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Adventures in Geocaching

Four fat people attempting to geocache. Hilarity ensues.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Abbreviated Caching

Well, I'm back again this week after leaving you in the more than capable hands of Doc last weekend. Hopefully after getting a taste of what a real writer can do, you won't be too bored with me again. Unfortunately, this week is probably not going to be my finest return to the saddle as we had an abbreviated run this week.

Fish was out but was kind enough to plan a run for us before his vacation. He can't be blamed for our sloth-like progression this week. He had a full run of caches planned for us but two of the group (Mad Mike and Ashlynne) were nursing sore ankles and I was nursing an upset belly so we knocked off after 7 caches to go watch "The Departed". More on that later...

To begin the day, we met up at Tserof's house and Ashlynne mentioned that, since Fish was out, our group was down to 4, a perfect size for Tserof to pick up the driving duties this week. So we loaded into the Titan to pick up Mad Mike. Now I know Doc spent quite a bit of time last week talking up Jason's Titan, making the obligatory references to the namesake beings from mythology. While I wouldn't want to contradict my elder or my better (Doc is both), I have a different take. The Titan certainly looks like its mythological namesake from the outside, huge and impressive. Unfortunately, when Tserof drives the Titan, it less resembles a mythological being than it does the NFL team it is also named for. Just like the Titans, it can't hit the holes, it often drifts across the line illegally, and it has a bad habit of stomping on the heads of unsuspecting curbs.

Our first indicator of problems was when we reached Mad Mike's house. Making a quick eyeball of Mike's driveway, with a comparable look at the size of the Titan, divided by Tserof's notorious parking ability.... Well, I'm not much good at math but it wasn't really adding up. To his credit, Tserof did ok and managed not to take out the reflectors on either side of the driveway, but it was close. We picked up Mike and were on our way. The soundtrack for this week is Tserof's Ipod, which had an impressive collection of female singers on it, most notably Lucinda Williams and Iris Dement.

Headed in to Huntsville, we watched as the Tennessee Titan drifted ever closer to being "offsides". Finally, Tserof drifted too far and the poor frightened VW in the next lane over almost gave himself a heart attack trying not to become one of the cars at the monster truck rally. Tserof's comment? "That guy sure is driving strange..." Honestly...

We moved on to our first cache "Where are the caches in your neighborhood." As is tradition, our journey began with a semi-circular course correction as Tserof was too into the song he was listening to and missed the "it's right here. Tserof, it's here. Here. Here.... Back there." He got us turned around (and let me tell you, watching that thing turn on a residential street is a scary, scary thing) and despite knowing the pull-off was right there, managed to miss it again. Two semi-circular course corrections and we haven't even gotten our first cache yet. Typical.

Finally, Tserof muscles Eddie George around and we get to the spot. Very easy cache to find, kind of anti-climactic after Tserof turned pulling off the road into a difficulty 5 task.

Next was "Looking down on the Joneses." This was on the Governor's drive overlook which, fortunately, wasn't busy since Tserof needed 3 parking spaces to get Bruce Matthews in. We did have to do a little bit of trekking through the wood for this one, much to the chagrin of our hurt ankle folks. The cache itself was an easy enough find. The only real barrier here was that the GPS decided to take another of its Satanic moments and try to point us over the fence and into the residential area. Of course, we'd given Ashlynne, she of the Monte Sano navigation disaster, the GPS because, as Mike pointed out for me "it makes for good blogging." Finally, we got the GPS to behave and found the cache. There was another cache in this area but there were muggles about so we didn't grab it.

Next up was One for the Little Guys, which we skipped a few weeks ago on one of our kiddie caching trips because there was a bit more of a walk than we wanted to take the kids on. This time, we had two gimpy ankles and a rumbly belly so it wasn't much better, but we parked in the movie theater lot and walked over. Easy enough find, not a fun walk when you're hurting. By the time we got back to the car, we had all had very close to enough. With the movie theater nearby, we headed over to find out the play time for The Departed. Discovering we still had some time to kill, we headed out to do a few more caches.

Next up was A Palm fer Us, by Exotic Dancer, a fictional creation of our old nemesis Frodo, the bastard. If the other one was a bad walk for the hurt folks, this one was worse. Mike was cursing Frodo to almost Monte Sano levels by the end. Good cache though. Clever hide. Picked up a TB with a Superman attached. His mission is to go to Antarctica. I don't think I'm going to be getting him to there. If we can't tackle Green Mountain, I'm pretty sure Antarctica is right out. Besides, we've had a hell of a time trying to train Fish's two dogs to the sled.

Next up was 4 mile post rocks. This was far too close to Green Mountain for me and I started to have flashbacks, rock back and forth, and curse Rick618. Fortunately, this distracted me from watching Tserof attempt to navigate Bum Phillips through that road. I'm told it was pretty scary. Easy enough find and a nice little cave across the road. I didn't explore the cave as it was on the same side of the road as the trail and the memories overwhelmed me.

Next, we headed back to Governor's Overlook to pick up the cache that we missed because of the muggles before. This time Tserof didn't even try to park, just moving over to the side of the road (which still leaves his giant Frank Wycheck ass in the middle of the road but that's not the point). It took us a while to find this one as it was a bit tricksier than it seemed, but Ashlynne thought "outside the box" and found it finally.

Our last cache was Froggy Went a Courtin' by our very favorite cacher in the world and one of only two honorary Bassmasters, RN2B. We had to do this one. RN2B has never let us down, always hiding caches where the mentally retarded (read: us) can find it. It's nice of her to make geocaching accesible for the handicapped. Cool spot, cool container, but not too terribly hard, just what we expect and what makes her our favorite cacher. Let's all have a moment of silence in her honor.

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Hey, these moments of silence fill blog space nicely... I should do those more often.

At that point, we were tired of caching but still had some time to kill so we took Tserof to his very favorite place in the world, Barnes and Noble. Tserof in a bookstore is like a penguin in the Mojave. It's pretty funny to watch. Mike and I, being heartless bastiches, steered Tserof (who, having seen Curious George that week wanted to go try his hand at them) to the required school reading instead. Tserof guided us through the section, showing us which books he'd watched the movies of, which he'd had to get the Cliff Notes on, and which he'd had to pay a friend to read for him. Mike was being kind, trying to convince Tserof to read good books like Frankenstein and Alice in Wonderland. I, on the other hand, was playing "bad cop" and trying to talk him into War and Peace or Silas Marner, a book so bad that even I, who minored in English in college, never made it through the thing. Tserof wanted to stick with the Curious George books. Finally, it was time for the movie.

I'm going to move away from geocaching discussion here to encourage you as strongly as I can to go see Martin Scorcese's "The Departed." Easily the best movie of the year so far. By far. I can't say enough good things about this movie. Great performances from everyone, including Leonardo DiCaprio, who I normally hate. Go see the movie. Right now, I'll wait.

Good stuff, eh? You can thank me later. I take cash, check, and paypal. I can even take your credit cards and will even return them to you in 6-8 months when I've finished with them.

Well, that's all for this week. Again, a short trip but we should be back on task next week as Fish is back and he usually keeps us focused.

Until then...

9 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Titans? where the heck is Jason? Don't recall those strange names and not even one mention of a gold mechanical owl....humph! and no update on the jail break of the cache nabbed in Fayetteville??? Oh well, don't forget in 2 weeks there is a B'ham get together. Yall need to phoon at the Blazer cam, GCPP77. Just up your alley, no hills, no hikes, and no hobbits. Plenty of nearby on street parking, easy short walk out to a median island, and a star struck moment to phoon whilst traffic is stopped and staring.

8:33 PM  
Blogger Linda / Chri said...

Hmmm, I recall Fish telling Tseroff that he drove better than you, Gryph. Maybe it was all that music... we went without music and with heavy discussion. LOL!

5:07 AM  
Blogger Gryphon said...

Fish is welcome to drive any week he feels like it.

3:54 PM  
Blogger Gryphon said...

Nope I didn't misread her. Just pointed out that my bad driving could stop at the request of anyone willing to shell out the gas weekly...

8:40 PM  
Blogger Mitchell said...

Convince Sanctified to let me go, and we'll have a special Sunday Cache.

8:40 AM  
Blogger Linda / Chri said...

Ooops, let the proverbial cat out of the bag. Course, Tseoff did drive well the week we went. Fish would drive, but everyone won't fit his Jeep.

7:51 PM  
Blogger lacey38655 said...

You guys and gals are my most favorite blog in the whole world. From one geocacher to the next I must say these things to you.

Thank you thank you thank you, I love you guys, I love you guys, You are awsome, I worship the ground you cache on. I feel like hugging everybody, you make me cry, you make me laugh. If I had all the money in the world I would give you half. You are who I wish to be like. Can I cook for your group?


Ok enough worshiping you.

You guys are awsome seriously. Thank you for making my monday afternoons go by so much quicker with your wild and adventurous caching. You are in my thoughts and prayers until I hear that all of you have healed from your injuries.

2:08 PM  
Blogger Gryphon said...

We all weigh 400lbs... We are willing to let ANYONE cook for us...

Problem is, 3 of us are on Atkins, one is on low fat, and one is on a diet that consists strictly of beer and beer related products...

Not sure how you cook a meal for all of those...

3:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I do like my beer....Mmmm BEER.

Fish/Vorin

5:38 AM  

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