My oldest daughter, Christina, was kicked by a horse recently. Fortunately, it got her on the shin (she was riding another horse). But she bled profusely, and ended up getting stitches. It even cut muscle.

I think back on my time with horses, as a farm boy, wilderness ranger, and horse ranch manager. “Horses aren’t like motorcycles,” I would say. “You can’t just get on ‘em, and ride off.”

I’ve been thrown, rolled on top of, scraped off under thorn trees, and scraped off on barbed wire by horses. Somehow, I kept getting back on. That explains a lot.

If you want a nice “safe” ride, get a 4 wheeler. Otherwise, if you really want to experience the raw exhilaration of life, plop yourself in the saddle, and wait for adventure, and fate to take the reins.

What is it that causes people to park their shopping cart in the middle of the aisle, while they wander up and down looking at things? When you come up to their one person traffic jam, quite often they don’t even notice you standing there, waiting for them to move their cart.

Occasionally, you will have a grown adult look at you with wide eyes and say, “I’m sorry!” while they back their cart off to the side. Is this the first time they’ve ever done this?  Haven’t they learned how to watch out for other people?

It’s my theory, that everyone is in their own little world, now. I-pods, I-phones, head phones, smart phones, dumb phones, media overload, down time, “Me Time”, TV, DVD, HDTV, and the like have all turned us into non thinking, non caring robots.  It’s been a few generations since people went out of their way to help others.

The most common occurrence of this syndrome, and the reason for this post, is when I watch people on my cave tours walk to the top of a set of stairs, and when they get to the top, they stop. They stand right on the edge of the landing, looking around, panting.

Just once, I’d like to see someone coming up from the steps “bounce” off of the offender, and start a domino chain reaction of people falling back down the steps.

No broken bones, no bruises, just a lot of screaming and yelling.

Instead, like clockwork, I have to say to them, “Please, move over so others can get up the stairs.”

I wonder what it would be like if everyone was pushing shopping carts up the cave stairs?

Perhaps the most amazing cave tour I ever gave was completely unplanned.

Martina Fierenza, the opera singer, joined me and 2 others for an evening cave tour at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park.  It was the 7 pm tour-that magical time of the evening when cave tours produce the most pleasant and unusual results.

We stopped in the “Darrow Tunnel”, that 150 ft long hallway. I demonstrated the reverberation of the rocks when singing a low bass note. Fantastic. Then I asked miss Fierenza if she’d like to sing anything. She responded so graciously and kindly.

Puccini.

I still get goosebumps just writing about it. The most amazing thing I think I’ll ever hear.

That cave tour should have cost $100 dollars each for the other couple. It was that good.

And as for Martina Fierenza?  She’s my wife, the mother of my 7 kids, and the love of my life.

At Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park, we have a really strange (and unique to this cave) animal.

3 mm long. Light pink. Claws like a scorpion. No eyes. Feelers all over its body. No stinger tail.

It’s called a Pseudoscorpion.

Sorry, you’ll never get to see one on my cave tour. Their claws are too tiny to be able to hand me the cave tour ticket.

There are those people who get angry when you tell them you shop at Walmart. But when you only have $4.00 in you pocket, it seems like the thing to do at the time.

So it was today, when my 17 yr. old son needed paper for his College Calculus class. We clicked (See:”250,000 Miles on My Subaru”) on into Walmart’s parking lot and headed straight for the school section once inside.

No ruled filler paper. Not wide. Not college ruled. Nada. Zip. Nicks-O-Rooney. Nowhere.

“How could Walmart be out of school paper?” my son asked.

“Must be a lot of educated kids these days,” I quipped.

We left, disappointed, but happy to think of all of the math problems that those missing papers represented.

Either that, or paper airplanes.

P.S. The college ruled paper from Office Depot had punched holes that don’t line up with each other. How can you NOT get holes lined up when punching them automatically with a machine? Aargh!