Virgins, Concerts, Shamu, and Squirt Guns in Caves!

Friday after work, we packed up two cars with camping and caving gear and set off to the Cumberland Caverns in Tennessee. Not long after arriving and setting up camp (Cumberland Caverns rocks and allows us cavers to camp there for free!), I get the usual I'm lost call from Dana and somehow direct her along the foggy roads to our campsite. We get a little roudy as usual with our 2 handles of Soco (Dana and I think alike) and Sean's obligatory bottle of 2 buck chuck.

The next morning we woke up and headed to a small cave in the area called Cave of the Virgins. I'm still not sure that this cave actually qualifies for vertical status, but nonetheless we set up a rope and rappelled into the VERY tight entrance. The cave was pretty small, but decently decorated and we spent about an hour exploring with everyone rappelling and climbing on out. Getting out the cave was interesting and I just got frustrated as my gear got in the way and some people REALLY struggled to get out.

More of our friends had arrived when we were in the cave and the parking lot for Cumberland Caverns had filled up. The group of us showed our pre-purchased tickets and we were led down the path to the cave entrance. Cumberland Caverns is a very touristy cave and the passages leading to the main room were well lit and all of us cavers looked for tiny side passages that we debated crawling off into. Most of the seats were already taken, so we awkwardly found places to sit on a pile of rocks off to the side and waited for the magical cave bluegrass to start. A concert inside of a cave? Awesome idea as the acoustics made the fiddles and twangy singing sound ethereal.

Post-concert we piled in our various cars and set out for Snail Shell, where we would camp for the night. chili, hobo meals, and bottles of wine put us to sleep this night (after Sean's drunk dialing antics and Lisa's epic first pee in the woods).

A few more friends joined our group the next morning and we all donned our wetsuits and either hiked or rappelled our various flotation devices down to the cave. There were several kayaks, a dingy, 2 intertubes, a pool lounge chair, and Shamu.

Sarah and I grabbed our oars and paddled our little inflatable dingy on into the cave. I think the paddle upstream is about a mile, at which point all of us but Dana deserted our respective floatation devices and preceded into the cave by foot. Dana was determined to use her River Rat raft (1 of the 2 that had survived Puerto Rico) for as long as possible, and this eventually led to its demise.

We hiked on in for a while, having to occasionally swim...but, all too soon we had to head back out of the cave and on the road back to the ATL.

Wonder Woman Triathlon

So, I had been training super hard...meaning, I had been running a couple days a week for all of 2 weeks and gone mountain biking a whole 2 times...and I somehow allowed AK to talk me into doing an offroad triathlon. I pretty much knew I was going to suck it up, so I joked about wearing my wonder woman costume and brought it along just in case I was feeling like a cape would help the day of the race.

AK & I drove up Friday night with our friend Daryl to Springfield, South Carolina where the race was being held. A couple of our friends planned on making the trip, but would come up on Saturday. We got there pretty late and had missed the big eve of the race pasta dinner, but the race director was so sweet that he invited us into his cabin and heated up some more pasta for us and gave offered us a beer. I of course turned down the beer, knowing that it would greatly effect my performance the next day....NOT! We chilled in the cabin for a while before heading out the campfire that a couple of the racers had going. We head to bed kinda early because I desperately needed my beauty sleep - I mean a girls got to look good for race day, right?

We woke up early the next morning and checked in for the race. We put our mountain bikes in the race racks (I'm sure there is a more technical name that I don't know) and went and grabbed our kayaks that we had rented and put them in the row of super fancy flat water kayaks next to the lake.

I went back to the tent to change into my race clothes and after a short personal debate - I was out in my finest crime fighting outfit. I figured the cape would annoy me since it goes around your neck so I tied it to my camel pack. AK and I were hanging out pre-race and just kinda stretching and warming up because I am hardcore serious and all...and somebody asked him where his costume was. He of course had not packed a costume...but, he did have some work clothes in his car. Hah, he went and changed into work pants, button up shirt, and a tie - we were ready to race! :)

We all clogged together next to the starting line and with the gun shot I was off like a speeding bullet...if a speeding bullet moves at a whopping pace of 6 miles per hour. This 7 mile run, would be the farthest I had ever ran...and my only goal was to keep running and I managed at least to do that. The run through the beautiful trails weaved in and out of the woods and around the lake and I'm sure it would have been absolutely beautiful if I wasn't nearly dying the whole time. At least I had a great support team with the "Go Wonder Woman" shouts every now and then!

After the run, was a 6 mile kayak around the lake - this was the part of the race that I was least worried about. Its not that I'm a big kayaker or anything...I probably paddle just a couple times a year, but at least I knew that I had actually paddled 6 miles in my life before (compared to the 7 mile run and the 10 mile mtn bike) and this was an extra fancy kayak with peddals that you steer with! We had to paddle our way around the lake 3 times and I was actually passing a couple of people which made me happy...really, really stunk for the guy in a white water kayak - he was doing nothing but paddling back and forth.

After the kayak, I hopped on my mountain bike and just prayed that my legs would somehow keep going for the next 10 miles. A lot of the biking was on fireroads, but these were sandy fireroads that made you feel like you were somehow peddeling backwards. The single track was hard and I was often off my bike pushing it up another steep hill since my legs weren't really going along with the whole not stopping thing. Overall, I got passed a ton and I got use to getting passed and was frankly ok that I was majorly sucking it up because the race was getting closer and closer to being over!

After what felt like an eternity, I crossed back over the main road and began biking towards the finish line and I hear "On your left." Ok, this is general curtosy on a bike or even when you are running and passing somebody and I had heard this all day because I had been passed many, many times, but my reaction than time was more of a "Not going to happen bitch" reaction. Well, I didn't say that but I would like to think that my reaction of speeding up and barreling down the road at warp speed, conveyed that. That girl behind me would be 1 of a whole 7 people that finished behind me. Well make that 8 because 1 girl totally cheated on the paddle - no way did she complete 3 laps!

Well, needless to say that kicking myself into warp drive did not make the victory bottle of rum seem like a very good idea and I gave myself a good 30 minutes and a whopping plate of food before I took my shot.

Unlike me, AK actually did really well at the race and apparently got to hear "I am NOT getting passed by a guy in a suit" several times during the race. :)

Well I had been hard at work sucking it up, a bunch of our friends had arrived and we had a great time hiking, drinking, and campfiring before once again heading back to reality.

Puerto Rico - Day 2 - Day on Vieques - an island off THE island

Ahhh, what a refreshing night of sleep in our humid as hell tin tent! We woke up feeling particularly sticky and already ready for a shower when it would still be a couple days until we got a chance.

We headed back down the mountain in our tent, stopping at lookouts along the way to check out the gorgeous view which I actually have a picture of from Adam's camera!



Our plan was to head back into town to pick up the permits that are required to camp nearly anywhere in Puerto Rico. Once we made it back into San Juan we caught a quick breakfast (we made complete fools of ourselves trying to get in because you apparently have to ring a doorbell to get into fast food restaurants around there....crime rate maybe high?) well waiting for the park office to open. Hah! Apparently the park office is closed for a very extended holiday for all of December and January. Oh, well for legal camping...

Since the bioluminescent bays are best to see on nights when the moon is nearly gone from the sky, we planned on heading over to the small island of Vieques and spending the night there. Knowing that the island was on the east side of PR, Dana managed to find a small dotted line on our PR map that had a little ferry symbol - to Vieques! Sweet! We headed to our departure city - Fajardo on the east coast of Puerto Rico.

We spotted this HUGE iguana right downtown Fajardo!


The ride over on the ferry was gorgeous and we arrived at Isabel Segunda on the Northern coast of the island. We found a small surf shop where we got the scoop on the best company to use for seeing the biobays - the tour happened to set out from Esperanza which is located on the southern coast of the island. Now, Vieques being an island and all seems to distort the islanders reality of distance - they made Esperanza seem like it was a days drive away when in fact it was a short 5 mile walk across the island.

After a delicious lunch, we began our hike across the island and within a mile of hiking we were already picked up on the side of the road by local who just happened to work for the exact company that we had scheduled our biobay tour with!

We arrived in Esperanza, a beautiful touristy town with a row of tour shops and restaurants on the street opposite the beach. We walked around the small town, watched an amazing sunset, and caught a late dinner before we met up with our tour company. The three of us, plus a couple of families were driven out on a bumpy dirt road in a van where our kayaks were waiting for us. Dana and I were in the same kayak, well Adam got stuck with the tour guide - who bet that I couldn't get a good picture of the biobay because it was near impossible.

We kayaked out and started to notice the blueish glow that started to surround our paddles as we navigated through the water. If you scooped your hand through the water it looked like blue glitter would trickle over your hand and the fish that darted through the water looked like shooting stars! We got to an area that was deep enough to swim around in without touching the bays murky bottom and we spent about 20 minutes swimming around in the bay. It was a surreal experience! But, it turns out that my waterproof camera was not so appreciative of the biobays as it malfunctioned and would not take pictures for the rest of the trip! Grrrr the tour guide won the bet!

After the tour, the three of us wandered down the strip of sand away from the crowded tourist section to find a secluded section of sand to pitch our tent on. We found a perfect spot right in between two bays and set up camp. We passed around our bottle of Don Q Anejo (definitely not as good as silver!) with our newly discovered favorite mixer - Carrot Orange juice.

The temperature continued to drop as we drank our rum on the beach and we spent the night in our tent attempting to sleep through the chilly, chilly night WITHOUT our sleeping bags. We had neglected to bring them to Vieques so we wouldn't have to carry them around everywhere with us (oh, and Adam had neglected to bring one to Puerto Rico period!). We got a very sparse amount of sleep in one of the most amazing camp spots ever!