Caving & Pseudoscorpions

Today Deb and I drove up to Great Basin National Park.  I needed to meet with the park rangers medics and review their EMS calls and policies.  Unfortunately my trip coincided with a winter storm.  I had planned on camping and hiking the peak, but that didn't happen.  We drove through some slick roads over mountain passes to get there.  We did get to participate in a special cave bio-monitoring survey in the Lehman Cave.  Deb and I teamed up with two rangers who are cave experts.

 They do this every three months.  We crawled through passageways and went down side branches of the main cave to selected monitoring spots where we searched and documented any insect or animal species (including psuedoscorpions, beetle, and mites).  We also took temperature and humidity readings.  I did all of the recording and Deb ran the instruments.  It was neat to see the other areas of the cave and be a part of the scientific process.  We learned that the GBNP has 30 plus other smaller caves and some of those are monitored by the NPS.  Maybe I can get in on one of those cave surveys in the future.

Baby Senior

This past week I participated in my 3rd annual Huntsman World Senior Games.  I competed in the Triathlon followed by the Cross Country Mountain Bike.  The weather was cooler than last year, but still very good on my race days.  My race time for the Tri was one second better than my previous time a couple of years ago.  It was only good enough for me to place 7th out of 13 in my age category.  (Men age 50-54)

 The mountain bike course was the same again and although I finished almost 5 minutes faster than last year, I still only placed 4th.  As I crossed the finish line the announcer called me one of their "Baby Seniors".  There are world class athletes that come and compete at these games.  I just do it for fun and I am in really good shape this fall from the increased training I did over the past couple of months.  So, I think I will keep signing up each year even if I get beat by some incredible athletes.  Deb came and took a few photos and Rebecca, Phil & Angie all showed up to cheer me on.