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Big Gee in Action
The end of my SAS training meant the weekend and Alana had arrived. While we saw the bats and visited M2 Friday night, Saturday we headed to San Antonio after a swing by my brother's place. The plan was to visit the Alamo and some of downtown and then later view a 20 million count bat colony outside of town. The first part of that went great with the Alamo, Phil Collin's (!) Alamo model across the street, a bit of the River Walk, and Tower of the Americas. Finding the giant bat colony didn't happen though. I knew it was on private property and off limits but I though I'd be able to drive to the vicinity and see a cloud of bats flying in the distance. Nope. (Photos of the other stuff will get uploaded sometime soon.)
Sunday before returning to Austin we stopped by Natural Bridge Cavern for the Discovery and Illumination Tours. They were 70 minutes each and pretty good. Even the caves in TX are hot! (Photos will get uploaded sometime soon.)
I'm headed to Austin for a week of SAS admin training and I'm staying the weekend. My brother lives there so this was an especially lucky training opportunity. Training went well and I got to see a few other things in town. The pic is of the bats leaving from their roost under the Congress Street bridge. Below is a boat of tourists with a red spotlight.
My brother is co-chef at M Two and he brought out quite the spread. Thanks Mark!
I mentioned it to Alana some time back and she set this up. For 3.5 hours our group captured and wrestled progressively larger and more dangerous alligators. View Gator Wrestling 101 (303.1 MB). Alana did fantastic and was the first into the pens every time. Most of the time it went just like it was supposed to but each of us got a fiesty one that turned out to be a real struggle. She got hers pretty early on and mine was my second last. In the end we were all victorious and the only person to get bit was the professional handler.
No gators were harmed during our escapades. In fact we were capturing them so they could be examined and have their injuries medicated.
Brian came to town for a conference and spent a few extra days here. I had fun keeping him entertained. What's pictured is Monsters Menace America which we followed with the movie Feed.
Let the planning begin! The CDT is a 3,100 mile trail along the Continental Divide from Mexico to Canada. It crosses New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. I'm 90% sure I'll be hiking it next year starting in April. I've bought some of the guidebooks and maps I'll need for the trip to start planning. I think it's really cool that on this thruhike I'll get to hike through areas that I already know and have hiked before on little weekend trips. All previous thruhikes have been on virgin trails to me.
I think this marks the debut of CDT information to hit the website! It will probably be a while before the next update. In fact only a handful of people know about the plan yet. And you.
Not such a great weekend weather-wise. Headed out for a hike with Alana but we got rained out. Our secondary objective was to pop off a few rounds and the weather broke for a little bit. So we shot up some more cans and water filled bottles before the rain came back. I had to dry out the guns after this event.
"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time." — Edward Abbey
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