• 11 Posts
  • 1.01K Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: July 22nd, 2023
  • shalafi@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•What is something you only experienced once and would like to experience again?English
    5·
    19 hours ago

    I aim to kayak West Cold Creek again, and do better than merely survive. I have more experience and better gear, not sure of my strength. (I should note, Florida is the flattest state in the Union, creeks are slow.)

    To save you a wall of text, here’s what I wrote the night I got back. Yes, it’s overly dramatic and disjointed. I was disjointed. Now I have an inkling as to why combat vets usually don’t talk about fighting. There’s a sense of, “You weren’t there, can’t possibly understand, why bother?” Wrote this to get my head on track, it helped a lot.

    here go if you're interested

    Went to conquer the West Branch of Big Cold Creek. Bucket list thing.

    Got my neighbor to extract me at the Adventures Unlimited landing. LOL, the plan was to get all the way back to Carpenter’s Park in Milton. Nope. Couldn’t talk to him, sat quietly on the ride, shocked to be out of there.

    We get back to my car, young rednecks hanging out under the bridge, jammin’ tunes and drinking beer. Young girl comes running up:

    “Oh my god, is that your car?!”

    “Yeah, that’s me.”

    “This is gonna sound so weird but can I give you a hug?”

    “Uh, sure…”

    SQEEZE

    in a rush of words

    “Oh my god we saw you take off yesterday AND YOU NEVER CAME BACK and we were talking about who to call for rescue and we thought you might be dead and we didn’t know who to call and oh my god I’m glad you’re OK!”

    SQUEEZE

    Nobody goes down that creek. Nobody. Even the guys at Adventures Unlimited didn’t know about West Cold Creek. And they WORK on Big Cold Creek! 2-miles of non-stop deadfalls, downed trees blocking the way every 50’, 3 jams in 30’ was the bonus prize. Humped my kayak and gear over-and-under and through dozens. Logs; slippery, mossy, underwater, rotten, floating, covered in spiky branches. Over one and the current slams you into the next, on the wrong side. It gets worse the farther you go.

    7 hours, 7 o’clock, 1.8 miles, no strength left, can’t make the main creek. 3 more impasses in sight. Soaked and submerged in West COLD Creek, over and over, for hours. Thinking hypothermia might in the works (sometimes one can’t tell because adrenaline, people die in summer temps), went to strike camp.
    South side; solid creeper thorns, impassable, looked North, across the creek. No lie, a patch of sunlight (weird in these thick woods) shining on a flat, elevated position. Barely bigger than my tent. Like God himself pointing His enormous finger, “No you idiot, there!”

    Dragged my gear up a 45º incline, tied the boat to a tree, pitched camp. Nearly everything in the hull soaked, dry-bags too loose. Clothes and linens dry! Splatted gear all about, got in the tent with dry clothes, warmed, rested, took stock, took a beer. Got gear squared away, hung a clothesline. Like it’s gonna dry. So wet a road flare couldn’t start pine needles. I have created smoke!

    Next morning, laid on my bedroll for hours, too sore to move. Heard day trippers, tubers and canoers, yelling on the main creek. People that close. Just gotta get off this tributary. No matter what I can pull the life-vest ripcord, float to a sand bank, await rescue.
    OK; Tylenol, cold espresso, trail mix. 1 hour and I’m home free.

    3 more hours to until I saw Salvation Beach.

    Wasn’t supposed to storm but I spent an hour or more hiding when it got bad, 3 storm bands, hanging on tree limbs under banks. Nowhere to safely get on shore, 20sq/ft of any land was a godsend and deserved a stop. Oh, and bailing the kayak with a dish rag after I lost my sponge. “Always carry a towel” is sound advice (Bugblatter Beasts aside), a big yellow sponge is a necessity.

    So tired I flipped the kayak for the first time (and that was after I hit the easy creek). Lost my weapon, new and old phones, GPS, monocular, ecig, knife, don’t know what all. One bag but it was the good stuff. Still had survival gear.

    I was extraordinarily cautious; one accident could strand/kill me. No getting out without a chopper and sling. Sometimes I wanted to quit, give up and fire a pair of flares at the next helicopter or plane. “How am I going to lever this @^%*! boat over this !#@%$ log with 10 gallons of water in the hull and taking on more!” In a storm, flooding my boat from top and bottom.

    One time I grabbed the T-handle on the front and bailed into the swirling green. Don’t care what’s down there, this yak is going over this log. Promptly run over by my own boat. Came up laughing! Beat that one!

    4 miles down the main creek I landed at Adventures Unlimited (local outfitter), borrowed the office phone to call for extraction. Looked rough climbing out of there, rain top shredded down the back, covered in bruises and lacerations. Workers at the landing were shooting the bull with me until one guy really had a look, “Do you need help man?” “Yeah, I do. Not with you guys this weekend but I need to call for a ride. Mind if I walk up to the church or cemetery, see if I can get a signal?”

    I’m faithful about only testing one bit of gear at a time, way too much new stuff on unfamiliar turf. Many lessons learned. LIFEWATER STRAWS WORK! (Ask me, I could be a spokesman.)

    16 Band-Aids/patches on my hands alone. I’m black and blue all over but from the knees down it’s frightful. Thought my legs were tanned and dirty, nope, bruising so solid it’s an even color.

    Did I mention the non-stop boat full of spiders? And the big yellow sponge? Fun fact: You can flick banana spiders out with a big yellow sponge. Otherwise grab their leg and yeet 'em.

    I’m going back in.

    EDIT: Forgot the part where I hit a 5’ wide dead tree blocking the way. Couldn’t pull my gear over it, no way in hell. There was a 12" tall triangular opening on the left side. Held onto to a rotten branch, stomped my kayak under water and through the gap.

    I’m really into the whole “man vs. nature” conflict. See y’all. I’m hiking out to see if I can spot that momma bear again.

  • shalafi@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyz•Wobble WobbleEnglish
    403·
    2 days ago

    Easy money.

    “It’s cold as fuck because a monster bolus of hot air hit the arctic from the other side of the planet, sent a chunk of the polar vortex down here. Heat directly caused this. Did you have a problem with the word ‘bolus’, or perhaps understanding the Earth is spherical? Was ‘spherical’ too big a word? I can dumb this down if need be.”

  • shalafi@lemmy.worldtoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.world•RefuseEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    LOL, made the mod mad. Well, we all know how to read [removed by mod], since mod was kind enough to draw attention to the post.

    Apparently talking about self-defense is “Advocating violence.” I guess if you’re a total pansy?

    Yo mod. Blacks, women and LGBT folks have been the largest gun purchasing demographic for years now. Got anything to say about that?

  • shalafi@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyz•moms ruleEnglish
    22·
    3 days ago

    I knew my great-grandmother, few people do. My great-great-grandmother is an ancient picture on the wall of my dead grandmother’s house, from a time when photography was new, a scant few years past daguerreotypes.

    4 mothers back is all I can summon, only remember 3.

  • shalafi@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•What happened to Chicago getting raided by Ice?English
    8·
    3 days ago

    The administration isn’t going to move that fast because they can’t, not nearly enough boots. Plus, they know damned well they can’t flush 13,000,000 slaves out of the system without crashing it.

    The idea is to scare them into submission. Not sure how you get illegal immigrants more submissive, but that’s the plan, put them in their place. And then?

    Maybe they’re aiming for literal slave labor, à la concentration camps? I honestly can’t see the end game. Yes, illegal immigration is a problem for the US. (Ban incoming!) Yes, it’s a problem for the immigrants. (We don’t talk about that.) But I’m not seeing the MAGA end-game here.

    Before someone pops off a one-liner meme answer, think on it first. What’s their end game? “Illegal” slavery seems to be working fine. Why disrupt that and crash the economy? Yes, hate of the “other” gets votes, but what are the real players playing?

  • shalafi@lemmy.worldtolinuxmemes@lemmy.world•So cool and funny haEnglish
    7·
    3 days ago

    He’s saying he found the virus in himself and overcame it. It’s a call for introspection. Then he’s trying to trace it back to it’s origins.

    “I woke up and fixed myself! Now, where did these dastardly ideas come from?”

    Probably thought it was profound on a drug trip of some sort. “Hey man! What if we could get all the nerds on our side? I’ll show them I’m cool too!”

    Y’all are way over analyzing this shit.