I Thought It Was OK

I received a couple of emails this evening that they are disabling a couple of my geocaches in Hitchcock Woods. I’m not the only one either, there were two other caches that got the same treatment.

The email cited a Hitchcock Woods Foundation rule that there only be three caches in the Woods. At the Aiken Horse Show this past spring I spoke to the Woods Superintendent and he knew of the rule. When I told him that there were already six or seven in place, he shrugged and said he didn’t mind and felt that there could even be more. He wants the woods to be used and geocaching was a good use. His only concern was that when they do controlled burns some caches could get ruined in the process. With out a direct denial that I couldn’t place any more caches in the Woods, I took that as permission to go ahead and do it, but don’t blame him if they got torched.

Cool I thought, as Captain Barbossa said, “The code is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.”

Well, as it turns out in this case, the rules were just that, rules.

I’m saddened by this development because there are 2,000 acres of forest with plenty of room for more than just 3 caches, but the Woods are the property of the Hitchcock Foundation and they have the right to set rules and limits on the use of their land.

By my count there are currently eleven caches in the woods (my four, plus seven more.) So far there have only been 4 disabled (2 of mine), I hope this is done fairly, so four more are disabled, leaving only three. And the three that stay should be the 3 oldest, even though this means all 4 of the caches I’ve placed have to come out.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 328

Eleven For Eleven

Donna has had her eye on a caching series called Color Code for awhile that is in North Augusta. It is a group of nine micro sized containers, each having a cute title that includes a color name. On the first page of the log of each of them is a word you need to write down. When you find all of the caches those words are used to help you locate a large mystery cache somewhere else in the city.

What started this morning as a simple trip to Georgia to buy a Mega Millions lottery ticket turned into a 4 hour, 100 mile cache-a-thon. It might have been shorter in both time and distance had we planned to do the whole thing, because we would have mapped them out, but it all started as, “Let’s try one or two of these and see how we do.” Then went to, “Hey, that was fun, let’s do another.” To, “Keep going.” To, “Let’s just finish these nine and do the final one another day.” All the way to, “It is only a two mile walk.”

The micro series and the bonus cache gave us ten for the day and it was time past time to go get some lunch, so we started back towards the car. Part way there I serendipitously looked down at the GPSr. Yikes! There’s a little treasure chest looking thing right on the screen near here. Fired up the PDA, read the description, peeked at the clue and proceeded to look about. Found it.

In a totally unrelated note, Big Papi clears the air (in his head) by holding press conference today in New York to explain about his testing positive for steroids in 2003. His answer stuns the world, “I don’t know how it happened.” Mr. Clean swears he didn’t take any steroids, but he might not have been too careful about the supplements he was taking. His teammates, in a stunning show of support, go out and are nearly no-hit against the Yankees. They end up with a whopping total of 4 singles and lose the game 5-0, dropping 5-1/2 games behind the MFY in the AL East.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 327

Wonder Where My Wonder Bread Went?

Now that Hats Off To Caching in SC is in the field, and found, it is time to think about hiding another. My new favorite caching inspiration, Renzo Tobias, has second puzzle for a mystery cache on his site that I think I might imitate called Grocery List. He used it on a cache called Food Glorious Food and it has a way of checking if your coordinates are correct, so this way we would know if the answers we come up with are right and then we can build our own version.

As usual when we went through the questions, I got some right off, Donna got some quickly and we struggled over a couple. Tonight we did our weekly grocery shopping and as well as picking up the stuff we needed, we shopped for the items we solved for on Renzo’s grocery list to find out what number the given ingredient was, so we could solve the puzzle.

Kroger didn’t carry our answer to clue ‘C’: Not a cracker nor will it help change a tire. But a visit to the Cracker Jack’s web site told me that soy lecithin was ingredient number 9.

Clue ‘H’ reads: Curiously the red, blue, and yellow spots make us hand over extra dough? Kroger also doesn’t stock Wonder Bread, so if you are out shopping and your local store carries WB leave the ingredient number niacin is in the comments.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 326

This Is Sad

At the MMC monthly meeting tonight everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Most of the time was spent on future event planning, where we hammered out the details for the next couple of month’s. Like what restaurant we would be holding the next 2 meetings at and where we would meet for the monthly breakfast. Then something odd happened, one member had the audacity to suggest a car related event…

When I got home from the meeting I turned on the ballgame and the FRS were beating the MFY 3 to 1 after 3-1/2 innings. The Yankees then scored 8 runs in the bottom of the 4th inning and it has been downhill every since. I wonder if it is too early to call in sick for tomorrow?

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 324

High School Reunion

My wife and I were sitting at a table at my high school reunion, and I kept staring at a drunken lady swigging her drink as she sat alone at a nearby table.

My wife asked, “Do you know her?”

“Yes,” I sighed, “She’s my old girlfriend. I understand she took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear she hasn’t been sober since.”

“My God!” says my wife, “who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?”

Applying For Social Security

After retiring, I went to the Social Security office to apply for Social Security. The woman behind the counter asked me for my driver’s license to verify my age… I looked in my pockets and realized I had left my wallet at home. I told the woman that I was very sorry, but I would have to go home and come back later.

The woman said, “Unbutton your shirt.” So I opened my shirt revealing my curly silver hair. She said, “That silver hair on your chest is proof enough for me.” She processed my Social Security application.

When I got home, I excitedly told my wife about my experience at the Social Security office.

She said, “You should have dropped your pants. You might have gotten disability, too.”

Foul Weather Fisherman

Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch, grabbed the dog, and slipped quietly into the garage. I hooked up the boat up to the truck, and proceeded to back out into a torrential downpour. The wind was blowing 50 mph, so I pulled back into the garage, turned on the radio, and discovered that the weather would be bad all day.

I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed. I cuddled up to my wife’s back, now with a different anticipation, and whispered, “The weather out there is terrible.”

My loving wife of 10 years replied, “Can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that?”