I posted this story on CaveTex about 2 years ago. Here it is again, but rewritten from a very fuzzy memory bank:
Sometime around 1996 ( 20 years ago ! ), I had a desire to poke around up in a small dome near the back of the Carrizal. My recollection from previous trips was that this dome could only be climbed with a really tall sturdy ladder. So I saved up my money and bought a very expensive heavy-duty extension ladder ( ~ $ 425, [ 1996 dollars ] ) In those days, I was driving a really nice Toyota truck with 4-Wheel drive and a really fancy pop-up Jayco slide-in camper on the back. ( I actually had a real job in those days ). Rigging the giant ladder to the pop-up camper was difficult and time-consuming. I had a custom-made rack on the front bumper, that I made. ( Thanks to caver David Jones, who at that time owned a welding shop in Houston. He is the caver I spoke of last week in Terlingua that once wanted to kill me ). [ Sidenote: I still have that rack in my storage building in Brenham, if anybody wants it. ] Back to the story, I convinced 3 Houston cavers to go on trip to Carrizal, and explained my objective. They agreed. I forget who all was there, but one of them was David Williams. Possibly Joe Douglass who was and is again, a caver in central Tennessee. My memory is that at older Mexican caver joined us, ( but that might have been on the previous trip ). There should be a trip report in SpeleoSpace Newsletter. We arrived at the cave, and geared up. I began to discuss how we would carry the ladder down the stream passage. Everybody immediately mutinied and nobody was willing to drag the ladder into the cave. They all out-voted me and stated they wanted to see the lead first. I had a hunch that they would not be willing to carry the ladder in once they saw the lead. Anyways we got to the lead and looked for other leads in the high passages, and nobody was willing to carry the ladder into the cave to check them out. I gave serious thought to trying to carry the ladder all by myself. It could have been dissembled into 2 pieces had it been necessary. But we had a time constraint to return to Houston. I even thought about stashing the ladder in the cave, but figured someone would eventually find it and take it. I was really really bummed out. ( It was a lot of work to rig that ladder to the truck each time that I needed to pop-up the camper. ) I returned home and spent the month of December making money hanging Christmas lights in the neighborhood to justify purchasing the ladder. I thought about various ways to use the ladder like at TCR or donate it to a good cause. For 15+ years, the ladder remained unused, except maybe did some tree trimming. As the Kiwi Sink Project progressed it appeared they were going to need a good ladder, so about 2 years ago, I donated the ladder to the Kiwi Sink Project. The problem for me was rigging that ladder to my Honda Fit and driving from Arcola to Driftwood. That was a major road-trip. I know the ladder has been used in Kiwi Sink a few times, and even survived a flood. I hope cavers will continue to use this ladder if it is still usable or can be repaired. David Locklear NSS # 27639 P.S. This email is sent in Gmail, using Google Chrome 52.0 while running in Xubuntu 16.04.1 with Xfce desktop ( That is why it is called Xubuntu ). I have about 300+ hours now of experience using the basic functions of 8 different distros of Linux. The beta version of the next version of Xubuntu ( 16.10 ) came out yesterday, and the final release is scheduled for Sept. 22nd. I currently have 36 free simple arcade games installed and have tested them. Linux Mint 18 also has an Xfce edition for beginners, but computer-savvy users would prefer Xubuntu, if they are wanting the latest version numbers of components. I plan to spend 99% of my spare time studying Linux on my own over the next few months. Today, I taught my kid how to play a free puzzle-game called Tetravex using Xubuntu. She just finished her first week of middle school. I have 6 distros on my SSD to choose from so on a whim, I switch to a different distro and tinker with them. The Xfce desktop seems to be good enough for my purposes, so that is the one I would recommend people use. The choices of desktops is crazy. But there are about 5 that Linux geeks argue about being the best. If you are a musician, then you want to check out the latest version of Ubuntu Studio, as it gets great reviews. If you are a gamer, then you probably want to give SteamOS Linux a try. Linux will probably not be a good gaming system for years to come. ( just Google, OpenGL vs. Directx to see the problem ) I have been using Linux long enough now to see why Linux geeks never want to go back to Windows. Windows is just an operating system. Linux is just like religion, only far better. You get a multi-orgasmic born-again adrenaline rush when changing distros or adding a new kernel, just like that warm-fuzzy feeling that some get when those snake-charmers behind the pulpit give them during a throw-away-the-crutches-and-canes-festival.
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