A Tradition Like No Other

I’ve had nine previous posts here on LoB on this subject and pretty much everyone of them starts out with me saying that we don’t play golf1 and really only watch one golf tournament a year and the Masters is that one.

This is because we have actually trod the hallowed grounds of Augusta National. We moved to Aiken, SC in May of 1989 and when we found out that you could pay a measly $5 and get in to see a practice round2 in the first full week in April of 1990 we took that Monday off and went over. We got there early, walked the whole course, ate a $1.00 palmetto cheese sandwich and drove home. That weekend we watched, just to see where we had been and it has become a tradition like no other ever since.

We did go back over a few times over few years until they instituted a lottery and we stopped getting picked. One year my brother (who does golf) came down to visit and he was fun to walk around with. He could tell us the names of the pros (and some of their history at the course) we would see as we wondered about. Another year my sister came down with her husband (who also golfs) and wanted to camp at at certain locations to watch as the players golfed through. That was in 1995 and I know that because that is when the photo above was taken.

And the only reason I still have that photo is because it is in one of five directories that are remnants of the Seattle FilmWorks era when you would get prints back and for a small fee, a copy in that new fangled digit format, in a staggering 640 x 480 pixel size. As you can see, the images leave a lot to be desired, but it was whiz-bang back in the day.

Here is another one to gaze at in wonder,
me in front of the famous scoreboard:

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Just Going To Keep Pretending I Won Edition of SORT.
As of Monday, November 9, 2020 at 9:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
2020 Chevrolet Corvette 2002 Jeep Wrangler X 2002 BMW M5
When the configurator first came online I went over to check it out and this is exactly how I spec’d mine. Bright Yellow makes it easy to find when I’ve gone way off trail. Just needs a hard top for Oregon’s winter. I might be taking a risk with the 141k miles, but it’ll be worth it until something expensive breaks.

Happy 31st Miataversary

Thirty-one years ago today, after a 108 day wait (story here) I drove home from Augusta, Georgia to Aiken, South Carolina in my first Miata. That’s me and it in New Orleans, Louisiana about a month later when we drove it down to visit Donna’s family for Christmas.

At The Car Wash

Took advantage of the next to last nice day (tomorrow probably is the last nice day until spring) to wash both cars. The CTBNL needed it because we recently parked under a tree and there was lots of little sticky sap spots all over it. The Lady Bug needed it just on general principle (looks like the last time it got a wash was May!)

The next time the Miata gets washed will probably be April. The next time the Mini gets washed it will be at a local automated place.

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…