Misc Photos

The Get Away

Plan A was a bike ride this morning, but some early morning fog kept us off the roads. So we put Plan B into action, a walk along the Augusta Canal. Donna nd I were frequent visitors here back in the day when would come over with our mountain bikes. Today, we walked.

The trail along the Augusta Canal Tow Path is probably the last place left around here where we can take a walk along a path lined with a fairly high density of geocaches, with about 20 caches along it’s 5-1/2 mile length. We started our walk this morning at the canal head gates and walked a little more than a mile and a half of it. Some of the hides along the canal are really close to the water so as to be accessible by kayak as well as by walkers and cyclists. This makes for some tricky descents down the steep 7 or 8 foot drop fro the path.

I was wearing jeans and not my usual cargo pants so I had the small notebook I use to record finds and DNFs in my back pocket instead of a side pocket. When I went to log in find number three I noticed that I didn’t have the notebook. The wallet was still in that pocket, but no notebook. The last place I used it was at find #2 so we walked the couple a tenths of a mile back and scrambled down towards the water. It wasn’t there.

We turned to continue down the canal to get couple more caches and wouldn’t you know it, before we got back to cache #3, there lying on the ground on the path was the notebook. Back in the pocket it went. We passed the already found cache and made our way further along the trail to cache #4. Another scramble down the hill and number four was in hand. I reached for the notebook and it wasn’t there! The wallet was still there, but I did take the hint and stored the wallet in the knapsack for the remainder of the day.

We walked further down the trail to get one more cache and then on the way back we kept an eye out, but never did see that notebook again.

At one point along the trail there was a set of stairs that led down to the Savannah River and that is where the above photo was taken. I have never seen the river so glass-like.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1017

Picture Post

A couple of random photos from Saturday’s MMC Road Rally final destination, the Yacht Club at Grand Harbor on Lake Greenwood.

Aiken Horse Show

The above is not a photo run through some sort of plug in filter to make it look “artistic”, but an actual image captured by my digital camera (click on the image to see what it should look like.) It started today while we were at the 2011 Aiken Horse Show in Hitchcock Woods. All of a sudden the LCD on the back of the camera looked all purple and scrambly. I spun the mode dial and it cleared up. It happened again and I cleared the same way. It would crap out randomly, sometimes I’d get 10 pictures and others only a couple. After awhile nothing would get it out of “Purple Expressionist” mode, even resetting the camera to its default state. Do you think I need a new camera? I do.

So I did some shopping this evening and ended up buying another Panasonic. The recently deceased TZ3 was purchased in August of 2007 and if I can interpret the file numbering system it took 5,946 images. The new camera is a model ZS5 that is 12 megapixels instead of 7 and has a 12x zoom instead of 10 with a slightly wider angle setting of 25mm instead of 28. It has a panorama assist mode and those manual exposure controls I wanted back in 2007, but didn’t get. At 7.3oz it is 2oz. lighter and is almost exactly the same overall size. The LCD viewfinder is a bit smaller at 2.7 inches instead of 3, but that should help increase battery life. (I wonder if they use the same one?) It is black in color instead of blue, $100 cheaper and should be here Wednesday.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 984

CREEK XING


You found [Traditional Cache] Victoria Bryant State Park
The water didn’t seem too high as the Miata made it through fine with just a touch of belt squeal post creek crossing. This is our favorite park so far out of the 17 we’ve visited. We took a heart shaped BB game and left a Gingerbread Man watch. Dropped Mickey Mouse TB. TFTH


You found [Traditional Cache] Froggy
Our GPSr led us right to a likely spot. We searched and searched and came up empty handed. We read the clue, well, this spot certainly fits the description. Oh, wait, the clue applies reasonably well to the other side of the trail too. Bingo! There it was. Took nothing and left 3 frog shaped erasers. Found as part of the Georgia DeLorme Challenge (GCZ8XQ)


You found [Multi-cache] The King of Bridges!
We found this in spite of ourselves. First off, read the whole page through and secondly pay attention to what you read. I thought we needed ABCD to fill in the coords for the final so we figured with the clue included in the last paragraph we could wing it without having one of the digits. Sure enough we located the final stage only to be greeted with a combination lock! Huh? Re-read the cache description page and discovered that ABCD is for the lock and the final coords are right there on the cache page. Well we have three of the numbers, we’ll just try those and ten tugs on the hasp with the ten numbers on that last dial. Didn’t work. So we walked back to read the missing number off the green sign for B that we didn’t get on our first try. Turned around and walked back to the cache again. Entered our four numbers and it didn’t unlock. Now we are questioning our counting of reflectors on the bridge. My wife then read the questions out loud to me and when she got to D I had to do a Homer Simpson forehead slapping, “DOH!” That was the ticket. We took nothing and left a Matchbox car and a couple of pencils.


You found [Traditional Cache] Shaking Rock
We almost didn’t stop as we were tired from a long day of caching and still had many miles to get home, but boy are we glad we did. What a neat place. Left a book and took a Travel Bug. Thanks. Found as part of the Georgia County Challenge (GC1B074)

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 968

Thanks


Thanks

The photo above is submission #27 to the EnchantedCeiling web site and my last.

Dear devoted friends and readers,
     Thank you for these seven long years of support and contributions to the EnchantedCeiling project. It has been fantastic to see what you all see from both near and far.
     As of the end of this month, January, 2011, I will be closing down the upload feature of the site. The archive of photos you have collected and shared will be maintained for as long as possible (and since hosting is cheap, that should be for a long, long time!)
     I know you will all find other wonderful ways to share you view of the world. Thank you for coming here for such a wonderfully long time.
-DH.

I’m not going to really miss the site that much, most of my submissions were in the first three years of its existence, in the last three I’ve only added 7 and those were basically prompted by a reminder email from the site owner. I have those submissions and 20 more posted in a gallery on LOB.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 933

Ice Ice Baby


I assume this is a statue of a little girl, but it could be a boy because it was so cold out here this morning that my junk had sought refuge internally too and I wasn’t even standing thigh deep in ice.

It was 24 degrees out when we left the house headed to Augusta for an MMC breakfast, but first we wanted to do some geocaching. Close to the breakfast joint was a huge baptist church that had 6 caches scattered around its very large grounds. It was Saturday morning at 7 AM, so we figured we’d have the place to ourselves…wrong. They must have had a Christian Men’s Breakfast because not long after we pulled into the parking lot several cars came zipping in after us. We ended up only getting 3 of the more far flung caches before leaving because we were getting eyeballed by the new arrivals.

The church also happened to be right next door to the Hyundai dealer, so we wandered over and eyeballed some vehicles. It was confirmed that the Genesis Coupe has too big a butt for our liking.The good news is Donna approves of the Sonata in Pacific Blue which is my first pick. We both like the looks of the Accent as well. Now it comes down to some test driving, waiting until the slush fund has enough money for a decent down payment and doing the bullshit car dealer price dicker dance. Their web site listed a blue SE at $23,450, but the two they had on the lot had stickers of 26 and change and then the dealer added paint protection scam for $800, so the price for the car ended up in the high twenty seven thousand range!

After breakfast we did a bit more geocaching at a park in Augusta and then a couple more in North Augusta along the Greenway. Ended up with an even dozen finds and no DNFs, although we were close to not finding the one entitled The Secret Garden where the above photo was taken.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 926

I’ll Take Bad 60’s Hairstyles For A 1,000 Alex


What are Muttonchops?

A fellow named Lawrence Harvey Luckham who worked in a Bell Labs Data Center in the 60’s posted some photos he took at work one day on his website. He even had the nerve to post the above picture of himself…

In the 60’s I was somewhere between the ages of 5 and 15 and I don’t have any photos of myself in that time frame. I do have one that would fit the Double Jeopardy category of Bad 70’s Hairstyles, my 1973 high school yearbook photo:

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 925