Journey of a Muscle God

Well…page one of my journal of our excavation of Mount Olympus. I am hoping that things will be going much smoother than our little climb up and past the summit of Mytikas. It is absolutely astounding that for all of us that are supposed adults, how much whining was going on from the party on ascent up the mountain.

What an interesting party we make too. Let me see….well, I guess I should start with myself in case I ever publish these memoirs.

Dr. Duke Bradshaw. No, my parents weren’t fond of John Wayne; they were fond however of surfing and Duke seems to be a popular name amongst surfers. Although, it’s funny my nick-name, which the people on this trip are never going to use, is “Dude.” This is because while growing up, half of California, where I grew up, was speaking surfer-valley talk and all the guys referred to one another as “dude”. Having heard this over and over again, when I was little and someone asked me my name, I, in my head mishearing my parents, told people my name was “Dude.”
But I digress. I’m 28 and have my doctorate in Archaeology, daunting feat for someone my age, but I did it – actually did it two years ago, and I’ve worked my way into this extraordinary dig and being the dig master so to speak, presiding over everyone.

The closest to me is probably, Dr. Odysseus Atkins, only named Odysseus because he apparently loved hearing the great Greek epics straight from birth, especially Homer’s, “Odyssey”. He is what we’ve referred to as our Homeric or Iliadic Archaeologist. Think something similar to a Biblical Archaeologist only instead of knowing and hunting things down from the Bible, it’s all about the Greek Gods.

He’s about 35, very white complexion, with jet black hair and steel grey eyes, which would make him almost look very Goth like except for the fact that he began to bald early in life and so pretty much just has a crown of hair on his head. Then again I guess he’s not so similar to me other than age and interests. Well, I’m very fair haired, a blond, still nearly platinum as opposed to his black, and I’m tan year round. But both of us are slim individuals, although he doesn’t wear it well on his 5’9” frame, while I’m a bit better at it, being 5’ 6”.

Next in line is Mikolos Valissiou, our Indigenous Archaeologist. He’s a bright young man, similar to me, trying to get it all done soon. He’s twenty-six years old, jet-black hair, steel blue eyes, and an average athletic build on a six foot frame. He’s originally from Athens, has his master’s degree and is working this dig to help earn his doctorate. It’ll be interesting to see his approach on how the Gods, or rather there servants as the Gods didn’t exist, help the Greek people evolve into who they are today.

After him is Eoin Aodhagáin, which in regular English would be Ian Egan (A-gahn), the last name being Irish, like he is, and means fire, which suits him well as he has a bright red head of hair. It’s a nice red though, not a screaming orange, and not an actual red, as in primary color, but and nice in between that takes the sunlight well and gets streaks of blond running through it. Well, he’s hard to miss anyway: 6’ 4” with a good muscled body. Not quite up to a gymnast size, but close. This is probably due to all the tools and materials he carries around and the amount of work he does chipping, carving, sculpting, etc. He’s an Experimental Archaeologist and will be here to help figure out what items were used for what and how were they made, etc.
He’s one of lowest ranking one of us all with only his Bachelors, working on this dig towards his masters. Kind of surprising as he’s 40, but he’s told all of us that he wanted to see the world and dig in it a bit before he cracked the books again.

Further down the line we have…Riku and Ryuu Yamamoto, who cover respectfully Paleontology and Zoo Archaeology. They’re here to see if they can find any kind of bones and fossils that might explain the areas description or belief of the myriad of mythological creatures. We get a kick out of watching them though. Every morning like clock work, they’re up at dawn, their…probably about 5’ 8” tall, average but very cut bodies, do various styles of martial arts, jet black hair flying in the air, piercing black eyes focusing on this and that.
Oh, and the other great thing is that these two are twins, and when they want to, they will move and talk exactly in tandem to confuse the hell out of one. It’s very amusing. They are here to finish work on their masters degree and are thirty years old.

The Yamamoto twins get a lot of help and encouragement from Dr. Nigel Waterford. He’s our Classical Archaeologist, but he has a master’s in Paleontology as well. But he’s here to help us out over all. This is his ump-teenth dig. Well, he is 62 years old. Looks pretty good for his age. 6’ 1” about 220 so the paunch is there but only around the belly. His brown hair is peppered all over with grey, not one strand completely turned yet. There always seems to be a smile in his puppy dog brown eyes, and what feels like a vast amount of wisdom.

That leaves only two people left. The first one is Dr. Pali Taro, 50, a native Hawaiian with a Master’s in Cognitive Archaeology. He’ll help us try to understand the classes and kinship of the people we discover here. Otherwise he’s going to help Eoin out because he has a minor in Experimental Archaeology, which is pretty good cause he’s just slightly smaller than Eoin at 6’2” but a bit broader and thicker, a good raw-bone type body, and can probably lift a lot of heavy weight.

And, it looks like I’m going to cut this short. The last formal member of our party, Jansen Visser, is attacking and pseudo member of our party, Jim Crowley. Jansen has only his Bachelor’s in Landscape Archaeology and has just started his work on a Master’s degree. He is quick to anger and quick to be lazy, a surprising fact given that he is the largest of us all, a 23 year old towering, blue eyed, blond powerhouse at 6’ 8” tall, size 18 boots, and arms that look about as big around as Dr. Waterford’s waist, or maybe Crowley’s.
Crowley on the other hand, a supposed reverend by the way, is a 5’ 10” and about 260 – 270 lbs with wispy, auburn hair and hazel eyes. He’s here more for a religious class, although what and how he’s supposed to learn anything is beyond me. He’s brought tons of religious books which could be interesting reading for us, otherwise he’s kind of become a man servant for us all, not that any of us asked him or hinted at the idea. Well, Jansen has hinted he liked the idea very much.

But, Crowley is turning blue. I better go rescue him…..

***********************

So, we’ve discovered who the bad guy is in our little party. Jansen has managed to piss off most of the work force, all of the students, plus all of us directors and the Reverend Crowley to boot. To top it off he turns around and slugs me in the chest for trying to get him off Reverend Jim. It took me turning around and pretending to call the university to get him to calm down. I’m not sure what we’re going to do to be able to handle that jerk all summer long.
The important thing is Crowley isn’t dead. He slinked off behind me returning to my tent, and surprisingly he’s making me a nice cup of tea to calm my nerves. We walked through an area supposedly listed as the “home of the Gods.” We all know of course that it was just the premiere, or the primary temple to the Gods. Anyhow, there was a nice flower growing out of one of the walls. I’ve never seen it before, but Crowley said it was only indigenous to this area. He knew what it was; apparently he does have a master’s degree in botany, and said it makes an excellent tea. Good for the nerves he said.
Well, I must close now. Rev. Crowley is here with the tea and it smells extraordinarily like honey or maybe jasmine. Either way if it tastes as good as it smells it’ll be very good and quite refreshing. He might be of some very good use after all.

Good night – Dr. Bradshaw.

Read next part

CAPTCHA