The Bar 2014 Edition

[magicmarty]

Sees LF and jumps into the NEB.

(((LF)))

[^Rhino!]

*rides up on War Rabbit, heads into barn to remove his ice slippers*
those are great, but he can't hunt with them on, I just ask him to wear them so we don't fall with me on him. I can't imagine slipping on ice and having a battle clad rabbit land on me!

*strolls into bar, starts ECM, slides chocolate, and eggnog down to pal*
*Makes CEC*

yeah, it's nice to read about people with knowledge enough to keep themselves safe and such until help arrives.
and the plane.......I lost friends in a plane crash outside Reno, sorta the same way, bad weather, they figured it iced up so fast they couldn't turn around and hit a mountain somewhere near Fernely......probably 15 years ago now. They had to search a week or so to find them, IIRC.

**wonders if War Rabbit's slippers are flammable and make black smoke if yggy gets caught out in the mountains after an accident.**

[ygmir]

thing about the sage brush there, Rhino, is it's frozen but not very wet......get a little fire going and you can break and pull that stuff and burn it, too. And really, stuck, on the War Rabbit? other than the "Holy Handgrenade of Antioch", he is pretty much omnipotent.

and, if you're from Lovelock, and know the area, I don't see a big problem with going out. I'd say they should have had someone "on call" and knowing where they were going, though.

[^Rhino!]

thing about the sage brush there, Rhino, is it's frozen but not very wet......get a little fire going and you can break and pull that stuff and burn it, too. And really, stuck, on the War Rabbit? other than the "Holy Handgrenade of Antioch", he is pretty much omnipotent.

and, if you're from Lovelock, and know the area, I don't see a big problem with going out. I'd say they should have had someone "on call" and knowing where they were going, though.

Knowing the area and setting arrival and departure times with someone that's home and SAFE is the best, EXACTLY what we used to do when we went caving or exploring underground areas.

Sometimes, things get very wierd, though.

There was a group mapping Flint Hill Cave in Kentucky some years ago, and they kept going down, down, down, and finally they leveled off and started going up again. Somebody shined their light ahead, and saw a linear feature- a perfectly straight line. They had planned for several weeks underground with water, food, sleeping bags, etc., etc. After three days, they saw this linear feature. Knowing it to be man made, they went straight to it, and found themselves on a trail that eventually led to an elevator. They emerged at 10 o'clock at night at the entrance to Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. An epic cave exploration if there ever was one. When they got to the gift shop, they had to call the park ranger at home to let them out with their remarkable news.

Now you've got me thinking about the underground again. Thanks.

A friend of mine and professor at Missouri State University also had an 'experience'. He found a totally new cave during road construction near Springfield, Missouri. After sealing it off from the looky-loos and yahoos that normally try to enter a new discovery cave, he went back there with students, who aided him in mapping the cave and some of the features, which included claw marks of the short-faced cave bear, tapir skeletal remains, and other paleontologic and geologic oddities, all perfectly preserved. Never vandalized, the cave is now a city park addition that has a museum and a virtual tour.

Every time I go underground, it's a thrill.

I've been 600 feet under Kansas City, and over a quarter mile down in the mines at Viburnum, and it's always a wonderful time.

[ygmir]

wow, fun Rhino!

speaking of caves: a couple of friends, who are avid spelunkers (short, wiry framed guys, unlike myself), claim to have found a new cave system, near my place at Bowman lake, CA. They say the entrance is 6k' elevation. There are some huge limestone layers up there, along with the granite and some intrusives. The went down about 100', mostly bouldering (dangerous), until they got to a spot where a huge log was jammed, and the boulders around all seemed to key into it. At that point, survival told them to leave.
the could hear the water cascading, deep below that spot, though.

The found it, in what looked like a glacial cirque, and as the traversed it, noted a creek running in, but not out.......followed that to where it disappeared and went down that. The bowl "cirque" seems to have actually formed from the roof collapse below, but from a distance looked like others in the area.

[Elliot]

*jumps up from his reading table in the back corner, laughing*

Amazing the coincidences this world is capable of! I'm sitting back there nursing a head-cold, listening to the Bar conversation with one ear and reading a book with the other (so to speak!). And what am I reading? Answer: Jules Verne's Journey To The Center Of The Earth! (Strange that I never read it before, yes.) They are descending perilous tunnels under the North Sea, pretty much as is being described here in the Bar. I mean... What are the odds?

[^Rhino!]

hmmmmmm....water + caves........this discussion can lead to a lot of things.

Anybody here ever hear of Iron Mountain?

There's two of them, both hollowed out to some degree.

The first one I'm familiar with is in Missouri, and it overlooks Fort Davidson, the site of the battle of Pilot Knob during the Civil War. You can see Pilot Knob, which is also hollow, from Iron Mountain. Both were rhyolite-hosted magnetite deposits, and the Pilot Mountain Iron Ore and Pellet Company lasted at least into the 1920s, even after the interior collapse of Pilot Knob. The surface, though is still pristine.

The one in California is a baddie...not far from Reddiing. It's a giant mountain of pyrite.

You DON'T enter that mine.

The pyrite got wet.

Pyrite decomposes with water to sulfuric acid. The water flowing out from that Iron Mountain has the lowest pH ever measured on earth.....a -3.6.

Great article on this mess at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Mountain_Mine

I heard from one source that they wanted to test the capavilities of a Stanford University-created robot to enter and survey that mine, with big Federal support from NASA-JPL. That robot has never been recovered.

Can you say 'nasty-assed Superfund site'?

I knew you could.

And Eliot......the book you're reading is a good one. The story's main characters make it back to the surface as well. How they do it is where the fiction comes in.

[ygmir]

wow Elliot. yer psycho!! we're all psycho!!

@Rhino:
a friend of mine worked on parts of that iron mountain mine.....they cut a new drain tunnel and re-lined others.
he said, if you left a 10' crescent wrench in it over night, it was just a blob of rust the next day.
they had to wear all hazmat stuff and such. One company here was developing a neutralizing agent, that would supposedly raise the PH there to close to neutral. Never heard how that came out.

In some places here, the arsenic runs out of the rocks as a brown slimy ooze. Of course, the gold is running in arsenopyrites, so it's a complex mix at times.

[Elliot]

wow Elliot. yer psycho!! we're all psycho!!

...

Hmmmmm.... ...

[magicmarty]

Would develop a load of heat in neutralizing that acidic effluent. I did that the other way around with highly alkaline Playa dust. Added a bit of hydrochloric acid to some playa dust and the heat and fumes were something to see! Was working on making a clay or glaze out of the dust. I did get some glaze that went to a deep shiny brown at about 2,100 degrees F.

[theCryptofishist]

Ah yes, that mine. The RA visited there shortly after he started here. I confess that it's interesting to read about. Quite famous for the toxicity.

[Aurelia]

Maybe it was a really Hansel & Gretal thing in the beginning

back in the day of my babes in arms I was uber cautious except in the woods maybe

[^Rhino!]

Would develop a load of heat in neutralizing that acidic effluent. I did that the other way around with highly alkaline Playa dust. Added a bit of hydrochloric acid to some playa dust and the heat and fumes were something to see! Was working on making a clay or glaze out of the dust. I did get some glaze that went to a deep shiny brown at about 2,100 degrees F.

Not so alkaline as you might think.

It's actually a little bit more than 50% finely divided calcite, then about 30% quartz, and the rest is illite, some halloysite, and organics.

I did a chemical analysis of it using an inductively coupled plasma atomic absorbtion spectrophotometer after '09, and the data's going to be published soon.

The quartz is abrasive, the calcite is neutral, and the clays are the problem. Or something like that. Hopefully, the Earth Guardians will let me lecture on it next year at the event. I already came up with a playa removal solution consisting of vinegar, water, and Calgon that seems to work, solving that little problem.

And I still recommend goggles and a dust mask.

[Aurelia]

ah Rhino,

and I like it plain please

xoA.

[Patsh]

Good morning, bar!!
Now that we're all back, I suggest a nice round of apple pies to get us back in the groove..

*sets up glasses all the way down the bar, and starts pouring*

[FIGJAM]

I can't be here as I am permanently banned!

[unjonharley]

I can't be here as I am permanently banned!

I can't see you.. I am also banned..........

[Patsh]

eighty-sixed for life!

[MyDearFriend]

I think we need a Banned-Aid party to help us forget, now that we are all here. Welcome Home!

*picks up a glass of Apple Pie, and then another*

[delle]

Were the security cams working? I'd love to see what the bots were up to during our absence.

[trilobyte]

I'm glad that got resolved. And hopefully we'll have the annoying CAPTCHA thing sorted by the end of the day as well. The bots were probably bored or making really short visits, since there was no new activity for 5-6 hours. Thankfully this happened during the off-season, and not while people were trying to get last minute stuff sorted before leaving for the playa.

Who's ready for shots?

[Patsh]

OOhhhh me! Me!!

(unless it's a flu shot...)

[ygmir]

*wanders in, makes CCC*
wow what fun. I'm so glad, Trilo does this *tips hat*.........I know I'd go nuts! er.

*heads for ROS*

ready:

[AntiM]

That was less than spectacular. Banorama flop.



Can I get more drama, please?

[FIGJAM]

"Banned of Brothers."

[unjonharley]

ygmir, great self portrait..

[theCryptofishist]

Lapbanned of Brothers

It's a new reality show combining basic training and bariatic surgery.

[ygmir]

ygmir, great self portrait..

haha UJH!

*leaves low hanging pun fruit*

[theCryptofishist]

Whoops. Lap-Banned of Brothers...

[unjonharley]

Whoops. Lap-Banned of Brothers...

Being in a bar......belts all around...