Month: March 2009

Less Than 2 Weeks To Go…

..and I’m ready.

Although technically I’m not eliminated from the office March Madness contest (to win it #1 seed Louisville has to lose to #12 seed Arizona and my other remaining 14 picks have to be correct), I am ready for the tourney to be over and get to the start of the baseball season. Right now I’m listening to a pre-season baseball game between the Sox and the Yanks (it’s tied 1-1 in the 8th) and it is going to be great to have something to listen to each evening.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 151

Be Careful What You Wish For

My previous digital camera used to annoy me by always forgetting my settings. Because I usually favor one way of shooting, every time I turned it on I would have to change the same series of settings to my liking. My current camera remembers everything and starts up right where I left off. Even the zoom if I want.

The last photos I took were last Tuesday of Charlie Pace while monkeying around on the floor indoors. I had the white balance set for incandescent and the exposure set 1-1/2 f-stops open so I could turn off the flash. The ever helpful Panasonic TZ3 started right up that way Saturday in Hitchcock Woods which is why the dozen or so photos I took of trail name signs look like the one above, washed out and kind of blue. I thought the image in the LCD screen looked a little off while snapping away, but chalked that up to the very bright sun I was in.

Now I’m kind of wishing this one would forget sometimes.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 151

Almost an Affair

A married Irishman went into the confessional and said to his priest, “I almost had an affair with another woman.”

The priest said, “What do you mean, almost?”

The Irishman said, “Well, we got undressed and rubbed together, but then I stopped.”

The priest said, “Rubbing together is the same as putting it in. You’re not to see that woman again. For your penance, say five Hail Mary’s and put $50 in the poor box.”

The Irishman left the confessional, said his prayers, and then walked over to the poor box. He paused for a moment and then started to leave.

The priest, who was watching, quickly ran over to him saying, “I saw that. You didn’t put any money in the poor box!”

The Irishman replied, “Yeah, but I rubbed the $50 on the box, and according to you, that’s the same as putting it in!”

Poor Creature

Muldoon lived alone in the Irish countryside with only a pet dog for company. One day the dog died, and Muldoon went to the parish priest and asked, “Father, my dog is dead. Could ya’ be saying’ a mass for the poor creature?”

Father Patrick replied, “I’m afraid not; we cannot have services for an animal in the church. But there are some Baptists down the lane, and there’s no tellin’ what they believe. Maybe they’ll do something for the creature.”

Muldoon said, “I’ll go right away Father. Do ya ‘think $5,000 is enough to donate to them for the service?”

Father Patrick exclaimed, “Sweet Mary, Mother of Jesus! Why didn’t ya tell me the dog was Catholic?”

Stock Market Explained

It was autumn, and the Indians asked their New Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was an Indian Chief in a modern society, he couldn’t tell what the weather was going to be.

Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his Tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect wood to be prepared.

But also being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, “Is the coming winter going to be cold?”

“It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed,” the weather man responded.

So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood. A week later, he called the National Weather Service again. “Is it going to be a very cold winter?”

“Yes,” the man at National Weather Service again replied, “It’s definitely going to be a very cold winter.”

The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of wood they could find. Two weeks later, he called the National Weather Service again. “Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?”

“Absolutely,” The man replied. “It’s going to be one of the coldest winters ever.”

“How can you be so sure?” the Chief asked.

The weatherman replied, “The Indians are collecting wood like crazy.”

This is how the Stock Market works!

Long Walk in a Big Woods

There are 5 geocaches inside the boundary of Hitchcock Woods and we had found only one of them so far. Today we thought we might try and get the remaining four. That goal took a severe hit when we couldn’t find the first one we came to – Cuthbert Cache. It is shown as a regular sized cache, meaning we were looking for something the size of a box of Kleenex at least, and the clue limited the search zone to between the trail and a stream, but we couldn’t find it. We moved on vowing to give it another shot on the way out of the woods.

Next objective was Hitchcock’s Mystery which was the one we were 1/4 mile away from once before, but it was 1/4 mile of swamp called Barton’s Pond. Ahhh, an ammo can, we are good with these and because the bushes are still somewhat barren of leaves this was a halfway easy spot for Donna. We left behind the small rubber chicken travel bug we found in yesterday’s Graniteville cache and took out a Blue’s Clues coin purse.

From here we headed over to The Cliffs of Cache.* But now that we were, where we were, getting there, was going to be a long walk because of that pesky Barton Pond again. This time we had already decided to make the long walk, so off we went. We came at this cache from the correct direction according to the clue given, but couldn’t find it. We then figured that when it said approach from the left, they must have meant our other “left”, so we tried from the other side of the cliffs. Followed the GPS to right back where we were the first time and found the cache. TNLNSL.

*This cache was made famous when 2 college kids from USCA were hunting for it one day several years back. They found bones of a body instead. A mystery was solved that day and a family now knows answers.

Next up furtim unus meaning “The Stealthy One.” This one was different from all the others in the woods because it was off the trail a bit, about 100′ into an area that was sparsely treed with pines. We almost gave up on this one, but I spotted after walking in a big circle and getting a different angle on it. This one had another travel bug in it, a green beanie baby bear, so we took it and left behind that coin purse from 2 caches back.

That left our one miss of the day for the walk out. We came at it coming from the opposite direction and the GPS said I was right on it again, but I was 40 feet further up the trail this time. The find zone was even slightly narrower, because the trail and the stream were closer together, but it didn’t help, we came away empty handed. Maybe next time.

According to the GPS that green loop you see above is 6.1 miles long and we spent a little over three hours in the woods. Partly because we were in there so long and partly because it was a glorious spring day we crossed paths with the most people ever, 20 or so horseback riders and and a little more than half that many people walking their dogs.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 149

Breakfast and a Cache

For the second month in a row we combined the MMC breakfast event and some geocaching. We ate at a place that Donna and I have driven by hundreds of times since living here, but never ever thought to go in, the Hard Hat Cafe which sits on the hill going west out of Graniteville, SC. It is the sort of place that is just where one should eat breakfast and is what the originator of this idea for the club had in mind – Mom & Pop places with bottomless coffee for less than a buck (it was good too.) This one was a little different in that not only could you order off the menu, but they had a buffet and that is where the nine of us ate from.

After chow when everyone went their separate ways Donna and I went back down into downtown Graniteville to hopefully find a puzzle geocache – “Milling” Around Town which is sort of like the one we didn’t get in Waynesboro last month.

This one had 6 stages and at each one you had to read a sign or count something that gave a number that needed to be plugged into a spot in the coordinates for finding the next stage. We misinterpreted the very first clue, but didn’t find out until the very end because we had the instructions and are familiar enough with the town to know all the landmarks that the stages ended at. We got to stage 5 (pictured above) and solved the math problem giving us the last numbers for the coordinates, they turned out to tell us that the spot where the actual cache was 1.9 miles to the west. All the other clues were within a 1/4 mile of each other, so that just had to be wrong.

As we walked back to the car Donna was reading all the log notes that I printed out and noticed that someone a couple months back had missed the same clue as we did and sort of gave us the answer. Amazing how if you figure wrong on a clue and then reuse that clue in the addition or subtraction math of another clue, the check sum still comes out correct even when your numbers are off…

After refiguring out the math using this new information we were less than a quarter of a mile away, much better. When we got to the final coordinates, it was intimately familiar, we were just there. We walked around awhile looking for the described 6″ long cylindrical cache in frustration, then as we sat on a bench deciding whether to give up this whole geocaching thing entirely, I noticed in the bush behind us a green tube. Eureka!

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 149