weekend away

[lauradi7dw]

Friday:
I've wanted to visit Mammoth Cave most of my life and on Friday we finally went. Arthur had been in Kentucky for most of the week at a juggling convention, and I joined him Thursday night. Friday morning early we drove from Lexington (that one)to the national park. We could have slept an hour later - we hadn't noticed that the time zone change happens within Kentucky, so we were there wildly early for the tour we'd booked.There are many tours available. The one we took was four miles long. The entrance we used was an artificial one, blasted out of a sinkhole in the 1930s, but most of the cave parts are absolutely natural, except with electricity added, and pathways made before WWII by the CCC. There are lights throughout the sections of the cave that are open to the public (although there is a tour one can take by lantern light, to be like the tours that had been happening for a hundred years before the electricity was put in), but they keep the lights fairly dim, and one's eyes get adjusted. Still, much of the cave looked gray in the faint light and we were interested to see, when looking at Arthur's photos, that there were many more gradations of colors on the cave walls.
Some areas were spacious

others had tight curves

or a low overhang with gypsum blob formations, near a picnic table

Saturday:
Formal shows are fine, mostly, but my favorite viewing at a juggling convention is the annual Simon Says games for 3 balls and for club balancing. In addition to the usual mess-ups from the Simon didn't say that stuff, some of the tricks are quite hard, and it's impressive to see a crowd all doing the tricks. I participated (loosely speaking) for the first time. I suppose I lasted for a minute. After 30 years of occasional practice, the only thing I can do that resembles a trick is to juggle 3 beanbags while standing on 1 leg, and that only for a short period of time. It wasn't one of the early tricks called, so I was out almost immediately. Not a problem - I like watching.
The other thing that was really fun to watch was an unofficial competition of two people (at a time) passing clubs, with one throwing wild but barely catchable passes, which had to be caught and returned as very good passes. Maybe that isn't clear, but I find it fascinating to watch.
A good thing to see was how many kids (some very young) were there. Some came with parents who juggle, some non-juggling parents were there because the kids wanted to come, and there were whole families in which everybody juggles. Saturday night three girls aged about ten were tearfully saying good-bye - it was like going home after camp. They don't live near each other but had become friends during the week of the festival.

Sunday was mostly travel time.
I didn't make much headway through the physics chapter that I'd photocopied to take along, but at least part of that was because of the subject matter. Magnetic fields seem fairly cool, and I wonder whether there is any connection between that and the theories about lay lines (usually considered either paranormal or nonsensical depending on one's point of view), but there is an awful lot of up and down and north and south and perpendicular stuff going on, and vectors, and other worrisome features. One explanation of the right hand rule for magnetic fields is here
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/magnetic/magcur.html
but the textbook version seems much more complex. I spent a lot of time staring at my palm and sticking up my thumb.
Arthur told me a useful joke:
Q: What happens when you cross a chicken with a horse?
A: Chicken Horse sin Θ.

On the other hand, on Saturday I participated slightly in a conversation about how a juggling club's moment of inertia made it more pleasant to juggle than the other club under discussion.

Comments

[dvmp.livejournal.com]

Just last week Dawn and I talked about sometime going to Meramec caves together sometime.