Day: September 12, 1998

Glade Muddy Glade or Oh My God, I Can’t Find My Shoe
Sept. 12, 1998
by John Doroshenk

This trip started off like no other trip in cave club history, Brian, Cristina, and John, that’s me, left our apartment at about 9:30ish and arrived behind Burrass and every person that was signed up was there and ready to go. Wow, we were going to leave early for the first time in Cave Club History, unfortunately, these intrepid travelers would be disappointed, because it appeared that no one had the gear. Oh well, so much for our grandiose beginnings to the caving season. So Brian and Jon Van Zandt went to get the gear from Rich’s. I’m not sure why Jon was there, he didn’t go caving, I think he was still on his way home from the night before and dropped by for a visit.

Well any ways, the illustrious alumni Chris Anthony came for a fun filled day of spelunking. The gear finally arrived at the back of Burress at about 10:05, so we departed, I think that was the closest to the departure time we’ve ever came to. First thing is first when it comes to caving, and that’s right, Mr. J’s Bagels is always a must in the morning. And it just so happens that a new Mr. J’s opened up on 42, that’s the road to all the caves. How convenient, I thought to myself as we ate some bagels.

With our stomachs full of eats we headed back onto the road to glade. Along the way, one road wasn’t paved and my car took some heavy damage from the flying debris of the auto machine of Chris Anthony. Finally we made it to the cave. We gathered our gear and hopped the fence, legal illegal we didn’t care, it was hot, damn hot, the kind of hot that makes ponys turn into asses if you know what I mean, and all we could think about was getting in some cool mud. Well along the way we dodged the gigantic bovine patties laid by our friends the cows. We got into the cave with little problems and made our way into the back mud room. We did a prolonged lights out while some one threw mud in the dark at all of us. I would have been able to tell you who it was, but as you might have guessed, it was dark. The fun of the back room ended and out we headed.

We ran into a little trouble at the giant mud wall when Kenny put his foot into a fathom of mud. All I heard was “hey my foot is stuck” Luckily he was able to pull it out, but the only thing attached to his foot was a sock, caving with a sock really isn’t the technique that we try to instill in new cavers, so everyone forced their hands into the mud trying to pull the shoe out of the mud. Finally it was out and then he got his other foot stuck. But this trained mud wader got it out and we all left the cave at last. We climbed the fences and headed back to the cars and drove home, thus ending a terrific day of caving.