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May 5, 1999 - Art Bell

02:40:34

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Caving - Bonnie Crystal

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50:11

bonnie crystal

01:19:07

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Welcome to Arkbell, Somewhere in Time.
unidentified		Tonight, featuring coast to coast a.m. from May 5th, 1999.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening or good morning wherever you may be across this great land of ours, all these time zones stretching from the exotic Cahitian and Hawaiian Islands in the west, eastward in the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands, south into South America, North, all the way to the Pole and worldwide on the internet.
		Thanks to Rumcamp.com and also Intel, don't forget, folks, G2, go get the G2 program.
		It is free, M-R-E-3.
		come back to my website click on streaming video and there i will be program in almost cv that's what i You see movement, you see me moving around, you see whatever it is that a talking head does.
		Pretty much just talk.
		But it's not a fun to see the video of the program.
		I would suggest to those of you with computers that you check my website immediately for the first item under the latest headlines.
		I repeat, the first item under the latest headlines.
		We've got a link up to a very interesting webpage that may clear a few things up for you.
		Then comes Bonnie Crystal.
		Bonnie Crystal is an amazing woman, CEO of a big company, and she's a caver.
		Now, some might say Spelunker, others would say caver.
		She says caver.
		Somebody sent me something earlier that said, well, you know, our cavers rescue Spelunker.
		So I don't know.
		These are people who go underground.
		And Bonnie doesn't just go a little bit underground.
		Bonnie goes 10,000 feet underground.
		She's something of a scientist, actually.
		And so if you've ever wondered about inner space, you know, what's down there, somebody who goes down 10,000 feet ought to be one of the people you'd want to listen to.
		And that's Bonnie Crystal.
		And I met her, by the way, on ham radio, on 75 meters.
		I met Bonnie, and I thought, oh, boy, there seems to be quite a bit to this lady.
		And I thought, let's get her on the air and talk to her about going down, way down.
		So that's what's on the agenda this night.
		Otherwise, Amy Fisher, who they called, you'll recall, the Long Island Lolita, is going to be paroled, apparently.
		The insanity continues in Yugoslavia.
		We say we will step it up.
		Kosovo, meanwhile, that was a place we were going to go into.
		And remember, the exit strategy was, well, we'll be out in a year.
		Of course, as the years roll by, headline, Kosovo may need more peacekeepers.
		In fact, more than the 28,000 troops originally envisioned.
		We've got a lot of our army overseas trying to keep the peace in all these places.
		In Oklahoma, where people have gone back to their homes, sadly, for the most part, what they have found is no homes.
		The F-5 tornadoes raged across Oklahoma, raged across Kansas.
		It was a little unnerving, even for somebody who wrote the book, The Quickening.
		In a moment, we're going underground.
		We are going way underground.
		Bonnie Crystal is going to take us there, and in a moment, I will tell you more about Bonnie Crystal.
		She is really quite something.
		I met her on, as a matter of fact, on 75 Meters, you know, the Hamband.
		I met her on the Hambands, well, I don't know, two, three weeks ago, something like that.
		And the more I learned about Bonnie, the more I went, wow, I guess I need to know more about this.
		She is a caver, you know, somebody who goes underground.
		Can you imagine going underground 10,000 feet?
		I have no idea what's underground 10,000 feet.
unidentified		Do you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		She does.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll talk to her in a moment.
unidentified		We'll talk to her in a moment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie Crystal is co-founder of Telegen, I think it is.
		Telgen, it could be Telegen or Telgen Corporation.
		1990, it is the first woman-founded company to go public on NASDAQ, where she is the executive vice president and CEO, chief technology officer.
		Telgen is the pioneering Silicon Valley company which developed the new flat panel display technology called High Gain Emissive Display, HGED.
		She has devoted the last 10 years to bringing this amazing display technology to market that's about to happen.
		Prior to founding the company, she co-founded several other high-tech companies.
		Is the inventor of VNR, video noise reduction.
		I'll be damned, I didn't know that.
		A technology which shrunk the size of satellite dishes in the late 1980s.
unidentified		Wow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		She was instrumental.
		I see I'm reading this quote.
		She was instrumental in researching at UCSF, University of California, San Francisco, to bring MRI magnetic resonance imaging to a higher resolution at lower cost so that diagnostic medicine can now see, of course, the fine details inside the living body.
		My, my.
		Beginning her professional career in the 1960s in Japan as a disc jockey for Armed Forces Radio, we share some background there, she quickly gravitated toward the engineering side of the biz, designing, building, and maintaining broadcast radio stations as a broadcast engineer.
		Bonnie is a proponent of personal and amateur radio.
		She's K6XA, licensed in 1967.
		She's also an author, The World of CB Radio, which, check this out, sold 3.5 million copies, making it the best-selling CB book ever.
		As a child, Monty longed to explore the void of outer space.
		Kind of like Jody Foster and Kodak, no doubt, but at the time, it seemed like an unreachable goal.
		During a family trip to beautiful Carlsbad Caverns, when the Ranger turned all the lights off in the cave, that experience sparked a lifelong love for caves and the darkness of the underground.
		As an exploration, I'm no idea of slaughtering that.
		She has been actively involved for a decade in cave exploration, caving projects, and expeditions, and leading the use of electronic technology and communication in caving, the science of caves, that word that I'm slaughtering.
		She wrote the standard for through the rock, get this, through the rock cave radio communications using low-frequency, 185 kilohertz frequencies.
		The pursuit of caving has led her to explore strange underground worlds never before seen by humans in far-flung areas of the globe.
		And these particular names and places and caves, I'm not even going to endeavor to try and pronounce.
		I'll slaughter them.
		Hey, Bonnie, welcome to the program.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know how much you heard, but I just read as much of your bio as I could before I got to words that I dare not try to pronounce.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Like speleology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's one of them right there.
		Speleology, huh?
		And then, of course, the caves where you have been, I looked down there and I said, no way.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Some of the caves are in very faraway places, and some are actually close to some of the people in your listening audience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we'll get to all that.
		There's a couple of things that I really, really have got to ask you about.
		As I read your bio kind of cold on the air, I started going, wow.
		Now, you have developed and have a patent for something called high-gain emissive display, H-G-E-D, which is what for the uninitiated?
		What is that, really?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, high-gain emissive display is a new type of flat panel display, which is the type of screen that you have on computers and televisions these days.
		That's very thin.
		Rather than being like the old television sets, a big box, it's very thin like a picture frame.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And this is something that we see now in the market, or we're going to see in the market?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		This is something that we are going to see more and more of in the market.
		And our technology has been under development for over 10 years here.
		And we're just about ready to start bringing it out here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		What does it mean?
		In other words, I'm used to looking at televisions.
		And I've even seen flat displays.
		And I know that as you move off to the left, to the left or the right, they begin to degrade to your eye.
		And so what change does this mean for us?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, the L C D display, which is the kind that degrades when you get off of the being directly in front of it, is the common display that's seen in laptops today.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It has a very narrow viewing angle.
		That means you can only see it in its optimum way when you're right in front of it.
		But with our new type of technology, the high guinea missive display, it's like the older style television sets, the kind of desktop monitors.
		You can see it from any angle, and it's the same from any angle.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, you're about to be a moldy millionaire.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess there's a possibility in there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		You invented...
		Video noise reduction?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Well, back in the early 80s, backyard dishes for satellite reception were just starting to come in.
		And I embarked on a project to make the dishes smaller.
		And the satellites at the time were in orbit in the Clark belt.
		They were putting out a certain level of power.
		And normally you took a 12-foot dish or something around that size.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've still got a 12.5-footer in my backyard.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		So you know about this real well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I know.
		Listen, I had one of the first private TV ROs in the country.
		Bonnie, I was into that long, long ago.
		It was a passion.
		It still is a passion of mine.
		I still have that dish.
		Now I've got it loaded with a KU band and C-band L and B, and it's a screamer at 12.5 feet, believe me.
		But you're right.
		That long ago, the satellites were underpowered.
		The dishes had to be big.
		And even at that, you had noise.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, there was a lot of noise when you got to smaller dishes.
		And it made it impossible at that time to have anything smaller than about a six-foot dish.
		So what I did was I said, okay, well, there must be something that can be done in the satellite receiver itself to improve it.
		And I went about trying to discover what it could be done and eventually invented video noise reduction, which went into just about every satellite TV in America.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Then you should already be a millionaire.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, at that particular time, I was working for a company and didn't have a great agreement for my intellectual property.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I got $500 in a handshake.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		$500 in a handshake.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And they had a banquet in my honor.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A banquet in your honor.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		But I've got a little bit different agreement now with the present company I'm with, which is Telegen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Now, you also wrote a book.
		Now, of all things, you're a ham.
		I told everybody that's how we met on 75 meters.
		What was it, about three or four weeks ago, something like that?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, about three or four weeks ago, down on 75 meters and on single sideband.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I heard you on there, tuned across, and we started up a conversation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And away we went.
		All right.
		Now, also, you wrote a book on CB Radio.
		And it sold 3.5 million copies.
		Now, that's, in fact, a gigantic thing to have done.
		3.5 million copies.
		My God, Bonnie.
		How did that happen?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, CB is more popular than most people realize.
		Especially in the middle part of the country, and it used to be even more popular back in the 70s before cellular phones.
		And just about every truck in America has a CB in it.
		And that's a lot of trucks, a lot of people who use CB for their personal communications between their house and their car or for their business.
		And people wanted to know, in layman's terms, how it works.
		What can I do to improve how it works?
		What can I do to make it work in such a way that people can use it on a daily basis?
		And so we came out with the book.
		It was immensely successful.
		And it's been selling ever since.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Three and a half million copies.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I was amazed myself that it became that popular.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you have a good deal with your publisher?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I sure did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you are one of the most diverse ladies I've ever met in my whole life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, what is the present state of Citizens Band Radio?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		The present state of CB is kind of a hodgepodge of various different kinds of communication going on.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Of course, there's the regular Channel 19 that a lot of people are most familiar with, which is the truckers talking to each other.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A lot of people out there listening right now are using 19, believe me.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And they're probably listening to me in their truck and riding down the road listening to Channel 19 at the same time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly correct, yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		But there's another aspect of CB too, which is the mom and pop CB, where families use it to communicate with each other between their house and their car, and they use the other channels.
		And then there's the part of CB that's known as sideband.
		Sideband is for those people that want to talk further.
		And there's a lot of sidebanders on there now.
		Because the cost of single sideband radios has been going down so much over the past years.
		It's now possible using regular CB single sideband to talk on a regular basis out to about 30 miles.
		And then there's also the new sunspot cycle, which is coming in, which you've talked about on your show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And you can get Skip.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then you might talk as far as thousands of miles or around the world.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, CBRs aren't really supposed to do that, are they?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		They're not supposed to do it under FCC regulations.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But they do.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It just happens to them.
		They're talking, they're sitting there talking, minding their own business, and all of a sudden someone from Sweden comes in.
		And all of a sudden, they're talking to someone from Britain.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so how do you resist?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's hard to resist that, isn't it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it is.
		We'll talk more about that, and then we'll get to the main topic for the evening here shortly.
		Bonnie Crystal is my guest.
		I'm Art Bell, and you're listening to Coast to Coast AM.
		Good morning.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from May 5, 1999.
		Coast to Coast AM from May
		Coast to Coast AM from May 5, 1999.
		5, 1999.
		Coast to Coast AM from May 5, 1999.
		Coast to Coast AM from May 5, 1999.
		The End V-Mir Radio Networks presents Art Bell Somewhere in Time.
		Tonight's program originally aired May 5th, 1999.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie Crystal is here.
		What a woman, huh?
		If you look at what she has accomplished, what she has done in her life, and you have not yet heard the half of it, with just the half of it, you've got to say, holy mackerel, what a lady.
		We'll get back to her in a moment.
unidentified		We'll get back to her in a moment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, back now to Bonnie Crystal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie, welcome back.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Thanks, Ark.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see our phone's held together through this break.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a good sign.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, let's hope it keeps that way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		all right now somehow from all of this which is a background that would exceed the accomplishments of most uh...
		uh...
		most men who have uh...
		climbed the technical ladder and and it really does exceed that i don't know how Well, it is difficult to fit it all in.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I do other stuff, like I'm a recording engineer, too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You are?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I work with Stevens Productions, and that's kind of a local thing here, but it's national, too.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I enjoy that, and that's part of my life that really has stemmed from originally being in broadcast.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where, by the way, are you, Bonnie?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I'm near San Francisco.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Near San Francisco.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		On the peninsula, as they call it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Beautiful area, yes.
		All right.
		Well, now, there is, some people say spelunker, some say cavers, and maybe they are the same thing.
		Maybe there is a difference.
		Somebody sent me a fact earlier tonight.
		I think I mentioned yesterday you were a spelunker.
		Somebody said, look, cavers save the lives of spelunkers.
		So this is some sort of inside thing.
		Can you clear that up for me?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Sure, Art.
		The thing about calling it spelunker or caver is really a matter of those that are cavers call each other cavers.
		Those that don't really know, they usually call us spelunkers.
		And back in grade school, we learned the word spelunker and comes from the Latin and Greek of spelunk and cave, which is speleo.
		And spelunker is kind of an American adaptation for one who goes merrily on their way through a cave.
		But cavers, the ones who actually do the cave exploration and study caves, they look at spelunkers as someone who's a flashlight caver, who carries a flashlight and goes into a cave and maybe ends up partying or getting lost in the cave.
		Oh, really?
		And there's an old joke amongst cavers that spelunk is the sound that's made when a spelunker falls down in the pit of a cave.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So I should not have called you a spelunker, should I?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, you get it all the time amongst the general public.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, really what it is, there is a lot of cavers who consider themselves speleologists.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's try this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is spelunking to caving as CB is to ham radio?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I think you just about hit it on the nose there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
		We'll leave it at that for those who know what we're talking about.
		So you're a caver.
		Now, you said something to me on the air on 75 meters that blew me away.
		You said you're going to go down 10,000 feet.
		Now, excuse me, but I didn't know anybody went down 10,000 feet.
		My God, that's almost two miles down into the earth.
		How in the hell can you go down that far and what's down there and all that stuff?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, cavers have been doing this for quite a number of years, and there's a lot of history of caving that goes from just very small caves to more and more exploring the depths of the deepest caves in the world.
		And some caves are very, very long.
		You know, you have the mammoth cave system there in Kentucky, and that's 355 miles long.
		So you enter, and you can travel for 355 miles staying underground.
		Of course, maybe that's not directly in one direction.
		It maybe winds and goes down and branches out, and you go through these passages that are maybe barely able to fit the size of your body through it to huge subway tunnel-sized passages and enormous grottos and passages chambers that are just big enough to fit the astrodome in.
		So there's all these sorts of caves around the world, and what cavers do and what I do as an exploration speleologist is to go and try to find caves that no one has been in before or passages that no one has gone through before in a cave.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, the first human steps.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		The first human to ever step in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now you said, I've got to slow you down a little.
		You said there are places where you can go 300 miles underground.
		300 miles?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		This is Mammoth Cave.
		It's a big cave system in Kentucky.
		And it's a national park, right?
		But the tourist part of the cave is very big, and you can take wild caving tours that are part of the national park system there.
		And anyone who's really interested in getting into caving, that's a good place to start, is on one of the wild cave tours, either at Carlsbad Caverns National Park or Mammoth Cave National Park.
		And they have guided tours and then they have these wild cave tours where you put on your helmet and light and go crawling through the caves in the area where the normal tourist doesn't see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		For me, there's no chance I would do that.
		You know, I'm claustrophobic.
		I can't imagine being 100 feet, much less 10,000 feet under the earth.
		I just simply, in my mind, I can't imagine it.
		And I imagine I would have a severe, severe panic attack.
		And I think I speak for a lot of people.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've had one of those before.
		I've been claustrophobic before.
		When I, at some time or another in my caving experience, I have experienced that, so I know what you're talking about.
		It was in a situation where I was underground, and I'd been there for a long time.
		I was fatigued from climbing underground.
		And there was this one spot.
		It was just a body-sized tube, barely big enough to fit my body through.
		And I was trying to get back out of the cave.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How far down were you?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I was only a couple hundred feet below the surface.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		But when you're in a cave, a couple hundred feet below the surface is complete darkness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doesn't matter, I guess at that point, a couple hundred, a couple thousand.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No difference.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I just couldn't quite get up the energy to climb up through this.
		Well, for one thing, the passage was up above my head, and I had to climb up to this passage and then start to snake my body through with my hands above my head and pushing with my toes.
		And I couldn't quite do it, and I got really, really frustrated and felt claustrophobic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Like you might not ever get out of there?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And I backed back down and got, you know, a lot of cavers don't want to talk about this kind of experience, and some of them never experience it.
		Others have experienced it.
		But I experienced it, got over it, and I've been caving ever since.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How much in common, out of curiosity, you know, I've done a number of shows recently on Everest and on the disastrous 96 expedition to Everest, to summit on Everest.
		And I wonder how much, in a way, in some ways, caving and mountaineering have in common.
		They're opposite.
		I mean, you're going down, they're going up.
		But there are some similarities, aren't there?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There's a lot of similarities to it.
		In fact, cavers and mountaineers are cousins in the same sort of technical endeavor.
		And we use a lot of similar equipment, a lot of similar techniques.
		Like you say, the difference is that cavers go down before they go up.
		And it's just the opposite with Mountaineers.
		So a lot of times...
		Mother Nature has picked the route for us, and if we're going to pursue it, we have to take whatever Mother Nature has handed us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie, are there frequently many choices that you can make?
		when you get for example into a cave that didn't not a human foot has traversed before are there you know forks in the road as you go down various uh...
		And so I'm going to sit here and I'm going to remember a lot of that, but there were a lot of sort of forks in the road as they went down.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There is a lot of forks in the road.
		Passages, you can decide to take the left passage or the right passage or the one above or the one below.
		And sometimes your choice of passage can lead to wonderful, beautiful places.
		And sometimes your choice of passage can lead to really slimy, muddy, guano-filled passages.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
		Well, that, of course, was going to be my next question.
		No, no, my next question is, Bonnie, how the hell do you go down 10,000 feet?
		Now, I just, in my wildest dreams, I can't imagine how that can be done.
		Please explain.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, you start out from the entrance, and usually with a cave system that's very deep, it normally involves a lot of what's called vertical caving.
		And there's two types of caving.
		There's horizontal caving and vertical caving.
		And some people like vertical caving, other people like horizontal caving.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Which one are you?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I'm a vertical caver.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That means that's kind of like the climber is going up the vertical side of a cliff, except you're going down, right?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		On the way down.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And we use nylon rope.
		It's about as big around as your little finger, but it's able to support about 10,000 pounds.
		The reason that we use this kind of high-tech rope is so that we can carry very lightweight rope down into the passages with us.
		And then when we come to a drop-off that goes very deep, we throw this rope down the pit and tie it onto something up above.
		Or else we have to install a bolt or something, which we don't like to do unless we have to, because we like to preserve the cave as it is.
		But sometimes we need to install like a little anchor to hold the rope.
		And then we slide down the rope, which is called rappelling or absailing, using a harness.
		And you see this on movies and that sort of thing.
		People rappelling off the side of buildings and hopping Down the building on a rope.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's kind of like as you go down, you push off, right?
unidentified		Right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And you slide down this rope, and it's a wonderful feeling going down there.
		But one of the things that one of the things when you go down that deep is that you have to have a lot of rope with you.
		And you carry it with you, and you keep successively putting more and more rope down more and more pits in the cave.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How many of you typically might be on such a deep expedition?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Usually we go in groups of four, and there's a good reason for that.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Four is like the magic number for a caving expedition.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, you have to have, according to caver lore and caver superstition and also really our best judgment, we use what's called the rule of three, which means that for the necessities of your expedition, you have to have three of everything.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		So you have the you carry three lights, you carry three separate sources of light, and go with at least three people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But you take four.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is the working assumption that you might lose one?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		That is the working assumption.
		If one person gets in a bind, and by the way, we rely upon each other for our life in many cases while we're traversing the underground.
		If one person should have an accident, which we don't like to think about ahead of time, but we plan for, if that one person should have an accident, there is still one person left to stay with that person and two other people left to go out of the cave together to get more cavers to come in and make a rescue.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Rescue, yes.
		Again, though, I've got to ask, I didn't know anything went down 10,000 feet.
		I mean, I know that people have been down, I guess, hundreds and maybe thousands.
		I didn't even think thousands, to be honest with you, Bonnie, but 10,000 feet?
		Now, I want to specify that we've talked on the handbands, and I know you don't want to give away the exact location of where you're going to be doing this.
		Do you want to generally say where it is?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, the next place that I'm headed to is in South America, to the Andes Mountains.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And in the Andes Mountains, now, previously a lot of cavers and speleologists have studied geographic maps, geologic maps, to find the places where it's likely to be deep caves.
		Now, this particular area where I'm going to is an area that has good potential for deep caves, although it was not known before to have that.
		But we've sent over the past couple years a couple of scouting expeditions and found some entrances and caves that started to go very deep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is this general knowledge now or not exactly general knowledge?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's not exactly general knowledge, but of course after this program it will be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I know very much more specifically where you're going and I'm not going to say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what is the reason that you don't want to say out of curiosity?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, amongst the top cavers of the world, just like, let's say, the America's Cup competitions, there's kind of a friendly competition amongst different countries, the top cavers, the top expeditionary groups, for finding the possible deep caves and finding the possible long caves and going to those places.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And generally the exact location is kept a secret to everyone except for the people who are actually going on the trip and their emergency backup people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
		So there is a competition.
		So, okay, that absolutely makes sense to me.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's not real, real competitive, but it's kind of a friendly kind of competition.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it as friendly as the competition among mountain climbers?
unidentified		Yes, it's about like that.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Actually, it's a little better because we tend to share the results more than they do.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And also, with caving, you don't know exactly where you're going until you get there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we're going to get to all of that in a moment.
		Hold on, Bonnie.
		Bonnie Crystal is my guest.
		She goes way down into the earth.
		We're going to talk more about.
unidentified		I wonder, what do you think's down there?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And does it get hot?
		Is there water?
		I mean, what's down there?
		We're going to find out tonight.
		Stay right where you are.
unidentified		You're listening to Arkbell somewhere in time.
		tonight, featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from May 5th, 1999.
		Coast to Coast AM from May
		Coast to Coast AM from May 5th, 1999.
		5th, 1999.
		there's If you could read my mind, love what a tale my thoughts could tell.
		Just like an old-time movie, out of ghost from wish him well.
		In a castle dark or a portrait strong, with chains upon my feet.
		You know that ghost is me.
		And I will never be set free as long as I'm a ghost.
		You can see I could read your mind, love what a tale your thoughts could tell Just like a paper matto The guy who trusts yourself When you reach the part where the heartaches come the hero You're listening
art bell ▲ ● ▼		to Art Bell somewhere in time tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from May 5th 1999 It's almost to me unimaginable to go down 10,000 feet go down into the earth 10,000 feet by crystal either has or is about to do that We'll get back to her in a moment Well,
art bell ▲ ● ▼		well i think i'll try this speleologist is that the only object and a lot of that three times back nothing to you uh...
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		no thank you now arm how far down have you been it depends on how you look at it there's depth from the entrance and depth from the surface there was a lot of number of miles right right let's talk about from uh...
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		the entrance to the case right well that that definitely in uh...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		the thousands of feet thousands of feet right you designed the way to communicate with the surface from thousands of feet below ground in you tell us a little about that if you have a low frequency similar to what submarines used to communicate with uh...
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		other submarines and their bases right and good it it's a radio communication on sideband low frequency and what it does is it talks right through the rock how in other words to me as a ham rock i mean real rock that's ground and and how do radio waves propagate through rock well it's mostly through magnetic energy rather than electrical energy really
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		and we use big coil on you know a coil about three feet in diameter that's collapsible since it's in a little backpack and we have a radio that's like a walkie-talkie and the radio looks up to these coils and then we when we get to the spot where we want to communicate let's say we're a thousand feet under the surface or something right we will open this coil up and make it just lay it down in the passage and someone up on the surface will do the same thing and
art bell ▲ ● ▼		we will talk through magnetic energy to each other so if i understand properly then what we know as rf radio frequency is not propagating as it does exactly through the air it's it's
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		you said magnetic magnetic right well rf or radio frequency energy what everyone's listening to us now on right comes through and it's both magnetic and electric correct it's a field emanating from the transmitters from the towers towers and we mostly pick up the electric field although the little coil inside the am radios that probably the majority of the listening audience is listening to us on is
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		actually picking up that magnetic energy and it's kind of discarding the electric energy i've got a question for you bonnie when you're down there several thousand feet can you pick up am broadcast stations when we get down several thousand feet normally we cannot pick up the am station
art bell ▲ ● ▼		stations no if we're just below the surface say a few hundred feet we can if there's a very strong local AM station we can pick it up all right and again that's the magnetic transference right oh that's fascinating and and so so you're actually able even down perhaps as far as 10,000 to still communicate with the surface?
		Is that correct?
		Or does voice communication begin to fade and then you have to go to alternate means?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We have an alternate means, and sometimes we use Morse code for it when we can't communicate by voice.
		And there's newer methods that we're trying to explore, which is data communications underground.
		But the other way we do it is we will take two pieces of wire, hook them up to our little cave radio walkie-talkie and stretch them out in the passage, stick one end in the mud, if we can find any, and then stick the other end in the mud and load up the earth itself with a signal.
		We will inject a signal and talk through the earth itself using what's called current injection.
unidentified		Wow.
unidentified		So you load the earth itself?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Tesla would be proud of us.
unidentified		Tesla?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Nikola Tesla pioneered this basic concept way, way back.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Just never got a chance to perfect it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know what a radio signal sounds like at line of sight and what it sounds like as it bounces off the ionosphere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are there any unusual characteristics that you could ascribe to a signal that you hear that's coming through thousands of feet of rock?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, for one thing, it's very, very weak sometimes.
		We can just barely pick it up it's through thousands of feet but generally it's a fairly stable transmission and it's not fading in and out of course we don't hear a lot of that background noise that you would normally hear when we're down in the cave because the earth is shielding us from the cosmic uh.
		radio waves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, I've heard there are radio emissions from the Earth itself.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you hear any of those?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we can hear what's called whistlers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What are those?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And we think that those are caused by lightning strikes around the Earth.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And they occur at the very, very low frequencies.
unidentified		Uh-huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But nobody knows for sure, I guess, huh?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's still sort of one of those phenomena that it is not really well known or i mean a lot of people have heard it and there's a lot of theories about it Whistlers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's really interesting because they've done a lot of research lately on lightning that goes from space.
		They are now seeing it going much higher into our atmosphere or even beyond than they ever did before.
		And apparently, it has the same sort of opposite effect in the Earth as well.
		And those might be whistlers.
		Oh, that's fascinating.
		Look, most people out there are, I guess, like me.
		I'll give complaints about this, but again, Journey into the center of the Earth with Pat Boom, that's all I know.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		A great movie.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It was a great movie, actually, in a lot of ways.
		But what the hell's underground?
		I mean, when you really get that far underground, does it begin to get hot?
		Does it start to get colder?
		Does it get wet?
		Does it get dry?
		A million questions.
		What's down there?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, I have some pictures of what's down there on my website for those who want to go to it.
		But really, the key thing to remember is that there's all kinds of different caves, and some of them are very, very cold, and some of them are very, very hot.
		And some places, like when we go to volcanic caves, such as out in the Pacific, there are some islands which have active volcanoes on them.
		And we go in these caves, and we go down there, and they get very, very hot.
		And some of the ones that I've been in there are close to where the magma is flowing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And you maybe get these bursts of steam coming through the cave.
		So you have to take, in some cases this can be very, very dangerous.
		In fact, tathing it in general can be very, very dangerous if you are not trained.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How hot does it get?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, how hot have what's the hottest point you've been close to or in?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, it got so hot I had to retreat out of one of the caves.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And it was, you know, hundreds, over 120, 140 degrees, somewhere in there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that'll kill you.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I had to get back out of that passage, and there was steam coming bursting through the passage in waves.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		That was near a volcano.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so then you're telling me, though, that there are other caves where you can go down thousands of feet, and, I mean, we all think somehow that the Earth gets warmer and warmer and warmer as you go down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that a general truth or is it false?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, it does get warmer and warmer as you get to the center of the earth.
		In fact, some of the very deep mines that are in South Africa, the gold mines, where they've dug six miles deep, 12 miles deep, and they have these very, very long elevators that take them down there, and they keep digging further and further to get to gold.
		And it gets very, very hot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I had no idea they had gone down that far.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		They've dug their way down there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're telling me they went down how far now?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		12 miles deep.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I have slides of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You do?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's so hot down there.
		And the workers can't work for very long.
		It's a very uncomfortable environment.
		But caves, generally speaking, we're still searching for those kind of caves that are that deep.
		We know that it's possible, but we haven't quite found caves that are that deep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My God, that would be how deep in feet?
unidentified		Roughly 70,000 feet, something like that?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		60,000.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		60,000 feet.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		60,000 feet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you believe these exist?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		The mines.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, the mines certainly exist, and we believe that caves can certainly exist into the 15,000 feet at least.
		Well, we already know that we've surveyed and mapped caves that are thousands and thousands of feet, a couple miles deep.
		Or a mile deep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know where to begin.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there life down there of any kind?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and we found such strange life down there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Like what?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's amazing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Like what?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, number one, everybody knows there's bats.
unidentified		Bats?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Bats in caves.
		And we find all different kinds of bats.
		And they're in there in such huge numbers in some of these caves.
		As well as birds in some caves, some of the tropical caves, like in Borneo where the biggest passages in the world are.
unidentified		Birds?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And there's spiders as big as your fist.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, now I really want to go down.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There's blind fish swimming in the rivers underground.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And in one cave that I was in, we discovered the footprints of some kind of lizard that walked upright and weighed about 20 pounds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Say what?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		This must have been some kind of dinosaur relic that, you know, but this was alive, had made tracks in the passage.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This was recent.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I took pictures of these prints that were in the mud bank.
		We swam through in order to get to this spot where this strange animal tracks were found.
		It took hours and hours, a full day, to get underground.
		We would slide down ropes, swim for a while underground in these underground lakes, go over to the side of the lake and go through another passage.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The side of the lake.
		Here we go again.
		That sounds like journey to the center of the earth.
		I remember them standing at the end of a lake, an underground lake, almost like an ocean or something.
		Now, I bet you've not run into anything that big, but underground lakes, large open areas underground, is there such a thing?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There are lots of them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There's these huge water tables underground, and when you go down and hit the water table, well, like, for instance, there's this huge chamber that's basically in a hollow mountain in Borneo.
		You could fit 14 U.S. capitals, dome and all, inside this thing.
		And there's waterfalls and flowing rivers coming out of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's amazing.
		And there's cave divers.
		I don't dive myself.
		I've been on dive trips where I've been a Sherpa for a friend who is a diver.
		And gone, first we would go down to say minus 1,500 feet below ground and hours and hours, take a whole day to go miles into the earth carrying tanks.
		And then the divers would get in the water in this underground lake and explore further down and find passages that are underwater and continue on underwater.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about plant life?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, where there's water, you would think that there is some kind of plant life that can exist without sun, isn't there?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There is a lot of plant life that exists without sun, some of it under the ocean and certainly in caves.
		In fact, in Lechaguia Cave, which is a fairly recently found cave that's one of the longer caves in the U.S., it's, oh, how long is this?
		It's like 100 miles long.
		And in that cave, we have found microbes that don't exist anywhere else in the world.
		And scientists from NASA have been there to check this out, and because it is similar to what may be found on other planets, and they have checked out these microbes, these bacteria and other types of microbes that are in these pools and growing on slimy rock and various places like that amongst the formations of the cave.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it is thought, Bonnie, turning to space for a moment and planets, that there is internal heat, as there is in our planet, despite the fact that there may not be an atmosphere, despite the fact there may not be surface water, or in some cases there is surface water, but scientists now are beginning to believe, astronomers, that there is internal heat in a lot of these planets and moons.
		And so based on what you're telling me about our own planet, wouldn't conditions 10,000, 20,000 feet, 60,000 feet underground possibly be somewhat similar?
		And doesn't that bode the strong possibility of life elsewhere?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It sure does.
		In fact, these sort of places where we go to underground are very similar to maybe what you might find on another planet or maybe underground in another planet, like on Jupiter's moon Io or someplace like that, where we go into these caves that have a sulfur environment or were made by the action of sulfuric acid underground.
		And you have these life forms that are maybe more based on sulfur than they are on oxygen and light.
		And they don't make chlorophyll, but they use sulfur to interact with oxygen and exist in this sort of environment that is very much like some of the caves that are sure to be found in the future on other planets or the moon or there's even a branch of speleology called astrospeleology,
		which is like a futuristic branch in trying to figure out what caves may be like on other planets.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, oxygen.
		What happens when you get way the hell down there?
		Is there oxygen?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, you have to watch out for that sort of thing.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There can be buildup of carbon dioxide in some of these caves, which makes it a very dangerous endeavor.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I bet.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		For those.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Not something to be taken lightly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But is that the exception with regard to what you run into?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or could you actually have breathable oxygen at 5,000 feet down?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Oh, absolutely.
		We have breathable oxygen.
		In fact, it's wonderful air down there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Maybe air that...
		Because of pressure changes at the entrance, there is airflow in and out of these caves on a daily basis.
		And some of these caves change their air once an hour.
		It's really amazing.
		And I've been in caves where there were 50, 60 mile an hour winds flowing through the passage.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, this is incredible.
		Hold on, Bonnie.
		Bonnie Crystal is my guest.
		She's a caver.
		And she's telling me things about caves that I never knew.
		And I would imagine you too.
		So there's a whole world below our world.
		A world that we don't know a damn thing about.
		Except what Bonnie can tell us.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		You're listening to Arkbell somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from May 5, 1999.
		Coast to Coast AM from May
		5, 1999.
		Coast to Coast AM from May
		5, 1999.
		Coast to Coast AM from May 5, 1999.
		Never hesitate to be You must be watched out somewhere in time.
		Tonight, featuring a replay of Posted Post AM from May 5th, 1999.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		God, this is scary stuff.
		But it's not really a surprise to you, is it?
		It certainly isn't to me.
		Bonnie, you used to be a disc jockey long ago, right?
		Right.
		You know what dead air is, right?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Sure do.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's a no-no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, these damn computers, I've got computers that run commercials, and there's this little dead air between one and another, and I just can't keep my mouth shut.
		I mean, one second of dead air, and I'm there.
		That's all there is to it.
		I'm not thinking about the commercials.
		I'm thinking about what I'm going to talk to you about, and so away I go.
		Anyway, light.
		So many things I need to know about this far underground.
		Are there ever sources of natural light that far underground?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		The only sources that I've run into are from worms.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Worms?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There are glowworms in some caves.
unidentified		Really?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And they're sort of like fireflies.
		And they emit their own light.
		It's really neat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I remember fireflies from when I was very young, back in the East Coast, we don't have them here.
		And fireflies really are neat.
		Is it the same mechanism in the worm that's in the firefly that allows the phosphorescence or whatever it is that creates a light?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I believe it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Science doesn't know a lot about that.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I don't study bugs.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, I know that it's like a chemical light process, and it produces a light very similar to fireflies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie, could a person live underground?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
		In fact, people have lived underground, and there's been people that have done it for various reasons for long extended periods of time in caves.
		But whether it was to get away from something on the surface or just to do it as an experiment.
		The problem with living underground is that, of course, there's no sun, there's no natural light there other than a few glowworms occasionally, and that's only in certain caves.
		But people need light.
		And when we go down into these caves, we carry light sources with us, and we carry three separate sources of light and all this backup equipment.
		But really, we don't live down there for very long.
		In fact, you know, maybe we will stay down there.
		We call it bivouacking or bivvy down in the cave for maybe a day or two or a week or ten days at the most.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a long time.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		And what we have found from that is when you stay down there for those extended periods of time, you start to gravitate more towards a longer day.
		Like, it's almost as if the human body was really made to have a 30-hour, 32-hour long day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		really in other words without the cycle of light and darkness and light and darkness other than that the you bring with you you Right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And you just, you know, you end up sleeping some of that time and maybe exploring some of the time and you make a little camp under there under, you know, really environmental procedures that we use for camping underground.
		But the day, the natural cycle of people tends to be more longer than the 24-hour day on the surface.
		And it's just like a natural thing that cavers end up being up longer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you think it's natural or unnatural?
		In other words, of course, we're fooling with some strange words here.
		What is natural?
		I have no idea.
		But on the surface, we regulate our sleep and our awake time based generally on darkness and light.
		But when you're in pure darkness, all of that changes.
		That's really weird.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		And it's something that has been looked at in the way of space travel and that sort of thing as well.
		And you know, when the astronauts are sleeping on board, they usually have some music that they play to tell them to wake up.
		And they try to keep their schedule on a regular basis because they will tend to start having these longer days.
		And they will be out of sync with the people on the ground.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have any sense of why that would be?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I don't really know for sure as a scientist.
		I can imagine that maybe it's our way of preservation of the species to be able to have a longer day and therefore to deal with the day as being a 24-hour day.
		We can do the 24-hour day with more energy than we could if we were to have a 30-hour day.
		It's just guessing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, there is so much we don't know, and apparently so much we don't know about our own Earth.
		Why has there been so relatively little money spent from government agencies to NASA to whatever to go into space?
		And it's not, and I love the space program.
		I'm certainly not against that in any way, but why hasn't there been at least something on a par with that looking into our own Earth?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		The only reason that I can think of is that it's not glamorous.
		The glamour is not there.
		The caver goes in the cave, they get all muddy, they come out looking like the cookie people, covered in crud and slime and dirt, and it's not glamorous at all.
		You don't go, hey, look at me underground.
		Nobody cares.
		Nobody even thinks twice.
unidentified		There's nobody to say it to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here's somebody from Illinois who asks, could Bonnie please tell us how they determine exactly how far below the surface they are?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, do you have any sort of instrumentation that tells you how low you have gone?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we do.
		There's several methods that we use.
		In fact, when we go and explore these caves for the first time, we also, as we are exploring them, we make a map of where we are in the cave.
		For one reason, it helps to be able to get back out.
		But we make a map so that future people, when they come and explore the cave, can tell where they are in relationship to what has already been found.
		And we use a clinometer which measures the angle and we survey it.
		And we use tape measure.
		It's a very old-fashioned means, but it's a very good means that we use, and we make our maps using these tried and true methods that we've developed over the years.
		We also use cave radio.
		With the cave radios, we can determine the exact point on the surface where we are underground.
		In other words, the above point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I was about to ask, now obviously, you don't have access to GPS, the global positioning satellite system underground.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		That's right, we don't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if you go a very long way, both horizontally and vertically, dumb question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But how the hell do you keep from getting lost?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, the spelunkers use balls of string, and that's a very bad idea because they end up with all this string going through the passage, and it gets all, you know, it's something that bad organisms can grow on the string, and it's messy, and they don't usually pick it up.
		But what we do is, experienced cavers, when they go through the cave, we look at what the cave passage looks like, and we try to remember that in our mind.
		And we also look back occasionally to look at what the cave passage looks like coming from the other direction as we're going in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, great, but how the heck do you remember?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you must, to get to thousands of feet below, some of it horizontal, some vertical, you've made a lot of choices, a lot of turns.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, when you're under there, you've gone 100 miles underground.
		A lot of places look the same, you know.
		One philiosm or cave formation may look pretty much similar to the other one, but there are differences, and the experienced caver learns to tell the differences between these different.
		And there are names for separate kinds of cave formations, and we use these names to remember where we were.
		I even got to name a new type of cave formation that we found in the bottom of Lechaguea Cave and called a mammalagmite.
		And, you know, these different kinds of stalactites, stalagmites that we see, some of them are very, very beautiful and translucent.
		They're dripping water on them, and that's how they get formed a lot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I like your name, by the way, much better than NASA's stupid cartoon names for the rocks up on Mars.
		That's kind of neat.
		You actually get to name formations.
		And there are a lot of stalagtites and stalagmites and caves and all the red, because that's what we all learned in school.
		We saw the photographs.
		By the way, speaking of photographs, tell me what's up on your website, would you?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Okay, on my website at www.telegen.com.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we've got a link.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		T-E-L-E-G-E-N.com.
		There is links to all the best photographs of caves in the world.
		And we have pictures right there on my website.
		There's a picture of me in a cave and a friend of mine in a cave.
		And if you click on those, you will find links to all the great caves of the world and photographers who have taken pictures of all the wonderful caves like the caves of Borneo and some of the very, very deep caves that are found in Europe.
		One that's called Lamprechtsoffen-Voge that's in Austria.
		And it's a 5,000-foot deep cave.
		There are other deep caves in France.
		And there are caves that have cave paintings that were made by people thousands and thousands of years ago before the Ice Age.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Before the Ice Age?
		Indicating that there were people on the surface who did caving, right?
		Not that there were people.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There were people who ventured into these caves with pine torches and other kinds of animal fat torches that they would burn and bring into the cave, make paintings using foot, make paintings using animal blood.
		This may sound a little gross, but that's what they did.
		These were prehistoric people who lived around, let's say, the Mediterranean shores of France, who ventured back into these caves.
		The caves later on ended up getting filled up with water from the entrance, but maybe the area where they made the paintings were not filled with water.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		how many places are there that you can go I mean you do hit that's what another thing that most of us have thought that you know you dig down not all that far and you find water you hit a water table now how do you as a caver avoid water tables or what do you do when you you get to them?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, one of the things we do, and this is called a thump, when you are going through a passage and you hit a water table that is basically covering the entire passage.
		And the only way to do is to go, well, you don't know for sure if there's any passage beyond that.
		If you need to get scuba equipment, special diving equipment.
		And by the way, cave diving is one of the most dangerous endeavors around.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure it is.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		You can't come up for air.
		You know, and they carry three tanks and they carry three of the breathing apparatus that they use in three of everything.
		And they are laden down with all this gear, plus having to wear helmets and carry three lights.
		And a re-breathing apparatus was developed for caving diving that enabled them to push the underground areas of caves that were totally submerged in water.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wouldn't do that for a million dollars, Bonnie.
		I mean, you could barely get me to scuba dive, but much less to go down with oxygen and then inside of a place where there's no top, where you can't come up for air because there is no air.
		There's only rock.
		It's all locked in.
		And you're hoping to find something over on the other side.
		My God, that's dangerous.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There are miles and miles of underwater caves that have the most fabulous formations and beautiful areas of them that no one but cave divers will ever see, except for the fact that they take some photographs and bring them up and put them on websites for everyone to see.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So everybody should take a look at your website.
		And folks, on my site, we've got a link to Bonnie's site.
		Go take a look.
		really, really are going to want to see this now.
		Bonnie, this is again a layman's question, but have you ever...
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Could there be a dream?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Could there be such a thing?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Certainly there are ones that go very, very, very deep.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		For instance, there's a cave that the very first drop-off that you hit in this cave is deeper than the Empire State Building is high.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The first drop-off.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And you need a rope that is that long to rappel down it.
		You know, we have fun rappelling down, but then we remember we have to climb this rope back out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So when you go down, you're a caver, but when you come back up, you're really a mountain climber.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And we use special gadgets.
		And this is the new technology that's been able to do this was developed beginning in the 50s, 60s, 70s, honed to a fine art, these methods of going down these deep caves on ropes and then climbing back out of them using this specialized ascending equipment.
		But still, it takes a lot of muscle, a lot of...
		And you climb for a ways, you have to rest, you're suspended in the darkness in the middle of this passage in the ground in a deep, deep cave.
		And there's nothing around you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then what I suggested is not impossible.
		We've not found all the caves.
		We've not found all the entrances to the earth, have we?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We haven't found them all.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		In fact, the group that I cave with, we find an average of three or four caves a year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Brand new things that people have never seen.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And there's sort of an umbrella organization that a lot of the cavers are a member of, and that's, you know, the NSS, National Speleological Society.
		And it was formed to conserve these caves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Hold on, Bonnie.
		We're at the top of the hour.
		I'm going to open the lines for the audience when we come back because I can just go right on dominating your time.
		This is fascinating stuff.
		There is something down there.
		And this is a lady who's been there.
		We'll be right back.
		Coast to Coast A.M. raging on.
unidentified		You're listening to Arkbell somewhere in town tonight, featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from May 5th, 1999.
		The sailors pass the time away and talk about their homes.
		There's a girl in this harbor town.
		She works laying whiskey down.
		Let's say Brown Lake puts her mother around.
		She serves them whiskey and wine.
		The same, the same, the same.
		The same, the same.
		The same, the same.
		You're listening to ArcBell Somewhere in Time on Freemere Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an on-tour presentation of Coast to Coast AM from May 5th, 1999.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, you really ought to know who you're listening to.
		Bonnie Crystal is a founder of Trojan Corporation.
		The first woman-founded company to go public on NASDAQ.
		She's invented a new display that doesn't fade from side to side.
		You'll be using it in years to come.
		Bonnie has invented video noise reduction.
		Many of you should know what that is.
		Bonnie has written a book that sold three and a half million copies about TV radio.
		She's a ham, but most of all, she's a caver.
		Serious caver.
		We're talking about what's under us.
		What's way under us.
		If you have questions, we're going to open the lines now and let you ask them.
		Bonnie Crystal, my guest.
		I'm Art Bell.
		And this, of course, is Coast to Coast AM.
		Well, if you want to see what it really looks like down there, she's got photographs there on her website.
		That's on my website.
		www.artbell.com.
		There's something brand new you need to, believe me, you need to check out in our headline sections.
		First item in the headline section.
		But then go on down to the guest section where you'll find Bonnie Crystal's name.
		And for heaven's sakes, click on that.
		Aren't you curious what it's like way down there?
		We've been listening tonight to what it's like way down there.
		And I'm going to let you ask some questions.
		Bonnie, are you there?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I'm here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are you still awake?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I talk to you on 75 meters at it seems like 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you must be a late bird.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I like the darkness.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		So do I. Yeah, I'm a late person.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Here comes the general public.
		Are you ready?
		Sure.
		All right.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		My name's Margo.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Margo, where are you?
unidentified		I'm in El Cerrito.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		El Cerrito, okay.
unidentified		I'm actually a neighbor of yours.
		Okay, so anyways, Bonnie, I saw this show, I guess it was a couple years back, and these two men, they went down this cave.
		I'm not sure had anybody ever gone in there before.
		But anyway, it was this really, really deep hole, and it was a vertical caving thing.
		But usually it fills up with water, because I guess it rains there a lot.
		So it was really dangerous for them to go in, and they didn't go in for very long.
		But they had a camera with them, obviously, because I saw it on TV.
		And there were these crystal formations in there that look like orchids.
		Have you ever seen anything like that?
		And I'll hang up and listen to you on the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, thank you.
		Like orchids, almost like a crystal flower.
		Have you seen that?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and they're very, very beautiful.
		Even as beautiful as some of the real orchids.
		There are various type of crystal formations.
		Some of them are called helectites or various, and minerals make these.
		They combine with the water, and through capillary action of successive water droplets, depositing minute quantities of crystallized minerals, they build up these flowers and branches like a tree, beautiful white, orange, even green and blue, all the colors.
		It's really a sight to behold.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is astounding.
unidentified		Do you ever bring them back?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I don't.
		No.
		And actually, it's a federal crime to do that in the U.S. Oh, it is, huh?
		To take anything out of a cave.
		But cave explorers are somewhat superstitious about this.
		We believe that if you take anything out of the cave, that it's bad luck.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bad luck you don't want.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We don't need any bad luck.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's dangerous enough as it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know climbers have their own superstitions also.
		Very strong ones, in fact.
		Wait, but to imagine that.
		Do you have any photographs of any of this on your site?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, there's quite a few up there, and you just follow the links to the various ones.
		And it's just, you know, you see these wonderful formations, and there are some cabers that really like to go and see the formations.
		And different people have their different reasons for doing it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What are yours?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I think going where no one has gone before is one of my reasons.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Star Trek Underground.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's Star Trek Underground, really.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		First time calling online, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Bonnie and Art.
unidentified		This is Steve in Montera, California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Steve.
unidentified		And I wanted to ask Bonnie a question, and I wanted to relate an experience in a cave that I thought Art would be interested in.
		Okay.
		I wanted to ask Bonnie, had she ever been in any of the caves in Franklin, West Virginia, Breathing Cave in particular?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		In Franklin, I don't think I've been in one right there in Franklin.
		The Breathing Cave you're talking about, I know of the system of caves there, but not that particular one.
		I haven't been in that one.
unidentified		It's a very, very awesome place to go.
		We spent our longest time in there.
		It was about 18 hours.
		And there are very few people who have had an opportunity to get back there and sign the register.
		That was a very great experience for me.
		Swiss cheese.
		And well, it should be a lot of limestone.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		A lot of limestone is full of holes.
unidentified		Yep.
unidentified		And I want to tell Art, if he ever has an opportunity to be in a cave, one really fantastic thing to do is to extinguish all your light and not speak, but just sit in the dark.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's like sensory deprivation.
unidentified		Actually, your senses are a little more heightened.
unidentified		You'd be surprised.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I'll be happy to take you on a cave in Kibart.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'll bear that in mind.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe 20 feet in.
unidentified		And Bonnie?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Horizontally.
unidentified		Bonnie?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		I wanted to ask if, and I'll listen off the air, if you've had any experience running into any lost critters in caves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, thank you.
		I want to go back to what you said earlier.
		You said you found the tracks of a lizard that walked on two legs, maybe 10 feet.
unidentified		Did you say 10 feet long?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We believe that it weighed about 10 to 20 pounds, depending on we couldn't tell exactly, but I had some people who study reptiles, scientists, look at the tracks, the pictures of the tracks, and we took close-ups of them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what did they say?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I put it up on a website for a long time and had various scientists looking at the close-ups and narrowed it down to this.
		And back in 1960, a group of cavers went in the first part of this cave and was part of a scientific expedition to find out what kind of animals lived in this cave because this cave was known as the world that time forgot.
		And they trapped with a glue trap, which is made by you pour out sort of a cookie sheet of glue and then hope that an animal walks across it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And they captured a 20-pound lizard.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A 20-pound lizard.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, this is going out on a limb again, Bonnie.
		But we all think we know that at one time dinosaurs walked the earth.
		Right?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		There have been many changes on the earth, and maybe not so many changes in the earth.
		So is it outrageous to ask you whether there is the possibility that if one were to get far enough down or in the right place, whichever, whatever, one might find something that has survived the ages from prehistoric or earlier times that might live within our Earth?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		In fact, we've already found species of animals that only exist underground, species that are unknown on the surface.
		And these are being found in caves now.
		And almost as we speak, there are scientists, cave explorers who are finding these type of things.
		And this is, you know, not really well publicized.
		In fact, caving itself doesn't get a lot of publicity.
		And the discoveries that are made in caves of these new species, they go into the scientific journals and that sort of thing.
		But not a lot gets said in the general media about the discovery of these different species.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie, I'm not surprised.
		Because in archaeology, when something is found, I'm going to have a guest next week named Michael Cremo.
		And when something is found in archaeology that doesn't fit into the paradigm that the archaeologists say must be, they literally put it up on the shelf and forget about it because it challenges long, you know, long cherished belief systems that would be shattered should this be true.
		And sometimes the people who present this evidence, archaeologists even, are ostracized and can't get jobs, can't get government grants, can't get grant money at all.
		They're just, you know, if they say something that doesn't fit in, they're out.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And to a certain extent, caving in general is almost like that because it's looked at as the dirty science.
		The science that generally people above ground, because it's such an intersection of phobias that you have people who don't grow up saying, I want to be a cave scientist.
		You know, you just don't hear much of that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're so right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There's not funding like there is for going and exploring the undersea or the unknown of outer space.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It just doesn't make sense, does it?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		But yet it is a frontier and it's right underneath us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Wildcard line, you're on here with Bonnie Crystal and Art Bell.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
unidentified		This is Andy from Wargo, Florida.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Andy.
unidentified		Hi, good to talk to you.
		Well, pretty much you just answered my question about the forbidden archaeology.
		Remember last year or the year before you had a gal who was, I guess the university tried to find a way to fire her because she was getting into some forbidden archaeology?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		Okay, now would this, I mean, okay, you got a 20-pound lizard.
		Now, how far could it possibly get?
		And I mean, in the laws of physics, would it get to the point where the government would say, okay, we've got to keep a cap on some of this?
		I mean, what, Bonnie, in your opinion, what do you think, I mean, if you've got a 20-pound creature down here, what do you think else could be down here, in your opinion, without getting into too science fiction?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, if you just move into speculation forward from a 20-pound lizard, which I wouldn't want to see, thank you very much.
		I wouldn't even want to see its footprints, actually.
		But if you move forward from that and speculated about what other life might exist at great depths, maybe depths we've not even yet been to, what would you speculate about?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, there has to be food for that 20-pound lizard.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		In this particular case where we found this, there was a lot of fish, blind fish.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Rather small, maybe only about two, three inches long.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But nourishment.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right, and these fish were existing on some of the bacteria and other algae and that sort of thing that were down there.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And when I was swimming in the lake with these fish where this thing lived, I noticed that the fish, even though they couldn't see me, they would find me and come up and kind of nibble at my wetsuit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It was kind of strange and kind of funny.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Even though they're blind.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Even though they're blind, they attract themselves to things that maybe have a smell in the water or movement or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or heat?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Maybe heat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Blind fish nibbling on you way below the ground in an underground lake.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No way.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, it was so fun getting down to this lake because we came down this passage and we had to get on a rope and go down a vertical drop.
		We didn't know where the bottom of the drop was.
		So we had this long, long rope.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, what about that?
		In other words, when you're going down a rope and the rope, how do you know the rope, once it's long enough, even hits the bottom?
		How do you know that?
		And how do you know that you're just not going to get to the bottom of the rope and fall?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We don't know that for sure, so we tie a big knot on the end of the rope.
		And we try to look down the passage, but sometimes our lights are not bright enough to view the bottom of the rope, or maybe it's a crooked sort of a passage down below or crevice.
		And so we came down out of the ceiling into this huge expanse of a chamber, and we were dropping down in the middle of this chamber, and then all of a sudden we're in the water.
		And you had to swim from there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my gosh.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		So you get off this rope and you start swimming, and you make it over to the bank of this underground lake where it's kind of muddy on the bank and sandy.
		And we noticed these tracks.
		And we said, well, we thought we were the first ones here.
		We noticed, well, you know, it was animal tracks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Animal tracks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Lizard tracks.
unidentified		Yeah.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Biped lizards.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, Art and Bonnie.
unidentified		This is Stephen in Terre Haute, Indiana.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		And I was curious, well, perhaps you could use some underwater night vision if you were under there.
		Of course, being that they're blind, you don't have to worry about blinding them like in some of the other deep sea excavations.
		But I was curious, they've retrieved a lot here recently, 7,000 feet in plenty near the thermal vents.
		And they're really not all that pressure sensitive if they don't have gas bladders.
		And being that they're not light sensitive, with special species, like I was saying, pharmaceuticals or geneticists might use for new drugs or whatever other agents, it would be pretty invaluable or would require special permission to retrieve such creatures.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, there has been some retrieval of these creatures by various speleologists that study this.
		It's generally kept to a minimum for the study purposes.
		And usually they try to study these animals or plants in situ, which means that they try to study as much as possible down in the cave without taking it out of it.
		In the case of the new organisms that were found down in Lechagia that are maybe a possible cure for cancer, who knows, they have tried to cordon off this from the caving world,
		certain passages of Lechagia to make sure that no one goes in these to contaminate these with surface microbes, which could contaminate in such a way as to ruin the environment that these things have existed in for eons and eons, who knows how long.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then, Bonnie, you're saying the cure for cancer, which many speculate is in the rapidly diminishing rainforest, may not be there at all, but may be 10,000 feet underground.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's very possible, and there have been experiments done towards that direction, not in humans, but in the laboratory using some of these microbes, and it shows promise.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		The particular organisms are in a protected cave deep underneath the New Mexico desert.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie, how would a 10 or 20 pound lizard walk on two feet?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, certainly dinosaurs did it back, and they were tons.
		They weighed tons.
		So, I mean, there are other ones that are on the surface, smaller lizards than that, that run on two feet.
		You know, biped lizards.
		And there are iguanas in Mexico that are huge.
		I mean, as big as a person, walking around on some of the Caribbean islands.
		And they're found in the caves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Hold on, Bonnie.
		So you think about that.
		A 20-pound lizard strolling around on two feet.
		How'd you like to meet that about 8,000 feet under the earth?
		If you're going to want to take a look at Bonnie's website, just scroll down to the guest area.
		Bonnie Crystal's name, and we've got the link right there.
		I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast, AM Above and Below.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time, on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of...
		Coast to Coast AM from May 5, 1999.
		The End
		Take a long way home You never see what you wanna see River plain to the gallery Take a long way home Take a long way home When you're up on the
		stage, it's so unbelievable Oh, unforgettable I may ignore you Then your wife seems to think you're losing the sanity Oh, calamity With a long way Oh, yeah Oh, yeah
		Oh, yeah Does it feel like you let's become You just need Mark Bell somewhere in time.
		The night featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from May 5th, 1999.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And my guest is Bonnie Crystal.
		We're talking about not what's up there, but what's down here.
		Actually down below us, which may be very much like what's up there.
		Has that occurred to you?
unidentified		Ha!
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, back it is to Bonnie Crystal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You hanging in there?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Oh yeah, I like that commercial about the LED flashlights.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What kind of lights do you all carry down there?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We mainly carry electric lights, battery-powered headlamps that are mounted on our helmets.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		But we also carry LED flashlights as a backup.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you do?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They are amazing, aren't they?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		They are truly amazing and wonderful because they last hundreds and hundreds of hours on a set of batteries.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And for us, that's a matter of life or death sometimes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Whoever invented the white light, whoever finally got around to the ability to create white light, and they do that with a little array, I mean, that was an amazing, to me, an amazing invention.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right, that was a Japanese invention.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was it?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And originally we were using amber lights, amber LEDs for caving.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I worked on these about 10 years ago, and we were using those, but then the white ones came out, and now we use the white ones a lot now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can imagine having a few of those in your backpack is a comforting feeling.
		I mean, if all else fails.
		It really is.
		And in fact, this kind of relates, here's the facts.
		Hayard, how many pounds of gear does Bonnie carry on a typical trip?
		I mean, or even a wild one?
		Say you're going down 10,000 feet.
		How much weight are you carrying with you as you're repelling away?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We usually, the vertical gear is heavy, although there's been technological advancements to make it lighter.
		The actual ropes itself, you know, we have to sometimes make several trips to bring in enough rope.
		I'm usually wearing on my body about 25 pounds of gear.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, boy.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Plus I carry a pack that has backup batteries, the LED flashlight, various extra headlamps, some food, and water.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's the next question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you ever cook underground?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You do?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Sometimes we do.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We bring a tiny little stove and burn some sterno or something like that or carbide.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Then the question is, does the smoke from that cause any problems?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's usually enough ventilation, and we would do it in a place in the cave where there's enough movement of air through the cave that it wouldn't cause a problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And here's a really wild question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there such a thing underground as a flash flood?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and that's one of the dangers.
		You talk about flash floods with cavers, and it's one of those things that gives you the heebie-jeebies.
		It's very dangerous, and we usually, if possible, and this is one of the great things about cave radias, you can keep in touch with the surface as to whether it's raining or not up there.
		But sometimes you can have a flash flood that will start filling up the cave with water.
		And you have to make your way out of the cave or into higher passages that don't fill up.
		And you learn to look for these kind of signs.
		You listen for water running through the cave.
		And it's a real danger.
		And really, cave exploration is not something that you just want to run out there and go do.
		It takes training.
		It takes real knowledge that can't be an instant sort of a thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It also takes great big things that I thought only guys had.
		First time caller line, you're on there with Bonnie Crystal.
		Hi.
		Hello there.
		I can barely hear you, sir.
unidentified		Hi, Bonnie.
unidentified		How are you?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Great.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		How are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I am in Las Vegas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, over the hill.
unidentified		And, well, I wanted to call and say that everything that she does, everything you do, Bonnie, for the Earth and for what the Earth is all about and educating people on what the Earth is about is amazing.
		I haven't seen this since I was in high school.
		Also, I tend to read Rune.
		And when is your next ex expedition gonna be?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, in other words, uh well, let's see.
		You're not exactly able to tell people where you're going because I because it's um a competitive kind of thing.
		But can you tell us when it's going to be?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		My next major expedition will be in July.
		And it's about a month long.
		We go up to a base camp up thousands of feet up in the mountains to a place where there's a lot of limestone.
		And the limestone area will go down to maybe an elevation of 3,000 feet or below and starts up in the 14,000, 15,000 feet area.
		So the potential for the cave is deep there.
		I'm not saying that it will for sure be a cave that is that deep.
		We don't know.
		And it's bad luck to forecast that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I hear you.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		But we like to go to the places where there is that potential.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, let me tell the audience, you're going to be in an unspecified part of South America.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		A very remote area.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie, you and I are going to try and keep contact by ham radio, huh?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, I don't know what the current laws are regarding what can and cannot be broadcast.
		I'm going to have to check into it.
		It's a very gray area, but I, Bonnie, I would love to be able to either do a live broadcast or do a tape and actually bring you on the air from South America via ham radio.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I'd love to do that.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And you've got a great station there with your log periodic antenna.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, we could do it.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I'll be at the base camp being able to talk to you and maybe even relaying from cave radio up to a repeater on the surface.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, now that would really.
		That had really been.
		In other words, you could be several thousand feet below ground talking to me here.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I look forward to talking with you, and hopefully maybe you can put some of that on the air there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know that if the FCC won't come in and chomp on me, I'll do it.
		And I think I can.
		I think we can get away with it.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		But it's legal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think it is too.
		Wild Carteline, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
		Hi.
unidentified		Yeah, hi, Art, and Bonnie.
		I've been checking out your website, and a couple of things.
		First of all, Art, maybe it might be helpful to have or use an internet phone out of South America up here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No way, Jose.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You see, she's going to be not exactly close to a phone line.
unidentified		Okay.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's a remote area.
		There are no phones.
		In fact, the edge of the topographic maps is where I will be.
		It'll be an uncharted area of the surface next to the edge of the Amazon basin.
unidentified		Okay.
		I just thought maybe with one of the repeaters down here there, perhaps.
		But anyhow, I'm an amateur radio operator.
		I also do research for Richard Hoagland, and that's for my call to you.
		Actually, I spent a day or two with Michael Kremel, by the way, by Forbidden Archaeology up here in the state of Washington.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He'll be on there next week.
unidentified		Right.
		He told me about that today.
		Anyhow, my question is regarding the underwater smokers that we've had beneath our seas and what you were relating to maybe in the caves and also on the moon of Europa.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean volcanic venting?
unidentified		Yes, what Richard has referred to in the past and talked to you about is called underwater smokers.
unidentified		And that's where we have the life beneath either the oceans of our planet or perhaps the oceans of Europa where there's no light existing, that sort of thing.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Overbase life forms.
unidentified		Yeah, maybe what Bonnie has found in some of these caves is she's got some pictures of something that might resemble that kind of scene as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We sort of covered that a little earlier, but the answer to your question is, yes, there is microbial life and maybe a lot more, actually a lot more that Bonnie's already identified way down deep here on our Earth.
		And so it would make sense where there is heat, where there is energy, there's probably going to be life.
		And so under the surface of Europa, for example, it's probably quite likely there's some kind of life.
		And that's close in.
		That's near us.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And if there is life up there, it's likely to be in the caves that are on those moons or planets.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why did you not aim toward the astronaut training program as a matter of curiosity?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know you wanted to.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It was kind of one of those sort of experiences that I would have loved to have done.
		And I've met some astronauts and had a lot of the same common thing that they have.
		But, you know, just caving sort of took over my life.
		And it was much easier, much more accessible than to try and get into a NASA program or something.
		Although I would have loved it.
		And what NASA is doing, they're having to come back to the cavers and go, what are you seeing down in caves?
		Because they want to know what to expect when they go to look for life on, let's say, Mars, which they are saying probably had water during the first 500 million years of its existence.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they believe it may be underground.
unidentified		Right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It may be under the permafrost.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Or there may be prehistoric ice down in the caves on Mars, just like there is prehistoric ice here on the caves in the Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are the laws in South America vastly different with regard to what you can do in caves than they are here in the U.S.?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There's not a lot of legislation having to do with caves around the world.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, because we are cave explorers and we wouldn't want to take anything out, although we find Archaeological things in caves, we don't touch them and we don't tell anyone about them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		That's one of the things about caving.
		It's part of our superstition, you might say.
		You don't want to attract anyone to the cave because caves get vandalized.
		And it's a very bad thing because Mother Nature created these caves and it took thousands and thousands of years to create them.
		They've existed through earthquakes, through floods, through all kinds of cataclysmic events in the earth, and they're still there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about precious things like, for example, going down that far, have you ever found gold, diamonds, that sort of thing?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		If I did, I probably wouldn't talk about it.
		But personally, I've never found any of those riches or anything.
		And most of that buried treasure or treasure in caves is just a matter of urban legend or legends.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And yet there is gold.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you talked about the gold mines in Africa.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Most of the rock that gold tends to be in is not conducive to the formation of caves.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There is exceptions to that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isn't gold typically found near quartz, for example?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that's not conducive to caving?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Although you can find quartz in and around caves.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Most of the caves occur in limestone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, you could run into a whole bunch of quartz and you could stumble one day into a gold vein.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I guess it's possible, but I don't know of any of those situations that me or my friends have done.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Yeah, Art.
		This is John from New Jersey.
		Hello, John.
		I find your topics and guests fascinating.
		Thank you.
		That was my first point.
		Thank you.
		And if you bear with me, I wanted to tie a comment into a question I had for Bonnie.
		Sure.
		It's pretty much accepted as common knowledge that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but as we all know, at one time, that was not the case.
		It was considered heresy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it was thought that everything revolved about us.
unidentified		And Galileo, I'm sure if he were alive, would attest to that fact.
		But that being said, why did that not set a precedent in the scientific community to how little we know about this universe?
		And from what I've heard Bonnie describe tonight, it just sounds like just yet another frontier that could probably teach us so much and we have so much to learn about.
		Why would there, you'd think the scientific community would be chomping at the bid to go down there and find out and discover and explore?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I couldn't agree more.
unidentified		I just don't understand it.
unidentified		And maybe Bonnie could maybe give me some insight onto that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, awfully good question, Bonnie.
		Why is there not more grant money, more interest?
		Obviously, there's a lot of science.
		There's a lot of unexplored territory.
		There are places where man has never put a foot before that you go to.
		Why isn't there more interest?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I wondered that myself a lot, and it's really a shame that there isn't more funding channeled into the cave sciences.
		In fact, a lot of the scientists are just absolutely living on the edge and they're not making very much money.
		They maybe struggle to get some kind of a position where they can do this.
		And it's considered, I guess, one of the outcast sciences.
		And you get dirty doing it, and there's a lot of phobias.
		And it's not glamorous at all, like, say, climbing a mountain, there's this summit that everybody knows about.
		Well, the summits below ground are invisible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But it is glamorous.
		As you have described it tonight, it's glamorous, it's dangerous, it's a new frontier, it's all of those things.
		And once you've heard somebody like yourself describe it, it's like you want to write to your congressperson and demand grant money.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, fortunately, we had the Cave Protection Act finally went into effect in the mid-80s.
		Before that, we were having people go in and cut out, saw up all these formations underground, disturb caves, vandalize them at will, go in and have parties down in these caves, and as if it was going to somehow miraculously, their effect was going to go away.
		It never goes away.
		When the cave is trashed by someone, it never goes away.
		It stays like that forever.
		These caves took thousands, sometimes millions of years to form.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie, I've got one more hour of the show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you stay?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Sure, class.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You can, all right.
		You know, there's something I would like to ask you about.
		The nightmare I would have, being several thousand feet underground, particularly in the area that you're going to, there are occasionally earthquakes.
		Now, what would happen, and I know that earthquakes occur at varying depths, some of them rather quite deep, and there's nothing I could think of that would be more horrible than to be underground and to feel the beginning of an earthquake.
		So I'm going to just put you on hold, let you relax, and when we come back, I'm going to ask you if you've ever been underground when it began to shake and the rocks began to fall.
		Unimaginable, huh?
		Bonnie Crystal is my guest.
unidentified		We're talking about what's down there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm Arthur.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		You're listening to Arthur, somewhere in time.
		Tonight, featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from May 5th, 1999.
		It's magic.
		You and the wheels of life.
		You and the wheels of life.
		Higher and higher, baby.
		It's a living thing.
		It's a terrible thing to lose.
		It's a given thing.
		What a terrible thing to lose.
		My heart and all of you, that's what we need to surrender.
		Oh, yeah.
		And I have left my dreams in me in quite a similar way.
		The history broke on the shelf.
		It's always repeating itself.
		The new networks present Parker, somewhat involved.
		The Mike's program originally opened May 5th, 1999.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And Bonnie Crystal.
		She goes underground, way, way underground.
		Here's an interesting question we'll get to it in a moment.
		Art, you know, we have military no-fly zones.
		I wonder if we have military no-caving zones from Karen and Houston.
		In a moment, I think we'll have the question.
unidentified		military no caving zone I'm going to win when I lose, allelu!
unidentified		Good thing every time, allelu!
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's Ava.
		I've always been such an Ava fan all my life.
		Anyway, we'll be right back with Bonnie Crystal.
unidentified		Don't move.
		SHUT UP!
		SHUT UP!
		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Back now to Bonnie Crystal.
		And this has been really some programming.
		You know, I don't think, Bonnie, that I have ever heard a radio program on this subject done before.
		Do you know if it's been done?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I don't know of any other ones, Art.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We may be one of the first, except for maybe possibly a couple of local little local interest sort of things that might have occurred.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I love being first, at least above ground.
		First time caller line.
		You're on the air with Bonnie Crystal and Art Bell.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Welcome back, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Virginians.
unidentified		I'm Ed, calling you from WINZ in Miami.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		O-W-I-N-Z in Miami.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Yes, most of the earth below Florida is limestone.
unidentified		And I would like to ask Bonnie, if she comes in contact with limestone, where say about 10,000 feet are brimstones or limestone or sediment, or what is the composition of that depth?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, good question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, mainly limestone, Bonnie, or what do you encounter?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, the area below Florida is indeed limestone.
		And the water table is down there also.
		So there's some cave divers exploring the caves below Florida.
		It's very dangerous for a regular diver to go in that sort of an environment, and it's really a bad idea for that.
		But if you're a trained cave diver, you can go in the caves below Florida.
		But once you get down below the limestone, if you think of the Earth as a billiard ball, the size of a billiard ball, and you put, say, a coating of nail polish over a paint around that billiard ball, that's about the area of the Earth that the little coating that you put on that billiard ball is equivalent to the amount of the earth that's been explored of the Earth.
unidentified		One more question.
unidentified		Five Mile Island, is that it comparable to the meltdown that was going to China?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Three Mile Island on the island in the Susquehanna River, right?
		Okay, what the China syndrome you're talking about, right?
		The nuclear reactor melts down, then they say that it will burn a hole all the way to China, right?
unidentified		Well, what are the connecting points of the caves that are below the Earth?
		If they're caves, how could there be a possibility of a meltdown all the way to China?
		I'll let you answer that again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, all right.
		In a lot of ways, that's an interesting question.
		Of course, we've talked about, you know, the scientists tell us, the atomic scientists, that there could be a nuclear reactor that would melt down, and then potentially that would keep literally going right on through the Earth.
		Or is that science fiction?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's actually fiction.
		It's science fiction and it's kind of sensationalism.
		But it can melt down quite a ways, but it it wouldn't go down to the center of the earth, and there would be something uh to stop it.
		I mean, it's not that that powerful, but there are vents that volcano volcanoes are occurring.
		That is the molten rock from the center of the earth that comes up through crevices in the earth, places where you have active volcanoes.
		And that molten rock at 2,000, 5,000 degrees is flowing out through these fissures.
		And there is a certain area.
		If you dig deep enough anywhere on the earth, you will get to this molten rock, the magma, or What people call brimstone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Brimstone, yeah.
		Hey, Bonnie, I said I would ask you about earthquakes.
		I want to ask about that.
		You are, after all, going into a region where there have been lots of earthquakes.
		I mean, what happens if you're several thousand feet, many thousand feet below the surface and there's an earthquake, a deep one?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, it happened to me once.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It did happen to you once?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I was about 15 years old at the time, living in Japan.
		And I thought, well, I'll go and explore around there.
		I want to find some caves.
		And I went to an area where there had been some tunnels built to house old bomb works where they made bombs and stored them underground.
		I broke off the lock to the front of this tunnel system, and I took along a friend of mine at the time, and we were just exploring with some flashlights.
		Didn't really know about how to go caving and how to do it safely.
		And while we were under there, we were hundreds of yards back into the passages, down these old dank tunnels.
		And all of a sudden, everything started to shake.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I thought I was a goner.
		I thought that was the end.
		And, you know, nobody was ever going to find me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that could have happened.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It could have happened, fortunately.
		And there was a lot of rock and debris coming down from the ceilings of it.
		It was an earthquake.
		It was only about a 4.7 to 5 on the Richter scale.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's plenty.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		But it was enough to scare me to the point where I went running out of there.
		Of course, by the time I got out of the cave, and I had so much adrenaline, and then I just kept going.
		The earthquake was over.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You just kept going.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I just kept going, and I never went in those bomb tunnels again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe you know a little something about earthquakes.
		I mean, when an earthquake occurs, I watch the USGS site.
		They always set the preliminary depth at 33 kilometers.
		Then later, they give you the real depth.
		And earthquakes seem to occur usually closer to the surface, not that far down.
		But, you know, there were some earthquakes, I think, about a year ago, that occurred down in the area where you're going, incidentally, that were hundreds of miles beneath the earth.
		You're aware of that?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		They were, yes.
		And that is areas where caves are, a lot of times are areas where there's been a lot of tectonic activity.
		And places where there's been tremendous activity of the plates of the earth, the tectonic plates, which is what forms the earth, they sort of float on the surface of the earth geologically.
		And where these crumple together and form these mountains are prone to earthquakes.
		And they also is a good place to find caves.
		But the thing about caves are most of the ones that I've been in have existed for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Somewhat comforting.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And they've been formed out of the action of water flowing through the earth or magma flowing through the earth.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And they're somewhat stable because of that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Yeah, sure.
		Anything there hundreds of thousands of years, that's a pretty safe bet, I guess.
		Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal and Art Bell.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Good morning, sir.
unidentified		How are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Fine.
unidentified		Dave's in St. Louis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Dave.
unidentified		I have a question for Bonnie.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
unidentified		Bonnie, good morning.
		Are you familiar with Admiral Bird and his theory of the hollow earth?
		And when he traveled there, he came across life forms and things that, well, aliens, to be exact.
		You have an opinion about that?
		Or do cavers talk about that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, actually, let's modify the question a little bit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I doubt you've met aliens other than big lizards, right?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		However, there's a lot of myth that is passed between cavers, right?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There is a lot of myth.
		There's various kinds of humorous things.
		We have a thing called a hodag, which is a mythical creature that supposedly comes in and steals your pack when you're caving, or maybe makes your light go out or something like that.
		And we call it hodags, but it's sort of like the little gremlins of cavers.
		But it's usually said in humor.
		Although there's, you know, if you go to one of the links on my website, I'm sure you'll get to the HODAG site.
		If you can go to that, you'll find it just, there's a search engine on the link for my site and just put in HODAG and you'll find it.
		But, you know, they're not real, but cavers think of them as sort of a way to make the caver humble and to know that the earth and forces of the earth are much more powerful than a human and sort of put the human in their place.
		I haven't met any aliens underground, and I know that there's a lot of myth about under Mount Shasta.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		All this kind of thing.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		I can tell you, I've been under Mount Shasta.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No aliens.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Haven't met an alien under there yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And if you think about it a little bit, if you did meet one, probably you would be regarded as the alien.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		If that was their home and I would be the alien to them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Oh, hi.
unidentified		Yes, Ralph in Austin.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Austin, Texas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Ralph.
unidentified		And my question, I caught the show right after, or just As she was talking about a glue trap set out at an underground lake.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		Okay, and then they, did I hear correctly, they caught a 20-pound lizard, and this was sometime in the 60s?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right, they also caught a 25-pound rat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What?
unidentified		What?
		Are there any pictures of this lizard?
		I raise monitor lizards, and I'm thinking that the only lizards that really get upwards of 20-25 pounds would be your Varanid species.
		Are there any pictures of this animal available?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, originally there were small dinosaurs that were about the size of a chicken.
		And there's been, you know, a lot of connection made between birds and prehistoric lizards and that sort of thing.
		And there still are very large lizards.
		The particular one that I was talking about, we found the tracks of it.
		And it was identified as being that from people who study the tracks of animals, scientists who study the tracks of animals.
		We went looking as much as we could, but it didn't want to be found by us.
		Or we likely would have found it in the cave.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A 25-pound rat.
		How could a rat get 25 pounds?
		I mean, how could that happen?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess it had a lot to eat there.
		You know, there was these fish, and obviously they were part of its diet, or maybe some of the...
		There's a few that disappear every once in a while and maybe are found years later.
		There was one that was found dead, of course, some years back who had been missing for about five years underground.
		And some cavers had gone into an area cave to explore an area of the cave that wasn't on the cave map and found the caver laying there in a passage.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have any idea what had happened, why he was laying there in a passage, dead?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		He probably ran out of light.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		was caving solo which is really kind of frowned upon in the caving community the buddy system always It's tried and true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First time caller line, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Am I on?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're on.
unidentified		Oh, okay.
		I was listening to one of your shows not too long ago.
		You was talking about him digging this hole in Siberia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		And I was just wondering when Bonnie is underground sometimes, has she ever heard any weird noises or sounds or anything like that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good question.
		Noises or sound underground.
		Is it generally utterly, totally quiet or are there sounds to be heard?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		In most caves, it is utterly and totally the most quiet place you have ever been in your life.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It is like the perfect recording studio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I know that here where I live, Bonnie, I live sort of in the middle of the Sirius desert out here.
		And you can walk outside, for example, after my program I frequently do.
		And I just stand there, and it's so quiet that you can hear the humming in your own ears.
		Now, normally you would never notice that because there would be enough ambient something or another going on around you to prevent that.
		But when you go out into utter, total quiet, for a while you hear the humming of your own ears.
		Do your ears adjust to that absolute silence after a while, or because you're with a group, does that not occur?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Being with a group, there are noises moving through the passage.
		Now, there is one or two exceptions to finding noises underground.
		Sometimes there is the flow of water.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And some of the waterfalls that are underground, hundreds and hundreds of feet of drop of water coming through makes deafening sounds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And there was one other situation which was really kind of eerie.
		And we were in a cave up in an alpine area where we had to climb a mountain to get into this cave entrance and then went hundreds of feet below the mountain in this very cold cave, about 35 degrees with water running through it.
		And we heard this kind of strange kind of humming sound that was sort of coming through the rock.
		And we were out in a wilderness area 30 miles from the nearest civilization.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And we had no idea what it was and couldn't figure out what it was.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you ever figure out what it was?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We never did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because we've had some pretty strange reports of underground hums.
		We have them near me.
		Taos, New Mexico has had one that still remains a mystery.
		So serious that a friend of mine, I've told this story before on the other side of town here, Bonnie, built a porch, and, you know, he sunk the two befores or whatever they were into the ground to build the porch.
		And when he did that, the hum that he would get at night was so bad that he couldn't sleep.
		And so there are things that go on underground that we just don't know about, aren't there?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Certainly, that's a possibility that there is something man-made that's causing this.
		Maybe it's something having to do with secret projects or something.
		I know that, for instance, you have a lot of things about Area 51, Area 51 on your program, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we're close to it, and so that might be exactly it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, he ended up tearing down the porch.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, He put like a resonator into the earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've got it.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		You know?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry.
		Somebody asked earlier, Bonnie, if I might.
		I want to get this in.
		We have military no-fly zones.
		Remember this?
		Do we have military no-caving zones?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, there are some military no-caving zones, as a matter of fact.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And I've been to some of them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There's an area on a Pacific Island.
		The Pacific Island is sometimes used as a demolition area.
		But there are some great caves in this demolition area.
		And certain times it's possible to go in there if you make special arrangements for scientific purposes.
		But normally it is considered a no-caving area.
		I wouldn't want to get blown up while I was caving.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, you wouldn't want to get blown up.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And then, of course, you can't go in the caves that are under Area 51 or under China Lake or one of those sort of places.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		So there are some caves that are off-limits.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Fascinating.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal and Art Bell.
unidentified		Hi.
		Yeah, hi.
		I have two questions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		Oh, I'm in Fairbanks, Alaska.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Fairbanks, way up there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Okay, my first question was about snakes.
unidentified		Do you often run into snakes and how far down are they?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good question.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Snakes do live in caves.
		They mostly stay close to the entrance because they feed on surface food.
		Good.
		So generally the danger of caves, both rattlesnakes and also in some areas of the world, asps, or cobra-like snakes.
		And one called a cave racer, which is a long black snake about 10 feet long.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's see.
		Hold on, Bonnie, we're at the bottom of the hour.
		Caller, hold on.
		I'll let you ask question number two after the break, all right?
		All right, all right.
		This is where we take a break.
		You're listening to Coast to Coast AM, where anything can happen.
unidentified		You're listening to Arkbell somewhere in time on Free Beer Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from May 5th, 1999.
		All obstacles in my way.
		Go to the dark clouds that had been blind.
		It's gonna be bright, bright, bright, sunshine is there.
		It's gonna be bright, bright, sunshine is there.
		I think I can make it now.
		The pain is gone.
		All of the bad feelings.
		Hey, hey, yo.
		Oh, You're listening to Arc Bell somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an oncore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from May 5th, 1999.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Welcome to the program.
		Those of you who join at this hour, anything is possible tonight.
		Anything at all.
		Who knows?
		But then again, that's kind of the way I like it.
unidentified		Shut up, no one.
unidentified		Shut up, no one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Once again, the world beneath and Bonnie Crystal, Bonnie, welcome back.
		You've been here a long time.
		Bet you've never done a four-hour talk show before, huh?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's certainly a good time here, and I've never reached this many listeners before on this sort of station.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, can they email you on your site?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, you can email me at Caverwoman, C-A-V-E-R, W-O-M-A-N, at a-ol-com.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Excellent.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		CaverWoman.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And you can get to the site through the link at the artbell.com site.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Let's bring back our caller.
		Sir, you're back on the air.
		You had two questions.
		You got one out.
		What's the other?
unidentified		Okay, my other one was, your guest mentioned spiders before in the caves, large ones.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Big ones, yeah.
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		And I was wondering, especially at the lower levels, do you run across many poisonous species of insect or animal life?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		I have.
		Fortunately, none of them have stung me yet.
		But in the tropics, where you have jungle caves, some of these jungle caves have some of the the most life forms as far as crawly animals and that sort of thing.
		You find in in this one area, like the place where I was in Borneo, where there was in the in the cave there were these fire centipedes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Fire centipedes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And they have the Sting of death.
		And then, you know, the spiders, some of the poisonous spiders, they're as big as your outstretched hand.
		When you look at them with your headlamp, they have green eyes.
		They sort of have retro-reflector green eyes, and you can look through the cave and see all these little bitty green eyes looking at you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
unidentified		Really?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		You need to wear gloves so you watch where you put your hands and stuff when you're climbing around in that environment or swimming through it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God.
		Oh, God.
		Little green eyes while you're swimming underground.
		No way.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		But it's a lot of fun.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		Sure.
		That and jumping from the Empire State Building onto a tech.
		Listen, the jungles of Borneo, you mentioned here, are places where they have headhunters.
		Now, these are people who do exactly what it sounds like they do.
		They hunt heads, human heads.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever run into a group of these folks?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, in fact, one of them was a Sherpa for me to help me carry some of the gear to the entrance of the cave.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		He wouldn't go in the cave.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		He was afraid of going in the cave.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you find him sort of longingly looking at your neck?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I couldn't speak his language.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		He understood that I would give him money if he carried some of my video equipment that I wanted to video the cave with.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But if he had your head, then he'd have your video equipment and your money.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I gave him an LED flashlight.
		He was satisfied with that.
		It's part of their religion.
		They still practice this.
		But it's not as much as before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good.
		What is the concept between taking in taking one's head?
		I mean, obviously it's some sort of religious or spiritual thing for them.
		What does it mean to them?
		Do you have any idea to take a person's head?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's part of a ritual to gain power.
		And I don't totally understand their religion.
		If I did, you know, I might be able to speak better on the subject.
		But as I know it, the only thing that is still practiced there is maybe the taking of a head to put underneath the foundation of a house to make sure that the house will be blessed for its existence.
		But other than that, it's been illegal in Borneo since the early 1900s to practice this.
unidentified		But speaking with some people who know, they still do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, a lot of things here are illegal and they still are done too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First time caller line, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal and Art Bell.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, Art.
		Hi, Bonnie.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're going to have to speak up good and loud, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm in Santa Rosa, California, listening on KSRO 1350.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, indeed.
unidentified		Bonnie gets my vote for most interesting guest in the time I've been listening to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Two questions for Bonnie.
		35 years ago in Kentucky, I crawled into a shallow horizontal dirt cave.
		It wasn't a limestone cave.
		And it was twice my body size or had gotten narrower quickly.
		20 or 30 feet back in there, there were tree roots growing through the cave and through the open air in the cave and back into the other wall.
		And there was a little water dripping from them.
		And I assumed that it was live tree roots.
		And unfortunately, I reached up and touched them.
		And about a three-inch section broke off.
		And it was a hollow tube where stone, they were actually stone roots, but the coloration looked live.
		And I had a tube in my hand of stone that was about a 32nd, maybe only a 64th of an inch thick.
		And I'm wondering how long would it take for that to have formed?
		Do you have any idea?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Probably about 20,000 years.
unidentified		What a shame I touched it.
		The other question was, I'm coming to a stage in my life where I'm going to have time to do some caving again, which I've done very little.
		How do you get involved with modern cave groups?
		Where would you look?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good question.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the main organization here in the USA is called the NSS, National Speleological Society.
		It is a group that you can join, and there's a link to it from my website, to your local grotto of the NSS, or local chapter of the NSS.
		And through the local grottos, you can get to know other cavers.
		And also a really great way of doing it is going to one of the national parks that has a cave, like Wind Cave, Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, or Mammoth Cave, and going on one of their wild cave tours.
		Now the NSS, you can reach them at their number at 256-852-1300.
		256-852-1300.
		And that's the NSS in Huntsville, Alabama.
unidentified		Well, thank you very much.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Thank you for calling, sir.
		Take care.
		Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Bonnie Criso and Art Bell.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		This is Larry from Fort Lauderdale.
		Hi, Larry.
		I just wanted to put a second of that vote that this is one of the most interesting shows, and I think it's caught us all by surprise.
		I think, like you said earlier, a lot of our thoughts about Down Under was just taken from the old Journey to the Center of the Earth movie.
		And I think that her descriptions are so good that it just sort of revitalizes the old art of storytelling, you know, from one person to another.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Indeed.
unidentified		Telling us, you know, in places that we haven't gone.
unidentified		My question, I had a couple of questions for Bonnie.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And one was, has she ever brought any equipment down and got barometric pressures is that change as you go deep into the earth or under the lake right yes we use a barometer actually it's called an altimeter we use it to tell how deep we've gone so yes we carry in some cases we carry altimeters and now you can get them on wristwatches does it work like in reverse I mean yes
		it does and as you go deeper it it corresponds to approximately how deep you are in the cave so the pressure increases right as you get lower down towards the surface of the earth or under the surface of the earth what about any any magnetic changes have you ever seen anything strange where actually I was gonna let me modify that color if she mentioned that there may be mines that go down 60,000
		feet in Africa now if you go up 60,000 feet there's serious changes that begin to occur if you go down 60,000 feet one could almost imagine gravitational changes well there certainly is radiation down there there's radon and I that's one of my the aspects of science that I'm a radiospeleologist and I study the radiation that's in caves now the gravity itself is about the same as the rest
		of the earth.
		There is a difference in magnetism in some caves like volcanic caves that are in basalt rock that's been formed by volcanoes, and that tends to have its own kind of magnetic deflection.
		So you have to watch out if you're using a compass underground in those situations.
		But, and there's also a study of paleomagnetism that can only be done in caves.
		And what that does is it shows how the earth magnetic field
		has shifted over the eons so the north pole hasn't always been exactly where the north pole is now it's shifted and the study of paleomagnetism or ancient magnetism through taking stalagmites and core samples of stalagmites in caves can tell us among other things where the magnetic field was situated as well as what the climate was like in different areas of the Earth's history.
unidentified		Wow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		Thank you very much, sir.
		Anything else?
unidentified		Well, I was going to ask her if she ever ran into that Air Force digging machine going by when she was down there, but we'll save that for another time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We actually had a photograph of an Air Force boring machine.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've seen it?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		It is available for cave rescue.
		We've never had to use it before, but...
		It's available for cave rescue.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean like a DSR-V for underwater?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's like it's an amazing machine.
		They can deliver it by helicopter to a place.
		You need a big landing zone to use it.
		And I can't think of an instance where we would want to call one in because it would totally obliterate the cave.
		And there's other ways to do it.
		But there is the National Cave Rescue Commission, which is an organization that trains cave rescuers, has this at their disposal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bonnie, kind of a far-out question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But do you think that our government or any governments on the earth have done any secret, serious, far-underground research and experimentation that we don't know about?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's very possible, Art.
		And there's been a lot of experimentation done with not only communication through the rock, but, I mean, they load up the Upper Peninsula and Lower Peninsula of Michigan with a signal and communicate with stuff right through the rock.
		So I don't know what other countries have done in secret, but certainly in Nevada and New Mexico, there's been a lot of underground activity.
		Plus, they want to store nuclear waste underground.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I know.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		So they're doing all the study in order to do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have any comments on that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I live not that far from Yucca area.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		The proposed nuclear site, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The Yucca area, yeah.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, what are they going to do with it?
		It's a dilemma for everyone.
		It'd be better if they didn't make it in the first place, but the fact of the matter is it's already in existence.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, but from what I understand, it's going to require that this stuff be stored safely for, in many cases, tens of thousands of years.
		Now, it's not that I don't have faith in our government, but we haven't ever done anything for tens of thousands of years as a human race.
		Not that I'm aware of anyway.
		Right.
		So to safely store this stuff and to assume that it will not reach a water table in some earth movement over a period of tens of thousands of years, I don't know, Bonnie.
		I'm not real happy about having it in my backyard.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and you know, there are better places to put it, like the salt caves in Texas that are more stable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know, but they see they've got more political oomph down there.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And we've got less.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So guess who loses?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hello, Bonnie.
		Hello, Art.
		Hi.
		This goes along with the call of before, with the barometric pressure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		But the content of air, Bonnie, does it have more oxygen?
		I mean, have you done any testing with that?
		There's been a lot of study of that.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And it depends a lot on whether or not there is any kind of organic material growing in the cave.
		Sometimes the organic material or organisms can make more CO2, carbon dioxide or sulfuric acid in the environment can make some change the environment somewhat of the air.
		But by and large, it's pretty good air down there.
unidentified		I don't think so.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And there's a certain amount of air that comes and goes throughout the cave because.
unidentified		Do you ever bring any seismic equipment to, like if you're in a cave, to see if there's another chamber, you know, that isn't far?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		There's been some amount of study towards finding a cave through electronic means.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		X-ray topography, that sort of thing.
		Right.
		you know one of the one of the stated goals of the heart project in alaska believe it or not is to find underground tunnels and caves i don't know if you caught up on Yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		That is one of the purposes, supposed purposes of it.
		And it may be possible to do that.
		And I'd sure like to use some of those techniques to find some of the deeper caves.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder if they'll tell us what they find.
		Somehow I have serious doubts.
		One more.
		Welcome to the Rockies.
		You're on the air with Bonnie Crystal.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		There was a big noise on the line right before you answered.
unidentified		I'm at Chulvis, California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Chulvis?
unidentified		Robert?
unidentified		Robert.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Robert.
unidentified		Hello, Bonnie.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Lord.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi.
		A question about Queen Anne Palms area, California.
		You do anything on caves there?
		Supposed to be a large underground lake up there.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, the ones that are on military facilities we don't have access to.
		But there are caves in just about every area of the U.S. What about Santa Monica Mountains area?
		I couldn't really say exactly.
		One of the things that cavers don't give out exact locations, but yeah, there are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about here near where I am?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a place called Crystal.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, there's definitely caves around there.
		And, you know, some of the caves around there are actually fairly dangerous.
		I don't know which ones you were talking about there, Art.
		Right, yes, that's part of Death Valley.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		It's a very small part area of Death Valley where they've got it fenced in.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		And actually, they lost a couple of cave divers in that a while back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, very dangerous.
		That's amazing.
		All right, well, listen, you've been a real sweetheart.
		What would you like to plug?
		Anything you want to plug?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Well, just the fact that it's such a dangerous activity.
		Don't go out there and go caving without getting good training and good knowledge of it.
		If you want more information, you can go to my site, go to Art Bell's website, or call the National Speleological Society.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And one more time, you've got an email address, too, right?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		CaverWoman at AOL.com.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		CaverWoman at AOL.com.
		You want to have some fun, Bonnie?
		When you get off here, why don't you go on 75 meters on 3830 and talk to some hams?
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Okay, we'll do that.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		We'll be on lower sideband 3.830.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		3830, folks.
		Bonnie will be there in about 10 minutes.
		I might be there in 15 or so.
		So if you want to talk to Bonnie and you're a ham, 3830 following the show, which is just about right now.
		Bonnie, what a pleasure.
		Thank you so much.
bonnie crystal ▲ ● ▼		Sure has been, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good night.
		That's Bonnie Crystal.
		And if you'd like to talk to her and you're a ham, she's going to be on 3830 in a minute or so.
		For me, that's it this night.
		I'll see you tomorrow night.

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