crowd could sing along to.

There was a constant stream of events you could go and watch. We saw a group called Welt that performed a variety of stunts using a bull whip. Everything from cracking to cutting a variety of objects held by members of their troupe. We saw a couple of places where you could go and pay a dollar to fight with padded foam weapons, which lead to some very adorable battles between the people running the booths and 4 and 5 year old children.

There was also an interactive skit by Robin Hood and Maid Marion where members of the audience filled in the various roles. The story was King George and the Dragon, and audience members played the various roles in the story while Robin Hood and Maid Marion narrated and fed the various participants their lines. Most of the story participants were kids under the age of 10, and it was extremely cute to watch them act out the parts.

The last thing we did before we left was watch an improv troupe going by the name of No Parchment Needed. I took some video, but the audio levels didn’t turn out well. Of course, the video I took was of Jessie! Duh!

After that we had to actually get on the road. We managed to make it all the way to Salem for our first stop of the evening. The weather all day was very disappointing. Rain, rain, rain and 65 degrees!

Which brings us to another fun little factoid about this trip. Jessie and I both have android phones. We’re using them during this trip for just about everything. My phone is primarily getting used for GPS Navigation while we’re on the road. Jessie’s phone is hooked into our car’s sound system and used to play music for us while we’re driving. We’ve also downloaded some cool applications that allow us to easily find food and the cheapest gas based on where we currently are.

Getting back to the point, we searched for a place to eat in Salem, and came up with a restaurant that had about 16 very positive reviews called Red Ginger. It turned out to be a Thai food restaurant, and allegedly the prices we fairly inexpensive. The exterior of the restaurant is very off-putting and parking sucks, but once you get in the door it’s one of the best Thai food places I’ve ever eaten at. The food was exceptional! And the prices were pretty good too. We ate dinner there for less than $30, and we were stuffed by the end of it.

While we were eating I found the cheapest hotel that still had a decent review, which turned out to be the Super 8. I made a reservation online through Expedia so I could get a discounted price, and Jessie and I crashed for the night.

Day 2:

The second day started out a bit early, around 8 AM or so, because we wanted to take advantage of the free breakfast at the hotel. Mmmmm….cheap coffee, toast, and cereal! And then, we were off! Our goal for day 2 was Redding, California, which was about six hours of driving away from Salem. This left us a little bit of time for us to fool around during the day.

We didn’t make a lot of stops the second day, just a quick stop for lunch at Red Robin in Roseburg, and then a brief stop at the Rouge Valley Mall. Jessie and I went searching for something with Rouge Valley printed on it, but oddly enough they were pretty hard to find. The upshot of the stop though was that it was finally sunny and about 95 degrees out! Phew! I was afraid that we’d brought the rain down from Washington with us.

That evening we found a great little mexican place to eat in Redding, California called Casa Ramos. Once again Google did not let us down! The food here was awesome, and they even had a deal where we could order two meals and an appetizer for $20. I figured they’d scale down the portions, and maybe they did, but it was still way too much food for Jessie and I to eat! If you’re ever in Redding, I highly recommend it!

We stayed at a little Howard Johnson’s Express, which is a pretty run down little hotel! The wall paper was coming off the wall in a couple of spots, and the air conditioner was older than I am. The A/C worked, the room was clean and the bed was fairly comfortable, once I got over the feeling that the bed was tilted a little bit. Since they provided free wi-fi, breakfast, and a place to stay all for $60…it’s hard to complain too much.

Me: What’s your problem?

Boris: My tummy hurts.

Me: Your stomach looks like a beer belly on a skinny Irishman!  What did you get into?!

Boris: <looks guilty> nothing.

Me: <Looks out in the garage> You ate most of the cat food we got from the in-laws! What the heck were you thinking?!

Boris: <farts, looks guilty> Ok, I did it.

Me: Gaaah! What’s that smell?

I just found out today I’d been sent to collections for failing to pay a dental bill. For a visit in 2004. Jessie tried to make an appointment for herself and was told we’d have to settle our account first. Then, they proceeded to give her the wrong number for the collection agency to call. So, I called and asked about the account. They asked for my phone number, and I gave it to them, then they confirmed my name and some other details and informed me the account had been sent to collections in 2005.

Really?

I told them their collection agency sucks, because I haven’t heard a thing from them in 6 years. There have been no attempts to reach me, and no contact from their office to settle the bill. They told me I’d have to settle up with the collection agency, and gave me the correct number to call and do so. The total bill was under $100.

I went to them because my insurance supposedly covered the visit, and had provided them with my insurance information. How about you use the phone number on my account to contact me and get a correct billing address if it wasn’t sent to the right one? How about you do a simple online search to see if you can find a Brian Gillespie at an address that is close to the one I gave you? I did it and found it in about five minutes. How about you use those HIPAA laws that are playing hell with the medical industry and obtain billing information from the insurance company? For that matter how about you BILL MY INSURANCE?!

Needless to say I won’t be patronizing Willamette Dental again. Which is disappointing, because I rather liked their staff. However, I won’t deal with a company who sends you to collections at the drop of a hat.

I get to hear a lot of outlandish tales from my wife. Our house is filled with stories of zombies, vampires, superheros, elves, dwarves, and other fantastic creatures…at least when Jessie is talking anyway. I often feel a little mundane when I start talking about computers and racquetball…mainly racquetball. The great part for me is that when I read I generally choose to read books about fantastic creatures of some sort; aliens, gods, dragons, elves, robots, and the like. Most of my library is filled with tales of that start out with some unsuspecting person who is either prophesied to be the chosen one, stumbles into a scenario that sweeps them off to adventure from their normal everyday lives, or is specially empowered with a unique skill of some kind.

I think that left to myself I’d be a rather mundane character myself, like Harold Crick from the move Stranger than Fiction. My favorite quote from that movie occurs in a conversation between Harold and his friend Dave. Harold has no idea what to do with himself now that he’s been shaken out of his day to day life, so he asks Dave what he’d do if knew he was going to die sometime soon. Dave replies “That’s easy, I’d go to space camp.”

“Aren’t you too old for space camp?” Harold asks, and Dave replies “You’re never too old for space camp dude.”

You’re never too old for space camp!

Out of 10 players in the B Singles, I survived the first two rounds of the bracket and made it into the semi-finals, where I ran into Bill Brammer. We played an extremely close match. I won the first game 15-10, and then lost the second game 13-15. Bill had gotten a 12-7 lead on me in the second game, and I just couldn’t come back from it. In the tiebreaker, we were matched pretty much point for point until the score got up to 9-9. Bill got ahead at that point, and even though I had a couple more chances to score, I couldn’t get the last two points. Bill ended up winning the match with a final score of 15-10, 13-15, 9-11. They didn’t have a match to see who would place third in the division, so I ended up either third or fourth, which is a pretty good finish for me in B’s.

In B/C Doubles, I played with Ryan Elmore. I hadn’t played doubles in a tournament with Ryan before, and we did a pretty good job of playing together. Most of our opponents were C players, and we were both B players, so we ended up winning all of our doubles matches in two games, which put us in first place.

So, that’s the good part. Here’s the bad part. I’m up at 3AM writing this post because I hurt my back somewhere along the line. I had a weird muscle spasm in my back Saturday morning before the tournament started, but I took a couple of ibuprofen and stretched before I started playing. It felt good all day, with only a minor amount of tightness, but by the time I drove home and got something to eat I could tell It hadn’t gotten better like I thought. I’m sitting here with a heating pad behind me in our living room. Here’s hoping I can get some more sleep tonight and get the muscles to relax!

Basically, Buzz doesn’t make it as easy to connect with people you’re not already connected with, and it doesn’t allow you to communicate in the same ways that have made Facebook fun and popular.

One of the advantages to Facebook is you can ask a person a question or share something with them that is viewable publicly, and then the responses gets communicated publicly as well. It’s far more fun that way, and it allows everyone who can see the post to keep in the loop with what’s going on with your life. It’s sort of analogous with listening in to a conversation at a party. You can follow what’s going on, and even start new topics if you want, but either way you get that feeling of inclusion.

With Google Buzz, the only way to start a conversation is to send someone an email. If you get an email from someone you’re most likely to respond via email as well, so its more like a private phone call. I can’t go into the Buzz feed, find Kevin or Lisa (names changed to protect the innocent), and ask them something via Buzz that anyone that follows them can get in on.

One other thing that is odd about Buzz, is that it’s not easy to find people to follow if you don’t have their email address to begin with. I can’t just search for people by name, because a search for followers only searches through my contacts. My search for Kevin didn’t return anything. I had to wait until he started following Lisa, and then I could follow Kevin. On Facebook I can browse through lists of people that my friends know as a way of finding people that I know as well. I can browse through my mom’s list of Facebook friends, and even though I may not want to add her friends as my friends, I may want to add some of their children as my friends since we grew up together.

Buzz blocks access to those lists until they are followers of the people I’m following or create a public profile. Right now on Lisa’s list, I can see 5 followers, including names, but she’s following 12 people. I may know some of those people (not likely, but it’s possible), and I won’t be able to follow them until they make their profile public or they start following Lisa in return.

Facebook has had years to get these basic things working for them, and Google is just starting out. I’d expect things to change in the future!

Jessie and I are bringing enough electronic gadgetry to let us document our trip, so don’t be too surprised if you see updates from on on our twitter feed/facebook pages or perhaps even some photos posted here! Stay tuned…

The good news is that through all these racquetball events and the trip to PAX we stayed right on budget all month long. We went a little over in a couple of areas, but we saved money in others that balanced it out, so we’re still meeting our savings goals this month! This has been a really exiciting turn of events for me, because it’s the first time I’ve really felt in charge of my money and able to save on a regular basis. I haven’t really given all that much up either, just trimmed out the stuff that we didn’t really need to be doing and got a little more deliberate about when we eat out and planning meals at home.

Now, if only I could figure out where I put my cell phone, life would be pretty darn good. I know I saw it saturday after I got home from the tournament…