Grunt Ahoy!

Happy Birthday to me!

2013-05-08T20:23:00.004-07:00

Thanks to Christielli, via another medium, I found out that my birthday is also part of the Fibonacci sequence, which has something to do with the Golden Ratio, which can be used to make spirals, which also describes my life and the aging process. I don't think that referring to my life as a spiral is accurate. I like thinking that this current day in my life just says that I'm perfectly twisted.

I hope all of you are having great days.

Strange Days

2013-04-28T21:29:00.003-07:00

I can't believe the weird things that have been going on. That's all I have to say. I hope you all are doing well. In addition to all the crazy going on in the world, I've had a rather bizarre day. It must be the drinking water. Maybe I should start taking acid. I think the world would start making more sense. I'm fine, but just really confused. If I had the patience, I'd explain everything. Yes, I'm a bit frustrated and confused at the moment, so I'm guessing that after you read this post you will be feeling the same way.

Here's a tip: whenever life dishes out WTF moments, just say "wheeeeeeeee!"

Bibble Bibble

2013-03-21T00:37:00.004-07:00

Rudyard Kipling once wrote....

but now he's dead so now he don't.

How's everybody doing since I've stopped being a good blogger?

Roveewade

2013-03-02T00:21:00.001-08:00

A couple of days ago, I was switching out a UPS backup for a computer that runs a standardized test scanner. The lady that runs the machine was standing by waiting for the machine to power up after I had done this. I had some guys help me move the workstation and they were just hanging around as well. This machine was taking its time and I needed to run to the loo real quick like. So, I go and do my business and when I returned one of the guys says, "Hey, did you know when she misses a period that they pay some guy to come out and fix it?" I couldn't help it. I laughed until I bled internally. The lady turned bright red from embarrassment and tried to clarify that he was referring to the test forms and not her reproductive system.

Happy Heart Day

2013-02-14T10:13:00.000-08:00

I don't know what is wrong with me--why I haven't been posting much. Whatever it is, it will work itself out eventually. Then it will work itself back in again and then I will be all distant once more. It's a vicious cycle that probably points to some kind of psychosis. Whatever, right?

I just wanted to get all Stevie Wonder on you guys and say I just called to say I love you. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go pick up my meds.

HI!

2013-01-30T22:40:00.002-08:00

I'm not dead. I don't even smell bad. Hell, I'm not even afflicted with rigor (subject to change in certain locations). I've just been really busy doing stuff that isn't all that interesting.

You weren't expecting anything like "My time in Space Academy" were you?

Jingle Bells

2012-12-24T22:14:00.001-08:00

Oh what fun it is to sing a Slayer song tonight! Go on, I dare you to go next door and start singing "Raining Blood" so loud that you shred your vocal cords. Wheeeeeeeeeee! Seriously, don't do that. Merry Christmas!!!

Sitting on a cornflake...

2012-12-03T14:02:00.000-08:00

But the van is nowhere in sight.

Whatever "it" is that I've waited for, to settle all the scores, right the wrongs, and make all my dreams come true, it ain't a coming. Who is this Santa Claus of my life? Answer: God. I've made God into a caricature. I have to conclude that I don't know God well enough. I wouldn't know him enough to pick him out of a crowded room of other gods. What I'm trying to say here is that I need to reboot, repent, and take heed of what's really going on in the universe. It's me, not you God.

Well, that's quite the assemblage of profundities, coming from me: a person from such a lowly station in life. God will do whatever it is that God does. I can't stop that. So if California sinks into the sea, all I will say is "Well, that sucks". Maybe I have control over the small stuff, the stuff that I'm supposed to not sweat about. Yea verily, I will have to make my life better myself and not wait around for manna to fall from the heavens. If manna does fall down to me, I will look up and say, without any irony, "thank you".

Tonight I'm starting off fresh. We'll talk this through and see where we go from here, okay? I'm prepared to change and I'll start by not assuming I got you all figured out. I've certainly a lot of other people telling me stuff about you, like they got keys to your vacation home, or something; maybe they do. Like I said, I need to pay attention. I've shown up to the restaurant looking for my "blind date" and assumed it was the blond in the booth, when it was the brunette at the window table.

Sometimes I try to avoid being human, or feel like one. The past five years have taken their toll on me. I've just seen too many inevitable story lines playing out before me and it leaves me depressed. I guess my attempts to minimize the emotional impact of these future events has left me a tad dead inside. The biggest mistake one can do to their spirit is to deny it humanity.

So my confession to God and man, my great sin: I am a human being.

Moving on, I've had a couple of weeks to sit on this post. Parts of it still ring true and others seem to have passed. From old folklore, you have a character called the "Trickster". A trickster has been at play in my life, setting traps and playing around with the order of things. These acts of mischief seem malicious, but looking back, my trickster was trying to get me to pay attention to what really goes on in the world. I would dwell on the negative aspects of what I saw. This has spun me out many times.

I realize now that I have been given warnings, lessons, and different perspectives of life. I am responsible if I do not take advantage of it all. I am the one who will suffer if I do nothing. I am able, one way or another, to inflict damage, or to heal myself. One must choose to forgive and love oneself.

It is easy to see how frustration causes a temporary blindness to one's surroundings. Frustration can cause you to not see the forces around you that offer help or cause harm. I have done this frustration thing for too long; however, I know that I will never be without it as long as I live.

That light cutting through the storm clouds is where I need to set my course. There will be plenty of good and bad to go around, but I can't stop moving. Destination unknown, possibly, yet I will set sail and see what happens next.

Sounds a little bit like...

2012-11-24T19:11:00.002-08:00

Buck

Cluck (The producers told me they'd accept it)

Muck

Stuck

Shuck

Huck

Yuck

Luck

Duck

Puck

Tuck

Pluck

Meh, I'm still depressed.

Ray for a day

2012-11-16T00:40:00.000-08:00

I was working with an electrician yesterday, hooking up some power to some office cubicles. The whole time we worked together he kept calling me "Ray", with this thick Mexican accent. He either had me mixed up with someone else, or was trying to mess with me. You'd think that this would bother me--it didn't.

When someone calls you by the wrong name the first time, you usually correct them, or politely let it slide, only to eventually correct them the second or third time. I corrected this gentleman today and he got upset that I let him carry on calling me Ray. When asked why I did, I said, "Because I thought it was funny". After that, he pronounced my real name with a hard emphasis on the "tt". If you know my last name, you'd figure out fast why "Ray", "Joe", or "Jack" would make for a hilarious first/last name combo.

Even though this guy was either pissed at me, or faking like he was pissed to further mess with me, I like working with the old guy. I wonder what would happen if I started calling him Cheech? Something tells me he would probably like it. I don't think Human Resources would like it as much. Hmmm. Maybe I should just tell the director of HR to donate her knickers to the Boy Scouts--knots and such. Boy, that'd be swell. Um, where was I? Oh yes, being Ray for a day was fun. The End!

PS. If you think I am bad, I know of someone who took two whole years to tell someone that his name wasn't Steve.

PSS. If you are wondering why this post ended the way it did, well, I'm garsh dern tarred. The End.

Where rocks call home

2012-11-02T13:57:00.004-07:00

A week ago I went on a day trip to the lovely state of "Potatoho" with my dad and brother. It was to a place that my father had always wished to visit, being a rock climber in his younger years, but never did. My father's advanced age keeps him from enjoying many things. Without mom around, it's up to his boys to get him out and have an adventure. I got to use an sweet Nikon to take some shots. I took so many shots, but these several I thought would make for a succinct post. There is so much more to this place; here is a taste.


I still can't believe that I took this shot. I can't take credit for creating the landscape, the weather, and the lighting, but I sure as hell know where to stand, point the camera, and shoot.


I had to get one awkward self portrait of myself to prove that I was there. Since then, I cut my hair and joined a cult--it was that powerful a place. Well, it wouldn't be the first time that happened, a-tee-hee!


Pioneers be taggin' this shit.


One of the many things to look forward to after the "harvest" of man: views unobstructed by modern civilization.

Fifty miles to the horizon and thirty to Highway 81, via dirt roads. You don't have to go this way, but where else are you going to see such beautiful nothingness?

I've done a couple of awesome hikes as well that I will post about in the future. Make sure to click on the photos to enlarge them.

What?

2012-10-09T10:22:00.001-07:00

This is weird. I don't remember having a blog. I guess I really did hit the pipe a bit hard this last month.

Really, though, I have been sick and other things. I returned to the mountains this last weekend and got my butt kicked. It is hard to get back what you lost.

It is hard to get back what you lost.

P.S. Vera, I hope your arm gets better soon!

Aqueduct Adventure

2012-09-17T00:28:00.002-07:00

I went on this hike two weeks ago. I was interested in fully exploring an old aqueduct that I had hiked up to fifteen years ago. This time it was a bit easier, since there was a trail leading up to the site and the brush was cleared by someone, well, some of the way at least.

This is the point where the old aqueduct would head out of the canyon and down to the valley to meet the irrigation needs of the settlers. I reached this point by hiking over the shoulder of the hill from the valley floor below. It is quite a hike just to get to this point, but this wasn't a big deal for me.

As you can see, I still have a lot of hiking to do. On the left, you can see the canyon road that leads up to some radar towers. This road used to be really busy with outdoor recreation, until it was closed down due to a landslide.

These little guys were sticking up everywhere. I think they look like mushrooms.


Of course, what I was seeing were the steel bands left over from the pipeline. The aqueduct's pipe was constructed of wood strips banded together with thousands of these pieces that you see here. The bands and accompanying hardware are still all over the place, stretching nearly two-miles. Almost all of the wood had either been destroyed by fires, or rotted away.


These bands tripped me up quite often. I had several occasions where I was nearly gouged. Fun!

This large elbow was of such size that I could hide a dead body in it. I sometimes wonder why my mind works the way it does. Hmm.


There were some cool outcroppings along the way. This was about where I had to start bushwhacking to get to the final third of the aqueduct and to the gates.


As I got closer to the gates, I found a peculiar object on the ground. Having to look where I had to put my feet paid off.


I cleaned off the object to find out that it was a stop watch of some sort. I could make out that it was made in Germany and that the dial went to 30. The dial read "Mills". I want to find out what in the hell that's about. Anybody got a clue?


Anyway, the body is silver plated and the needle was rusted off. I'm guessing that it is rather old, but not older than a hundred years. I still am too afraid to open it up, for fear of launching a bunch of springs and gears all over the place.


Here are the gates. Not much to look at, but not many people, I would gather, have been up here in the last 40 years. I have always been curious about what things the old timers did and how in the hell they built/got all this crap up here.


I forgot my WD-40. Damn.


Instead of coming back the way I came, I hiked down to the creek and up the north side of the canyon to a good trail. I knew I was getting close to the road when I saw the "Satanists" cave. This is a good place to get loaded and set shit on fire, btw.

I promise

2012-09-13T22:24:00.001-07:00

That I will post something soon. I know you all can't live your lives without me. Yep.

Phew!

2012-08-28T00:39:00.000-07:00

This blogging thing is hard. Boy, I'm going to have to hire an assistant or something. Or maybe I'm going to need to do something besides eat, work, shit. I get a shower in there; I'm not a freakin' ape, ya know. If I were an ape, this would be some miraculous shit right now, blogging. Certainly, if an ape was able to blog, it would be fascinating. If I woke up in the morning to find myself transformed into an ape, I'd be scared. Eventually, I'd feel pretty awesome and go to the store for a banana run. I could work as a body guard or night club bouncer. I would then pay my way to through law school and represent animal actors.

There, I've finally got my five-year plan!

Post Tittle

2012-08-06T23:11:00.003-07:00

I can't think of anything interesting to post. This blog is running on fumes. I guess that means that I'm running on fumes. It isn't for a lack of interesting things that I've done or seen, or smelt. I guess it just means that I feel like I'm old news, tired, whatever. Poor me.

I love all my current bloggies. I do, however, miss having certain old blog friends come around. It's the nature of the blogosphere, I suppose. I miss the golden years of this blog. There was a time before: when I didn't have cancer, family members weren't dead, and I still looked young. That time of blogging was rather fun for me. I would do off the wall posts, show passion, or go on a rant. That was a time of having crushes on pixelated expressions of other people and their ideas. I think I'm in it now for the companionship. Blogging is just like a marriage when it gets old--do it twice a month and on holidays.

I guess I'm just feeling a bit down at the moment. I'll get over it.

Any of you have a "Grunt" moment from this blog that brings a smile to your face? I'd like to hear about it.

Revelations

2012-07-24T23:22:00.001-07:00

I just realized that I don't give a hoot anymore.

I just realized that saying "I don't give a hoot anymore" sounds gay.

I just realized that sounding "gay" is all right, especially when I am all alone in my room.

I just realized that "sounding gay" while being "all alone in my room" is gay.

I just realized that my obsessing over sounding gay, or where I sound like it, is pointless.

I just realized that observing my pointless observances is pointless, so I give up.

I just realized that by giving up I am only giving in to apathy.

I just realized that the only way to overcome apathy is to take a stronger stance on my positions.

I just realized that I don't give a shit anymore.

ApheIchthyophobia

2012-07-16T23:58:00.002-07:00

When I was in the first grade, the class had a small aquarium full of guppies. At the end of the school year our teacher let us take some home. I remember being thrilled to have my own pets, not shared pets like our two dogs. My mother got a small aquarium from somewhere. It couldn't have been new because of ongoing financial issues from my dad being in and out of work. I digress and digest: it's called multitasking, folks. So we got a glass box, full of water and colorful rocks, to throw live animals in. Yep, my Lite Brite didn't stand a chance.

I was no good at cleaning the tank and dealing with the dead, but I was sure as hell good at feeding the damn things. For some reason, these fish started leaping out of the tank. It scared the Jesus out of me. Bejesus was still safely inside, awaiting for that encounter in third grade with the hobos in Woodland Park. I know my brother and sisters were getting fed up with taking care of my pets; eventually, the responsibility of taking care of these fish on my own would be unavoidable.

So one day I come home from my friend's house to see a couple of fish flopping around on the floor. I tried real hard to get them into the net, but I couldn't. I tried grabbing them with my hands, but something about the struggle and the fish moving around made me lose my shit entirely. I ran into my room screaming and didn't come out until my mother got home. So, dead fish on the floor and me having emotional problems, my mom took care of the dead fish and then "suggested" that the older kids have fish as pets.

To this day I still have to fight not "losing my shit" when having to handle live fish. I don't care to touch dead fish, either. I do it when I absolutely have to, but I usually let someone else handle them. I think I can live with that.

Short stuff

2012-07-08T23:44:00.000-07:00

I'm keeping it brief tonight. If I kept it boxers, that would be silly. I found my way back into the mountains again. I am enjoying that. Waterfalls are now my thing, so the mines and ruins are off to the side for now. This evening's hike had me wondering what dog's could tell me, if they could talk, about my crotch. Pretty much all of the people with dogs on the trail had to pull their pooches off of smelling my nads. As far as I can tell, they're just plain nuts.

I've been doing more work at a storage unit that my family shares. The goal is to get people their stuff, throwaway a bunch of crap, and get the hell out of there by the end of July. I found a couple of boxes of my old hobbies, mainly radio controlled cars. I was the first kid in my neighborhood to get into building these things. When the other kids got into it, I ended up helping them build theirs and repairing them. Anyway, I decided to see if any of this old stuff was worth anything. Most of it isn't worth much more than fun memories, but there are some items that could fetch some nice dough.

One of the items is an old scale model, radio-controlled truck that was mostly metal and engineered unusually well. I bought this truck second hand from a hobby shop back when I was doing a paper route in seventh grade. It was old then, but it had a certain charm about it. I was going to buy a new car to have as a project, but I bought this truck instead. I never could find the parts that I needed, back then, to fix it up, so I boxed it and forgot about it. I grew out of that hobby as I got my license. Now, I am revisiting that time in my life.

This truck turned out to be a "holy grail" of scale model radio controlled cars. So I've begun sourcing the parts I need on Ebay (something the thirteen-year-old me never could have dreamed of). This little Toyota truck is going to get fixed up and then sold. It will have a new home of some man that wants to capture a part of his childhood in amber. It isn't my thing anymore. I believe that it was my job to obtain it, be the caretaker, and now the restorer of it. The joy I will get is finding ways to spend the money from selling it.

Is that all? Yeah, for now. Toodles!

The 'Roid of Thy' which functioning is low but reading was high

2012-06-27T00:23:00.002-07:00

I am rather pleased by my title. It wraps up my current health woes nicely. We're talking small potatoes, as far as what I've dealt with. But I keep wondering, what's next with the gift that keeps giving? (That is, having gone through cancer and chemo/radiation treatment.) So, it was a lack of energy, a dash of chest pains, and weight struggles that had me wondering what the pluck was wrong with me. My regular cancer checkup's labs came back and showed that my thyroid is now not functioning very well. The good news is that I am going to get some medication to help. I hope, with these drugs, I turn into Superman, 'cause it would be real rad to fly wearing only red and blue underwear. A boy can dream.

SUPER GOITERMAN AWAAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!! (I don't have one of those, but I couldn't resist the pun.)

Narc

2012-06-20T23:27:00.002-07:00

I've had fun posting about my adventures here on the blog. My last adventure is one that I was looking forward to blogging about, but I can't. Why? Because, your ~~stupid~~ fearless adventurer wandered into a rather suspect camp and informed law enforcement about it. I spent last weekend having phone interviews with city police, Sheriff's Department, and the Forest Service. My photos and such, plus not being able to talk about it sucks. The plus side is that if they make an arrest, I get a reward. Maybe someday I'll be allowed to talk about it openly. I'll say this, the site had a few possibilities that had law enforcement interested enough to launch an investigation. One thing's for sure, I'm never going back that deep into that area again and I'm not giving the location until things are cleared up. I got out of there without harm, but that's because I am lucky that no one was home at the time and because of my survival skills acquired in 'Nam, er, Order of the Arrow (Boy Scouts' Delta Force). I kid, but I'm not joking about this. What good is an adventure if you can't brag about it?

The Further Adventures of Sir Grunty Chicken Caesar

2012-06-08T00:13:00.001-07:00

My thoughts tonight aren't that organized. Some family stuff has my neurons a bit tied up--nothing super serious. So I thought that doing a fun post without a lengthy narrative would be better for the both of us.

I was at this place a bit ago. My bro took the photo. It's easy when you can drive to places, so long as it is in a 4x4. My truck does alright. It's just a bit thirsty. Anyway, I'm looking at something I found in the overburden from the ore bin.

I may be a fool, but I knows gold when I sees it! Albeit, this is a very small

amount, trapped in rock.


I also went on some big solo hikes and found more adventure and DEATH CARS!!! Well, this '30s era Chevy truck is dead, but I don't think anybody was killed in it.


I'm pretty sure that this one had blood on it's dash. This is why hiking below old mountain roads is always interesting, and spooky. Speaking of spooky...


This is the first mine that I visited on my hike last weekend. I really, really, didn't want to get wet. That didn't last long....


I am a fool for adventure and so went for a nice wade in this ice cold tunnel. The boys didn't appreciate it much.


I eventually made it to higher, dryer ground and found some cool rails leading the way.

Usually, the ties rot out and the rails come loose in these old mines, but these are still well intact.

This was quite a find: a cast iron, hand-crank winch. I came across this as I was exploring a second mine in the area. I was descending from one level of a mine to this level, which led to another adit (opening). The vertical shaft that this winch was used for was back filled, fortunately. I would love to haul this back home and display it out front, but this thing wasn't going to budge--it must have weighed a thousand or so pounds. The top gear came up to my shoulder, so it's near five foot tall. The crank was frozen, but that didn't stop me from trying my damnedest to break it free.

This was inside the last mine from last weekend's hike (four total). This is a partial cave in. You can see the timbers nearly giving out while trying to support the stope. Seeing as how I don't have a wife and kids, and my neighbors think I'm uncouth, I figured that if I didn't return it would give them less to talk about in the church correlation meetings. So I went ahead and crawled through my own personal death wish.

This is the view just after I passed through the partial cave in. The opening is not that large--just enough for me to crawl on all fours. You'd like to see that, wouldn't you? Sickos. Anyhooter, I had my sunglasses in my shirt's front pocket. The glasses fell out and down in a crevice. "Balls", I said, "Filthly Dog's Balls!" They were my favorite glasses; they made me feel cool like Fonzie.

These are the fruits of hiking your ass off. This was from an earlier adventure three weekends ago. I went in search of an old mill site. I found a clearing where it was supposed to be but nothing else, with the exception of one piece of rough cut lumber sticking out of the earth. You can see the wetlands and Great Stench Lake off in the distance.

I love beaver. I love dams. I love them, Sam I am.

When I become Bill Gates' beneficiary, I am going to have slaves carve my likeness into this rock. A castle built on the pinnacle would be my next choice.

This is from a hike in April. What you see here is a small clearing where a cabin used to be, way up on the mountain. The cabin burned down in the '40s after the man who lived there blew up his moonshine still. He had a mine nearby as well, but it was blown up by the forest service. Bastards!

Here are pieces of cast iron from a furnace that I found in the vicinity of the cabin site. I also found some old bed springs and loads of pipe strewn about. I wonder what in the hell possessed the guy to live all the way the hell up there in the first place? Maybe he had church people trying to "correlate" him too.

Lobster Hat and other things

2012-05-25T00:46:00.002-07:00

There's this part-time employee where I work that defies all common sense as to why he still has a job, especially in this economy. I won't go into all the details of why he shouldn't still have a job, but I will share a few things with you that will bring some amusement. He told some of us at work how he was overweight as a child. This wasn't exactly a stretch for us to imagine, since he's about 300 pounds. He shared with us a story about how the restaurant Red Lobster made him feel better about himself when he was a fat kid. He fondly recalled that whenever his family went to Red Lobster, they gave him a "lobster hat" to wear. This made him feel special, he said. Well, it was a rather touching story. He ended with, "Yeah, they're my most favoritist restaurant in the whole wide world!" He followed this story with this, "My sister-in-law told me about a job and I'm gonna apply for it. I'm going to work at a dog factory. Um, dog food factory. They don't make the cans there, but I think that they make the food that goes into the cans. It's a warehouse job. I don't think I'll like driving forklifts. I'm scared that I'll hit something. Do you think my wife will let me have a dog if I get that job?" This is what happens to Ralph Wiggam when he grows up.

Yesterday, I was doing some ongoing cleaning out of a storage unit of my family's. A lot of my deceased sister's belongings were stored there and sorting through her stuff has been a job that I've taken on. Occasionally, I will find something that will open my eyes to my sister's past. I was sorting through her book collection--flipping through the pages to find notes and such. I was going through a new, unread book. It looked to be something she intended for someone else; it was. A note inside read, "For my boyfriend Jack, who has no balls." This note had me rolling in laughter. My sister's humor is something I'll always miss. I'm just glad that I got to hear her crack one out posthumously. (For those who don't know: Jack was her last boyfriend, who left her in a hard place--she was fighting a serious alcohol and prescription drug addiction in the last year and a half of her life, which ultimately claimed her. She had previous troubles with alcohol that we--family--were never aware of.)

People who ride ATVs are on my shit list. Why? Because they just are. Well, some are and some aren't. The ATV is not to blame, it's the idiots who ride them. I guess what I am trying to say is that ATVs are great at enabling idiots to reach places they normally wouldn't be bothered to venture, due to the effort involved. This idiot delivery system minimizes the appreciation of distances and terrain covered. So, in other words, an idiot is not humbled enough by the exertion of bike, hike, or horse. They get to a place and wreck it like it is their own little garbage dump/playground. This is why I am angry: the structures and/or places are full of litter, tagged with "gang" symbols, and going to ruin faster than normal. I understand the appeal of riding ATVs and I have enjoyed riding them. But the idiot factor gets my blood boiling.

My grandfather "Vern" used to tell me that it was WWII that ruined the wilderness. He said that the returning GIs and other people bought up surplus army Jeeps and 4x4s. This led to people traveling further into the woods than before; people who were not as appreciative of their environment. He would say that they brought the city with them and left it there to rot. I listened to my grandfather Vern and now tend to leave the "city" behind me when I go into the hills.

Lobster hats for everyone!

Proof of my advetures and stuff!

2012-05-16T00:07:00.000-07:00

My eventual destination was the ridge line just at the top left of this shot. I wasn't certain where I should be headed at this point of the journey, but I figured that I would use my intuition and memory of what I saw on Google Earth to find the mine works.

I was hoping to do a more complete post on this, but providing my audience with proof of my adventures is top priority! The outing started off last Saturday with my brother and I driving up a desert canyon towards some mountains. We had spotted an interesting area on Google Earth and wanted to see what was up there. Well, the plans got foiled when my brother's Ford Exploder was not up to the task of going up the rest of the trail. So, I told my brother that I'd hike the rest of the way up myself and take pictures of what I found. I told him I'd only be a couple of hours. Four and a half hours later, this is some of what I found, in no particular order....

Me holding my find: a single-shot, break breach shotgun.

This is part of the tramway that the mine used to haul the ore down the mountain.

This is the main entrance to the mine. I explored what I could and the network was decent. As for what I didn't explore, I was alone and had no desire to find out if "bottomless" pits were really bottomless.

One of several structures that I found. Most were foundations or had collapsed in on themselves completely.

I hiked to the top of the ridge to get cell reception. I needed to let my brother know that I was still alive (he was down the canyon in his car waiting for me). When I started down from here I noticed the butt end of a gun sticking out of the dirt. I pulled out the gun that you can see in the picture above. It must have been forgotten. I'd say that it had been there a year or two--nothing rare or special.

This was taken on my way up to the ridge mine. My destination was to the left of the shot. Directly ahead of me is a beautiful mountain. I have plans to hike up it in the future.

The gun after a light cleaning and oiling. I was able to break the breach open and cock the hammer. It wasn't loaded. I haven't figured out the gauge yet. It's smaller than my two pump actions. As long as I can get the inside of the barrel clean and the breach seals properly, it should be safe to fire.

The remnants of an old building.


The wheel from the top tram house.


This was one of those pits I was talking about. The complex (not this shaft) probably went down 1,000 feet, evident by closed adits seen on the way up. Look at the vein of iron ore; I'm not sure that's what they really were hoping to find.


Poltergeist or deadly gasses? I'm thinking it's a gassy Casper.

In conclusion, I am awesome. The End.

Ten Things that happened

2012-05-15T00:06:00.000-07:00

I had a birthday.
I saw The Avengers.
My back got better.
I had a disturbing dream.
I learned that it doesn't matter, so long as you don't murder them in real life.
I went for a long hike, took pictures of old frontier ruins, and explored many mine tunnels.
I found a shotgun up on a high ridge. It was half-buried in the ground.
I did not find human remains near the shotgun, but wondered if it were dumped there by a criminal.
I am stupid and took the gun with me. I plan to restore it and shoot at old T.V.'s and other "desert" appliances.
Discovered that my deceased mother recently shared something on Facebook; thus, proving that the afterlife can be just as mundane as the present life.

In reference to #9, I present...