>From David Locklear
I have been hesitant about posting anything, as I am fully retired
from the Internet.
There really is a lot going on in the caving world.
Here is a link to a caver that regularly post caving videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/derekbristol1/videos
Here is a new video of the Dogwood City Grotto going "repelling."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXK24uBXNQk
Here is a video of some guys ridgewalking in a potential sea-cave
area ( presumably at low-tide )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSMYQeraiE4
Unfortunately, I did find a recent caver obituary
https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/wvnews.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/6/03/6039c34e-6d0c-11e8-8265-0f0b953ff54e/5b1dbee4c292d.image.jpg
Bertrand D. Ash, 94, of St. Albans, died on May 31, 2018 after a short
illness.
He was born in Clarksburg, WV. After attending WV Wesleyan college, he came
to the Kanawha Valley in 1942. He was an analytical chemist and worked for
the Westvaco Chorine Products Corp. which was making strategic war
chemicals to be used by our armed forces in the invasion of Europe. After
the war he accepted a position with Union Carbide in the Research
Department. He was soon promoted to research chemist and worked
thirty-eight years in the Technical Center in South Charleston. He was an
emeritus member of the American Chemical Society and authored chemical
articles for the technical literature. In addition, he was co-inventor for
several U. S. patents for chemical processes.
He was a charter member of the Charleston chapter of the National
Speleological Society. With that organization, he pioneered the systematic
exploration, mapping and photographing of numerous caves in West Virginia.
A life-long environmentalist, he lectured widely on the destruction caused
by strip mining coal and also clear-cutting of our forests. He was a
skilled naturalist and took numerous close-up pictures of W. Va.
wildflowers, mushrooms and insects. He was well known for the color slides
of the Monongahela National Forest.
Although I am not going to the NSS Convention this year, I did toy with
several ideas, all of which were crazy. I did pull up the plane ticket
web-sites and ponder the idea of buying tickets just for the heck of it.
One of the things eating at me, is that the number one reason I am suffering
with being self-employed ( or pretending to be self-employed ) is so that I
can have full control of my summer vacation. I really do not have a
single
client at the moment that is worth a can of worms. But I would lose some
clients for good, if I were to blow them off for a week. I am pretty
sure I lost my # 2 client, when
I went to the TSA Spring Convention. He is a total p***k anyways, so I
am not going to lose any sleep over it. It would be a great relief to
me from
a mental perspective, if I could close my imaginary business. But at
the present time it occasionally pays some of the bills.
On another personal note,
( hit delete button now, please )
30 years ago this week, I had my own apartment in Monterrey, Mexico for
about 2 months, with 2 male students ( from Mexico )
while I was taking a Spanish course at I.T.E.S.M. ( TEC ). I lived on
134 Rio Usamacinta St. I think the link below is the building,
but it has been remodeled.
https://goo.gl/maps/SV48hu57ntw
My memory is pretty bad of this experience, however, it was at that
time the best time of my life. I was in love with a beautiful girl
there, and I could have married her. I walked every week day to school,
and totally immersed myself in the full-culture of the society. On the
weekends, I would travel south by bus or maybe hitch-hiking in a
few places, or at least riding with the "campesinos" in an old agricultural
truck. I visited the entrance of Golondrinas, and did ridgewalking
in various places. Mostly just learning the details of the geography of
San Luis Potosi. It is all mostly forgotten memories, that I can not
seem to dig up. It was at this time, I was in the process of totally
breaking up with a girl I had previously been engaged to ( or trying
to get over it ). She and I had taken the tour of the Squid Room in
Inner Space Caverns in 1986 ( led by the caver doing those trips ), and she
attended
one TCR at the Lazy L&L on the Guadalupe River around 1986. But the
pressure of being a normal person, was more than I could
take at that time, so I had to move on, but unfortunately, I could not get
the girl in Monterrey on board with my plan, either. The last moment
with her, in late July of 1988 was like a Hollywood film about tearful
separations. I made a faithful effort to get her across the border, but
I guess it was
just not meant to be. It has been almost 30 years since I heard from her,
and never found her on Facebook. One part of this story
that I am leaving out, was that I took a chartered Mexican van out of south
Dallas ( Oak Cliff area ) to Monterrey. The driver fell asleep
in Laredo and we had a horrific multi-rollover crash. I was thrown out
the back door ( I think ) and flew through the air for maybe 30 feet before
landing
on my butt on the asphalt. I will have to tell the rest of that story
some other time, but it changed my entire perspective of life.
David Locklear
P.S. I can now build Linux computers featuring the Fedora Rawhide (
development branch of Fedora ) operating
system, as long as the user doesn't need wi-fi. ( I haven't figured that
problem out yet ). I am in that right now on
my old Intel i5-3470, sending this email ( via Gmail ), and watching the
videos above with Firefox 60. This all will
be available to the Linux world ( 1 % of computer users ?? ) by November as
"Fedora 29."
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