It is Memorial Day weekend here in the U.S. It’s the unofficial start of summer. The weather was mild with a light and variable breeze. I went back to the place I found on May 8 for some deep exploration. I took some lead weights and a breathing tube. I went down until the pressure on my chest was such that I had trouble taking a breath. At that point, I released myself from the weights and resurfaced. The lead weights (around 35 pounds) were enough to hold me under and make it pretty easy to sink, but not enough to just drag me down. It was good, though. All I had to do was to squirm around a little, or pump my feet to go a little deeper. I did not find a bottom, or even anything remotely solid.

After I resurfaced from my deep sink, I played around some and I explored the area a little more. My enthusiasm waned a little when I started to get cold. The deep mud was pretty cool, and the breeze was taking my heat away fast when I was out of the mud. Either way, I was losing heat. The sun came and went. I was grateful when it would share it’s warmth with me.

I shot 20 minutes of video, but I had no way to clean myself up enough to reset the camera, so I only recorded my deep, weighted sink. It’s not a very interesting video, in that you can’t see me, or much of me, most of the time. Here is the clip.

The Alligator Stalker has been added to my clip store. It was shot on 5/8 in the new, deep mud spot I discovered. It’s a very good “death by quicksand” clip. I think it’s one of my best. Look for more new clips from the new mudding spot in the next 2-3 weeks. I’ll definitely be heading back out there at the first opportunity. Maybe I’ll be able to talk the fngibtm into joining me out there, next time, so I have someone to drown in the bottomless mud. I know you guys have been waiting a long time to see someone pushed under the mud.

Wow! Today I discovered some very deep mud. I selected a spot for shooting a little movie about an alligator stalker who looses his footing and falls into the mud. I didn’t know how deep the mud would be, so I didn’t know how the movie would end. When I “fell” into the mud for the first time, I sank easily up to my crotch with no sign of bottom. The second time I jumped in, I wasn’t doing it for the camera so I jumped a little more deliberately and went down nearly to my armpits. The mud was well over my head. There were places where I went down as deep as I could go and could not find a bottom.

As luck would have it, I had traveled over very shallow water on my way in, and the tide had gone out even more, leaving me stranded out there, surrounded by nothing but bottomless mud. It was awful! ; ) So, I took advantage of my time out there and shot some more video clips. I got one hell of a workout, and by the time I could get out of the swamp, all of my gear was covered with mud. Of course, I had been covered with mud for over an hour, but that’s different. On may way back, I stopped to swim in the creek to clean up. A boat came zipping around the corner and nearly stopped when they saw me. I’m not sure if I looked like shit, or if they were wondering about my muddy boat with a muddy tripod strapped on the front and muddy gear stacked on the back. I know I didn’t look good, but I had been swimming, so I shouldn’t have looked too bad, either. We may never know what they were thinking, but they looked concerned. Maybe they were worried that I was swimming in alligator infested waters. The hunter becomes the hunted! Seriously, I worry more about poison ivy.

Speaking of video, do you guys even realize what you’re missing from my HD video? Here is a single frame from the video. Imagine when we all have BluRay DVD players and we can watch these on our HD televisions! The clips4sale people tell me to limit my videos to around 10MB/minute, which doesn’t allow me to encode them in their full glory, but the HD videos still look sharper and cleaner at the smaller sizes.

Check out the new video clip I uploaded from today. In addition to my mini movie, I shot a movie where I’m treading mud (like treading water), until I’m too exhausted to keep it up, at which point I go under and die (of course). It’s going to take me days to recover from today’s little adventure. I spent 40 minutes just cleaning my gear when I got home.

I’ve got lots of things to report. I did some housekeeping on the web-site and did some work on the gallery, and added some photos from today’s adventure.

Which brings me to my trip report. Today was intense. I didn’t go to the usual places. I explored a little bit, broke in a new sinking hole, and picked up a few clams for dinner. I took some still photos, but no video. You’ll hate me if I tell you the details of my trip, since I didn’t video tape any of it. I definitely got in over my head, and it was good. I got a lot of exercise and there is nothing like the rush I get when the mud is closing over me and I just want to go deeper.

I ordered a new tripod for kayak trips that will be a little more manageable in weight and size, and it’s designed for muddy conditions! When that comes, I’ll probably be out swamping for days ... well, maybe not. In case you’re wondering what I did to the web-site, it wasn’t much. I just shuffled some things around (behind the scenes) and got rid of the drop down menu for movie clips. I found that to be unreliable and messy, so now you just get the movie page, which has links to all of the movie clips that are currently on-line.

Of course I forgot to mention that I also uploaded chapter 2 of the April 23 saga to my clip store at clips4sale.com

There is a new clip in my clip store called “Rope Cuffs, April 23, 2009”. That is chapter 1 of 2 from April 23. The second chapter is almost ready, and I’ll probably upload it next week. The weather has been very warm this past week, the water is also warm, and the days are getting pretty long. This is prime mudding season, so I expect to be recording some new adventures in May. If anyone has any ideas for me, be sure to send them on.