Day 21: Day off (sort of)

Today is the much anticipated day off!    Had several options, but decided to get a scooter and ride the island.  However, I did not make a reservation and the rental shops were closed to check availability.

I decided to help search and rescue Mike’s hexacopter.  It is always thrilling to do hiking with a purpose, however this was not hiking, it was dodging spiky branches, crunching down waist high ferns and climbing under/over root and branches that acted like walls, all while it was raining and the ground was nothing but mud.  Every few feet, I had to have a good look around since the brush was so dense, trees so high, to look for the black copter in the darkness of the canopy.  About 30 minutes into the “hike”, Mike made the announcement that he found it.  Absolute stroke of luck that he saw the shiny metal bottom of the copter which was covered with leaves.  Hoots and hollers all around.  The graphics cards were still good with usable data, but the copter had broken one of its arms.

After this, I decided to spend the day doing my work, and research.  Pretty quiet day, very peaceful!  Will take another day to do a little sightseeing…

My research seems to me more about proving that more work needs to be done.  I have been correlating thermal photos with true color photos.  Unfortunately the caves are not as prominant in the photos or the thermal is showing that vegetation and cave temperatures are nearly the same.  Thus picking out caves along the walls will not be an easy process using thermal.  This seems to be where I am heading as far as an answer.  What I need to do, what is screaming at me from my gut, is to use the bunker and nearby cave as controls to prove that I am right, that there is no benefit to using thermal to pick out caves in the way of vegetation.

Thermal

True color