17% Done

When I said there were 63 pages to the South Carolina DeLorme Challenge I was wrong. The last map appears on page 63, but the first 15 pages of the book have other information, the first map page is #16. That means there are only 48 pages to find caches on.

We already have eight of forty-eight done, so we are almost 17% finished. Well really, if we stick to having separate caches for each of the challenges, we are only 7 of 48 because the one lonely find we have over in Summerton, Woodside Wonder, is eligible for use in Clarendon County and DeLorme Page #47.

It probably won’t be lonely for long though, got a breakfast meet at the Cracker Barrel in Florence with cousin Laurie on Sunday. I predict more counties and pages will be gotten this weekend.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 388

Brian & Donna Buy A Lottery Ticket

We needed a renewal on Retirement Plan B, so we made a trip to Georgia to buy a chance at the next ten drawings of Mega Millions. Augusta is about fifteen miles away as the crow flies, but our round trip was 200 miles long.

It included a route that took us through the South Carolina counties of McCormick and Edgefield. You can guess why the long circuitous route, geocaching, but what was the significance of the counties? It was because of the South Carolina County Challenge. If you find a cache in every one of South Carolina’s forty-six counties, you will get the coordinates to this bonus 47th cache and then you can add this “prestigious” goal to your caching resume. Eight down, thirty-eight to go.

On our way home we stopped in at Books-A-Million to buy something that will help us accomplish a sister challenge to the county one, the South Carolina DeLorme Challenge. You buy a $20 book and you have to find a cache on each of the 63 pages it takes to cover the state to get the coords for the final mystery cache and another trophy for the mantle.

The rules don’t disallow using the same cache in both challenges, but to us that would seem like cheating, so we will be getting at least 109 more caches in South Carolina. I’m willing to bet it will be a lot more than that.

I only wish we knew of this stuff back a few years ago when we were going on those Post Office Photography Safaris.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 388

Boyd Pond

Boyd PondWe spent a pleasant morning traipsing through the woods surrounding Boyd Pond today. Boyd Pond is a recreation area slash park that is southwest of Aiken and when we first moved here it was available only to employees of the Big Bomb Plant, but now it is open to every Tom, Dick & Harry (I think.) There is a switchback laden trail on the east side of the lake for hiking and biking along with a straighter, shorter nature trail. On the west side is a park with a boat launch, picnic tables, playgrounds and softball fields. We did all 5 caches here, 3 east and two west while walking 4-1/2 miles.

Lunch was outside at Moe’s watching the Whiskey Road traffic zoom by and the afternoon was spent watching Season 7 Disc 2 of West Wing. Only 15 episodes left…

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 386

Really Expensive Pedometer II

Have I mentioned lately that my GPSr isn’t working? I thought so. We are approximately 4 days into the 12 to 15 working days before our repaired unit is scheduled to be returned to us.

Two working days into the process we knew we wouldn’t be able to make it that long. We bought a new Garmin eTrex Vista? HCx from Walmart online and had it shipped to us. The UPS man dropped it on the doorstep this afternoon.

This is a slightly upgraded unit compared to the one that is broken and in for repair. It has a micrSD slot so there can be a lot more stuff stored in the unit, like gigabytes worth instead of just 24 Meg. It has an electric compass, so when I stop befuddled in the middle of the woods while looking for a cache, the needle will still be pointing at the cache instead flopping around. It has a barometric altimeter, so I will know how high we are above sea level (which the Venture does too when the topo maps are used) or maybe when there is an approaching storm. It also has the ability to give point to point on road directions like a Tom Tom or similar, but we probably will never use that feature.

There are ammo cans shaking in there hiding spots just knowing we are back in the game again.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 386

Should I Update My Will?

A distraught senior citizen phoned her doctor’s office.

“Is it true,” she wanted to know, “that the medication you prescribed has to be taken for the rest of my life?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” the doctor told her.

There was a moment of silence before the senior lady replied, “I’m wondering then, just how serious my condition is, this prescription is marked ‘NO REFILLS’.”

4.5 Months To Go

Until Season 6 of TDTVS. They are already filming episodes in Hawaii and like the junkie I am I’m already reading the spoilers…

I had downloaded all the Season 5 vids from a back alley of the interweb and burned them onto DVDs. I lent these out to a co-worker a couple of weeks ago and yesterday he came up to me and asked what he needed to do to get another set of discs. Seems he has misplaced them. He has turned his office, home and cars inside out with no luck. Curiously a Neflix disc of Air Bud: Golden Receiver (AKA: Air Bud II) is also missing from his possession. Coincidence, I think not.

This Sunday is Episode 5 of TDTVS2 and AMC is going to run a mini-marathon of the first 4 episodes leading into numero cinco. Guess where I’ll be from 6:00PM until 11:00PM?

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 385

The Monkey Needs More Soap

Sometime over the weekend I got something stuck between a couple of back teeth. Rigorous flossing removed the offending piece of food stuff. Later that day I poked my tongue back there and felt something sharp. And a hole. Great, I probably busted the edge of a tooth that was probably mostly filling. Visions of expensive crowns danced in my head.

Fortunately it only ached a little back there, not hurt, and it was sensitive to temperature. Tuesday I called the dentist and they had just had a cancellation for Wednesday at 11:00AM. Today was my lucky day. Turns out I had broke out an existing filling, so they just had to clean out the hole, scrape off a little tooth material and pack the hole full of Mighty Putty.

Our Dirty Monkey is really a lotion dispenser, but we use him for hand soap.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 383