400+ Damage

I broke my "don't spend any money until your first paycheck" rule. But who can blame me? Peru is coming up and I am getting excited. During my break from work today, I went down to the Tacoma REI and went buckwild! New hiking shoes, Chaco sandals, Hawaiian board shorts, regular khaki shorts, long underwear, two tank tops, and a head lamp. (The head lamp is my favorite.) Still on the list of Things I Am Going to Buy Today: a blank notebook, whose first pages will be covered with lists of more things I want to buy and What to Pack.

What can I say? When it's 6 am and I'm sitting on a stool, watching old folks soak in a jacuzzi, I make lists. It passes the time better than anything else I know.

Nightmares

Some people have nightmares about being naked, falling, missing a test, etc. I have nightmares about being late for work.

I'll wake up at 1 am in a sweat thinking I've missed my shift. Any time a phone wakes me up, I instantly assume it's the pool wondering where I am. Some nights, when I'm especially exhausted, I'll toss and turn all night thinking if I fall asleep, I'll miss my alarm. In Georgia, I kept Irene awake one afternoon because I was tossing, turning, and whimpering. Guess what I was dreaming about? Being stuck in traffic when I was supposed to be teaching lessons.

I cope with this by getting ready very, very early. I set my alarm for an hour and fifteen before work when I know I only need 45 minutes. When I open, I'm usually at the door by 5:07, when the guy with the key doesn't show until 5:15. (How he times it perfectly, I'll never know.)

Right now it's about 12:40, I'll be leaving in 5 minutes so I'll be at the pool with a whole 10 to spare.

Diphenhydramine?

I've spent 24 of the last 48 hours at the pool. Forgive me for talking about it nonstop.

Adding to the pile of Shit That Has Gone Wrong this week, today we had a little girl bleeding in the locker room at the same time we realized the hot tub (you know, that steaming pool of festering bacteria) had absolutely zero chlorine in it. So while some staff ran around trying to find First Aid supplies and bleach, the other half was running back into the boiler room trying to figure out just what the hell happened. Twenty minutes after things had calmed down, the fire alarm went off and we evacuated the pool.

In other pool news, Creepy Asian Lady is officially on stalker watch. CAL was first noticed back at the old building, often standing near adolescent boys and giggling if they did something funny. She was particularly fond of wearing her white bathing suit, which we repeatedly told her was inappropriate for the pool. So then she started wearing her underwear instead. Push-up bras and panties, right into the pool. She also wore very thick eye makeup that ran all over her face once she got in the water. CAL never noticed.

Before, CAL was just creepy, and I was weirded out by her, but the staff never talked about her or gave her a name. Obviously, things are different now. Creepy Asian Lady cut off her hair, bleached it, and dyed it back to black in patches. She has a new, slightly modest one piece, and continues to watch the adolescent boys. A few nights ago she came to the public swim with candy and asked for some boys' addresses. Pool staff has gone into watch mode; when CAL makes her next appearance at the pool (we know she will, but when?) then we call in the managers and Shit Goes Down.

It'll be like an old-fashioned rumble. Think The Outsiders but wearing swimsuits and matching red shorts.

Oh! And finally, there was an old man at lap swim this morning with the most amazing Colonel Sanders mustache EVER. I kept looking at it and grinning; I wish I'd had my camera with me.

Very funny, moving on

In my last four years of lifeguarding, no child dared even ask me for a band-aid. I remained dry, calm, and completely out of touch with the finer details of cleaning up vomit.

In the last 48 hours, I've pulled a boy out of the winding river, sat and tried to keep a second-grader with a bladder infection occupied until her mom came to pick her up, walked into the locker room with a woman possibly having a heart attack, and attempted to put a leash on said woman's Cujo-like terrier.

What next? A spinal during public swim? Seriously, enough of the accidents. Enough filling out forms. I just want to watch the little kids play!

In other related news, I've started up my old 5:15 am schedule, only this time it's Monday through Friday. The same old men as last summer are coming in to swim laps. Bob, 91, and Dalton, the Santa Claus Lookalike, were sitting in the hot tub around 7 am.

Dalton: We've found the fountain of youth, Bob.
Bob: ... Too late.

Pandora: it'll do for now

Okay, I realize this is a strange hour to update. But there are some things I feel like sharing.

1) My dad is configuring my computer to work with Suse. While this is extremely exciting, it's also a major bitch because my external hard drive is not enjoying the transition. Before, I had managed to work around the corrupted music files. Now, all but maybe 200 of my mp3's have become inaccessible, both in Windows and Suse startups. Fortunately, my dad is a big computer geek and sees this as just another fun project for him to play with, once he gets my wireless working with Suse. (Once Suse is up and running, and my hard drive is fixed, I doubt we'll be seeing much of Windows. Maybe to use Excel for class.)

2) I have seen Tom twice since I've been back home, both times with beer and his recently-graduated high school friends. They're charmingly exuberant. Also, Tom is one mean BBQing machine.

3) It takes 5 minutes for me to drive to work, 15 to ride my bike. It would probably only take 10 to ride, except my neighborhood is designed to be impossible to leave by bike. I have to walk it up the roller coaster hill going out, and up the 7-11 hill coming back.

4) Work is fucking amazing. A sauna and steam room, and I didn't even realize how bad I missed my old coworkers until now. If only I could pluck up the new Rec Center and drop it over Arne Hanna, mixing the two town's lifeguards and completely transferring Fedtown's supervising staff. I'd never whine about lifeguarding again.

5) Redondo is just as useful as I thought it would be. Running every day, plus walking and drinking coffee at night. Never before did I realize how steep the Redondo hill was until I drove up it, imagining myself on a bike. I cringed. Can't wait to show it to Irene.

6) I have not done laundry since the week before BRAG. With the dawning loss of clean underwear, it's about time I ran a few loads. Maybe tomorrow, before I head to the bike shop for some fresh air in my tires.

7) The long-awaited reunion of Chanelsea takes place tomorrow morning, 11 am, location TBD.

Don't you wanna go down?

All year long, I kept track of my bike mileage in my school planner. Each month had a mini-calendar before the real planning part began, and I used those little boxes to mark off "Bike Work" or "Bike 10 miles". The distances were short and infrequent. I believe my best week was a 30 mile ride one day, and Bike Work all the rest of the week. Once Spring quarter got to be tedious and predictable (and my attempts to actually do schoolwork fell off completely), I stopped keeping track of my training.

I kind of wish I'd kept it up. If anything, just to see the sudden spike from Bike 10 Miles to Bike 70 Miles, Bike 65 Miles, Bike 73 Miles, etc., all within one week.

Seriously, I did 421 miles in 7 days. I still don't quite believe it.

This evening I went for a light pedal around Bellingham. Ended up going up hill after hill after hill, and instead of wondering why the hell I kept turning up instead of down, I really just regretted that I was on the mountain bike. I can't wait to put the road bike back together.

Network Cable is Unplugged (but really, it's not)

I would like to file an official complain to my laptop's internet connection. I've been back home in Bellingham for little over an hour, using a computer for the first lengthy chunk of time in over a week, and I can't begin to explain the extreme frustration I'm experiencing. Apparently my computer's internet plug likes to wiggle around in its slot, disconnecting and reconnecting at random. When I go back to Fedtown for serious this Sunday, I'm going to have a chat with my dad. See what he can do about hooking me up with a better piece of machinery.

Please take the time to note the timestamp on this post. 10:30-ish, yes? I've been fighting off sleep for the last 40 minutes. Last night, I slept from 9pm to 8am. I've been sleeping 12 or so hours a day ever since I climbed off my bike on Sunday. Tomorrow I'm going to go out running and see if I can't jolt my body out of its hibernation mode.

I'm trying to look at my own blog right now, but instead I'm seeing something completely different. Is Blogger down? Who knows. Anyway, I'm going to post this as a test and republish the whole damn thing. Also, Irene and I got bored during the ride today and started thinking up jokes to tell to the riders we pass/who pass us. Here are some I found on the internet just now:

A: What do you call a deer with no eyes?
B: No idea. (No Eye Deer.)

Q: If you drop a white hat into the Red Sea, what does it become?
A: Wet.

Q: What do you call a boomerang that won't come back?
A: A stick.

Q: What do you call a hippie's wife?
A: Mississippi.

What do you call the best butter on the farm?
A goat.

What do you get if you cross a chicken with a cement mixer?
A brick layer!

Two cannibals eating a clown.
One says to the other "Does this taste funny to you?"

Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was drinking battery acid,the other was eating fireworks.
They charged one and let the other one off.

Staying at high schools is irritating. 90% of the joke websites I tried to check were blocked, as are Facebook and Myspace. Who knows how many kottke.org links will work when I go for my links fix?

A movie about this year's Tour de France winner is playing. Mostly it's just amusing to watch the skinny biker footage. Listening to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! and planning on running back to my book here soon.

Washington? DC or the one in Georgia?

I came into the campus library to use the bathroom (after staring at the building from 200 ft. away trying to convince myself to get up), then saw the computers and thought, Hey, I'll check my email. Now I'm back to the same dilemma from before. I really want to go back outside and lay in the sun, read a book, sleep, but damn it's hard to stand up.

We're 205 miles closer to the 4oo-something finish line. 416? 402? I can't remember the specific number. I can barely remember how many miles we're doing a day. Day One was Hills of Death, Day Two was The Day My Legs Didn't Work, Day Three (today) was Party Armadillo Day. Yeah, today the bikers were throwing Mardi Gras beads on all the roadkill.

If I could actually focus, I'd try to write about all the bizarre behaving bikers. But right now my legs refuse to lift me from a sitting position, and my back and shoulders are in a constant slow burn. My legs have an already frightening mid-thigh tan, and... I don't know what else. I'm going to go sleep in the sun (it rained all morning, so the heat is semi-bearable today.) Funny to think that I'm getting up 2am West Coast time and sleeping like a baby by 6pm.

Also, I think I'm picking up the accent.

Why can't we be friends?

The geekout moments just keep coming. I was watching another episode of Freaks and Geeks today (I think I can blame this show on my current descent into geekdome, actually). Episode 8, Boyfriends and Girlfriends, for all you dvd tv show nerds out there (Tommy, that was directed straight to you.) Anyway, the very last 2 minutes or so are of Lindsey and Sam sitting in the kitchen, eating ding-dongs. Sam gets a phone call from the girl he likes, who starts telling him about the boy she likes that asked for her number. Sam wraps the telephone cord around his neck and fake-dies, and Lindsey comes over to listen in on the conversation. After a couple seconds she opens her ding-dong filled mouthed into the phone receiver, and Sam shoves her away before turning back to the call.

And I smiled and felt a little pang, because I really miss living with my brothers.

Tuey and I are going out for an End of Year Dinner at Jalapeño's when she gets off work. Hopefully. Usually whenever I write about my plans in here, they fall through. But if they don't, then tonight is a night of enchiladas and Deep Fried Ice Cream (aka DFI, for when you find yourself saying the phrase too many times in polite conversation and need to save your breath for the gasps of anticipatory excitement (or pretend you aren't geeking out over ice cream covered in corn flakes.)) Tonight will also include reminisces of older times, like the time in junior high when we stayed up until 5 in the morning eating frosting from the container and talking about boys. Or all those Memorial Day weekends in high school spent wandering Folk Life Festival. Or the endless nights we used to spend between the pool hall and Denny's with Bob and Steve-o.

...

I am practically dying with anticipation now, thanks Blogger. An hour and a half until showtime.

Don't touch me please, I cannot stand the way you tease

So, in my dinosaur class today, we watched a clip from the fabulous movie Dinosaur, which I have watched many a time thanks to my many years spent babysitting for families with vast Disney DVD collections in high school. When the mama monkey screamed for her baby monkey, "Suri! Where are you?!" I almost fell over snorting with laughter. I think the Hollywood gossip rags can finally stop arguing. We know where Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes found their baby name. Also, in statistics I felt the usual desire to keep a running commentary on the class material (it keeps me distracted from his accent, sort of.) When he started talking about the Greek letter beta, ß, I had an immediate flashback to high school German. I spent a good chunk of time rewriting words including the eszett. My favorite is saßy.

I completely geeked out this afternoon at Fred Meyer. First, I've got a brand new baseball cap. I've been dying to find a good one for ages, and alright, it's Nike, not Adidas, but I can deal. Not all my sports apparel has to be from Adidas. (But my new workout shorts are! Note to self: Find red Adidas shorts, they must be around the house somewhere.) Anyway, my geek moment was when I stood among all the sports bags and backpacks and suitcases, fondling and comparing fanny packs. I took the items in my basket and saw how many I could fit in each one. I checked for durability of the fanny strap, color, price, and sex appeal. Ouch, well, I guess I have two Nike products now. But my new black fanny pack is perfect, wonderful, glorious, I can't wait to get it covered in dust on the outside and bug spray/sunscreen on the inside.

9:30 Update
3 days until I leave Bellingham, 82 hours and 18 minutes until my plane departs for Georgia!

Loves Company

Every day with this cold is a new adventure. Friday was mild discomfort. Saturday was a complete body failure, where every muscle went on strike and I slept 18 hours (non-consecutively) and still didn't feel "rested". Sunday I almost went through an entire toilet paper roll while blowing my nose. Today I've sneezed 23 times and counting, lost all sense of taste, and can't keep my eyes open for more than 10 minutes without them drying out and simultaneously watering like crazy.

On the plus side, Siggy is coming to visit tomorrow! (Supposedly. Every time I announce a Fedtown Friend Visit, it seems to fall through. Here's hoping I don't jinx it.) I've made a considerable dent in my Statistics study plan. Considering the actual difficulty level of the work, it's purely shameful how I manage to pull a C on the test and have failed to do the homework assignments. I could say it just feels like busy work, but obviously there's something in the problems I'm not getting from lecture. Damn that last test. Damn that test this Thursday that I'll probably almost-fail. Damn that I have to take the final for this class 3 or more weeks from now.

Siggy is coming to visit tomorrow. I'll put all my homework concerns aside and take her out on the town, revisiting all the old stomping grounds and getting positively fat on Mallard's.

Perhaps I'll get her to drink my warm keg beer, too!

Confessional

Irene laughed at me today when I told her that my favorite memories from this quarter were the times I rode in the back of her truck. We were, naturally, riding in the back when I told her. Tiana and Seth were up front, and we were on our way back from Mallard's. Cigarette dangling from my fingers, wind blowing the hair in my eyes and the smoke from my face, my legs propped crosswise across the truck, it was a typical afternoon ride. And it was magic.

During Spring Break we went camping out at Larrabee. I rode in the back with all the camping supplies, huddling under sleeping bags and blankets, leaning against the mountain of pillows we'd brought along. I ate a Cadbury Egg and watched the trees along Chuckanut pass overhead.

Then there are all the times we've been heading out on some bike ride or another. Irene and Seth in the cab, like usual, my with my legs intertwined between tires and handlebars, usually wearing a helmet "in case we crash." Occasionally, if there are more than just the three of us along for the ride, Seth and I will sit scrunched together in the back, me snuggled under his arm as we try to keep from sliding too far down.

Whoops

Dropped another too-large amount of money on bike gear today (or rather, yesterday). But! Two brand-spanking new pairs of bike shorts are well worth the money. My vagina can stop crying about the inadequate padding from my crew trou. Plus, I've needed a new helmet since I was 16. And this helmet? It matches my bike! How cool is that??

So, now my shopping list is down to: (oh god it is still so long)

Either some $90 clip-in sandals (which are going to be a PAIN to acquire, considering I don't even know if Shimano makes men sizes as small as my feet, and I'll have to order the shoes over the Internet and just pray that they arrive before June 7th and that their shoe sizes are identical between models. Are shoes referred to as having models? That's a question for Siggy. When she gets here Monday I'll quiz her about shoes.

Oh, right, so if the $90 clip-in sandals don't work out, instead I get to buy new pedals for the bike and some sturdy Jesus sandals. I have my eye on a new pair of Chacos, but I really wanted to hold off on that (again) $90 price tag until Nordstrom's annual shoe sale, right before Peru. Argh, so can you believe it? It will cost me more to go the easier route. So unfair.

A giant monster fanny pack. To scare my friends with, and also to carry the giant tube of

Sunscreen that I will need to apply liberally, every fifteen miles, to places that have never felt the touch of sunscreen before. Like the backs of my ears and the tops of my toes. Somehow I don't think Georgia will be accepting of my "oh I don't burn, I just tan" skin tone.

A very large bottle of Ibuprofen.

A camping sleeping pad.

Very Strong Bug Repellent.

A white t-shirt, which I will decorate with silly Washington pride phrases.

Fake plastic trees?

A hat. One with a hole in the back for a ponytail. I've always wanted one of those, and now I need it.

Okay so I guess it won't really take a whole lot of effort to check off the BRAG shopping list. But I'm really starting to run out of cash and I wanted to avoid tapping into my CD already (although I do realize I'll cash it out long before maturity.)

In other news, while studying for Spanish at the local Starbucks tonight, our neighboring old man companion decided to butt into the argument on verb conjugation that my study buddy and I were having. I didn't really cotton on to what he was talking about at first (he mentioned something about my Georgetown sweatshirt. I considered interrupting to tell him I found it in the nocturnal exhibit at the zoo, but then realized that's a much more interesting tidbit for things like the Internet.) Eventually however, he made it clear that he used to know Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald's killer. They used to call him Sparky, he said. Because of his temper. And Jack Ruby's buddy's wife was at the Kennedy Assassination, then went on to marry some important official under Nixon, so she was around for Watergate, too. And that the Cubans probably had little to do with Kennedy's death, but that woman was probably involved somehow. Why was this all relevant? Because the verb conjugation we were arguing about was part of a text about the Kennedy Assassination that we were supposed to be translating.

Man, that old man was cool.

We shared a few choice comments are Salvador Allende's death, how South America is going socialist, and that our book authors obviously have a pro-USA anti-Socialism stance. (The text we were translating also spent a good chunk of time talking about the Cuban Communist Conspiracy Theory.) Then he got mumble-y again and I turned back to trying to recall the differences between pluscuamperfecto, past subjunctive, imperfect subjunctive, present perfect, and oh god I know there are more of them but I try to pretend they don't exist. Seriously, why is there a difference between han perdido, hayan perdido, hubieran perdido, habian perdido, perdieran, and perdieron? And why do I have to remember all the subtle contexts in which each version is necessary?

Alright, I'm stressing about Spanish again, which I had managed to forget about since 10:30. I suppose I'll let it go and call it a night.

AKC @ Lynden Fair Grounds

Saturday was an adventure of great magnitude. Were I going through an identity crisis, it would have firmly reestablished my bearings on just what kind of person I truly am. A geek. Fortunately, my geek friend accompanied me. Cheers to Morgan, who used to raise and show sheep for 4H, and went just as nuts over the dogs as I did!


First dog of the day, a brown husky. I'm still debating the finer points of a gorgeous brown coat versus the overall chill effect of bright blue eyes on black and white. All the brown coated huskies we saw had brown eyes, so the creepy effect is definitely lost.


A cleaner version of Beethoven.


This is just as freaky now as when I took the photo.


A puli. This one had some serious energy issues (maybe it's inherent with the breed?) The following pictures are the ones I took while trying to capture the dog leaping through the air, dreds flying in all directions.










You can see its face in there.


Christ it had a lot of fur.




Someone botched the poor puppy's 'do.


A leonberger. The males get up to 150 lbs, and grow an actual mane. Giant dogs that don't slobber, are great with kids, and don't need excessive space to function (although obviously, something that size needs to be exercised.) Anyway, basically I fell in love and will own one of these someday.




So I'll never be a nature photographer. Whatever.




Cue to the corgis. I watched The Queen today, and that woman was surrounded by packs of corgis at all times. Looove.




Oh no! Now there are two of them!


Left to right, Irish Wolfhound, Bloodhound, English Foxhound, Whippet.


While watching some sort of show as a child, I was introduced to the Basenji (black dog). They don't shed. At all. Also, they bark very, very rarely. Point? They make excellent apartment dogs. So if this next school year becomes unbearable without a dog around (boy roommates, oddly enough, don't count), I'll be sneaking one of these into the home.


Gorgeous Saluki in the background. I wonder if an English Foxhound is like a giant Beagle. Training it would be horrifying.


Another Basenji photo, which that woman's horrible maroon pantsuit ruined.


Check out the giant Borzoi on the right. Huuuge dogs.


Whippets.


The Irish Wolfhound. I love monster dogs.

Losing Control

Both of my plants are dying. No matter what I do, I don't know how to stop it.

This bothers me more than the fact that I had no answer to the "So what have you been doing with yourself these days? School, booze, boys?" from an old acquaintance tonight.

I had birthday cake for dinner!

2 am unable-to-sleep-updates are really the best. I can tell you right now, there is absolutely nothing of importance that will be said in this post.

Saturday evening I messed up my knee (the details of where and how are unknown, just like the sprained wrist.) Monday I got it checked out, the doctors say that rest and relaxation, as well as getting my bike fitted, ibuprofen, and ice packs, will have it back into abuse-ready condition again in no time. Supposedly. They didn't call me about my x-rays, so maybe there's something more dangerous happening? (I hope not! Miss BRAG? Are you nuts?!) I brought this up, however, because I used it as an excuse to extend my skillz check at the pool. I still went to be the victim for the others, though. However, climbing off the backboard, treading water, and jumping into the pool proved pretty darn quick that I really wasn't in skillz check condition. My knee was popping regularly by the end, and I wasn't even there for a full hour. Jayna, in her utter astuteness, mentioned that maybe I shouldn't be working at all.. And she has a point. In case of an emergency, yeah, I could perform up to standards. But the routine of standing around for 5 straight hours does much more to mess up my knee than any rescue could.

In other news, while attempting to give the new Modest Mouse album a good, hard listen, I'm once again repeating The Moon and Antarctica over and over again. Don't get me wrong, their new music is glorious. But it doesn't get into my head the same way.

I make lists in my free time

With BRAG fast approaching, panic is settling in.

Shimano makes clip-in bicycling sandals, which are exactly what I need for Georgia. Unfortunately, they only come in Men's sizes. Also, the Bellingham REI doesn't carry them in stock.

#1: Visit REI. Try on Men's Shimano bike shoes. Remember size. Order online. Keep in mind shipment will take about 2 weeks.

#2: While at REI, buy some padded bike shorts. Vagina will appreciate it.

Now there's the question of how the most important piece of luggage, my bike, will get to Georgia. Shipping it on the plane is the favored option, but luggage also goes missing and that would be a nightmare.

#3: Call Alaska Airlines and interrogate about shipping policies. Also, make sure bike is counted as my 2nd piece of luggage so I don't have to pay $80 for cargo space.

#4: (although this should probably be done before #3) Find a box to put bike in. Visit Fairhaven Cycles and Kulshan, beg incessantly until they give me a box.

#5: Stock up on sunscreen.

#6: Convince brother that driving to FW on Thursday of Dead Week is a really great idea.

Watching the clock before Spanish

Man I feel so cool when I get motivated and do things. I cleared off my shit-collector (aka the desk I used to have a computer on) and it looks rather lovely, all dark wood and healthy plants and empty space. And then I spread out my statistics book and notes and pop open my laptop, showcasing some marvelous Excel work, and I scoot back in my rolly chair to appreciate it and think, "Wow, now that there is the picture of hard work." Then I take my laptop back onto my bed and plug it back into the internet to fool around and ignore the handy little setup I made. But you know, at least I got closer than usual.

By the way, have you heard the news that The Office might be extended to hour long episodes next season? Bad ass!

Googlear: to google. Estoy googleando.

I got a little excited this afternoon with the news of Seattle's sinkhole. It sent me on a frenzy of sinkhole fascination, causing me once again to bemoan the too-short time we spent on sinkholes in Geology. With a quick (or semi-quick, considering how the internet's been treating me today) image search on Google, I found some pretty great photos.

From Wikipedia (Wikipediar: to wiki. Wikipediamos cuando necesitamos información)

A sinkhole, also known as a sink, shake hole, swallow hole, swallet, doline (in the Slovene language dolina means valley) or cenote, is a natural depression or hole in the surface topography caused by the removal of soil or bedrock, often both, by water. Sinkholes may vary in size from less than a meter to several hundred meters in diameter and depth, and vary in form from soil-lined bowls to bedrock-edged chasms. They may be formed gradually or suddenly, and are found worldwide.

Mechanisms of formation may include the gradual removal of slightly soluble bedrock (such as limestone) by percolating water, the collapse of a cave roof, or a lowering of the water table. Occasionally a sinkhole may exhibit a visible opening into a cave below. In the case of exceptionally large sinkholes, such as Cedar Sink at Mammoth Cave National Park, USA, a stream or river may be visible across its bottom flowing from one side to the other.


That's one pothole you want to avoid on the tractor.


Wikipedia again. "Sinkholes near the Dead Sea, formed by dissolution of underground salt by incoming freshwater, as a result of a continuing sea level drop."




Surprise puddles! Watch out for the crocodiles.


Not very exciting, I know. This was our example of a sinkhole in Geology. Thor really failed on the entertainment factor during that unit.


Some poor Yankee's truck.


This is actually a cenote. Someday, during my endless travels around Latin America, I'm going to visit this place.

View from the bottom.


Florida knows how to play to its strong points.