White Water, Black Water, & Ice Water

Sleep deprivation is a funny thing. In our military we train soldiers to endure days of sleep deprivation to strengthen the physical / mental mind balance. Couple this with extreme stress levels and non-stop physical activity and you have a Manchurian Candidate. This is not anything new – The CIA has used these techniques to manipulate individual mental states since the 1960’s. Probably the most interesting and controversial were the experiments done to civilians / soldiers during the famous Project MK-ULTRA…

Alas – I digress. You don’t have to be a soldier or a captured civilian in the CIA’s custody to be deprived of sleep or feel like your current situation has your mind going bonkers. Shit – I rolled out of bed at 0530 this morning and wanted to kick myself for staying up so late. A night at the gym turned into 6 or 7 beers with friends... And The Modern Uncle never turns down great beer, great friends, or a great atmosphere.

But, the mind wonders awake with life, thoughts, and to-do lists and I’m horrible at shutting that off. So – 0130 hits and I’m thinking about drunk texting… No, no – I convince myself that would be a bad idea in my current state… Instead though, I gather myself and start figuring my upcoming adventure trip to West Virginia. Yes – white water rafting to be exact. I know what you’re thinking – what the hell is in West Virginia? I thought the same, but WV has some killer Class IV/V rapids – literally – I may die on these f*cking things.

So, I promised adventure – now what I have gotten myself into? I mean I have built survival rafts /crafts from sticks, logs, bamboo, bones, and silly string while lighting a fire in the wilderness and holding a puppy in my left hand… But I’ve never been on a Class V rapid in a floating zodiac looking piece of rubber with a bunch of screaming people. Its’ also the end of September – can we say ice cold, bone chilling water? Awesome. I’m stoked beyond belief – no really – I am.

So, I’m going to sit back and relax a bit in the office today. My coffee is almost gone and I ate my burrito like a champ. So ponder this – picture yourself in a situation where you cannot communicate in normal ways to someone you need to get a message to. What do you do? How do you get your message across without being solicitated by the enemy or compromising the integrity of your message? Sometimes, how elaborate little letters insure everything is the key to cryptology.

Frost it up,

-Billups