I just got back from a bonfire next to the New River, by McCoy. I can
say that is was one amazing thing to experience. First the silhouette
of a mountain in the background automatically makes it a beautiful
image. This coupled with the moonlight striking the water just by
your feet, and the sound of the rapid upstream makes this absolutely
breath taking. Add smores, friends singing, swimming, and warming up
by the fire, and you have a pretty sweet night.
Just upstream you can rent an tube and have fun floating all day. Less
than a mile further down the road there is a cave, that goes back
a mile and a half. It takes over an hour to get all the way to the
back even going very quickly. I challenge anyone to do that and say
its not cool.
If you like country drives just take Roanoke Street and really take
it. Once you get past Blacksburg it is the quintessential of a
country road. It goes on for about an hour and there is not a single
stoplight or stop sign. You pass a few churches along the way that
can't possibly hold more than 20 people, yet the entire town clearly
worships there.
As far as hikes there are about half a dozen good mountains on the AT
worth doing. There is also the Cascades. Mcaffees knob is simply
breathtaking, and that is only one of them. I can't put into words
how amazing the area is around VT is. I cant' believe that any other
college in the country has it as good as we do.
Showing posts with label Stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stories. Show all posts
Brevity of Life
I am a flower quickly fading
here today and gone tomorrow
A wave tossed in the Ocean
A vapor in the wind
-Casting Crowns
This is absolutely right. Our lives seem to mean very little in the grand scheme of things. What society tells us is important is our social status. We need to get rich, have a trophy wife, and live in a mansion. That is success. It is a status symbol to carry you through life.
What about after life? What will your legacy be? Your money will not last. It will be squandered or become useless. Your mansion will wither away and fall. Your social status will be forgotten. From a long term perspective, achieving worldly status is utterly useless. What does matter is how we leave this world. One of the most important things to me is to leave this world a better place than how I found it. What would I not give to be George Bailey, getting the tour of Bedford falls without me. My only fear is it would look too much like the world with me. I have been thinking, and I cannot think of anything tangible that, would be better off if it were not for myself. For something so important to me, this concerns me deeply.
*leaves to ponder past experiences*
Oh and just for kicks, as this post is about brevity, I feel that this blog should be short.
here today and gone tomorrow
A wave tossed in the Ocean
A vapor in the wind
-Casting Crowns
This is absolutely right. Our lives seem to mean very little in the grand scheme of things. What society tells us is important is our social status. We need to get rich, have a trophy wife, and live in a mansion. That is success. It is a status symbol to carry you through life.
What about after life? What will your legacy be? Your money will not last. It will be squandered or become useless. Your mansion will wither away and fall. Your social status will be forgotten. From a long term perspective, achieving worldly status is utterly useless. What does matter is how we leave this world. One of the most important things to me is to leave this world a better place than how I found it. What would I not give to be George Bailey, getting the tour of Bedford falls without me. My only fear is it would look too much like the world with me. I have been thinking, and I cannot think of anything tangible that, would be better off if it were not for myself. For something so important to me, this concerns me deeply.
*leaves to ponder past experiences*
Oh and just for kicks, as this post is about brevity, I feel that this blog should be short.
Weekends are Insane!!
What A manly weekend!!! So it started off early Friday with the Men's Advance, because real men don't retreat! It was interesting to say the least. First we all gathered in an Auditorium for a talk. At the end of the talk we all wrote a letter to one of our female counterparts in the chapter. Getting all of the guys to be serious and inspirational on the spot is a sight to behold. Next up was a trip to a Gym in Christiansburg. Games would include, basketball, knockout, frisbee, dodgeball, and wrestling. When we were done with the Gym we went to a local house and spent the night. Activities there included food, rock band, food, poker, food, and food.
Alright fast forward to Saturday afternoon. It was apparent that Sunday was going to be one of the best days in months. Naturally we were going to take advantage. Jeff took votes and oddly enough caving won. On the nicest day ever, we went to a place where the weather was the same all year. Go figure. Anyway, caving was amazing as usual. We ended up taking a completely different way through the cave that no one had ever seen before, even though our destination at the waterfall was the same. I ended up banging my knee on a rock which hurts VERY good, and we all came back dirtier than Mike Rowe (Dirty jobs)
Alright fast forward to Saturday afternoon. It was apparent that Sunday was going to be one of the best days in months. Naturally we were going to take advantage. Jeff took votes and oddly enough caving won. On the nicest day ever, we went to a place where the weather was the same all year. Go figure. Anyway, caving was amazing as usual. We ended up taking a completely different way through the cave that no one had ever seen before, even though our destination at the waterfall was the same. I ended up banging my knee on a rock which hurts VERY good, and we all came back dirtier than Mike Rowe (Dirty jobs)
The Life of Jim
So in addition to writing about topics that make people angry, I like to tell stories. This one comes from this past weekend. As background information, I am more of an adventure type of guy rather than a sightseer. Rather than a trip to Europe or Yellowstone, I would much rather go backpacking, rafting, or caving. Caving is exactly what we did last weekend.
So to start, I finally bought my first car. It is a 2000 Toyota Celica GTS. It is dark blue and running perfectly. This car is definitely my baby, and I am working hard to keep her happy. Now becuase we didn't have enough cars, I ended up driving over there. Needless to say the car wasn't happy about it. The good news is I was at least able to clean her out and she is back to normal.
For those familiar with the area we went through the New River Cave. If you don't know where that is, we took Prices Fork, to the little village of Prices Fork. Then we took the road to McCoy and turned right at the road that parallels the river. Now when you get there, the cave isn't right by the road. You have to climb half-way up a mountain that doesn't have a trail. This mountain is so steep that you are on all fours most of the way up. Its so wet that at any moment you could slip and slide all the way back down. For me, this was fun.
Now when we got into the cave the story gets pretty simple. Caves have obstacles, and we come up with creative ways to get around them. One of the guys that went with us was quite a bit larger than the rest. He quickly came up for a name for these tight squeezes, "Obese Filters." You must be this skinny to enter. There is one part of the cave where you are army crawling for a pretty good amount of time. In the middle of the path is the mankiller rock. If you didn't know why it was called the mankiller rock you quickly found out. When you get to the end there is a hole in the ceiling that you have to push yourself through. In the words of another caver, "Its like being born."
Next on the itinerary came the plunge. The plunge was about 15 feet straight down rock climbing. Not bad except that we don't have anything keeping us safe if we do happen to fall. Luckily enough, using spotters and helpers, so one got hurt. Pretty soon we came to the slide. The slide is a long reasonably steep incline that is covered with slick dry dust. We decided that the most fun way to get down was to slide and let gravity do the work.
After about an hour and a half of working our way through the cave, we came to the waterfall. As the goal of our journey we stayed for a little while and enjoyed the view. Mark took a shower.
Well its never an adventure until someone gets hurt, and this time someone did. On the way back one of the girls slipped and fell into a 10 foot hole. She laid there for a few minutes and insisted she was okay. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Then she stood up and there was a puddle of blood where she was lying down. It turns out she had split her head open. We were still at least 45 minutes away from the entrance so we really had to make sure she was okay. Buzz did a pretty good job of patching her up. In order to clean the wound we used a lot of water which made it look awful as it stained her entire shirt red. So we went up the assent, braved the reverse slide, and crawled back into the womb in a hurry so she didn't lose too much blood.
Getting out of the cave was interesting too. There really wasn't a good way to get down as it was really steep with mud and small rocks. It was basically sliding down the mountain and trying to grab hold of glass to stop yourself. FUN TIMES!!! So that is the end of my tale!! I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I enjoyed experiencing it.
So to start, I finally bought my first car. It is a 2000 Toyota Celica GTS. It is dark blue and running perfectly. This car is definitely my baby, and I am working hard to keep her happy. Now becuase we didn't have enough cars, I ended up driving over there. Needless to say the car wasn't happy about it. The good news is I was at least able to clean her out and she is back to normal.
For those familiar with the area we went through the New River Cave. If you don't know where that is, we took Prices Fork, to the little village of Prices Fork. Then we took the road to McCoy and turned right at the road that parallels the river. Now when you get there, the cave isn't right by the road. You have to climb half-way up a mountain that doesn't have a trail. This mountain is so steep that you are on all fours most of the way up. Its so wet that at any moment you could slip and slide all the way back down. For me, this was fun.
Now when we got into the cave the story gets pretty simple. Caves have obstacles, and we come up with creative ways to get around them. One of the guys that went with us was quite a bit larger than the rest. He quickly came up for a name for these tight squeezes, "Obese Filters." You must be this skinny to enter. There is one part of the cave where you are army crawling for a pretty good amount of time. In the middle of the path is the mankiller rock. If you didn't know why it was called the mankiller rock you quickly found out. When you get to the end there is a hole in the ceiling that you have to push yourself through. In the words of another caver, "Its like being born."
Next on the itinerary came the plunge. The plunge was about 15 feet straight down rock climbing. Not bad except that we don't have anything keeping us safe if we do happen to fall. Luckily enough, using spotters and helpers, so one got hurt. Pretty soon we came to the slide. The slide is a long reasonably steep incline that is covered with slick dry dust. We decided that the most fun way to get down was to slide and let gravity do the work.
After about an hour and a half of working our way through the cave, we came to the waterfall. As the goal of our journey we stayed for a little while and enjoyed the view. Mark took a shower.
Well its never an adventure until someone gets hurt, and this time someone did. On the way back one of the girls slipped and fell into a 10 foot hole. She laid there for a few minutes and insisted she was okay. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Then she stood up and there was a puddle of blood where she was lying down. It turns out she had split her head open. We were still at least 45 minutes away from the entrance so we really had to make sure she was okay. Buzz did a pretty good job of patching her up. In order to clean the wound we used a lot of water which made it look awful as it stained her entire shirt red. So we went up the assent, braved the reverse slide, and crawled back into the womb in a hurry so she didn't lose too much blood.
Getting out of the cave was interesting too. There really wasn't a good way to get down as it was really steep with mud and small rocks. It was basically sliding down the mountain and trying to grab hold of glass to stop yourself. FUN TIMES!!! So that is the end of my tale!! I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I enjoyed experiencing it.
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