It wouldn't be Adventures in the Underground without me posting about my first caving trip.  On Sunday I went with my caving class to Alabaster Cave, between San Ysidro and Cuba, NM.  It was cool!  Our teacher told us it was a training cave, meaning that if you can get through this one, you are ready to go on to even bigger and better cave adventures.

Just to give a little background, alabaster is a type of a rock called gypsum, or CaSO4-2H2O for you chemistry-minded types.  It forms by evaporation of salts from water, also known as a chemical sedimentary rock.  I was first introduced to gypsum in college when I went to a mine for my intro geology class.  I remember liking it so much, I even made up a poem about it.

Oh gypsum you're the one
in many different states you come
coarse, satin, alabaster
you are much better than plain old plaster

(which is funny because you can totally make plaster out of gypsum)

We arrived at the cave site at about noon, got a little introduction/safety briefing, and then were told to squeeze through the tiniest hole to get into the cave.  When our teacher first pointed out the entrance, I thought "yeah, right, buddy."  But it wasn't so bad once I got down in there and actually saw that I could do it.

We wiggled through a crazy narrow passageway into a large "room" that easily fit all six of us on the trip.

We continued to make our way through short passages, like this one, that required crawling and sliding on our stomachs to get through. 


This is where equipment like knee and elbow pads become essential.  And even with them, my knees were still incredibly bruised, and my arm and leg muscles still very sore.

In the cave were some pretty cool things.  We were told that we may run into some wildlife, mainly of the bug variety, but we were definitely not expecting this.


Bats don't typically live in this type of cave.  I can't remember why now.  Sorry.  Probably because it's too shallow or warm or something.  It was awesome, though. 

We each took turns leading the way.  When it was my turn to lead, I had to lead us toward the light, which would be our exit.  And when I got there, it looked like this.


I thought it was cool looking with the light coming in through the small passageways, but that also meant we would have to once again squeeze through to get out.  For this particular tunnel, we sent the smallest kid in first and we had to take off our helmets to be able to make it through, while pushing our backpacks in front of us.

Even though that was our exit, it wasn't the end of the trip.  First, we wanted to go see the water.  The way to get there was to go past the entrance, down through a narrow passageway and into a really cool tunnel, which we entered here. 


The way in was either to crawl behind the weird sticking up rock or to climb above it.  I chose the easy road and took the low tunnel, which was pretty neat, and led me to this.


A warning?  Maybe.  But not too long after that, we found the water, which led to yet another exit. 


Murky and stagnant, this water was around 35 degrees and went up to above chest height before leading out through the cave exit.  The crazy boys in the group decided to go out through that way, while the girls, choosing not to get wet and even more gross, decided to backtrack to the original exit.

After attempting to remember which path we had taken to get there (which was difficult), we finally made it back to the exit, and outside into the sunlight.


See that teeny little hole?  Yep, that's what we crawled out of.  Pretty wild, huh?

The one thing I could have used, but forgot, was a dust mask.  Gypsum is very soft and erodes easily (hence the cave being formed) so it was really sandy and dusty in there, and at times I even picked it up with my camera.


Breathing in gypsum dust is not that awesome for you and when I blew my nose it came out looking all gross.  I didn't take a picture of that (you're welcome).  Luckily, I had a bandanna that I tied over my mouth and nose, which I'm telling myself helped a little bit.

All in all, it was a good trip.  Next stop: my old stomping ground, Socorro!

I've been trying this new thing lately, called making dinner at home.  It's a good idea!  I can't believe I used to hate going out to eat.  I seriously thought I would die.  That was a weird phase in my life.  Now I'm making up for it, I suppose.  But perhaps a bit too much.  Hence the making food at home.  Matt does some cooking too.  Here's what he made the other night.

Looks good, huh?  The sweet potatoes were awesome.  It's just chopped up potatoes (I think they're technically yams, actually) and onions with chili powder and olive oil baked for about an hour and 10 minutes.  So yummy.

Last night I was invited over to his parents' house for dinner and tonight we were lazy and had frozen pizza (because I had class and got home super late) but we didn't go out and the pizza was on sale for $4, so that's pretty good.  I spiffed it up with pico de gallo and spinach. 

Tomorrow I have caving class, which also goes late, so I'm trying to figure out how that will work.  My plan was wild rice stuffed pork chops and asparagus, so I'm hoping I can convince my chef to make it for me.  Tee hee!

I really want to make healthy dinners at home every night and work out on a regular basis.  I just have so much stuff going on all the time and it's hard.  Like tonight, after work, school and groceries, I was home for the night by about 8:30.  That's pretty typical.  Maybe I'm trying to do too much?

My 23rd Birthday...  Not sure if it was the best day of my life but it was a good one.

obviously, I am an artist in my spare time.  couldn't you tell?

this photo is of the bellagio ceiling, taken on my last night in vegas.  not really a great night in itself but there are memories from that night, and others, that I will keep forever

ok, so obviously this is not my parents at my age. and my mom is not in it.  it's old, though.  my sister looks like she's in about 8th grade.

my brother's shorts are my closest friend

Houston was not really my favorite vacation.  I just like this picture.

I hiked 9 miles to get to that.  YEAH I DID!

I wish I still had my actual photobooth pictures where my brother, cousin and i were in spaghetti.  But this will do.

I'm from Oklahoma, bitches!  We ride bulls!  Oh wait, I'm getting my bullriding stories mixed up...

this dude.  yep... definitely hangin onto him.  just like my former boyfriend the billboard lawyer in vegas.

This is my favorite picture of him

the stratosphere

same people as above.  hmm...

this one makes me laugh

SNOOOOPS!

my buddy TT : (

garden of the gods and goddesses

that's my sister, in case you were wondering

i love vegas!

the night of my thesis defense.  ahh, those were the days.

bobcat bite, the best burger in the country

What I made for dinner.

It's my favorite time of month!  I always look forward to it with such anticipation.  (Actually, I kind of do.  You know... just to be sure.)  I always know when it's coming because my left knee hurts and I feel uncomfortable in my own skin for a couple days before hand. 

All I wanted today was to get through my speech without feeling like I was going to die a slow, horrible death by cramps.  Oh, did I not tell you?  I joined Toastmasters at work.  It's actually kind of nice.  I get to not work for an hour every week, and get paid for it.  And I made my first speech today.  It went really well, and no, I did not have cramps.  Yet.  Those came later.  So I'm pretty happy about it.  Oddly enough, I'm a pretty decent public speaker, despite everything else.  Perhaps the public speaking part of the brain is different from the small talk/trying to make conversation part?

I started feeling grumpy this afternoon.  On the way home from work, there's a left turn that absolutely needs the green arrow.  I don't even know why they have just the plain green light because a steady stream of cars comes from the other direction at all hours of the day.  So the light turned green and I totally couldn't go but some jackhammer decided to start honking his horn at me anyway.  But it's either that or try to get through the street that goes from 3 lanes to one in about 50 yards, where absolutely no one will let you in.  Oh, and there's usually some bum with a sign asking for money there, too.

I'm at Matt's house now.  I was starting to get pissed because he didn't answer the door soon enough.  Ha, it's that bad.  I feel ok physically right now.  Not awesome, but not as bad I have been in the past.  I feel as though I am oversharing quite a bit today.  But it seems like a lot of people are.  Maybe it's something in the air.

One thing I know is I'm craving cheese.  Like, I really want some, bad.  I also want a milkshake.

I decided to make some new picture links.  There's one for my "About Me" type profile and there's another one called "The Soil Adventure Mobile" which links to all my outdoorsy posts.  I liked the links at the top, but the pictures are fun.  Maybe I'll put them in both places.  Would that be redundant?  It was pretty easy to do.  Getting my layout to be 3 columns instead of two... well, that is another story.  HTML is tricky!

Weekends go by too fast.

Are the days when I most miss Vegas, because they remind me of the way I felt when I was there.  These were the kind of days that were perfect for leaving early and heading to the bar, where the spring air wafted in and the cigarette smoke stuck to my clothes.  Where we fell into easy conversation and I was genuinely happy to be with the group of people who were there.  Where life was easy and free.

Now, as the days get warmer and the sun stays longer in the sky, those feelings of contented happiness have come back to life.  Field season doesn't seem so bad anymore as I imagine warm, calm weekends back on my patio, swimming in the pool, and maybe even going to a bar or two.  Spring makes me feel light.

Why is the bandwidth exceeded? It's written all across the top of my page. Does that show up for everyone or just me?  I would check it on my computer at work, but I gave up all blog-related things at work for Lent.  I mean, they can check my work computer and find out what I do all day if they really wanted to, so I probably shouldn't be on it anyway.  So here's some incentive, right?  When I was in college, I gave up internet computer games, like text twist and bejeweled and some other weird games, for Lent, and I haven't played one since then.  I just didn't find it interesting after I had given it up.  I think I will still find blogging interesting when I'm done (obviously I will still be blogging), but I'm training myself to not want to look at it at work.  I don't need to get in trouble for something dumb like that.

Anyway, what was I talking about?  Oh, the bandwidth.  It's probably my new layout.  And I really like this one, too.  Darn.

Oh guess what, I found my aerial photos, if anyone cares.  My boss accidentally put them with his stuff and forgot about them. I snooped around in is cubicle and found them.  Heeheee.

Is it just me, or did this week go by really fast?  I'm not complaining but it just seems like Monday was not that long ago, when I was watching all those Bachelor bizzos talking about their drama, and Matt kept changing the channel so he could watch Scarface.  I watched the end where he has a huge pile of coke and goes crazy shooting everyone and then some dude shoots him in the back and he falls in the pool in a pile of blood.  Good times.