Deep in the heart of Texas

That's where I've spent the last day or so. A group of us that will soon depart to the other hemisphere decided that we needed to bond a bit, and what better place to bond than the middle of nowhere? This might be a long post, but a lot happened, and I'll try to make it worth your while to stick with the whole story.

Literally, the directions to even get there were something like, "Once you get on the dirt road, stay to the right. Cross the dry creek bed, and proceed on the dirt road. After the road turns into a gravel road, turn hard to the left. Then it becomes a grass road, go up a hill, then a sharp turn the the left. You'll see two gates..."

So we were hoping to get there around 8, and we kind of did. We got to the gate at 8 (I didn't intend for that to rhyme...). Anyhow, the gate had 3 locks on it. One rotary combo lock, one "girlscout" combo lock (the kind where you pick 4 numbers and align them correctly), and one Masterlock key lock. We had a combination for the girlscout lock, but apparently, not the right combination. We tried for a few minutes (about 20 or so), since everyone we called about it was difficult to reach (cell phone are no bueno when you're in the middle of nowhere).

So we hiked to the house, while looking for two things along the way: 1) the breaker box for the electricity and 2) the spot to turn the water on. We made it to the cabin after about a 10 minute walk. The landscape was beautiful - tall pine trees, filling the air with a fresh aroma of raw nature.

When we got to the cabin, the instructions to actually find the key were also a bit convoluted. "On the chimney, go up 3 big rocks. You'll see a fist-sized rock, and under it will be the key." Right. We searched that darn chimney for about 20 minutes, while rapidly losing daylight.

So I went around the back with a few others to see if we could find "alternate" routes into the structure. There happened to be a screen door with a tiny hole (i.e. the size of my tiny chicken wing of an arm), so I reached through and tried to unlock it. MacGyver must have been the last person through the house, because there was no getting in.

Recap - it's getting dark; 3 cars are about a 10 minute walk from the cabin; they are behind a gate that we can't get open; and we're trying to break into a cabin in the woods.

One of the team members made it half way up the chimney, climbing up the jagged rocks that poke out from all side in all angles. He picks up a rock, and voila - the key! So we're now into the cabin. And wow, I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. My first instinct, as an avid insect lover (liberally using heavy sarcasm) was to scan the room for creatures that have more than 2 legs. Almost immediately, I saw the biggest spider I've ever seen. It had a "funnel web" which apparently means bad news. So we started to consider how to kill it, and it immediately scurries into a folded up camping chair. That chair rapidly made it out to the woods, spider in tow.

So I started looking around a bit more. We found 2 more large spiders, one of which we aptly named "Big Momma." Why did we name it Big Momma? Well, it was about the size of a small Eurpoean car, but it had a web, and multiple eyes/legs. We decided that our best weapon, aside from an armored military vehicle, was the shop vac that happened to be in the "living room." We sucked those spiders right up, but not before I snapped some crazy arachnid pictures!

Recap - we got into the cabin; we found multiple large spiders (which we think might be Brown Recluses); we sucked two of those spiders up with a shopvac and threw one out into the woods; it's getting dark; 3 cars are about a 10 minute walk from the cabin; and they are behind a gate that we can't get open.

Brilliant! So while some of the team members readied the house (i.e. vacuumed up all the spiders), the rest of us went back down to the gate. We had two flashlights and a really sweet (nerdy) headlamp, a toolkit and a whole lotta team spirit. We worked on that darn gate for a good 45 minutes. We tried every combination known to man, we tried taking the gate off the hinges....but alas, no gate.

Until...the same guy who found the key earlier had come down with the rest of the crew. He went to work on the girlscout lock and just started incrementing numbers one at a time. After about 30 minutes or so, voila! Open lock - open gate!

We finally made it to the "clean" cabin about 2 1/2 hours after we first got there. How's that for teambuilding!

The night was toasty, but not unbearable. The girls slept upstairs (in the spider den), and the men were downstairs. I kept waking up paranoid that I was being crawled upon. But things were fine, for the most part. The grossest thing, by far, happened in the morning when I was getting ready. I pulled out my toothbrush from my toiletries bag, but realized that in order to make it down the very precarious stairs, I needed both hands. So I put the non-brush end in my mouth. AHHHHHHH! I spit something out very quickly. At first it looked like black fuzz. But nope, it was a dead spider.

oh.my.goodness.

That's about the most disgusting thing that has happened to me in the past 9 years.

Sure. I can handle using nature as a bathroom. No problem there. I can handle a variety of other ailments or inconveniences. But a huge dead spider in my mouth? Take me out and shoot me.

Other than that, it was pretty uneventful for the most part. But I'm getting really excited about the trip...