Primitive Tim | Busted by the Man

First off, I'm guilty.  I committed a crime and was sent before the judge and he dealt justly with me.  In fact, he was pretty cool.  I like Judge McGlashan, although I would hate to have his job.

After I got my new (to me) truck I procrastinated getting it registered.  Of course I had planned to do it but I just hadn't gotten around to it.  It was the next weekend after I bought it that I got pulled over.  I was pretty much oblivious as to why I was getting pulled over.  I had the tag on that I had planned to register it with so unless a cop really looked at the tag then I would blend in with everyone else... except the registration had expired from my last truck.  Up to this point I understand that I was just being neglectful and I was doing illegal things that I am guilty of.  I will be paying closer attention to this kind of stuff from now on :)

This is where I thought things got a little out of hand.  After showing the title and proof that I own that truck I am asked to get out of the vehicle.  Keep in mind I'm calm and respectful this whole time.  I just wanted them to hurry up and write my tickets so I could be on my way.  Yeah, that didn't happen.  There were two cops, the one that pulled me over and his sergeant who came later.  Once the sergeant got there he kind of took over everything.  Anyway, he asks me a few questions like why was I driving an unregistered vehicle with that tag on it and blah blah blah.  I explained it and he wasn't impressed and that's fine.  I just  wanted him to write me my tickets so I could get out of there.  That's when things escelated.

 He asks if I have cannabis with me.  I tell him I don't... because I have never ever been in possession of any illegal drug ever!  Drugs don't interest me.  He asks if he can search my truck.  I tell him I'd rather not.  So then he says he's going to have to pat me down.  I'm like okay fine I don't care.  After an intimate pat down he tells me to put my hands behind my back.  I'm like, "WHAT???" and I turn to look at him cause I'm realizing that he's about to cuff me.  He responds by saying, "If you move It will be considered resisting arrest." Why in the world would I need to be restrained.  I was perfectly compliant to everything.  So yeah, he cuffs me and then goes and searches my truck.  I was standing there on the side of the road cuffed for a good twenty minutes while he searched my truck and wrote out my tickets.  At this point I have no idea what's going on.  Am I under arrest?  Am I going down to the police station and put in jail?  Like what the heck!

The sergeant is done doing his thing  so he starts to leave and he's going to leave everything else up to the cop that initially pulled me over.  I still have the sergeants cuffs on and right before he gets in his care the other cop says, "Hey, don't you want to get your cuffs back?"  He forgot I was cuffed!?  So, he takes his cuffs off of me and leaves.  The other cop fingerprints me on the hood of his squad car, hands me my three tickets, and explains to me that I'll be getting a court summons in the mail.  He then tells me that since I had such good behavior they're going to release me there.  That seems great right?  It would have been but while I was cuffed he had called a tow truck to come impound my truck!  I'm stuck and hour away in Volusia county without my truck and left right there on the side of the road.  I'm not offered a ride to anywhere but left stranded.  Granted, they did give me my wallet and cell phone.

I as two miles from blue springs where I was going to do some freediving that day so me and my friend walked down to the springs and did what we had intended to do in the first place.  I called another friend to come pick us up when we were done.  I'm blessed with good friends.

Fast forward a few weeks.  I get my court summons.  Court starts at like 8:15AM and I figured while I'm in the beautiful county of Volusia I may as well go to the one place that makes it worth stepping foot in that county, blue springs.  Another friend comes with me to court and we planned to go freediving afterwards.  I go before the judge, show my registration, tell him I have insurance, and he drops all charges.  The government made no money off of this, just the towing company where my truck was impounded.  The whole thing was ridiculous.  We were out of court a little after nine so we headed down to the springs and enjoyed what only nature can provide.

So there it is, I tried to write this with as little bias as possible to portray and accurate representation of my experience in Volusia county.  I've concluded that their law enforcement sucks and their judicial system makes up for it.  I am now a free man with little to no trust of cops now.

Here's a picture of me freediving at Blue springs

Please pardon any typos or grammatical errors.

Freeze Frame

One thing I really enjoy about filming is that it captures everything.  I'm shooting at 60 frames per second so whenever something happens I can grab a frame out of that footage and the results are sometimes hilarious.

So I'm editing footage from my recent road trip of the southeast and I come across a segment where a snake is going wild.  Often times there are things going on that happen too fast for the naked eye to register.  I paused the segment to switch windows and grab another piece of footage but when I paused it the segment happened to land on the below frame.  I had just watched this segment and never realized I made this face.  Not only was I making an exceptional expression but the snake was at full strike with its mouth wide open.  I grabbed the frame and saved it.  I thought it was humorous and it gives anyone interested in my videos a preview of what's to come.

Southeast Road Trip: N. Florida, Tennessee and Georgia

This trip had three basic parts.  Everything went according to plan for the most part.  The plan was to go to Apalachicola and meet up with all the Southeast folks of NAFHA and look for reptiles and amphibians, then head up to Tennessee where the 17th annual primitive archery classic was being held then go back down through Georgia and visit family and hunt hogs on some family land.

Apalachicola was fun!  We found a lot of cool stuff.  If you want to see lots of pictures check out my facebook page.  I was able to stay with my brother and his family and meet up with some other folks that were there for the event.  All in all during that event over fifty species of reptile and amphibians were found.  That's a lot for just one weekend.  Here's a shot of one of my favorite finds:

Next stop was Tennessee but I spent the night at my aunt's in Atlanta, where I also got a flat tire.  That was a fiasco.  My bank thought it was suspicious to buy a tire in another state, because that's the first thing that an identity thief would do???  After I got that taken care of I headed to the Tennessee Classic.  The primitive archery folks there were awesome!  It was also cool to be recognized by a few people from my videos.  I had several good trades as well.  My goal was to talk to folks that had hunted with stone points and had experience with the primitive hunt.  I certainly learned a lot and met some really cool folks.  Pappy is the man that runs this event and I was honored to put an arrow on his arrow rack among other arrows that had been given to him.  Mine is the one with the green fletching on the right

Now on to Georgia for the hunt.  Well, the hunts were unsuccessful.  This wasn't terribly unexpected.  I wanted to spot and stalk some pigs.  I had gotten some advice on this at the classic but this is something that must be practiced a lot before you can even think about success.  The first two days I was able to see some pigs and get fairly close.  I never got close enough for a comfortable shot though.  I never want to wound an animal, even if it is an invasive and is causing damage to farms and the local ecosystem.  I did have a good time being out in the woods and checking out some cool plants that are unfamiliar to me.  This being one of my favorite finds:

This trip also coincided with my cousin's graduation so it was a lot of fun to be able to be there for that.  She's a sweetheart

All in all it was great trip and even though I had some curve balls and failures I was able to learn from those experiences.  Now it's back to work editing footage from the trip.

The Smart Phone: A Sign from the Heavens

Just a few weeks ago I was guiding a kayak tour and a freak storm comes out of nowhere and hit us.  Naturally I had my stone age flip phone that cost me all of $15 in case of an emergency I would be able to call 911. This storms sweeps through and most everyone was on an island except for a couple boats.  So I head back out into the storm to help out another guide with rescuing an elderly man that had flipped and got separated from his kayak.  Anyway, during that whole process my phone got drenched.

I put the soggy phone in rice and waited a while.  After a few days I realized it wasn't worth waiting the few days so that it might work and being phoneless also meant work couldn't ask me to work.  I took this wicked storm as a sign and went on to purchase a smart phone.

Life will never be the same....  :)

Selfies???  Not sure if I did that right... but go follow me on instagram where I will NOT be posting selfies and twitter.  I'll be keeping things updated as I go along via my new smart phone. :)

Been Taking a lot of "knaps"

Flint knapping is the process of creating a sharp edge on any knappable stone.  For the most part I make stone arrowheads and knives by flint knapping.  Obsidian is probably the most well known knappable rock as it is the sharpest edge known to man.

I've been working on some hunting points so I made a variety of them to show to some of the pros to see which ones they liked the most.  The points are shown below.

I use only bone and antler to work these points just like our ancestors would have used.  It's been a fun challenge and I've learned a ton!  I'm still not so good at identifying the different types of materials but it doesn't really matter so long as I can make an arrowhead with it.  The favorite from the pros that I asked was number 10.  They liked that style the most for hunting.  For now I'll keep aiming for ones like that.  I may be doing some hunting soon so I need to get my equipment up to par!

St. Johns Expedition

This week a friend and I did a three day kayaking trip down the St. Johns River from 520 to 46.  I don't know exactly how long the trip is but I estimated it at about 35 miles long and all the navigation was done by nothing but keen animal instinct.  This was an amazing trip full of unexpected adventure.

DAY 1: Day one was fun.  We set out at around 9:30 or so that morning.  The river was quiet and nice.  We saw a large hill out on the floodplain so we stopped there for lunch.  From that hill we saw another kayaker.  Not a lot folks kayak this river but as this guy got closer we could tell he was out kayaking for the long haul.  His name is Jim so we started chatting with him and decided to paddle together, the three of us.  As we got to know him he told us he was paddling to Jacksonville and out into the ocean.  That made our journey seem kind of wussy.  We all reached the catfish hotel around 4 PM.  Jim took a break and continued on solo.  This catfish hotel is the most rickety little shack.  I slept in it that night and I'm really surprised it didn't blow over that night.  The wall to my right was bending in from the gusts.  It was an adventure!

DAY 2:  This was my favorite day!  It started out cool and windy so that was a bummer but the events later that day made up for it.  We set out paddling and came across some free roaming horses out on the flood plain.  Down the river we caught up with Jim again so it was good to see him.  We all had a rough night with the cold front that had come through.  The sun finally came out and we were dodging air boats left and right.  Out on the middle of the floodplain was a lone cypress tree and I noticed a clump of something on a limb.  It looked furry but surely no woodland mammal would be so dumb as to sit up in a tree out in the open.  I did the only natural thing and climbed the tree to get a closer look.  Sure enough, it was two young raccoons snuggled together out on a limb sleeping the day away.  Coincidentally, I found a good sized yellow rat snake shed in the tree too.  In the backdrop to this scene of coons in the tree was a blazing wildfire.  Fires are natural part of the floodplains  but this was up wind and approaching the opposite bank fairly quickly.  We got to paddle right past it as it hissed and sent dark plumes of smoke up into the air.  At the end of the day we had seen 100 alligators and actually found our next camping area, which was in the most remote parts of the river.  I ate, drank, strung up my hammock and dozed off as the sun went down.  I was exhausted!

DAY 3:  This was another chilly night but better than the last one.  It was overcast and still when I got up that morning.  With the cool morning air, I wasn't inclined to get out of my sleeping bag so I dreaded it for a while and got out a little before nine.  I knew it was the last day and I was ready to get back and have this trip complete.  I had hoped to see Jim again but I think at this point we were a fair bit ahead.  As we headed north we hit puzzle lake which isn't really a lake but a river that goes through a series of small lakes. I had hoped there were a few short cuts but each time I ended up going the long way.  Navigation was difficult but the good ol' animal instincts got me home at the end of the day.

I apologize for the lack of pictures but we were on a mission to cover the distance.  All in all it was a great trip and I look forward to guiding some folks through this stretch in a couple weeks.

Coconuts: Survival in Paradise

Recently I took a trip down to south Florida.  While down there I seized the opportunity to collect some coconuts.  I climbed the palm like a chimp and twisted off five medium sized coconuts and let them fall.  I do enjoy hearing them thud on the ground as my forearm begins to tell me I need to get down before it lets gravity help me down.

Coconuts are absolutely key to survival on isolated islands, especially in the Pacific Ocean.  The coconut palm provides food, water, shelter, cordage, fuel (fire), and shade.  Now if I were to explain how one utilizes the coconut palm in the afore mentioned ways this would turn into an essay so if you have a question just leave a comment and I'd be glad to answer.

Coconut water is an amazing thing!  It hydrates the body and is always healthy and sterile out of the shell.  However, if you solely drink coconut water for an extended period it will act as diuretic which will cause you to lose a lot of that hydration so it is important to get some freshwater.  Luckily rain is pretty consistent throughout the range of the coconut palm.  The next thing that blows my mind about coconut water is that it can be transfused into human blood.  Yeah, you can hook up an IV of coconut water.  So if someone is ill you can put that stuff straight into their blood and it will hydrate them.

So when I visit areas and see coconut palms I know I should be able to last a little while and it's so important for me on my various adventures to be able to process them efficiently and confidently.

Check out the below videos on the process.  Until next time, go eat some coconuts!