Sunday, January 4, 2009

Slicker than snot

This morning, I was cautious as I set off for church, as I'd heard we were to have received the "gift" of a bit of freezing rain overnight. For the lone reader or two who may not know it, I live out in the country on the corner of two hilly roads. We don't get first dibs on the road crews coming through, that's for sure! Anyway, started down our road, creeping all the way. You know it's slick when you're only going about 5-10 mph and start sliding on a level stretch of road! I was a bit shaken after the 2nd or 3rd incident of this BEFORE I got to the big hill at the bottom of our road, leading to the state hwy into town. Decided that I didn't want to take my van on a luge run down the hill, so turned back and went home. I really hated to miss church and my 1st graders in Sunday School, but I just couldn't drive it this morning. Steve went into town at noon and he said the roads were ok by then, either the road crews salted or the temp went up just enough. But of course that was too late for church.

I had a busy day yesterday. We had our quarterly Wood Badge Association board meeting, which lasted from 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. After the board meeting, which included a potluck lunch (two of us brought the same dish, meatballs!) some of my Bear friends - Tod, Sonia, and Becky - and I adjourned to a nearby establishment for our two hour secondary meeting. We talked about possible ways we could help in the rebuilding of the dining hall (see my earlier blog post) and of course, many other topics as well. We left about 4:30 p.m.

I had more new caches from the winter series at this end of town. How many could I get done in an hour (before dark?) Turns out I was able to get five altogether. First one was (I thought anyway) nearby. Parked in an apartment complex lot, tried to climb a big hill only to realize that there was a shopping center at the top of the hill and the cache was best retrieved from the other direction! It was a park and grab from the other side. To continue on the hill would have been dangerous, especially alone. Also came at the next cache from the wrong way, had to drive around and then found it easily, another park and grab. Picked up a geocoin commemmorating World Diabetes Day in this 2nd cache.

Made a detour to another cache, not in the new series, that I had tried to find twice before. Finally found it this time but it was about 7 feet up, tucked behind a tall sign. Managed to knock it down with my hiking stick, but then couldn't put it back so just hid it nearby and made a note of apology in the log. From the clues, I'm not sure it was supposed to be up that high anyway!

Went to a nearby park where I used to take kids swimming in the summer when I worked in this area. Two cachemobiles were parked there and the occupants were just coming back after finding the cache. We talked for a few minutes - they had come from Kalamazoo just to do the series (26 caches) - I gave them the coords for my nearby Ice Breakers #2 cache as well. Took me a few minutes to find that cache after the rest left - wish I'd asked for a clue. Then decided I was close enough to another cache I'd looked for previously. The owners had given me a clue after my DNF but where they told me to look, it wasn't budging. Will have to wait until spring, I suspect.

Last cache, just as sun was setting, was just about across the street from my last find. Took a couple of minutes but there it was. Headed for home afterwards as I've promised Steve from the get-go that I wouldn't cache alone after dark. A nice, but full day.

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