Gold Digger (the actor)

Miles spent a week working on his equipment. He did it Just in case there was something worthwhile in the samples.

During that week the women were busy doing their scientific things. Louise had the map complete, but she was very secretive about her findings. Miles wasn't quite sure why, but he respected her decision.

Ada had her nose buried up the ass of a computer, or so he was told by Louise, who was his only contact with her. Miles had no interest in or need to contact her. Since he considered her an interloper, Miles felt that she was and would always be a passenger on the gold train.

All the mystery was explained when Ada called him. "Miles can you make time for a breakfast meeting tomorrow."

"Sure, are you and Louise going to finally tell me what the hell is going on?" he asked.

"Yes you will know everything after breakfast. I think we should return to the pancake house where we first me," she suggested.

"Damn you are sentimental," Miles suggested.

"Sure, but that's not why I'm suggesting it. Not everyone likes the greasy food to which you seem to be addicted," Ada said.

"How would you know that?" he asked.

"Louise and I talk," she suggested.

"Oh no, do you also know about the Nazi uniform she wearings on Friday nights," Miles asked with a laugh in his voice.

"No, but I do know about the pony," Ada said laughing.

"I was never convicted of that," he openly laughed at that image. "So are we meeting some one from the QE2 outfit?"

"Excellent guess," Ada said.

"So have they bought into your grand plan?" he asked.

"Not yet they have read the synopsis I submitted. Now they want to meet their potential stars," Ada said.

"You are worried about me, how sweet," Miles said.

"Yes I am worried about you, not for you. You don't really care about the QE2TV production. You are going along just on the chance that Louise might make a few dollars at it. Also of course, so that you can keep doing what you want," she said.

"Okay what time?" miles asked.

"9am," she said. "Since it won't do any good, I'm not going to tell you how to dress."

"Not a bit," he agreed. "But I will wear the clean bib overalls."

Miles knew that Ada and Louise would be all nervous about their presentations, while he had nothing to lose. He planned to dig on the scale he could afford with or without QE2TV.

"Well I see someone is an early riser when it is important," Miles said the next morning as he came from his room and stood behind Louise. Both of them were in their underwear. Seeing even a glimpse of her twenty five year old body was more than enough payment for his allowing her to live in his house and eat his food.

He was just muddled minded enough so that he might have touched her, if he gave into his baser nature. He fought it only because she was family.

"Well I have to pee badly. Could you step out?" he demanded.

"Uncle Miles, I'm twenty five years old. I have seen a penis before," she replied.

"But you haven't seen mine," he suggested. He waited till she left then closed the door and urinated. Just too get even with her, he took a quick shower then exited the bathroom wrapped in only a towel.

The two of them left a half hour later. Louise in her back sweater and white slacks. The outfit showed a little more cleavage than her dad would have liked, but Miles didn't mind. Miles wore a pair of clean and unstained work pants. He also wore a faded blue work shirt.

Louise drove her small Ford, which looked to Miles like a Fiat. He rode his Honda classic motor scooter with the sidecar. When he entered the restaurant there were four of them at the large round table.

None of them stood to greet him of which he approve. Ada spoke as if she was the leader of the expedition," Roger, Silvia, this is Miles. Miles had the idea Louise and I just expanded it. Not the idea for the show, but for the project. I'm afraid he isn't going to be too enthusiastic about being on TV."

"Ada, I can speak for myself," Miles said as he shook hands with the two of them.

"It certainly is an honor to meet you Mr Adair." Roger said.

"Thanks, but I'm just an ordinary old man. Silvia it's nice to meet an attractive young woman to whom I'm not related or doing business with." He added the later to explain why there was nothing between himself and Ada Fine.

"What do you recommend for breakfast?" Silvia asked.

"Since it is a pancake house, I would go with the eggs and bacon," Miles said with the sarcasm dripping. Louise kicked him under the table. "Actually they have the standard menu of all these plastic and chrome places," He added.

"Everything is pretty good," Ada said. She was obviously trying to break her perceived tension.

"I'm going to go with Miles' suggestion," Silvia said to the waitress when she ordered the special. Roger had the French Toast which labeled him a wimp in Miles' mind. Louise and Ada ordered variations of the special.

"I think I'll have a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on one of those kaiser rolls," Miles insisted.

"Gee, you should have told me that sounds great," Silvia said. She was obviously trying to win Miles over. The two women looked at each other as if to say, I knew it.

"So tell me how you see the show Miles?" Roger asked.

"To be honest I have watched a few Episode of those Alaskan truckers shows as well as the survival shows. The things I find most irritating is the way they jump from one character to another. The shows are also pretty one dimensional. I would think they would be better, if they went more into the personal lives of the girls. You could weave that through their work on the project. You know like why weren't you on time for the meeting Louise? Then have her explain just to make her human, not just a woman with a good idea."

"What do you see yourself doing?" Silvia asked.

"Most likely just doing what I do, but you know there is the chance to do something even there. If I'm going to be mining twenty miles from the nearest store, cover the people who come into contact with me," Miles said. "I'm not a survivalist, but I am a man trying to survive as easily as possible."

"How about Silvia and I meet to discuss this for a couple minutes then meet you are your office to give you our decision?" Roger proposed.

"That's fine with me. I'm sure Ada would be glad to give you a lift to the office," Louise said that after looking to her uncle for a sign of his approval. She accepted his nod as a positive sign.

"By the way I love that scooter. It will video beautifully," Roger said standing in the parking lot.

"Well that wasn't what I had in mind, but I like it pretty well myself. It also gets a lot of attention, when I drive it down the road," Miles admitted.

Miles rode off on his scooter while the others watched. He enjoyed the ride and even the evil looks Ada and Louise gave him as the two producers seemed to be more interested in him than they were in either of them. He had found that amusing.

Miles changed his clothes when he arrived back at his house. He was busy working on the frame of a larger more sturdy Miners cabin. He knew that should he find a semi permanent site to dig during the winter, with the larger stronger cabin, he would be able to have a bed and stove which would change the game considerably. First however he had to find out about the sites where he had worked during his road trip. The women were still not sharing their research with him.

It was mid afternoon when Louise and Ada arrived at the house. Ada had the Bobsy twins in tow. "I can offer you guys some Ice tea flavored chemicals to drink, if you would like?" Miles suggested.

There was a resounding, no thanks, from the group. "So let me begin," Roger said. "We would like to send a camera crew down to shoot the pilot. After we show it around, we might be able to offer you a one season contact. Of course with an option to renew for additional seasons."

The girls where excited. "Before I jump on board the train, how about telling me where we are going. I doubt that you are going to do this without a plan so explain it to me please," Miles said.

"We are going to send a couple of camera people, one to go with you and one to cover the girls. They will shoot twice as much film as we need, so we can edit it down for a one hour show. It shouldn't take more than three full days, certainly no more than a week," Silvia finished explaining.

"I thought so." Miles said. "The problem is technically speaking, we don't have permission to do this shit. So your crew has to be able to pack their tools in with them and carry them up and down the streams."

"The camera man is in good shape and he has the most light weight equipment made. He can handle that no problem. He can also help you, since you won't be worried about being helpless, if you have an accident." Roger suggested.

"What if the cameraman breaks his leg?" Miles replied.

"If the bone is sticking out we expect you to help, otherwise he can manage," Silvia suggested.

"That is just fucking cold," Miles said, "but I like your style."

"What is our pay for making the pilot," Ada asked.

"Well you aren't a proven commodity, so it won't be a lot," Silvia said.

"We were thinking a $1,000.00," Roger said.

"I do hope that is each, because three days in the woods is a lot of time for a thousand bucks," Miles said. "If you can't afford three thousand dollars, you must not have much faith in the project. If that is the case my vote is no thanks," Miles said.

"Okay, but if it is any good, we will renegotiate," Silvia said.

"You bet you beautiful ass we will," Miles said. "So how about you ladies, are you in?"

Both of the women agreed. Miles thought it was probably the biggest mistake he had ever made. But he was sure there were bigger ones coming.

When the producers left Louise and Ada discussed their research. Ada stated, "Those historical finds were mostly in settlement along the coast or in the Piedmont plateau regions of the state. The streams where they found gold originated in the mountains of course.

Ada traced the Piedmont finds to the most likely creeks in which they traveled down the mountain. In doing so she found that one of the creeks was one which you scouted on your last exploration. So we got a huge head start because of the samples you brought back.

She checked those samples and found that one of them was filled with a high concentration of granite gravel. It also had a high concentration of quartz. Both are precursors associated with free gold. We think it would be worth a return to the area to search it again. To process the gravel on site. In other words we think it might be profitable to mine the creek bed."

"So give me the coordinates, and I'll pull up the pictures of it," Louise gave them to her Uncle Miles. He found the images associated with that sample site. It was a shallow and fast running stream. I sort of remember this site. The closest of the other test sites was upstream a few miles. I had to hike into both sites. How about we give it a week after I finish with the TV people. If I do any good we can make plans to explore around the creek.

Miles hurried back to work on the prefab cabin. He planned to work on it while he waited for the production crew to arrive. He was prefabricating the bones of the cabin with just enough heft to hold a reinforced plastic tarp nice and rigid. The particular design allowed a less than twenty dollar tarp to be trashed before packing out the prefab walls. The idea was to be able to drag the whole thing through the woods tied to a plastic land sled. Those sleds had been used by everyone from American Indians to miners fighting their way through the rocky mountains. Okay, they didn't have plastic ones, but they were sleds none the less.

Miles tried it all and found it worked, but it required at least six trips from the truck to the cabin site. That should get all the parts and tools necessary to build a cabin on the site. With that in mind, the hanging prospectors tent look better all the time. Still if he set up somewhere the tarp cabin would be a welcome change from the cold damp prospector's tent. It would allow a stove if nothing else. That stove would be a major improvement.

The Sunday after their meeting with Roger and Silvia, Miles got a call. "Miles Adair," he said into the phone.

"Mr Adair this is Eddie Sower, I'm the cameraman assigned to you," The voice without a face said.

"Good, I have been waiting for your call. So do you know what the producers want?" Miles asked.

"They want us to retrace your steps from the first expedition and demonstrate the techniques you used to test for gold." Eddie suggested.

"Fair enough, then be ready to move at 6AM. Bring enough gear for three days at least," Miles said.

"I worked on the explorer series, I got a pretty good idea what I need," he said.

"Well don't worry you want need too much equipment. We are going to be on the move most of the time, but it will mostly be driving from site to site. Then it will be hike in a few miles, take a couple of hours to collect the samples, then move on. I don't know if they warned you, but we don't exactly have permission to do these tests, so try to stay calm if we get stopped. You can follow me up or you can just meet me at the first site. I'm going on a pretty slow motor scooter."

Louise had figured the GPS coordinates for the diner under the bridge. Miles gave them to Eddie, so they could meet there at noon the next day. Miles gave himself plenty of time to make it there on the scooter. He set the time for noon so they could get one last meal in before heading into the woods.

After a bowl of cereal and a cup of day old coffee Miles left his small house. The sun had barely risen on that Monday morning, when he rolled his stealth black Honda scooter out of the garage.

Stored away in the sidecar was the cellphone from QE2. It had arrived by UPS. He didn't own one of the idiot makers, and never would. He had agreed to carry it should the camera man get into trouble in the woods. Since QE2 had been in the unreality business a while, they knew not only the value of a cell phone, but also the value of a second charged battery. The second battery came complete with a solar charger. It was to be set up back at the campsite. He knew that no matter how he cursed it, the cellphone was a new reality in the woods for him.

He arrived at the diner just a few minutes after noon. He could have made it on time, but he stopped to put gas in the scooter. It took only ten minutes to make it from the super duper highway, to the Dinner.

Like all good long distance scooter riders, Miles carried spare gas. In his case it was in a metal water bottle stashed in his side car. He poured the liter of gasoline into the tank then added a bit of new gas to top off the tank. Then he refilled the container and put it away before leaving for the restaurant.

"So you are Eddie," he asked of the young man with the very lightweight video camera sitting in front of him.

"What gave me away," Eddie asked.

"It was the hair cut. You look so California." Miles said.

"Actually it is New York. California has all the scripted dramas and New your has all the docudrama producers. The facilities aren't really important any more. I can shoot and edit the files from a laptop in a motel room. Anywhere there is an electrical outlet. I carry a pack filled with extra charged batteries. I know that you are going to be day tripping, so it will be easier to use the charging station in the SUV, than to fool with the solar chargers."

"You know what, I'm glad you know your shit, but I really don't care how it works. I hope you didn't wait for me to order," Miles said changing the subject.

"Hell no, I have learned over my two years with QE2 that I need to eat whenever I am in an area with food. You guys are not going to wait for me. You take our money, but you hate the camera. At least for a while. It you make it for a second season, you learn to play to the camera for some reason."

"I just ask you, if You had eaten, I didn't ask for your opinion of me or guys like me. I can tell this is going to be a long day," Miles said shaking his head.

"Only if you make it one," Eddie said. "I won't talk shit too you, if you don't talk shit to me. I will only ask you the questions necessary, to elicit the responses necessary for the show.

"Good," Miles said. He then went to the counter to order a burger to go. It took only ten minutes to be on the road again.

The trip to the old bridge, where he had taken his first samples, was a short ride then a long hike into the bush. He chained the scooter to a tree, then engaged his secret kill switch. Yes he also took the ignition keys with him.

"Why did you go to all that trouble," Eddie asked.

Miles realized that it was going to be an even longer day than he expected. "When it's twenty miles to the nearest phone and your food and clean water supply is on the scooter, you tend to want it to stay where you leave it. I know a pair of bolt cutters will get rid of the chain, and a simple rewire will bypass the switch, but unless the thief plans to push it twenty miles, he had better have a pickup truck and some help loading it.

So a thief had to have a set of bolt cutters in his long bed pickup truck. He would also need to know something about the wiring of a Honda motor scooter. Baring that, it's going to be too much trouble to steal it. I'm just playing the odds. We are probably going to be here for a few hours. then move to the state park down the road a ways."

After that brief explanation Miles lifted his pack and headed down the worn path. The path ended by the creek, but it was a deep slow running spot used for fishing. No one was fishing that day, so they walked on past it in a southerly direction. After a few miles walk they began to hear rushing water. "Hear that, That's the sound we will be looking for the rest of this trip. It is the sound of fast moving water," Miles explained

It appeared that men also used the spot for fishing. Since it was a pretty good hike in, there were fewer people willing to make the trek to the second spot. Also

Fortunately there was no one fishing that afternoon.

Miles took the core drill out into the rushing water. Then he placed the core drill in what appeared to be a good place. When it was ready he pounded it with a rock. As he rotated it. The rock was his decision to avoid the need to carry a hammer. He had carried a hammer head on the first trip, by the second he knew better.

He used the wooden plunger to force the bottom three or four inches into the sample container. The containers looked a lot like a tall pill bottle.

"You need to explain exactly what you are doing," Eddie said.

"Good god are the people who watch these things that dense. If so you have an audience with a combined IQ or fifty." Miles said.

"Average," Eddie said. "You mean average IQ of 50."

"No, I mean two guys with and IQ of 25 each," Miles said. Even so he went back and explained it all, including that he learned about the rock after having carried a sledge hammer head all day, just so he could use it five minutes. "That is called a case of terminal rookie dumb ass," Miles said to end the bit. He went on to take another sample in a different part of the rapids.

While Miles and Eddie finished their samples and headed to the state park's primitive campsites, Ada and Louise were meeting their camera lady. She turned out too be a thirty, or so, year old female named Jerri. @@

Jerri's arms were covered with various colorful tattoos. She also had hair of at least three different colors. Jerri was almost junkie thin, which wouldn't have surprised Ada at all. Louise just thought she was cool looking.

Jerri also spoke with a strong accent. "So are we ready to begin?" she asked. In something close to a Russian accent.