The night time is not the right time.
Tried to go for two quick caches today. First one was easy. The second one was described as follows:

Difficulty: 3 out of 5 Terrain: 3 out of 5

The path to the cache brings you through an old cemetary. The short hike up to the top is not too challenging but the views at the top are worth it.

The cache is a tupperware container located off the beaten path so muggles shouldn't be a big problem. Requires a little bushwacking but not too bad. There are some great views of Swanzey and Mt. Monadnock so bring a camera.

My experience with it:

Found It! June 30 by Max Jerome (107 found)
This one required a lot more work than I anticipated.

I spent an exorbitant amount of time trying to find the cemetery. I went circling around Talbot Hill Road for a long time, then went further down the road to the wrong cemetery which, oddly enough, has a trail behind it. I think it's private property though. Then I finally found the correct cemetery on a road I initially thought was someone's driveway. Would have been nice if they had some sort of sign by the road.

I never found the beaten path from the cemetery. I found it best to stick close to a stone wall that brought you near the top.

Once I reached the top, the first place I looked had the cache. Sweet! There were some cobwebs in the hiding spot, too. Guess no one has been here for a while. :) TNLNSL.

I never found a path from the top back to the bottom. I was kinda freaking out on my way back down because it was getting dark and there was some dense foliage and I was having trouble seeing where I was supposed to be going. I waypointed my car, so I knew I was going in the right direction, but no trail + darkness + scary monsters potentially living in the woods (lol... I did spot a deer, though) = heightened sense of danger. Or something. Definitely not a cache to do around sunset. :P

TFTC. I'll bring a flashlight next time.

Not fun at all. I gotta stop putting myself in panic situations.

This is going to be a great weekend for geocaching. If things go my way, I'll be up early tomorrow and attempt some inner city micros. Then, I have an early morning haircut appointment back in Hillsboro. After a quick stop home, I'll then head out east of Concord to the Epsom-Pittsfield-Northwood area and hopefully bag a dozen or so caches.

I'm not sure how Sunday will unfold, but I'm sure I'll bag a few more in the Concord area. They're a ton of new ones there every week!

I don't expect to be busy Monday. Since we do business-to-business stuff, a lot of our partners probably won't even show up to work. I suspect a half day at the office, probably with lots of cleaning involved. I'm thinking of heading northwest after work and finding four or five caches in the Bellows Falls area.

Tuesday, barring any sudden drinking and BBQ plans (and even still, I might not go), I'll head down to Winchendon, MA for a rematch. Those sons of bitches have it coming.

Some time later that week, my sidekick is getting a canoe. There's a cache on the island in the lake next to his house. Wicked.

I don't really know what my goal is at this point, but at my rate, it's not unrealistic for me to aim for 200 by the end of the geocaching season. Or maybe even the first day of fall if I really bust balls. Ooph. Tuesday Funnies
For my boys from RPI:

Comprehending Engineers

Comprehending Engineers - Lesson one
To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Comprehending Engineers - Lesson two
A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. The engineer fumed, "What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!" The doctor chimed in, "I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude!" The pastor said, "Hey, here comes the greens keeper. Let's have a word with him." [dramatic pause] "Hi George. Say, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow, aren't they?" The greens keeper replied, "Oh, yes, that's a group of blind firefighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime." The group was silent for a moment. The pastor said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight." The doctor said, "Good idea. And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there's anything he can do for them." The engineer says, "Why can't these guys play at night?"

Comprehending Engineers - Lesson three
There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multimillion dollar machines. They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine to work but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "X" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and stated, "This is where your problem is." The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges. The engineer responded briefly: One chalk mark: $1.00. Knowing where to put it: $49,999.00

Comprehending Engineers - Lesson four
What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers? Mechanical Engineers build weapons, Civil Engineers build targets.

Comprehending Engineers - Lesson five
"Normal people ... believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet."

Comprehending Engineers- Lesson six
An architect, an artist and an engineer were discussing whether it was better to spend time with the wife or a mistress. The architect said he enjoyed time with his wife, building a solid foundation for an enduring relationship. The artist said he enjoyed time with his mistress, because of the passion and mystery he found there. The engineer said, "I like having both." "Both?" Engineer: "Yeah. If you have a wife and a mistress, they will each assume you are spending time with the other woman, and you can go to the lab and get some work done."

Comprehending Engineers- Lesson seven
An engineer was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess." He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week." The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want." Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess, that I'll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?" The engineer said, "Look I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog...now that's cool."

Geocaching Pics
I've got a few. Mostly in reference to this earlier post:

Older:
* The front of a typical USA geocoin
* The back of a typical USA geocoin

Cache #1 (Stumpy's) revisted:

* My car. I took this pic because I wanted to compare it to five years ago, but I think I parked in a different spot.
* The cache itself.
* The "You found me!" letter. (five years ago)
* Our log entry five years ago.
* My log entry this past week.
* The Compass Rose 2005 geocoin. It doesn't actually say "CoinsAndPins.com" across it. I couldn't get a good pic of it because it's too shiny, so I snagged it straight from their site. :P I'm thinking of getting myself a milestone coin from them.

Cache #100 (Bear Caves):

* The enterance sign.
* The cache itself. Behold the power of beans!
* My log entry.
* Cliffside. I started off somewhere in the trees.
* Another cliff. I ended up scaling that. Not straight up scaling, but I had to get up it somehow.

I found my first "nano cache" this morning. I'll get a pic of it next week, but to give you an idea, it's about the diameter of my pinky and 1/4th of an inch long. Ridiculously small. You can only initialize the log! I hope this trend doesn't catch on. In need of a nemesis.
I'm getting kinda antsy sitting here doing nothing in my apartment. There's stuff I could do -- like get food at the grocery store -- but that's not exactly an exciting option. Had I gotten up at 6 AM like I originally intended to, I could have made an effort to find the three or four micros in Central Keene. However, I was shorted sleep most of the week and decided to sleep in. I think I was in bed before 10 PM last night (no partying) and up at 9 AM. Woo. Apparently, I needed it. Good thing I hit 100 earlier in the week, 'cause I just don't have the drive in me today.

It's kinda cloudy, but supposedly it's gonna be thunderstormy and rainy. But I can't really believe anything weather.com tells me anymore. They said there was a 100% chance of rain when I woke up, and about 90% for the rest of the day. It didn't rain at all! It hasn't rained since I woke up! What the hell?

Even still, cloudy weather can make crappy reception, so though I kinda wanna go play in the woods, I'm gonna have trouble finding anything. Plus I should probably give myself a day off. But there lies the conundrum: I have nothing to do here sitting in my apartment. Mother's PC is as good as it's gonna get until I get an operating system disc. Hiking at least gets me out of the house, but if I go hiking, I need a goal (a cache), but with a greater probability of failure (poor GPS readings), it seems pretty fruitless. Son of a...

I think my next goal will be to get 100 in a summer (138 lifetime), but if I got 39 in 22 days, I don't think it will be much of a challenge. :) I decided to secretly race against another geocacher as to who can get the most lifetime caches by the end of the "season." He doesn't know this yet, but he's got almost 20 caches on me, so it's an interesting goal for me to strive for. After all, he's not gonna stop geocaching any time soon, so the gap is going to continually grow and shrink. I don't really want to tell him, either, because I have a large enough gap to try and overcome. :) This guy seems to hike as regularly as me, but because I was so adamant about getting to 100, the rate at which he finds caches is less frequent than mine. He appears to have a life outside of caching, so it's not like I'm competing against one of those retired people with 3,000 finds under their belt where locating under 15 caches a day is considered "a crappy outing." Though I'm not entirely sure I can win this secret race (he sometimes has spurts where he'll find ten or so in a day), it does keep things fresh and interesting for me. To my advantage, I have access to the Concord area, where people are placing new caches on a weekly (almost daily!) basis. Really saves on gas.

I guess I could always upload my pics from earlier in the week... I'll think about it. I might not necessarily do it, but I'll think about it. :) I could really use some canned air.
Pics have to wait. I have more pressing business to take care of. Namely, my mother's broke-ass computer.

Despite the trip home Monday to get a cable and adapter so I can use my monitor with her PC, I still neglected to bring back some sort of recovery CD. Well, one that would work on her PC, anyway. The one I brought with me on Sunday didn't do anything. I then tried to get a hold of someone locally to let me borrow a functional CD, but it turns out I wouldn't need it after I ripped the hard drive from her case and slapped it into mine. My PC automatically fixed it up when Windows tried to load and noticed something was awry with her hard drive. Sweet.

I was able to recover everything off of it. I made a backup DVD for my mother. I installed the 300 GB drive into my machine and copied everything off of my 120 GB drive onto it. Some point tonight, I'll nuke everything off of the 120 GB drive and have it ready to do a clean install of Windows when I go home tomorrow. The 40 GB drive will get nuked clean after everything on the 120 GB is set straight. Or maybe I'll play baseball with it. We'll see.

What's also neat is that I somehow miraculously got her hard drive out of her PC case without resorting to physical violence. I'm not sure how the hell I did it, but I saved $40 in the process because I can bring the new case I bought on Sunday back. Whee. I'll turn around and spend that money on more memory, because 256 MB for a WinXP machine just isn't kosher. No, Sir. And the day is mine!

Posted a Note June 21 by Max Jerome (99 found)
Five years ago today, a friend introduced me to the world of geocaching and we (raisins and I) set out for this cache and found it. Today, I decided to repeat that journey.

It wasn't quite like I remembered; I think I parked in a different spot than last time. Regardless, I recognized the cache location upon sight.

The cache is in good condition, and the original sheet explaining what geocaching is is still ok. It was neat to read my 5-year-old log book entry. The cache wasn't hidden at all, but there didn't seem to be any nearby sticks or leaves to cover it up with. Hmm...

Once again, I dropped off a deck of cards. Since there wasn't an "any" key to take this time, I took the geocoin instead.

Thanks for the memories. :)

Now, it's time to get find #100...

Found It! June 21 by Max Jerome (100 found)
I wanted my 100th find to be somewhat of a challenge. I was thinking of doing the Monadnock cache this weekend, but since today marks my 5-year geocaching "anniversary," what better way to celebrate by not only visiting my first cache, but to hit a milestone as well?

The hike up was... uh... different. Not a big fan of unmarked trails. :P I somewhat made my own route towards the end. I kinda tried to wrap around the cliff sides using (what I thought was) the trail instead of going straight up from the bottom at 200 feet away. Worked out in the end, but I nicked myself in a couple spots. Chicks dig scars so it'll work out. ;)

TNLNSL. Thanks!

Cache #100 (Bear Caves) could possibly have been the hardest hike to a cache I've done to date. It's either the hardest or second hardest. There was a cache in Pawtuckaway State Park (Devil's Den) that was also quite the challenge to get to.

Kinda tired right now... I'll post some pics tomorrow.

I should get hammered, too, while I'm at it. Woo! 100! Tuesday Funnies

Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a US radio personality who dispenses advice to people who call in to her radio show.

Recently (years ago actually), she said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance.

The following is an open letter to Dr. Laura penned by a US resident, which was posted on the Internet. It's funny, as well as informative:

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the other specific laws and how to follow them.

1. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbours. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual cleanliness - Lev.15:19-24. The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.

4. Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

5. I have a neighbour who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? -Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev.20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your devoted disciple and adoring fan,
Jack

I'm broken.
When we play frisbee at work, me and this other guy I play with do all sorts of crazy throws and catches and stuff. We've mastered the art of skipping it off the ground. We sometimes can throw it underhand vertically or horizontally. Usually, we just skip it off the ground and I catch it behind the back or he catches it between the legs. Best catch ever: I skipped it off the ground and as he ran for it, he jumped up and caught it between his legs. Fuckin' money.

Anyhoo, as to why I'm broken: every now and then, there's an attempt to skip the frisbee but the frisbee gets too much air under it so it never hits the ground in a timely matter, skidding out a couple feet from the other person. Sometimes, though, the frisbee will skip about two feet from the intended target. I usually stop low frisbees with my foot, but this one throw skipped at the last second and hit me right above the ankle. This happens a lot, actually, but there was one toss this past Friday that hurt me good. I have a 2" bruise because of it. Ow.

My right hand is cut in four spots. I bought an air conditioner today, and as I installed into my window, I forgot that one shouldn't touch the backside of the air conditioner. Ever. Sliced my pinky good, and I have multiple scrapings on and around my thumb. I finally got to break out the first-aid kit my mom got me when I moved into my apartment. It works. Doesn't hurt much, but my hand doesn't look too pleasant, either. Chicks dig dudes with scars, though, so maybe it'll work out.

I like the fact that, you know, the air conditioner keeps things cool, but the flip side of that is that I have no view from my apartment. My kitchen window is a half-window above my heater, so I can't see out of it. Not much to see, anyway. The fire escape is right there. And my bedroom window is about a foot from some run-down shed thing. Nothing to see there. My living room overlooked a brook, and I liked listening to the water flow and whatnot. Now I can't see it or hear it, because that's where the air conditioner is. Damnit.

(More dated pics here.)

It's advised not to use an extension cord for one's air conditioner. Unfortunately, I don't have a choice. I have very few outlets, and the only ones in my living room are on the opposite wall of the window. Even worse, the only three-pronged outlet in my place is in my bedroom, to the left of bed. Right now, I have a three-pronged surge protector running from the side of my bed to the living room, and the air conditioner's plug spanning the living room floor to the surge protector. That's wrong for so many reasons. I'll have to pick up a plug adapter at Home Depot after work in the coming days.

Maybe after I heal. The hunt continues.
Interesting weekend.

Friday involved drinking, air pistols, and learning how to drive a stick. You know, the usual. I didn't get incredibly hammered since I had to drive back home (and someone else back home. Hence the stick-shift driving.). Wasn't sure how early I had to be awake Saturday. Still didn't have an answer by the time I went to bed. Or when I woke up at 6 AM.

No response by then meant I slept some more, and I eventually made a bizarre commute back home that was reminiscent of when the Sullivan Bridge was taken out and it turned my 30-minute commute to a 75-minute one. There was a bunch of oddball geocaches that weren't near any other caches. I decided to visit them this afternoon. Had I done a nearby cluster, I could have hit that 100 mark, but patience is a virtue. Nothing particularly magical happened at any of theses caches. I went 3 for 4. And it figures that the one I missed was the most isolated of the four, had the steepest incline, and the longest hike in. Damnit. I'll be back. Maybe.

After work on Sunday, I did some shopping for myself (air conditioner, new rechargeable AA batteries) and for my mother (hard drive and case. See post below.). I then went to my car, unloaded my shit, and noticed I was sweating while standing in place. That's rough. I had plans to head out to Spear's Park and hit a couple caches, but it was too hot out. I left my water bottle at home, and the last person to find said caches remarked that there were ticks, so I wasn't going to change into the shorts I brought with me. I would have died. I didn't really have a back-up plan, unfortunately.

There was a cache I attempted to hit in Henniker, but apparently the directions I took down were completely wrong. I took the initial correct turn, but every road I was looking for from that point on apparently didn't exist. Seriously. I think Google Maps lied to me. I spent 30 or so minutes looking for the correct route and staring at my GPS not knowing if I'd be able to find my way back home or not. Eventually, I came across the most potholed dirt road in the world, and though it brought me to .6 miles of the cache, I didn't want to chance driving any further. Rumor has it that you can drive to within 1/4 of a mile from the cache. I could have walked that last 1/2 a mile, but I wasn't going to leave my car unguarded at a dirt road intersection with all of the computer parts and other valuables locked inside. I doubt that much traffic would pass by, but I didn't want to chance it. I wasn't exactly off to the side of the road, either. There were no shoulders. I would have been in the way for any passing trucks. I say trucks because the roads I took were not meant for sedans like mine.

Not wanting to pull a goose egg from my ass today, I hit a couple of micros once I was back in Keene. Hunting micros goes against my rules to reaching 100, but oh well. I didn't have much choice. Besides, one was in a car dealership and the only way I could get that without being spotted by a salesman is to do it when the dealership is closed: on Sundays. Ha. Eat it commissioned-based hippies.

Up to 98. Plenty of easy ones left locally to get my 99th if my coworker buddy doesn't feel like playing in the woods this coming week. And if he wants to do a hard one, I might hit an easy one first anyway because any difficult cache with decent scenic views is probably worthy of being my 100th. Hmm.

My initial goal was to find 38 caches in one summer. I've found 39 in the last 22 days. Warning: lots of nerd speak ahead.
It turns out that one of the reasons I never heard about anything that was planned this weekend was because my mother's computer died. Hard drive imminent failure. I'm not sure if that was a warning brought on by SMART. Her computer might be too old for such nifty technology. It might be a BIOS thing. It POST's, tries to load Windows, then loops/dies at the bootstrap loader.

It also turns out that I can't just take the hard drive out of the case and replace it with a new one. Or even secure a second hard drive into the case with more than one screw. So I can't even get the fucker out and run some tests at my apartment, which is where I left all of my tools and diagnostic crap. I ended up taking the whole computer case with me. After work Sunday, I bought a new hard drive and a new case under the assumption that both are gonna need to be replaced. That old case is totally getting destroyed. No way around it. It's gonna be fun.

It didn't dawn on me at the time that I just might be able to repair the partition with a Windows CD. I'll have to try that soon. Preferably before I break out the sledgehammer. Then I can return the case and hard drive and stuff. Maybe. There wasn't any good deals on any of the smaller hard drives we sell, so I bought myself a 300GB SATA Seagate drive (SATA2, NCQ, 16MB buffer) and I could give her the 120GB drive (EIDE, 8MB buffer, incredibly quiet) I'm using right now. (I love Seagate.) Maybe I'll do that anyway as part of my fixing fee. ;) Her current hard drive is almost five years old anyway; it probably should be replaced regardless of if I can get it working properly again or not.

Unfortunately, I still can't do jack shit with her computer at my apartment. My monitor is currently using a DVI cable. My video card doesn't have a VGA connection, and her video card doesn't have a DVI connection. And I can't install my graphics card into her case because my card uses the PCI-E bus and hers uses the AGP bus. Totally screwed. I believe at home that I have a VGA cable I could use. My monitor can use either, but I opted for the digital DVI and left the analog VGA cable in a box in my bedroom closet at home. I also should have a DVI-to-VGA adapter in the same box. I believe one came with my video card. But regardless, it looks like I ain't doing jack shit until I make another trip back home. Maybe tomorrow. We'll see. I have no idea what's going on.
I'm always impressed how Fridays shape for me. Usually, I have no fucking clue what Friday is going to bring, even by Thursday. Yet regardless, I somehow find myself every Friday having a great time with friends/coworkers at a bar somewhere or driving around town doing stupid shit. It's kinda nice. I haven't been able to do that at all living in Hillsboro, but that mainly had to do with not having anyone locally to hang out with. If I wanted to have fun, I had to pretty much hope for an invite from someone living 30-45 minutes away. That sucked. Anyhoo...

I'm not entirely sure what the hell is going on today, but I know I need to do something because this is the first Saturday in which it hasn't rained in about five or six weeks.

The only cousin I talk to graduates from high school today, and I have no idea who is going and where to be or what time to be there. I figure now that it's after 9 AM, the graduation ceremony is either happening or about to happen, so I guess I won't be going to that. Which is fine. It's not a very exciting moment. Well, I guess it depends. I was pretty stoked graduating high school, but I was pretty bored at my college graduation ceremony, despite the efforts of Bill Cosby to liven up the place. Actually, it probably had more to do with having to sit there and listen to about 1,500 names get called up to the podium and not being able to fall asleep until 1 AM the night before. But I digress.

So yeah. I figure there will be a party after the ceremony somewhere, but I don't have directions to her place. Plus, she lives in Hudson, which is next to Nashua, and that's not a short trip from Keene or Hillsboro. By the time I show up there, I might as well head back home. The lack of communication probably means I'm gonna go outside and play in the woods in hopes of bringing my total finds to 96. And then I'll bring that up to 98 Sunday. I'll find #99 some time in the middle of next week. I could hit 99 (or even 100+) Sunday (or even today if I really wanted to), but I figure a coworker may want to go hiking some time after work, so it gives me sort of a buffer.

Hmm. Actually, I wonder what I should do. I could still aim to hike Monadnock next weekend, but should I hold out my 100th find until then? I could totally hit 100 by my five-year geocaching "anniversary." Not sure.

Father's Day tomorrow. No real clue what's going on for that, either. I'll be working in the morning, and I'd like to cache afterwards. Supposedly, my sister may meet up with our dad for lunch some time. Usually, I'm out of work by then, so hopefully I can tag along. But that requires communication, and I never seem to be in the loop in regards to my sister or my father, so we'll see how that pans out. Whatever. I don't feel extremely close to either, anyway.

This will be a good weekend to get an air conditioner, too. Should be mostly 80-90 degrees this coming week. Woo. I don't think the frisbee playing in the business casual gear is gonna work out too well. House
I like the smell of freshly fallen rain, but I'm sure tired of seeing and hearing it.

It's raining right now. But at least it's raining on a Tuesday evening instead of a Saturday afternoon. Or whenever I decide to play in the woods, for that matter.

Actually, I don't mind it when it rains when I go out and "play." It typically keeps the bugs -- and people -- away.

Speaking of, I'm at the point where I have to find a cache a day to make my goal. And I didn't go hunting today, so that puts me even more behind the eight ball. Maybe tomorrow, I'll actually go out and do the four-cache trip I was thinking of doing today. I chose to chat online and nap this afternoon instead.

It's also interesting because if I set out to find a cache that isn't near any other caches (and I'm gonna run into this situation a few times these coming weeks), I have to find it. Failure is not an option. Otherwise, I will lose too much time. Keene doesn't really have any "clusters" where I can make up some finds per se. And it'd be in my best interest to avoid the micros (or something even more diabolical: "nanos") and the caches I've failed to find in the past until I hit that 100-mark. Then I can clean house. Tuesday Funnies

Pilot Talking

A jumbo jet is just coming into the Toronto Airport on it's final approach.

The pilot comes on the intercom, "This is your Captain. We're on our final descent into Toronto. I want to thank you for flying with us today and I hope you enjoy your stay in Toronto."

He forgets to switch off the intercom. Now the whole plane can hear his conversation from the cockpit.

The co-pilot says to the pilot, "Well skipper, what are you going to do in Toronto?"

Now all ears are listening to this conversation.

"Well" says the skipper, "first I'm going check into the hotel and take a crap. Then I'm going take that new stewardess out for supper, you know, the one with the big tits. I'm going wine and dine her, take her back to my room and put it to her all night."

Everyone on the plane is trying to get a look at the new stewardess.

She's so embarrassed that she runs from the back of the plane to try and get to the cockpit to turn the intercom off.

Halfway down the aisle, she trips over an old lady's bag and down she goes.

The old lady leans over and says, "No need to run, dear. He's gotta take a shit first."

Probably inspired by the similar joke in Good Will Hunting. "Did I catch a 'niner' in there?"

Found It! June 11 by Max Jerome (81 found)
Took a bit of work to find the first part of this multi-cache, but once I did, I was quite relieved to learn that the second part (and third part) were all within 50 feet of one another. That's really cool! No random driving or hiking into unknown areas! All other multis I've found to date have had their "next part" miles from the first part.

I was quite surprised to have met another geocacher in the woods today. I've only been doing this for five years. Haven't ran into anyone. (Well, there were two years between my first cache and my second. :p) I've seen a lot of muggles in my time, and I knew I couldn't be the only geocacher in existence (unless all other logs are lies?), so it was quite neat to learn that I'm not the only one out there. ;) I kinda stayed hidden in case it was a muggle, but upon spotting their GPS, it was safe for me to reveal myself. Startled the guy. :) So yeah. That was different.

TNLNSL.

I thought I could get to the Goats, Trolls, and Bridges cache from here, but it turns out you can't. There was a point in which I stood on a large rock so I could better survey the area, and a baby deer came out from under the rock and frolicked away to safety.

Yeah. I found some guy in the woods. Now I have better idea of what your typical geocacher looks like with my sample size of one. It was some older guy, with a full set of gray hair in his beard but without the arthritis or wrinkling that plague the way older people. I don't really know much about him. I was pretty happy to have finally seen another cacher that I wanted to hang out and talk with him for a while, but he didn't seem interested in doing that. Hmm.

I'm not 100% sure what his (family's) online geocaching handle is. But if I'm guessing right, he's really new to the scene, having registered onto the site a week ago. He hasn't written any logs today for me to confirm his identity.

It would make sense that he's new, because he essentially just stared at his GPS and walked in a straight line to the objective. I, on the other hand, don't rely so much on the GPS. I beeline a lot, finding the best way to get to a certain spot without fucking up the local landscape. I also rely heavily on a compass, because the GPS isn't always pointing me in the right direction. I often stand in one place for a couple minutes so that my GPS can give me a more accurate reading, usually from a distance greater than 30-40 feet (GPS's are shady from that close of a range).

Anyhoo, that was my 81st cache. The first of nine of the day. Yeah, that's right. 89 total. Ten more to go before Monadnock. I'm pretty happy with that because I went 0 for 3 yesterday. I batted 1.000 today. Whee.

I'm starting to toy with the idea of saying, "To hell with Monadnock, let's get 100 by your geocaching anniversary date (June 21)!" That's pretty damn grandiose. On the plus side, I don't have to bust my ass climbing a peak to hit the century mark. Hmm.

I'd really like to get 100 by the end of the month, and not, say, July 4. I don't know what I'm doing July 4. Last year, I hung out with a friend and saw fireworks. I'd like the same thing to happen this year, but since this is the same "friend" (and you can quote me on the "quote unquote") I hung out with Memorial Day 2005 and who has refused to call me back when I wondered what would be happening Memorial Day 2006, I'm not exactly holding my breath to get any sort of response out of her. :( More realistically, I'll go hiking somewhere. Maybe I'll get invited to a BBQ somewhere, I don't know. I wasn't satisfied with how I celebrated this past Memorial Day. I could really use some beer and burgers and fun times.

Anyway...

Ten to go. Sounds all too easy, assuming I do some after-work weekday caching. There's a very good chance of that happening this week with the weather finally shaping up into something I would classify as "pleasant." We shall see. Yessa.

Found it! June 9 by Max Jerome (80 found)
After work today, I set out to find this cache. Surprisingly, a coworker decided to tag along with me. I was pretty ecstatic about that. After the first cache I found with a former roommate, I've had to find my next 78 caches alone. Ho hum. But yeah. I guess 80 is a charm or something.

It was kinda a drizzly crumby day, which makes good geocaching weather. :) A couple people were swimming in the river near the first cache. My sidekick somehow managed to find the first part of the cache. I thought that was funny, because although the GPS stated we were within 40 feet of the cache, he'd run off about 100 feet away and start looking around, eventually working his way back to where the cache was hidden. Hmmph.

The second part wasn't too bad, though wet weather and rocky cliffs are a horrible combination. Again, my fellow comrade took off way downstream for some reason, but this time I managed to find the prize. I didn't unhide it, but I let him know that I was standing about 15 feet from it. He was pretty happy to have found it after that hint. I think he's gonna be tagging along a lot more often now. Yay!

Didn't leave anything. Didn't take anything either. Go figure. TFTC!

The cache above is a two-part cache. Have to find the first one to get the coordinates of the second "final" cache.

I've been keepin' pretty busy with the caching lately. If #100 is coming at the end of the month, and if the weekend before that is both Father's Day and the weekend of one of my cousins' graduation, that only really leaves this coming weekend for any serious hiking. I found a couple on a bike route yesterday, and I (with the help of my "wicked hard" friend) managed to tag another today.

Two heads are definitely better than one! I wonder how much longer I would have been out there had he not found the first part. Having him around sure would make finding micros a hell of a lot easier, too.

I'm gonna head out and find some more tomorrow morning, and there's a good chance my new Keene geocaching sidekick (who, by the way, is hooked) will join in later in the day to help me find what's left on my itinerary.

I'm starting to think finding 100 before the end of the month will be too easy. :) Monadnock may be holding me back! Da Bears
Come June 21, I will have been geocaching for five years.

That also means that I haven't had anyone to cache with since my first cache five years ago.

Of course, my second cache wasn't until two years later (25 months if you want to be exact), but that's beside the point.

As of to date, I have found 77 caches, 76 of them by myself. How lonely. :( But that's ok, I'm used to it.

A few people have claimed that they would like to go caching with me, but it wasn't until today that a fellow coworker actually paired some action with his words and went out with me into the bear caves of Gilsum, NH. Unfortunately, we came up empty-handed because I forgot the bug spray and the mosquitoes were incredibly horrendous and we just couldn't take it anymore. But next time, we're loading up on deet and kicking those flying blood suckers to the curb. Hopefully as soon as Friday after work. That will be great. Bear caves. Cliff side. Bring it.

My goals have somewhat changed, too. I doubled to 76 this past weekend. I'm now going to attempt to hit 100 by the end of this month, as opposed to the end of the hiking season (usually mid-fall for me). I want the cache on the top of Mt. Monadnock (the second most climbed mountain on earth) to be my 100th. There's also a second Mt. Monadnock cache that could be my 101st, or 100th if I can't find the other. Nice little "Plan B" right there. But anyway, that essentially means I need to find more than a cache a day if I hope to reach that goal by the last Saturday of the month. That's pretty freakin' hardcore. I'm not entirely sure I can do it, but it's one hell of a goal. I'm gonna have to start hitting those Concord clusters, for sure. And there's still enough left in or around Keene for me to find that it's not completely unrealistic.

Should I get to around 100 by then, I don't think it'd be out of my reach to up my goal to 100 geocaches found in one summer (138 total). Hell, maybe I can get to 150 lifetime. That'd be pretty schweet.

Surely you want to join me in my crusade to get lost in the woods, don't you? :) It's a fun time. You get exercise without the price of the gym membership. Plus you get to hang with me, which could be the best thing on earth. Bring your own water, though. And bug spray. Tuesday Funnies

Ouch

A man went to a plastic surgeon to get work done on his penis. The doctor, curious, asked what had happened to it.

"Well," the patient said, "I live in a trailer camp. A gorgeous buxom creature lives in the trailer next to mine.

I used to peek into her trailer and I saw that she had a habit. Each afternoon she would take a hot dog from her refrigerator and put it in a hole on her trailer floor. Then she'd sit on it and have a ball. She nearly drove me crazy.

So I got a bright idea. One day I got under her trailer and when she slid the hot dog in the hole, I slid it out and slipped my penis up through the hole. She sat down on it and everything was going just great until there was a knock at the door."

"And then?" said the doctor.

"Aw hell," the patient explained, "That's when she tried to kick it under the stove."

Rain rain on my face
This weekend sucks.

While this week has been hot and muggy, it wasn't until yesterday that the weather decided to rain. And rain it did. It hasn't really stopped raining since I last left work. And it's not likely to stop raining until I go back to my full-time job come Monday.

I was hoping to get some early morning caching done today, but I was invited out at the last minute last night. I often know when I have reached my alcohol consumption limit: the point where one more drink will have me kissing porcelain later in the evening. Once I reach that limit, I stop. (Go figure.) If I'm drinking with the boys, I can't be pressured into drinking more. But with the ladies? Apparently, I give in knowing full well the consequences of my actions. Add the fact that the drinks were free after my first couple (thanks, Lady) and I could be entering a world of pain.

Needless to say, I wasn't exactly feeling like a superstar later that night, and any plans I tentatively made for the early morning Saturday were thrown right out the window.

As a side note, I'm a great fucking dart player when I have about three drinks in me. Two double bull's eyes with three darts. Suck it. I can't hit the "18" for shit, but the bull's eye is my bitch.

I tried to cache later in the afternoon when there was a break in the rains, but no sooner did I step outside did it start raining again. But I didn't care. I walked to a cache anyway. I was better off driving, but I figured the fresh air would do me some good. Unfortunately, by the time I made it to the cache, the rain had picked up substantially and I was soaked to the bone before I even attempted to look for it. I didn't stick around long. I'll try again later. When it's dry.

When I was within two minutes of my apartment, it stopped raining. What the hell.

There's a flood watch in Concord, so should I go play in the woods tomorrow, I'm gonna seek (hopefully tick-free) higher grounds. With my new EMS shoes! :D There's a small loop of caches I may attempt after work, so if my little cache counter jumps up four or five integers... well there you go. I can't wear shorts on casual Fridays.
I was hoping to get some quick and easy local cache hunting done during the week, but alas, it was not meant to be. It's been hot and muggy since Memorial Day. Instead, I've had to settle for passing out in front of my fan hoping for a nice strong breeze to make it through my window. I won't even describe what it was like playing frisbee in business casual attire at lunch time in this weather. Gross. Good thing I live on the first floor.

I need to invest in an air conditioner.