If At First You Don’t Succeed …

I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it, before, but today, I cut a piece of bamboo (about 12 feet long) and took it with me to the swamp to replace the log that broke under my weight a couple of days ago.

The idea was to hang, upside down, over the deep soupy mud. I figured it would be impossible to stay on the surface, given the consistency of that mud. Well, it didn’t work perfectly; first, the tide was not as low as I would have liked, and second, I could still float on the surface of the mud.

However, a good time was had by all. I tied my ankles and genitals over the bamboo pole and went, face first, into the soup. I had my breathing tube, so I could dive down and stay down, while I struggled and tugged at my genitals. It’s not torture, by the way, it actually feels pretty good, since most of my weight is supported by the mud, and I’m just jerking myself off, in a manner of speaking.

The bamboo worked great. It was strong enough, and it’s very light, compared to a waterlogged, rotten old log. Actually, it’s very light compared to just about anything! Bamboo is awesome.

I still had that pesky tide, biting at my heels, though. The surface of the mud was watery because the water level at low tide was barely below the surface of the mud. When the tide started coming back in, it overtook the mud very quickly. I guess I could think of this trip as a practice run. Now that I’ve experienced this setup, I think I can plan for it and do better, the next time we get an exceptional low tide. I also only had one camera with me. Somehow, I managed to forget one of them and I didn’t realize it until I was on the water. I still got some pretty good documentation of the big experiment.

On a side note: I managed to stand upright on the bamboo and jump into the mud. That was pretty cool. I went straight down; toes pointed and legs straight, and I went in over my head. That’s some really deep mud.

Thanks for reading by blog, and happy sinking!