1st First To Find

A little over a week ago we took a drive up to the Lake of the Woods because it was a nice 35 mile trip to somewhere besides to the grocery store or some local restaurant to pick up a bit of take out. But mainly to take hike and do some geocaching.

Wouldn’t you know it, two days later, somebody published a new cache very near where we were. Donna wanted to go right back up there to try and be the First To Find. I talked her out of it to concentrate on the Friends of the Children scavenger hunt. I told her if that cache hadn’t been found after the hunt, we would try to be the 1st.

In over a decade of caching with over fourteen hundred caches found we have never been the First To Find on a cache.

We didn’t even try back in Aiken, because around there, there was a regular squad that would drop almost anything, including work, to rush out and look for newly published caches.

We were close once, really close, a second to find, on a random happenstance in Colorado. We were passing through on one of our driving trips and I had picked out some caches along our route, one of which had no finds. But, by the time we got there someone had beat us to it.

By today no one had found that Lake of the Woods cache yet, so this was the day for us to go up there and see if we could. Last time we drove up we took the Mini because it needed the exercise, but this time we drove the Miata because today was the last day it will be near a high of 70 until probably 2021.

After a little bit of searching around we found the cache. When I unfolded the log it was empty. Our 1st First to Find.

2020 Klamath Basin Scavenger Hunt

This was a week long event, put on by Friends of the Children where teams had to go all around Klamath Falls and take a selfie at various interesting or historic places. The entry fee was a $25 donation to a good cause (generational childhood poverty) and it sounded like a fun thing to do. There were daily door prizes and three Grand Prizes at the end, but they didn’t really matter to us*, because most of them were not our style prizes.

There were 42 challenges and we submitted pictures for all of them. On day one, Friday, we captured one, it was the farthest away at a place called Lake of the Woods about 35 miles northwest of us. While we were there we also walked a couple miles along the High Lakes Trail and back to find 4 geocaches. Saturday we walked downtown and back and picked up three more. Sunday was a very cold day, so in between NFL games in the afternoon we walked just a few blocks to get a couple of very local challenges. Monday was a short loop walk to grab three more that were close by. Tuesday we got in the Mini and travelled to the 9 that were really too far away to walk to. Wednesday we did a 5 mile walk all over downtown to capture 18 objectives, almost half of the overall total challenges. We finished up on Thursday by taking 3 at home, 3 by driving around in the Miata and one by walking up the hill behind our house.

You can see all our photos in the gallery I have created here on my page or if you are so inclined you could always go to the event Facebook page to see ours and everyone else’s who participated in the fun.

The picture above is probably our favorite of all we took, but we didn’t use it because the challenge said “A Blue Zones-approved restaurant and take a selfie eating there!”

*Good thing too, because we didn’t win any of the prizes…

Negative

Donna received her results on Monday bright and early, I didn’t get mine until this afternoon. So in a way I already figured what my results would be, because of our situation, whatever she was I was, sure to be as well.

SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19), DIAGNOSTIC
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Performed at: 01 – LabCorp Seattle
550 17th Avenue Ste 300
Seattle, WA 98122
Lab Director: Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx MD, Phone: XXX-XXX-XXXX
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Testing was performed using the Aptima SARS-CoV-2 assay. This nucleic acid amplification test was developed and its performance characteristics determined by LabCorp Laboratories. Nucleic acid amplification tests include PCR and TMA. This test has not been FDA cleared or approved. This test has been authorized by FDA under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). This test is only authorized for the duration of time the declaration that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of the emergency use of in vitro diagnostic tests for detection of SARS-CoV-2 virus and/or diagnosis of COVID-19 infection under section 564(b)(1) of the Act, 21 U.S.C. 360bbb-3(b) (1), unless the authorization is terminated or revoked sooner.

When diagnostic testing is negative, the possibility of a false negative result should be considered in the context of a patient’s recent exposures and the presence of clinical signs and symptoms consistent with COVID-19. An individual without symptoms of COVID-19 and who is not shedding SARS-CoV-2 virus would expect to have a negative (not detected) result in this assay.
—–
Component Results

SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) by RT-PCR
Standard Range Not Detected
Your Value Not Detected

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Collected on 10/16/2020 12:02 PM from Nasopharynx (Swab)
Resulted on 10/17/2020 10:05 PM
Result Status: Final result

Happy Election Day

Oregon was the first state to exclusively go to voting by mail by passing a measure in November 1998 by a 70% to 30% margin after starting with optional for local voting in the late eighties.

Our ballots came thru our mail slot along with a flyer for Bed Bath & Beyond on Friday afternoon. We had planned on filling them out on Saturday, but got to watching college football and didn’t get it done. So we did it this morning.

Even with all falderal from a certain President, we have zero qualms about the process because of this state’s long history with voting by mail. Still, we won’t actually mail our ballots, we dropped them into an official collection box like we did for the primary back in May. Unlike back then though, today we rode the tandem instead of walking.

When we rode into the parking lot where the drop box was, there was a young couple with their toddler standing next to it. We circled the lot a couple of times while they unloaded, then loaded back, their kid so the child could put their ballots in the slot. And all the while they snapped photos of the process to post on social media. I didn’t have a problem waiting this out at all, because I planned on that same sort of exercise for us too (see my InstaGram account.)

As we were loading back up onto the bike to leave, a fellow in a pickup truck cruised up to the box to drop in his ballot. I said to him, “Happy Election Day.” He looked at me sort of quizzically and replied, “Yeah, you too. Have a nice day.” Come to think of it, Happy Election Day does sound a little strange, but what would have been a more appropriate greeting anyway? Merry Election Day? How about “Go Democracy?” Maybe a golf style cheer, “In the Slot!”?

The only downside to the whole Vote by Mail deal is I don’t get a little “I Voted” sticker to wear around all day…