Our Lucky Day

We’ve had a couple of DNFs on two of our caches down on the old US301 trail recently, so on Sunday we decided to make the drive down and see what is going on with them.

One of the caches, “Kiosk #1”, was right there at the spot where you park, but we decided to walk the 3/4 mile down the trail to the one called “Used to be Twin Stumps.” It is called “Used To Be” because at one time we had a cache there called just “Twin Stumps” for the two side-by-side tree stumps that were there. But one stump turned to sawdust and we lost the spot where the container was hidden.

I was holding the GPSr and I stopped when it read 4′ from destination. I was nowhere near a stump and and a hump of sawdust. We both looked around for where we might have hidden a cammoed waterproof matchstick holder, nothing stood out. We both mentally scratched around in our heads for a recollection of where we might have put it, nothing stood out. So walked back a ways until we found the used to be twin stumps. Still couldn’t remember where we put it, but I said, “If I was hiding something like that today, I’d put it right there.” I went over and lifted the end of a 2 foot by 4 inch diameter log and right there was the container. Donna opened it up and the log was dry, so we put it back under the log.

That log was almost 40 feet from where the GPSr said the cache should be, so I laid the unit on the log, created a new waypoint and let it sit there for a bit all the while averaging its location. While we waited I re-read over the description of the log and I had mistakenly mention that you had to climb down the embankment and to be careful. While that note is needed for one of the caches we placed on the trail, it did not apply to this one. These two things were more than enough to make someone DNF this cache, so when we got home I edited the description to say the cache was at trail level and corrected the coordinates.

When we got got to the end of the trail to check on “Kiosk #1” it was not inside the crook of the three small trees we had placed it in. It was laying on the ground right next to them. This is a 2-stage cache, the coordinates lead you to the kiosk and then to find the container you have to walk 150′ at a course of 270°. The distance is right, but maybe I don’t have the course right? We found it using that parameter, so who knows.

We were lucky in that we didn’t need to replace either container, but that is not the real lucky part. On the way to look for “Kiosk #1”, we knew that it was off in the woods to the right of the old paved road, so we took the first opportunity to get off the pavement along a little path in the weeds. I went first and Donna was a couple steps behind me. About 20 feet in I heard her behind me say, “Hey! That’s a snake! And it rattled!” I turned around and we both walked back a couple steps. Sure enough, there was a very viper-ish looking snake all curled up and the thickest part I could see looked about wrist sized. I’m not real schooled on just what kind of snake it was and I didn’t want to get close enough to take a good picture. But if in fact it was a rattlesnake we were both very lucky because we walked less that two feet from the reptile.

117 Years of Transportation

One of the categories in this years Moss Motoring Challenge if to find a car from each decade since 1900 to 2010s. The cars from the 70s to present are worth a point, but then the point value starts going up by 1 each decade going backwards to reach 7 points for a car from 1910-1919. Then it jumps a bit so that an automobile from the first decade of the twentieth century is worth 10 points.

The first photo we took in this category was worth 5 points when a coworker randomly showed up at work with her 1935 hot rod a couple of weeks ago.

Today, Donna and I went to Outback for lunch and then to Target for a little discretionary spending. As we exited the Restaurant I noticed a stanced Smurf Blue NA Miata go by on the street. I’ve familiar with that car because it used to belong to the boyfriend of our next door neighbor’s daughter. That kid sold it when he went off to college so it hasn’t been around for a while.

As we drove into the Target lot in our NB Miata I saw a gray retractable hard top NC car leaving. It was then Donna saw that same modded little blue NA and asked, “What year is that?” “90 or 91,” I said. She said, “Let’s go take a picture of it.” About that time we saw a white ND Miata drive right by the front of Target. We had now seen all four generations of the Miata in the same parking lot in a two minute span.

We looped back and took a photo of the customized NA (obviously because of the photo above) and chat with the kid who owned it, told him that we just wanted a picture of his car along side ours for a photo scavenger hunt we were doing. I had the Challenge poster in my hand and as I was showing it to him he reached for it, so I handed it to him. Seeing as he had a hold of it, I asked if he wouldn’t mind posing with it and he was game (or just to stunned that this old couple wanted a photo of his car), so I took a couple pictures, one from the front and another from the back.

How Was Your Saturday?

Decades Old Fantasy Fulfilled

Gillian AndersonBACKGROUND:
In the early Aughts when the X-Files was on TV every Sunday night I developed a little crush on Gillian Anderson. Somewhere in there I started a minor little gallery of photos that I culled from the internet. Everything from her early modeling days to then current magazines to show screen captures. If any of you were around then, and I can’t fathom that any of the tens of people of might see this now were, at one time I thought it might be fun to add one of her pictures to each of my posts. There was no correlation to whatever I was writing about to whatever picture, but anyway, it was fun for a while.

I would point you to that era if I could, but in a move from one blogging platform to another or one server to another I opted not to put the pictures back in place. The picture collection is long gone too, probably dumped in the bit bucket on a PC move or due to hard drive space requirements. I don’t have the compunction to blog stalk her with photos anymore, but somewhere deep inside my addled brain is the thought that if I wasn’t married to Donna and she wasn’t married to whoever, I’d have a chance.

THE EVENT:
I got to sleep with Gillian Anderson. Not in the same bed. Well, I don’t know, it might have been in the same bed, but it definitely wasn’t the same time. It was the same house though, well, it might have been the same house. It was on the same property, well, maybe it was the same property, but I definitely slept in the same B & B that had an autographed picture of her on their brag wall downstairs.

Using the same logic, I also got to sleep with Shirley MacLaine & Hugh Jackman. It is kind of hard to tell, but that is Shirley in the pink jacket in the photo above and to the left of Gillian and Hugh is the photo above and to the right.

Big Easy

One of the parties planned for Adele’s 90th birthday celebration was to be a champagne & chocolate fete thrown by her eldest daughter Susie. So I thought I had it made with the Hammond B&B being practically next door to the birthday girl’s house and all. This way if I had a flute or two too many, I could walk home afterwards not risking a DUI. I was also hoping not to have to drive into New Orleans and thought maybe I wouldn’t have to, as Donna was not to pleased after our last trip in 2012 to the town where she last lived before joining Uncle Sam’s Yacht Club.

Sunday afternoon, not long after arriving in Hammond both hopes are dashed summarily when I was informed the Champagne & Chocolate party was going to take place in the Big Easy’s Garden District. Susie and her husband John were renting a house in New Orleans so they had a place for them and their two adult daughters that was a little more cosmopolitan and more to their liking than Hammond. And when I say house, its not just any old house, it is owned by a native New Orleanian artist and decorated in a style that would probably be too funky in any other town in America. It is kind of over the top, but so far over it worked. VRBO Listing

The party was slated to run from 1-4 PM, so we decided on a 2 o’clock arrival. We left Hammond about ten o’clock and instead of taking I-55 due south, we opted to take the somewhat scenic route of LA-22 west around Lake Maurepas before catching I-10 east into the city. We had three goals in the French Quarter to take care of before making our way over to the party. First up was lunch real Louisiana gumbo for Donna and red beans and rice for me. Then we needed to make our way to Aunt Sally’s for pralines, one for dessert and a box to bring home as souvenirs. Last up were some beignets from Cafe du Monde. This one didn’t work out so well. Because it was mid-day the place was jammed with tourists1 and the line was real long for a table. We then though maybe we’d just get an order to go, but that line was even longer…maybe next time. We did get a chance to stroll along river on the Moon Walk for a bit and I took the obligatory photo of the St Louis Cathedral and one of the Mighty Mississippi.

Awwww Mom!

Even though this morning’s temperature was borderline freezing, Donna and I still bike rode over to our usual Sunday breakfast spot, Ridgecrest Coffee Bar for a panini. We were the only folks in the place until we were just about finished and a family of five came through the front door.

It was a man and woman probably around 30-years old, two boy kids maybe 5 & 6 and a infant in one of those car seats with a basket handle. The parents had on puffy vests, car seat infant was under a blanket, but the kids were just in flannel shirts. As the group approached the counter, the younger of the two kids, noticing the sliding window behind it, said, with as much exasperation as a person that age can muster, “They have a drive-thru!”

I’m not sure whether his annoyance was because he had to get out of the car and walk 15 feet to the door (in the cold) or because this was the first time in his life he had ever been in a restaurant that had a drive-thru and and they hadn’t used it.