Wind Cave...

This last weekend my Mrs. Redhead in Rapid and I headed to Wind Cave National Park. It was awesome. I got to learn lots and lots of new facts. Let me tell you some:

• Wind Cave is the fourth longest cave in the world.
• However, though 135 miles have been discovered the 'experts' think that they've only found 5% of the cave. If true, this would make it the largest cave in the world.
• So far, all 135 miles are crammed into 1 square mile (with a depth of 1/3 mile). That's like cramming 134 inches of a string into 1 square inch.

Wait, you don't want more facts? Well, too bad:

• The cave was "discovered" by the settlers in the 1880s.
• This cave has very little water, so you don't see stalagmites or stalactites. Instead...
• 95% of the world's box-work is found in Wind Cave.

This is only a few of the facts I gleaned from my 3 hour trip. Boy, what fun!

The RACE...

Here in the Heartland (aka South Dakota... eat it Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, Nebraska, etc...) we are having an intense US Representative race between Kristi Noem and Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin. Both gots lots of money so we get to experience plenty of attack ads. And because ad time is cheap we get to see lots and lots and lots of ads. And because I watch old folks T.V. (e.g., Wheel of Fortune) they pile them on.

Anyway, the ads are getting a little ridiculous. Kristi attacks Stephanie as a Pelosi stooge, conflating procedural votes with real votes, to say that Stephanie votes with Pelosi 90% of the time. Even though Stephanie voted against the Health Care Bill, etc... On the other hand Stephanie's best attack is that Kristi has had 20 speeding tickets over 20 years... Umm... not that impressive.

I'm a bit stuck in this race. Generally speaking I'd prefer a conservative Democrat over a really conservative Republican. Both candidates say that they take the deficit and national debt seriously, but neither of them will tackle the elephant in the room... entitlement and deficit spending. And to make matters worse they both are for increasing farm subsidies. Sheesh. I got 2 weeks to decide and it ain't going to be easy.