as The Virgin said (I rephrased this) - if you don't wanna make it rain, you really ought not open your umbrella

Pity. Wait for a while and then try again ;).


That's still better than a Volkswagen Golf :D.
You got out in one piece?
Or are you still in it? :D.

Morrrissey today

woke up in some slight panic as i have to finish a lot of work before the Chrissie holidays

have heard a lot of metal and calmed down somewhat since then

There is not a muscle in my body that doesn't ache. I was one of two people who'd never been seriously caving who went on the excursion; the caves were not beginner friendly.

The first one wasn't too bad; there was some awkward side shimmying going on, and the first room it opened into had like, no formations at all. It was strange. The next shimmy was much more difficult; you still had to be sideways, but if you didn't kind of climb while walking sideways, your helmet wouldn't make it through. Some really awkward maneuvering there.

This opened up into a small room that really couldn't even fit our whole group, although it was quite pretty. We were immediately ushered on to the final and most terrifying element of them all; the crawling. Now, when I say crawling, I don't mean a stomach crawl. That would have been ideal, actually. I mean that the passage was so narrow, you had to shimmy on your side, with one arm really awkwardly positioned, and just kind of hope for the best. On the way through it the first time, I literally lost my pants. I was wearing thermal under them, but that was horrifying.

On the way through the second time, the person who went in front of me had disturbed a bat, so that as I side-crawled, I took a very angry bat to the face.

The second cave was gorgeous, albeit wet; if you just gave up and walked through the water, the degree of difficulty wasn't too high, although there were some kind of difficult climbs. It was really difficult if you tried to avoid water, but really fun to maneuver. Also, the last room was gorgeous. Waterfall room.

So, yeah. I'm actually claustrophobic, but caves, even tight ones, don't seem to bother me. I actually figured I'd be freaked out crawling through water, as that's pretty much the only thing that really triggers my claustrophobia - the possibility of getting trapped underwater - I'm really weird about being in cars that go over bridges and stuff like that - but I was fine.

I fully intend to cave more often in the future. Very fun stuff! I've already gone through one of the caves that the grotto are most terrified of, with no adverse effects aside from a bat flying into my face. Enjoyable stuff.

Today this guy comes up to me at work chuckling to himself and so I assume he's going to tell me some amusing anecdote about getting drunk the previous night or something.

Still chuckling to himself he informs me that he's selling his friend a fishtank but the guy doesn't really want that fishtank he wants his other one which apparently matches the one he already owns. Still chuckling to himself he informs me that he's bought some new tank and he's going to sell some other tank that the guy wanted originally or something and that the money from that tank will go to another tank that some girl is either selling him or buying off him or whatever the fuck,then he starts telling me about some other tank in an aquarium he's buying for himself, or someone else, he begins to chuckle even more whilst describing this orgy of fishtank swinging while I stand there with a totally blank look on my face occasionally mustering up enough enthusiasm for the occasional 'Heh' when he seems to find something amusing, not being able to follow any of this crap whatsoever.
This whole ordeal lasts something in the region of 10 minutes and as he gets to the end of this anecdote I await the punchline only to discover there isn't actually one. And he walks of chuckling to himself that he's either ripping off his friend or getting a new tank or something, I don't really know.
He even came over to my desk to especially tell me this.

Anyway, why am I telling you?
Well I figured as he wasted 10 minutes of my life telling me all this I would waste a couple of minutes of yours while you read this. Now I don't feel bad about listening to this shit knowing I've wasted your time too.

I'm a very slow reader and didn't want to miss the punchline either, so I spent ten minutes reading that. I hope justice has been served.

I'm still confused, apparently someone thought it was funny that he was selling someone a tank which looked identical to the one he thought he would buy, and then use the money to buy a different tank?

And he thought this amusing enough to chuckle about and share with people?

WTF?!?!?!

This obviously isn't me, but this is the end of the weird "crawl on your side" segment of the first cave we went through, Skyscraper.

http://www.caves.org/grotto/esso/ima...005-2-0076.jpg

I'm still not sure how I made it through that twice; the picture is showing the easy part! There's one curve in that segment I hated because it tore my pants off once, and my kneepads the second time. I also disliked that you had to crawl up at an angle with no room to maneuver at one part, lest your helmet get stuck.

^That looks terrifying. I'm not claustrophobic in the slightest but that would make me feel really uncomfortable.

That looks cool and terrifying at the same time. Spelunking is something that I've always wanted to try, but it scares me at the same time.