Geocaching

Chimney Rock

Chimney RockSpent most of the day with sister Diane and husband Allen.

We started the day at Chimney Rock Park where we spent about 3 hours walking up, around and about on the trails and stairs there. Lunch was on the outside deck at a small Mexican place in the neighboring town of Lake Lure where Donna and I had eaten a couple years ago on a fall leaf peeping expedition. It was as good as we remembered it.

From there we made another run to their now revealed secret hideaway. We drove around, got a tour of a model home where the decorating budget was probably more than the cost of our home in Aiken. Allan then took a look at a different lot and spent several minutes talking to the developer’s son trying to work a deal.

After a two hour break for afternoon naps we went back into downtown Hendersonville to see the end of the big plant & flower show and get some dinner. Two words: West First. Best pizza since, well, ever.

Between yesterday and today we are 6 for 6 in geocaches. Five of which Diane & Allen have done with us (we may have converts on our hands.) Tomorrow on the trip home we may do a few, weather permitting.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 209

Time Travel

I went outside to get the paper this morning and discovered I had been magically transported to November. It was cold, well relatively, anyway. We even put the top up on the way to work and probably will again tomorrow when it is supposed to be in the middle 40s.

Tonight when we went out to pay bills we grabbed two on the other side of Aiken. Both of these were considered small in size. We are slowly integrating the smaller hides into our repertoire. We were six out of nine geocaching on Saturday morning with the fifth one being find #100. The three missed were in the small category, but we weren’t totally hopeless at that size, two of the six finds were considered small.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 198

Sheetrock Fairy

We returned the dead battery to the dealer in Columbia. The fellow was supposed to charge us 9 bucks for a core charge the other day, but he waived it and asked that we bring the battery back whenever it was convenient for us. Well, it probably would never be convenient, but it was an excuse to go caching.

I picked out a few along the route there and a bunch more once we got to the capital city. First stop was Leesville. From the description and clues we figured it would have been an easy find, we were wrong. after a couple of passes with the GPS we were getting frustrated. To make matters worse, today was the town’s annual Poultry Festival and people started showing up looking for a place to park to get to the festival area, so we logged a DNF. There were two other caches in Leesville, but we went ahead and marked them for a return visit some time when it was quieter.

The next one was up the road about ten miles and it was another that sounded easy and ended up as a DNF. Number three was in Lexington in a small patch of woods and after poking around in the forest floor for 5 minutes we started to seriously doubt our geocaching abilities. Donna wanted to toss our electronics into the nearby pond.

After dropping off the battery at the Mazda dealer we headed to downtown to take a second pass at a cache we DNF last month just before starting on vacation even with the help of Donna’s sister Sandy and a helpful building employee. In another bit a bad timing, we couldn’t find a place to park close by and there were lots of people roaming the area because there was an event at the nearby civic center. Once again we couldn’t find a regular sized container inside a 5′ x 25′ garden.

Good thing we found the next three we attempted or I would have helped Donna throw the GPS and PDA into the nearest body of water.

When we got home I realized we had been visited by the Sheetrock Fairy. There leaning against the side of the house was a partial sheet of drywall, a box of screws, a roll of tape and a bucket of mud.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 189

How Was Your Day?

I need to swap the bedroom set to the summer bedroom. I need to clean the pine pollen off the back deck. The garbage disposal in the kitchen has stopped working, so I need to take it apart and see what has jammed it up. I still have 12 days of vacation photos sort through.

So what did I do today? We went geocaching, on a Time Speed Distance Rally with the MMC, watched two episodes of West Wing and I’m listening to the FRS on the internet.

Oh, and I have to order a new battery for the Miata.

We finished a disappointing tied for fifth (out of 6 cars) in the rally this morning. We made one error due to a misleading statement from the rally masters misinterpretation and another because of a missed a clue. We felt that we had kept track of the time and mileage overruns, but even subtracting them from our totals we were still way over and lost big points. The capper was I worked a pounds to kilogram conversion the wrong way and blew the bonus question.

After lunch at the BBQ place one of the Club members had left his lights on and the car wouldn’t start. That is a picture of three of us trying to push start him. After about 4 or 5 attempts we gave up on that and went inside to see about borrowing some jumper cables. The jump start work its magic and off he went.

On the way home Donna and I stopped at a quick stop store in south Augusta to get a bottled water and a Sprite. When we got back in the car I turned the key and was met with silence. Hmm, did I have the clutch all the way in? Tried again and still nothing, but radio display flashed as I went by. The dome light was on, so I figured it wasn”t a dead battery. Funny thing was that with the ignition switch in the ACC position the radio display would flash and there was a clicking sound (like 2 relays) coming from the instrument cluster.

Pulled out the cell phone and called Rudy (AKA Clunk) (or is it Thunk) and his first thought was battery, even after I described the symptoms. He said hold on, I’ll get the truck and come take a look. Thirty minutes later Rudy and Patti pull up. He brought some wrenches so we could remove the battery and (for what I figured was for testing purposes) the battery out of his Mazdaspeed Miata. We swapped batteries and the car started right up. According to Rudy the newer batteries don’t give you any warning, like they used to in the olden days. now they just up and die. We called a couple places to see if they had any batteries for the car and one said we don’t carry ’em, called the dealer and the other had one, but for $90 and he was all the way on the other side of town. Rudy has his truck and Patti just got a new Lexus, so he let me babysit his battery for a while.

It is still going to cost a hundred bucks or so for the battery, but it won’t be a generic replacement from Autozone, it’ll be a quality Westco replacement that is designed for the Miata.

Thanks Rudy.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 180

Blogger’s Night Off

The barbed wire fence was little deterrent as this water tank along NM14 and it got a very colorful paint job. There was a geocache just a little further north along the fence.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 178

Going Paperless

Didn’t have time to work up a post tonight because I’m busy playing with my new toy, a HP iPAQ HX2495b. We borrowed a PDA to use on vacation for paperless geocaching and liked it so much that I bought on off fleabay. I got one with the bigger battery, so it should be interesting to see how long it will run compared to the borrowed unit. It didn’t come with a stylus (through oversight or on purpose by the seller), so right now I’m using a q-tip with the fuzz cut off to navigate around. I wrote the seller and we’ll see if he drops one in the mail or I have to buy one.

I also started weeding out some of the 551 pictures we took on vacation to get it down to some sort of managable level for posting online here and sharing with friends and coworkers (without boring them too much more than it already will just by its mention.)

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 176

Aiken, SC

0 miles from home.

Easy flight back, we started to get some heavy turbulence somewhere over middle America, so the pilot got clearance to fly at a higher altitude. When we got up there, there must have been a better tailwind because we spent only 2:55 in the air as opposed to the scheduled 3-1/2 hours.

We used that extra thirty-five minutes to catch 3 quick caches on the way home, 2 in Fort Mill and another in Blythewood. There were still a couple left on the GPSr to do, but we could only put off the inevitable so long, we came straight home from number three.

Sorry for the Travel Bug follow the route link yesterday, didn’t realize you had to be a member and log in to see the map. So here is an image you can see – take a look.

The first things we did when we got here was for Donna to mow the weeds in both the front and back yard while I blew the piles of oak pollen clusters off the deck and the driveway. Then the Emperor got a much needed bath. The poor boy spend the last 2 weeks parked outside the Charlotte Airport Holiday Inn and there was a nice layer of baked on pine pollen on all his horizontal surfaces.

Tomorrow it is back to reality.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 176