Due to the persuading of Mike (and me, a little bit... at least, I like to think), Logel decided to actually come to Florida to visit for once, bringing his brother and two friends, Windham and Joseph. They were expected to arrive around 2 AM Friday night/Saturday morning, so we decided to stay up and play foosball in anticipation. However, when Logel informed us that they would be arriving around 5 AM, Kelsey and I decided to go home and sleep.
The next day, we met Logel and crowd for breakfast in Gainesville and then headed to UF's Lake Wauberg for some sailing. I hadn't been sailing on a Hobie Cat before and I was in for quite the adventure. My first round was with Mike, Logel, and Kelsey. The water was chilly and the sun was playing coy with us, so getting soaked was not as fun as I anticipated. We almost flipped the Hobie several times and I seemed to get the brunt of the waves smashing into us. Suffice to say, I looked as if I had been swimming by the time we circled back to shore. Bevin's Hobie Cat was having rudder issues, so I volunteered to go in her boat and give the others a chance. I was with Bevin, Vlad, Kelsey, and Logel, Mike had the other three. We raced each other around the Lake and Mike's boat kept trying to jump onto ours. We ended up at one point with six people on our boat, swapping Logel for his brother and Windham. Bevin kept trying to get Kelsey and I to swim and she eventually elbowed me out of the boat. I flew over the edge and fully submerged as they sped away. Mike and Logel came to get me and pulled me out of the freezing water. We played around with the boats for a while longer before going to get ice cream nearby and then hiking to Paynes Prairie.
That night, we invited over tons of OAR people to Mike's apartment and challenged each other to rounds of foosball. I'm absolutely terrible but it was a lot of fun and I practiced with Bevin until we both were pretty decent. We moved the foosball table into the hallway and tried to drag random passersby into our games. Few complied but the ones that did seemed to have fun. Then we headed to Shotgun Hole for a night of caving and swimming in the springs. The next day, Logel and his fellow North Carolinians joined Mike and I in Jacksonville for further adventures. We went to Mike's house and paddled his Hobie Cat (rather than sailing it, the mast was difficult to deal with) to Exchange Club Island. We walked around and explored the island some before paddling back. I steered the boat in for a perfect landing and then we piled into cars and went to my house. There, my mother prepared a chocolate fountain party for the six of us and I was impressed with the guys' ability to eat through a majority of the food. We then went to Mike's parents' for dinner, at which point I thought my stomach would explode. Then the Logel group headed back home, a nice weekend on the water in the middle of February.
Events occurred: February 22-24, 2013
The weather was not in my favor in February. The climbing trip to Sand Rock was cancelled because it was going to be too cold, so Jeff decided we would hike along the Suwannee River in Florida instead. We met around 9 AM on Saturday morning and shuffled into cars, heading about an hour away for our hike. While I was shuttling people from one end of the trail to the other, I ran over something in the middle of the road. When I stopped to pay for the park entrance fee, someone noticed gasoline leaking from my car. I had split my gas tank all the way down. We tried to patch it with gum but we were unsuccessful. The park rangers were very helpful but they informed me that I needed to move the car asap because gasoline is bad for the environment. I called AAA and they were useless. I was very disappointed with their lack of help and I called my mom in a panic. Luckily, her friends had a hitch and a dolly, so they drove from Jacksonville to get me.
The OAR kids waited patiently even though I urged them to go ahead and hike without me. It started to rain and it was cold outside, so we all huddled under a park pavilion for warmth and dryness. They waited until my mom was less than 10 minutes away. I ended up home and carless for the weekend, my OAR adventure only lasting a few hours.
Events occurred: February 16, 2013
When Mike texted me and asked me if I wanted to co-lead a vertical caving trip, I was ecstatic. The original plan was to have two cars and I would lead one, he would lead the other, but we ended up with only one car. Still, we planned everything together and he let me set anchors and make decisions. The ultimate goal of this trip was Signal Light. Last time we had gone, Mike had spotted some breakdown leading up but our group didn't want to keep going so we left it alone. Though neither of us had been able to get our hands on a map, we had a theory that the cave kept going for a while.
We drove up Friday night and camped near Chattanooga. Lindsay and I stayed in the car while Mike, Chelsea, and Nina camped in tents. Considering that the latter all woke up with frost on their sleeping bags, I have no regrets. We started the day in Howard's Cave but ended up spending barely any time there because there was also a church group of about 20 and a group from Georgia Tech of at least 20. The cave was much too crowded for our liking, so we headed to Rusty's Cave. Ironically, Rusty's was named in honor of a guy who discovered it but died saving a group of boy scouts from Howard's. Rusty's is a pretty cool cave and this time I was able to sprint through it because I was familiar with the terrain. We emerged from Rusty's fairly quickly and grabbed dinner at a somewhat nearby restaurant, Randy's, that had fantastic calzones.
The next day, we started exploring my baby, Signal Light. Again, I set up one rope and Mike set up another. We only ended up with one photo from the whole trip, a group photo in Signal Light. We headed back to the muddy passage, which was sadly less muddy than before. The water that had been waist deep was now just puddles interlaced with the mud. We engaged in an intense mud fight, throwing thick peanut butter mud at one another and rolling around in the mud. I loved it. I have always loved to play in mud and this mud was perfect. After a fair amount of time here, we headed up the breakdown. We hunched over, crawled, and rolled for about 20 minutes until we emerged in a huge room with a lake. Mike and I looked for ways around the water but we saw nothing good. So, with Nina taking the first plunge, we decided to swim across. When I submerged my body in the water from the neck down, I thought I was drowning. The water was so cold that I felt as if my lungs were collapsing. I struggled to keep my head above water and all I could see was Mike's headlamp a few feet in front of me. He pulled me out of the water and I shivered continuously through the rest of the cave. We continued to crawl through some more and after a few hours, the group decided to turn around. We headed back for the surface only to discover that it was raining. Mike and I decided to ascend up last and on the same rope, allowing the other three to get to the top as quickly as possible on both ropes and then take one of the ropes down and head for the car. We headed up and I threw the rope in a jumbled mess over my shoulder after he was at the top. We sprinted down to a nearby gas station, where the others were waiting. I stripped down to my shirt and spandex shorts with no shoes and sprinted to my car, trying to avoid getting it all muddy from my jacket, jeans and shoes. Everyone loaded their caving clothing into plastic bags and changed in the bathrooms at the gas station. We then headed into Chattanooga and met Lindsay's dad for dinner before heading back to Gainesville, since he was in Chattanooga too.
Though it didn't feel like I fully led my own trip, it was nice to see that Mike had confidence in me to make decisions and set anchors for caving, one of the most difficult types of OAR trips to lead.
Events occurred: February 8-10, 2013
My second OAR trip of the semester, MLK weekend, was also unusual. Over 40 people, including a contingent from St. Louis, signed up for a trip near Chattanooga, which Jeff described as hiking, climbing, hang gliding or whatever anyone wanted to do. I decided this was my chance to lead a vertical caving trip. I attempted to set up a second trip that weekend, also staying near Chattanooga, but, at the time, my qualifications were unknown. Mike decided to go on this trip to officially lead any vertical caving but my input was acknowledged. Kelsey, Marcelle, Simona, and I all left early Friday and arrived at the campsite before 10. To my knowledge, we were the caving contingent, minus Mike.
The next morning when I woke up, Jeff informed me that everyone was going vertical caving and that I was to teach everyone how to use the gear. I was worried because vertical gear is complicated to use and I did not feel comfortable expecting 40 people who had never used the gear before to suddenly know what to do, especially because vertical caving is very dangerous and we only have 4 sets of gear. Marcelle and Simona also knew as well as I did that it would take all day just to get that many people down and back up again, sending gear every fourth person. Kelsey still wanted to go, so we dropped her off with the big group and decided that it would be easier for everyone if we did something else.
Marcelle, Simona, and I ventured into Chattanooga and found ourselves catching up on some homework and searching for something nearby to do. I called my mom and explained the situation. Immediately, she recommended Rock City, a tourist trap in Chattanooga. I typically avoid tourist traps whenever possible, but we decided that this one could be a lot of fun. We took tons of cheesy pictures and climbed all over the limestone. We spent several hours exploring Rock City, eating lunch over a cliff that boasts you can see seven states at once. We finally returned to downtown Chattanooga for some coffee and then headed back to camp. When we stopped at a gas station to pick up drinks, we ran into Mike, Kelsey, and a group of about 5 that had apparently been the caving group after everyone else realized it would take forever to set up. We all went to a Mexican restaurant nearby and got dinner. My table consisted of Mike, Marcelle, and Simona and resulted in two things: 1) caving at Signal Light the next day and 2) Spring Break in Colombia.
The next morning, our group headed to Signal Light, my favorite cave. We set up two ropes, Mike anchored one of the them and I took care of the other. He checked over my work and gave me some advice for the future. He trusted my rope enough to go down on it and we started exploring the cave. Normally, we don't spend a lot of time in Signal Light because Mike has been over 20 times and knows it really well. Or so we thought. We stumbled upon a muddy passage way that led to several small lagoons. Suffice to say we were soaked and coated and mud within minutes. We created mud figures, painted our names on the walls in mud, and threw hunks of mud at each other. At first, I tried walking across the muddy water with delicacy, trying not to get to wet. Eventually, however, we were all up to our waists in water. We reached a crawling section that we went through for a while before turning around and heading back out. While traversing across one part of the cave, I slipped and dislocated my left knee. I screamed and Kelsey grabbed my hand so I wouldn't slip. Everyone helped pull me up and I sat on a rock trying to fix it. I set the injury and popped everything back in to place, pressing on to the end. I was the last to ascend out and I caver coiled my rope as quickly as possible. We found a short cut down to the parking lot and after that, we went to dinner at some pizza place. We ended up with a lot of pizza because there was a special for larges, so we ordered three and they messed up one of our orders, so we had four pizzas for five people. Suffice to say we had leftovers.
When we arrived back at camp, half the group was gone or packing to leave. It was already around 8 PM, so I didn't understand why they didn't just wait to leave the next day rather than driving all night. It turned out that a lot of people had gotten sick and just wanted to go home, so our group shrank to about three cars. The next morning, my knee was still bothering me. The plan had been to go vertical caving again but Mike didn't think it was worth it and I didn't feel up to it either. We ended up going to Cloudland Canyon. I stayed back and rested while everyone else hiked and then we headed back to Gainesville.
Events occurred January 18-21, 2013
The next day, we met Logel and crowd for breakfast in Gainesville and then headed to UF's Lake Wauberg for some sailing. I hadn't been sailing on a Hobie Cat before and I was in for quite the adventure. My first round was with Mike, Logel, and Kelsey. The water was chilly and the sun was playing coy with us, so getting soaked was not as fun as I anticipated. We almost flipped the Hobie several times and I seemed to get the brunt of the waves smashing into us. Suffice to say, I looked as if I had been swimming by the time we circled back to shore. Bevin's Hobie Cat was having rudder issues, so I volunteered to go in her boat and give the others a chance. I was with Bevin, Vlad, Kelsey, and Logel, Mike had the other three. We raced each other around the Lake and Mike's boat kept trying to jump onto ours. We ended up at one point with six people on our boat, swapping Logel for his brother and Windham. Bevin kept trying to get Kelsey and I to swim and she eventually elbowed me out of the boat. I flew over the edge and fully submerged as they sped away. Mike and Logel came to get me and pulled me out of the freezing water. We played around with the boats for a while longer before going to get ice cream nearby and then hiking to Paynes Prairie. 
That night, we invited over tons of OAR people to Mike's apartment and challenged each other to rounds of foosball. I'm absolutely terrible but it was a lot of fun and I practiced with Bevin until we both were pretty decent. We moved the foosball table into the hallway and tried to drag random passersby into our games. Few complied but the ones that did seemed to have fun. Then we headed to Shotgun Hole for a night of caving and swimming in the springs. The next day, Logel and his fellow North Carolinians joined Mike and I in Jacksonville for further adventures. We went to Mike's house and paddled his Hobie Cat (rather than sailing it, the mast was difficult to deal with) to Exchange Club Island. We walked around and explored the island some before paddling back. I steered the boat in for a perfect landing and then we piled into cars and went to my house. There, my mother prepared a chocolate fountain party for the six of us and I was impressed with the guys' ability to eat through a majority of the food. We then went to Mike's parents' for dinner, at which point I thought my stomach would explode. Then the Logel group headed back home, a nice weekend on the water in the middle of February. 
