Garrett Looking Ridiculous on Youtube in Order to Apply to be a Roadie with Invisible Children

So as I have received more and more negative responses from the various national parks that I have applied to for the winter (I just received another "no" from Jewel Cave yesterday), I have begun to think about other possibilities of what I might do in the spring. A few weeks ago I received an email from Invisible Children requesting applicants to be "roadies" for their spring tour. It is something I have thought about doing before, but never actually pursued. However, it might actually be a possibility now because they need people from mid-January through mid- April. So I decided to go ahead and apply. Well part of the application is to submit a five minute video that tells them about yourself and addresses several particular questions. In normal circumstances this would have been fairly simple for me to pull off and a lot of fun to do. However, in my current situation things are a bit more complicated because I do not have access to a video camera or editing program. So I had to get pretty creative in order to put it together.

Through the use of my digital camera I was able to film little bits of video that allowed me to begin putting something together. There is an old version of Windows Movie Maker on one of the computers here, which is ridiculously hard to use and does not allow you to do all sorts of things that I had taken for granted. So my original idea (which was to have me driving and having a conversation with John Muir, who I was going to put in the video as a still picture with my mouth talking, essentially creating a talking head) was severely modified by the end. I also ran into all sorts of other problems like not being able to have two different streams of audio and not being able to superimpose pictures over video, things which it never occurred to me I would not be able to do! I had selected several songs I wanted to use, but the program decided not to read most of them and even when I converted them to different file types (such as MP3 and WAV) they still didn't work, so I had to go to plan H on the music! I had also found several videos that I had taken in various different national parks including a great shot of Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point, a shot looking down Nevada Falls, and footage in the redwoods which I was planning on using. But after a great deal of arguing with the computer I finally conceded that it was not going to read the files and I couldn't use them.  So the video is not good, is not anywhere near what I could have done, and is very different from what was actually in my head originally, but it is still kind of fun to watch. :)

This is the link on youtube (which is how they wanted me to submit the video to them) where you can watch the video. It should take you right to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7u3YZnifDY

I have also attached the "script" of what I did for the video so that you can follow what I am doing if you choose to do so. There are a few parts of the text that are no longer in the video because I had to cut it down so that the video itself would be less than 5 minutes long. So anyway, if you want to get a good laugh, take a look at it!

I Finally Did It

So all summer I have had a great fear that one day I would somehow mess up and end up going to lead a cave tour and not have my key in my pocket. That would be very bad news because without that key I cannot get in or out of the cave. Well.... today it happened. It really did. I went to give the 11:30 tour and as I arrived at the elevator building I reached inside my pocket and did not have a key....

I have two keys on a little carabineer. One is the key to my truck, and the other is the key to everything here at the cave. Well I had driven into town last night and automatically put my keys down with my wallet and cell phone and not with the other things (like flagging and a lighter) that I always carry with me at work. When I was putting things in my pockets this morning before heading to open up the visitor center apparently I somehow failed to notice I did not have my keys. And the fact did not come to my attention until I was arriving at the elevator with 15 visitors to go down into the cave (I enter a code on a keypad to get into the building in the morning so I had not needed the key for anything yet). So I had to tell them to wait while I ran home (quite literally--I ran all the way to the house and back in my full dress uniform) to retrieve said key. Thankfully I was able to do so and was only three minutes late starting the tour, but it was still pretty ridiculous.

So yes, it is apparently possible for me to be a total spaz and not bring my key with me to work, and thus be unable to get into the cave.

Oops!

Sweeping Chimneys in the Snow

So for those of you who may have been wondering, I did succeed in living through my trip to Jewel Cave on Sunday. It was a near thing though! We ended up spending ten hours in the cave, and during that time surveyed 694 feet of new cave passageway. It was a very very good day! For those of you who are not familiar with cave surveying, a really good day is going to yield 500 feet of surveyed passageway, so this was phenomenal! I came out of the cave looking very much like a chimney sweep, with a lovely layer of manganese covering absolutely every part of me. My caving pants also decided that they had had enough part way through the experience and when I came out I noticed that they had a lot more ventilation in the posterior section than they normally would have. So those pants may be on their way to retirement!

I didn't get to name any rooms, but we did find some exciting new passageways! And I ended up doing all the instrument reading for the entire trip. We only had one set of instruments so another guy went on point and established each survey point and I took the measurements from the previous point and then went to the new one and took the back sites as well. Normally two different people take the opposing measurements, but in this case I did all of it. So every inch of those 694 feet was actually calculated via my measurements!

We came out of the cave into a bit of a snowstorm. It wasn't too bad, but it was definitely snowing and it picked up as we continued on. It was the sort of snow that reminds you of taking off into light speed as you are driving along. It also brought images of sliding and slipping off the road to the forefront of my mind! But we did make it back safely. The snow had turned to rain before we got back to wind cave, so after spending a copious amount of time and effort cleaning myself in the shower I went to bed to the sound of rain utterly exhausted and feeling like I would never move again.

When I awoke I discovered that things had changed during the night. I opened the curtains next to my bed to discover a winter wonderland, a land completely covered in a soft blanket of snow. It had a magical quality to it, much like the classic image of awaking Christmas morning to find a similar coating surrounding you. The snow has since mostly melted, but that first snow was rather magical. Now I am hoping I don't get too much of it in the next month that I am still here!

The Final Countdown

Did anyone else hear the beginning of the song when they read that subject line? I think that Jason and I used that music a little too often in video projects because now it is firmly etched in my memory!

Anyway, the point of this email is that I found out a little bit more in regard to an ending date and that sort of thing. I actually talked to both Ted and Mary today which resulted in some highly useful information! The first thing is that if I were to use all of my allotted hours now I could work through November 23. So that is the last day that I could be here before I would have to leave on account of my hours running out. However, Mary wants me to leave before that because she wants me to come back and work EE (Environmental Education) in the spring. I think that would be pretty fun. :) It would be pretty crazy and very very demanding and tiring, but also fun and exciting. I would be teaching first through eighth graders about the environment through the park.

So all that is to say that Mary wants me to leave earlier now so that I can come back earlier in the spring, which does work out fairly well for my own plans. I still don't have a defined end date quite yet, but it will be sometime between Oct. 24-Nov. 8.

My thought is to go to Colorado to see Kristen, Corey, Brandon, and Lisa once I leave and then make my way over to California where I will move out of the house and head to Phoenix just in time for Thanksgiving. And depending on when I actually leave I will hit up some other scenic and interesting spots along the way. :) Something like that anyway!

A Colorful Discovery

This past weekend was once again blessed with some colorful adventure! I headed up to the northern black hills where I had the opportunity to visit a good friend and spend some time in her world before heading into the glorious spearfish canyon. I had heard the canyon was beautiful, but what I had heard did not do it justice! It was magnificent! And it was an excellent time of year to see it because the Autumn colors are beginning to be visible, but many of the green leaves are still present as well. I had a chance to do some hiking in the area and discovered an incredible overlook where I stayed for quite a while simply looking out at the canyon. I also found two different waterfalls and some glorious pathways alongside the little spearfish river. I was keenly reminded of the poem "the road not taken" by Robert Frost. One of the attached pictures even shows two roads diverging in the yellow wood. We are surrounded by beauty and wonder, if we will but only stop and take the time to see it!

In addition to the pictures I have attached to this email, I do have quite a few others that I have just uploaded onto facebook. Many of my pictures are on facebook if you are ever interested in seeing more of what I am writing about!

On my way out of the canyon that night I passed a group of bikers attempting to pull a bike up out of a gully so I stopped and asked if I might be of help. I ended up getting my rope out and rigging it to the bike and then tying it to another truck that also happened by (I was planning on using mine, but he pulled up and conveniently had his tow hitch a few feet from where I had the rope) and helped pull it out. Without the rope and truck we would not have got it out, so it was very good that I happened along! He had been riding alone a few minutes behind his friends when I deer ran out in front of him. In an attempt to miss the deer he hit a rock which sent him off the road and down the gully. Scary stuff!

The weather is changing here! It is quite cold outside today and even spit snow this afternoon!

I spent yesterday surveying in the cave! I was supposed to be working, but I was able to arrange things to where I got to spend the day in the cave instead, which was way more exciting! I am very tired today though! We were in a different part of the cave then where I surveyed before and we didn't find any Alvin signatures this time, but it was still a grand adventure! And we did survey another 456 feet of passageway, which isn't bad! And most exciting, I actually got to help name two rooms that we found on this trip! The first is "Frontier's edge" (can you guess who was behind that name?!) and the second is "dragon's hollow." So now there are three areas of the cave that bear a name that I was a part of!

I am also probably going to spend all day Sunday surveying in Jewel Cave. And when I say all day I mean 10-12 hours. That is longer than I have ever been in a cave so far, so we will see how that goes!

As for now, I am off to go and watch episode five of "America's Best Idea: the National Parks."

Living the adventure!