The Big Blade

In June 2009 we (the two Chris's, Bob and I) were up in Canyon on one of our jaunts up in Canyon, Tejas, cataloging artifacts found at the Alibates 28 site.  This was pretty intensive work, involving thousands of artifacts in a multipart, three person process of pulling the boxes from the stacks, opening the boxes, pulling out each individual item, calling out the multipart item number, weighing it, measuring it three dimensions, entering all this information into a database and then reading it back to ensure proper entry (and I was quite capable of screwing this part up!), and then photographing it from two, and sometimes three of those dimensions. 

Whew! 

If this sounds as if it could be mind boggling, try repeating thousands of times!

But then it was dealing with some truly beautiful material, and sometimes we just had to stop and admire what we'd come across. 

This was the case with The Big Blade...

This was a big one indeed!  And even after puttings hands on enough outstanding artifacts to make an avocationalist salivate, this one was indeed outstanding...

And like happening across that celebrity that you've always admired and wanted to meet in a chance encounter, what else is there to do but to have your picture taken in their presence to prove that you really, really were there, sharing that time in space and hoping that in some small way to impress your friends afterward...

It sure made Chris smile!

Bob's eyes were popping out!

And I'm still wearing that shit eating grin on m'face everytime I think about it!