Mike Bauer

So at six days, you cancel a search for somebody who can run 50 or 100 miles in the wilderness, really knows the wilderness as good or better than anybody in ESD.

Shut it down.

Why are you shutting it down?

Well, they say that they decided he committed suicide.

He was obviously down.

He was obviously upset.

But was it enough to commit suicide?

Would you be telling me about your ultra marathon if you were just going to end it all?

Would you even be planning to go run at the punch bowl, which is an ugly area anyway?

None of that made sense to me with the suicide.

Plain and simple.

I think he killed himself.

That's the only way I can explain it.

He says, you know, there's a bunch of caves and stuff out here.

You can pretty much disappear, I think was the word that he used, and nobody would ever find you.

Our unit was next to a big giant duck pond, and one of the ways we used to make jokes about each other is kind of like, where do you fit in the duck pond?

John was, and I don't want to malign him, but he was one of the oddest ducks in the pond, which is good, right?

You need them.

You don't want everybody swimming the same.

They said, well, we think he might have sat on the edge of one of those mines and blown himself into the mine.