Whatever I expected of this trip, Monday was not it. We all met up at the Hash office — a converted Presbyterian church — I was introduced to everyone whose names I'm familiar with, but then (since I was introduced to everybody at once) promptly forgot which names belonged to which faces. Got to hear a presentation from Martin Hash, founder and president of Hash, Inc., on the super-sekrit Hash Project. Is it a secret? I don't recall. Best not to mention specifics, just in case.

Then we loaded up into two vans and took off for Ape Cave, a 2.5-mile-long lava tunnel in a mountain near Vancouver. Along the way, the van I was riding in got sideswiped by a trucker who wasn't even looking where he was going. He said he didn't see us — but how he missed a leopard-print van I'll never know.

So we got to the mountain, hiked up two miles and then went down into the lava tunnel.

(click to enlarge)

All told we walked a bit over three miles inside the cave — really neat stuff, though I learned it's not wise to concentrate on watching the ground if you don't want to walk smack into a low-hanging rock shelf. D'oh. No bats, no bugs, no crawling things, just cold wet dripping stone. There were a few drops — including one which the "natives" said was eight feet — and big piles of boulders and loose rocks we had to clamber over. I'm sure my legs will be stiff in the morning, but it was worth it.

Had dinner and then went to Martin's huge house. Martin loves balconies. He had four or five that he showed us, and then we went up on the roof, where he plans to build another. And he's got all the toys: pool table, foosball table, table tennis table... all he was missing was the air hockey.

We sat around and chatted for a while, then did "show and tell", where people showed off some of the non-Animation:Master things they'd done. I didn't have my laptop with me — we'd locked them in the Hash office before going to Ape Cave — so I hooked my PDA up to Martin's stereo and played a couple of my songs. I was gratified that they laughed at The Day The Clowns Went Berserk.

Then they drove us back to the Hash offices, whereupon Zach and I drove back to the hotel and blogged like geeks before turning in for the night. I think tomorrow we'll be rappelling down into the caldera of Mount St. Helens, so I definitely need my sleep.