A CAVE STORY

Trips never go as planned, and my Arkansas adventure started out with a big twist last Thursday when great neph Luke got sick before we ever got out of town. I took him back home, stat, but would this stop The Flaming Bore? Oh, no. I've travelled alone before and I can travel alone again. Onward. There are three caves awaiting me.

But the first one just about did me in--located in a godforsaken hideaway that I have since dubbed The Bates Motel of Cave Operations. A few cars were in the parking lot, but no one was around except the owner, a middle-aged oddball whose mother, "god rest her soul" (his words, not mine) lurked behind him at the check-in desk via a large, colored chalk drawing. His voice sounded similar to Riff-Raff's in Rocky Horror Picture Show, and one eye was askew...but I am not one to pass judgment (much) on strange appearances that one cannot help, so sign me up for the tour.

I'll skip over the circumstances, but this ended up being a cave tour personally guided by "Norman," mono y mono since no other tourists/fools arrived. But first, he must get his hammer and a board. "I need to replace an area where a 300-pound woman busted an area over a bridge yesterday," so says he. Immediately, I was suspicious. He could bust my head with that hammer, dump my Saturn in the river, and no one would know that The Flaming Bore had met a dire ending. Onward!

We hadn't been but maybe 5-10-minutes into the tour when: Ka-thump!! What the #$@! I saw stars! Was that the hammer? No. I'd been so diligent watching my steps that I'd failed to see the low overhang of rock in the passageway. "Watch your head," Norman, steps ahead of me, said a moment too late. Thanks for the warning. I checked for blood, and feeling none....Oh, to hell with it. Onward!

Eventually, we came to a metal ladder. "You climb on up. I'll meet you over at the other side," said Norman.

I had no clue what I was climbing up to because I couldn't see my destination, even from the top of the ladder. The going was rather steep and slippery, but it was better than being next to my creepy, "guide," so I was game. Hands and knees. Keep the head low. Onward!

Eventually I met up with Norman, who was on lower ground, hammering the new board into place. Steps led me down to where he was working. Across the bridge we walked to the final destination, a larger room where he told stories of finding human bones, all the while a shadow appearing to be a man hanging from the ceiling. Please, God, just get me the hell out of here alive. Where's the hammer?

I'd had enough of Norman and my imagination, so I feigned a headache from the earlier collision with the rock overhang, told him I was ready to go, and he led me back to the entrance. He hadn't locked it, so I was safe in that respect....but before we made it made it back to the office, the weirdest of the weird, out of the blue, shot out of his mouth.

"You know the Oklahoma bombing and the World Trade Center collapse was all a government conspiracy."

"Oh, really." Where in the world did that come from? Norman, now no longer walking, gave me his theory about how the conspirators had set off various explosions in the buildings. The jet planes that blasted into the World Trade Center were just decoys to cover up the plot.

Okay. Whatever. I didn't argue with him, even though the intelligent part of me was thinking, "You are full of some crazy shit, mister." Just put away your hammer and let me move along, thank-you very much for the lovely tour. Is this episode of The Twilight Zone over yet?

Now, you'd think this hairball experience would have totally wiped away any desire to continue on the next day's caving plans on down the road, but I immediately knew I'd be safe when I pulled into the parking lot and saw who would be accompanying me on this next tour--four Harley riders from Illinois. My kind of riff-raff, for sure! Onward!! It was a fun tour, and I didn't hit the lump on my head once.