This week, #haveboomboxwilltravel finds it’s way to to Inner Space Cavern in Georgetown, Texas.

The facility, boasting some of the most amazing views of what is beneath many of us daily reminds me of the kinds of field trips that I never really understood as a kid. To this day, tours are guided through the terrain to show off formations below sea level. As I age, I am steadily more and more captivated by the earth’s natural beauty. As a child, I was confused by geodes as they just appeared to be uninteresting rocks. Now, I understand the beautiful science that develops highly saturated and shined crystals.

The track this week is “Underground” by Ben Folds Five, in all their glory. The song cites misunderstood youth who find their way to mosh pits and an alternative music scene as a way to connect and/or cope with the world.

As I slowly creep towards my mid 30’s, I notice a pattern in many of my generation in that we pride ourselves in being unique, yet all also want to connect with others. It is not a desperate sense of needing community the way that you might observe in a middle school lunchroom, but instead, there lies an appreciation of enjoying those around. But community requires a common shared interest. Have we out-individualized ourselves to the point of lacking true connection? I posit that we haven’t yet, though a focus on an electronic life versus experiencing what’s around could lead to that.

Remember Y2K? For the uninitiated, Y2K was a widely shared conspiracy that believed that at the exit of year 1999, the stroke of midnight on 1/1/2000 would confuse all computers into resetting all financial and electronic information using a specific kind of year coding. Many doomsday preppers fueled their theories by stocking up on tradable commodities as they proposed that cash would be obsolete. Mind you, this theory was decades after the creation of the personal computer.

For the religious of us, I remember a middle school youth group focusing on people being “taken” in a rapture, many of whom were prophecizing that Y2K would bring some kind of reckoning.

At the time, I was 13, transported by my father who utilized his court custody rights to take the family to a lakeside cabin around Central Texas with some work buddies turned family friends. There were fireworks, small groups of people mainly divided by age, and the occasional story of a late night poker game.

But, at the strike of midnight in neighboring countries, no apocalypse. No rapture. No famine or collapse of infrastructure.

I think the most tragic part of Y2K was actually tasting value priced champagne (a mistake that to this day haunts me).

But as time marches on, maybe I will too find something more than the face value of a wholly awkward teenage existence that we all can connect with.