Spirit of the Holidays

First off, this is going to be a pretty short entry this week because, frankly, I'm sick as a dog and missed about half the trip. For the record, don't geocache with bronchitis. Bad idea...

This week, we're doing a little more cache placing at Well's Hill Park. If you've been monitoring your weekly cache notifications, you've seen that there's been a flurry of activity in Lincoln County recently as the Zen Bassmasters (including new Bassmaster Froglegz) have taken it upon themselves to make Lincoln County a place worth coming to for geocachers. We've more than quadrupled the previous number of caches in the area (2 before we began placing) so if you've been looking for some virgin area to cache in, come here in a week or two when we get the last of the caches up. It'll be worth your time.

The main reason I wanted to get this week's entry, however short, in is to commemorate an extremely rare occasion. You've all heard the stories of the holiday spirit filling people from different, often warring backgrounds, who come together just once to break bread and share stories. From the pilgrims and indians at Thanksgiving to the warring armies singing christmas carols to each other across their trenches, it's all over the place, and it's all very nice.

But they ain't got nothing on us...

Don't believe me? Just take a look at this picture.



Yes, that is indeed the evil hobbit Bilbo pictured with our own Fish. No, we haven't taken up with the filthy little hairfoots and no we haven't given up our war to eradicate Middle Earth (or at least Northern Alabama) of their evil. But he did ask nicely for some help in locating a couple of our challenges and, in the spirit of the holidays, we decided to bring him along. Besides, we thought, if he fell to his death doing one of them, wouldn't it be better for us to be there to witness it, rather than just have to hear about it from others. Hooray!

Little did we know that Bilbo had hidden some caches of his own earlier in the week and had similar plans for us. Very interesting...

Again, not much to tell here. We found Bilbo's first cache easily enough and he had a good deal more trouble than we expected from one of my as-yet unpublished ones. Guess I need to bump the difficulty on that one a bit.

We walked on a bit more and watched Bilbo and Ashlynne both go after Mordor's Gauntlet #4: The Corrupted Dwarf. Both nearly fell but they located it eventually. No hobbity death for us today.

Beyond that... I can't really tell you. All I remember is a haze of burning lungs and hacking coughs. "You've got bronchitis?", Bilbo asked me. "What the hell are you doing out here today? Just when I thought you guys were getting smarter..."

I remember taking a travel bug to our "Underground Railroad TB Hotel" and dropping it off and then nearly dropping myself. Finally, I had to admit defeat and head back alone while the others went on. Hopefully Fish or Ashlynne will be willing to blog up the rest of the day. Heck, I'd even put up a blog from Bilbo. I'm such a whore...

I will leave you with the picture of one of our waterfall caches. These are absolutely beautiful caches (and another was found today so expect more). They're pretty hefty finds (unlike the hobbits, we rate our terrain fairly and these are legit 4s). But even if you don't attempt the caches, it's worth heading up the path to see them. We were bowled over since, a month ago, only a few of us knew this park existed and none of us knew about the waterfalls. So I leave you, for now, with those. Enjoy.

Monte Sano Strikes Back, Part 2

Well, as you have read in our last post, we made it to the bottom of the mountain, to Bushwhacker Johnston's trail, and were pretty proud of our successes. Tired, hurt, but proud. Of course, our victory was short-lived. We were down, but our cars were up. Uh oh...

Up... Such a small word for such a lot of pain. Old man gravity keeping us down again. Considering how much pain we were feeling from the trip down, I didn't feel terribly confident about our chances.

Fish, Mike, and I started up while the others were finishing off the last cache. We figured if we got ahead of them, we might gets a good deal of the way up before they caught us. We began to wonder if maybe we should have bugged out when Saintseester did, saving ourselves this embarrassment. But we're Zen Bassmasters. We can't take the easy way out, or even the moderately difficult way out. Nope. We've been challenged by the hobbits and we just have to do it the hardest way possible.

Unfortunately, nature decided to move the definition of "hard" a little to the right...

I wish I had some funny anecdotes or witty things to say about the trip up but, honestly, I don't. I don't really remember most of it. I know it hurt. A lot. The only thing that kept it from hurting more than the Jolly Green Debacle was the temperature. I remember cursing Rick mightily, using many of the same curses we used on the Jolly Green trail (did I mention we never learn?). I remember Fish being very possessive of one of the benches. I remember telling Fish I wasn't going to sit down because my muscles would stiffen up if I sat. I remember fighting Fish for the next bench down. I remember being caught and passed by the evil hobbit sympathizers, who seemed amused by our plight. I remember children who were running and skipping on the way down now plodding past us with dour looks on their faces. I remember Stephanie catching up to me and keeping pace with me, happy to find someone else who was having problems with the climb. Mostly, I remember pain. Pain in my legs and pain in my feet and pain in my back and pain in places that I can't mention on the blog.

Pain... But eventually, we began to hear cars, then see cars, then finally we see the little bridge just down from the parking lot. I can tell you that I've never loved a bridge so much in my life. If I weren't already married, I'd have proposed to that bridge. It's a wonderful bridge...

And finally, we make it out to the parking lot. The afore mentioned children are lying on the ground like they're dying. I feel like doing the same but I'm not sure I'll ever get up again if I do.

After some more time spent cursing Rick and saying our goodbyes to Stephanie, Taz, Parrgolf, and all the other dupes, er, "folks" who joined us on this adventure, we headed out to Beauregards to conquer the all you can eat chicken wings and lick our wounds.

I don't know if this one counts as a victory over the hobbity types or not. On the one hand, we met their challenge and we passed it. We walked right into their plan to kill us and came out alive. On the other hand, we suffered some injuries. Physical injuries and psychological injuries. Fish has already said no more hike events for him, at least for a while. And I tend to agree. We do this to lose weight and get into shape and, honestly, this hurt us enough to seriously hinder our walking regimen during the week.

So I guess we call this one a tie. But don't worry. We've already got a few thing planned for our hobbit-y friends to turn the battle back in our favor. Stay tuned...

-Gryph

Monte Sano Strikes Back- Part 1

In our last few editions, you've got to join us in celebrating our defeat of our old nemeses, the hobbits and the evil mountain they call their home, Monte Sano. But you knew it couldn't end there, right? Of course not. Like every demonically possessed horror movie franchisee in history, Monte Sano rose from certain death to terrorize again.

Actually, it was completely our fault. Someone once said "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity." We just call it The Zen Bassmaster Way.

All this began several weeks ago at the Finger Lickin' Chicken event. We were talking to noted hobbit sympathizer Rick618, who mentioned that he had a hike event planned on November 11. We talked to him about it and it sounded interesting enough. Civil War history, a few caches, nice wagon trails Rick told us. Keep that word in mind. Wagon trails. It'll come up later.

He then says something to the effect of "I'm surprised you'd want to hike with a bunch of hobbit sympathizers..." A challenge. We couldn't possibly turn down a challenge like that from a hobbit lover. And they knew that. Clue #1...

Fast forward to Saturday. It's cold. Very cold. It's misting rain. We envision a slippery trail. Do we turn back? Of course not. We're Zen Bassmasters, and Zen Bassmasters equals "not too bright".

We arrive at the land trust parking and notice that there are an awful lot of familiar faces there of the hobbit-y variety. And they all seem amused to see us. Clue #2. But our danger sense was frozen in the cold and we thought nothing of it. Fortunately, there were also some friendly faces, including Saintseester and her daughter, complete with Pink Walking Stick of Doom!! Saintseester is a regular reader of the blog and always has nice comments so we were thrilled to put a face to the name. The pink walking stick was impressive as well. You'd certainly never lose it in the woods and, if you got hurt, it's bright enough to signal passing aircraft. Also in attendance was Parrgolf who, despite keeping company with some shady hairfoots, is a pretty good guy. We also met some other find folks like Stephanie2427 who was soon to become my partner in slow. One face we didn't see was Rick's significantly better half and honorary Bassmaster RN2B. This should have also been a clue to us as RN2B probably didn't want to see her fellow Bassmasters lured into the evil hobbit trap.

After an informative, if COLD, discussion about the Landtrust and the history of the Bushwhacker Johnson trail, we set off. Very early on in the trail, we slipped and slid, always on precarious footing. Finally, gravity won its fight with me and I slipped in the mud. I spun in the opposite direction trying to keep myself up but then my other foot slipped and I did the splits. Now I'm sure most of you have never weighed 380 lbs but let me tell you that there's a reason you've never seen a 380 lb man do the splits before. The physics of it are not pretty. And the muscles in both my hamstring and my groin were not appreciative. The move did get me a 10 from all of the assembled "judges", except for Mad Mike, heretofore known as the East German Judge, who insisted it was at most a 7.5 because I didn't "stick" my landing on the back leg. The nerve of some people.

On down the trail a little further, Fish got his moment to "shine" as he slipped and landed square in the mud on his butt. Great. 2 of the three Bassmasters present are now injured, but do we turn around? Of course not. Press on.

Soon after, we noticed Saintseester, her daughter, and even the Pink Walking Stick of DOOM! were gone as well. Apparently she's smarter than we and had gotten out while the getting was good. Since we're not so smart ourselves, we kept moving.

We continued down and I began to lag behind, my hamstring giving me fits. Rick, who had been given charge of ensuring all the sheep made it out alive, hung back and Parrgolf, bless his soul, stayed back as well to make sure no hobbit loving shenanigans happened out of earshot of the group. I mentioned "wagon trails" to Rick, along with the fact that I would like to see the wagon that would make it down the mountain. He just smiled knowingly and waited for me to die.

Finally, we made it down to the spring where Bushwhacker Johnson surrendered. We felt pretty good, despite a couple of injuries. Maybe we'll make it out of this hobbit trap alive yet. It was then that a nice fellow reminded us that the mile and a half we just did was only a small part of the battle. Once again, Monte Sano had teamed up with our old enemy gravity to try and defeat us.

But that's a story for another day.

See you then.

-Gryph

There and Back Again: Alternate Perspective

When we conquered Monte Sano, it was such a big deal that I asked all of the other Zen Bassmasters to write something up about their feelings on this momentous occasion. To date, only Tserof has taken up my challenge.

May God have mercy on our souls...

I refuse to be blamed for this...

"Joan drive well.
Tserof was hungry.
Joan parked van but hit big bump.
Tserof dreads hike down.
Tserof doesn't want to leave van.
Tserof tries to hide the fear.
Tserof thinks trail not so bad today.
OUCH. Tserof racks himself.
Tserof liked over under better.
Wet leaves slippery.
Pretty cave.
Others stupid to risk lives in cave.
They saw a pretty waterfall.
Me likes shiny water falls.
They come out, I decide to go in.
Both Mikes guide down.
Tserof always horny.
Tserof molest cave.
Tserof thinks he feels cave get more moist.
Tserof find water fall.
Fish used his big rod to help tserof out.
Tserof hate taking pics.
More hike.
Tserof make loud breaths.
Joan poked the cache.
Usually fish does the poking.
Yay! We found bling!
Hobbits suck.
Tserof has to climb back out.
Tserof almost give up.
Can see cars though.
Hungry.
Royal Buffett if tserof make it out.
Wish I had cheesy bread :-(
Damn tserof horny again.
Why tserof think about cheesy bread so often.
Ugggh!"

I'll be back tomorrow with our update from this week. Let's just call it "Monte Sano's Revenge" for now. Trust me, this one's a doozy...

There and Back Again- Part 2

Yeah, yeah. I know. It's been a week since I put up part 1 of our adventure. But I had an excuse. Ash and I have switched internet providers, necessitating a couple of days with only dial-up before our DSL got turned back on. I love you guys and I appreciate that you enjoy the blog, but I don't love you enough to upload pictures to a blog at 33.6k. My love only goes so far.

Anyway, the important part is done, right? We found the cache and exorcised our demons, we got revenge on the evil hobbits, and we found the precious.

One problem... We had to go back up. See, up's a pain in the butt for us. It's that whole gravity thing which, as Mad Mike is fond of saying, is always keeping the fat man down. Down is no big deal. It hurts our knees but when you weigh 400 lbs, down is your natural state. Up on the other hand...

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We still have the cache to deal with. As most of you who read this blog know, we have a bit of a "friendly" rivalry going with the hobbits and hobbit sympathizers. Well, friendly if you define friendly as "consistently trying to lead each other into situations that will get us killed." We're kind of like the Spy vs. Spy of the geocaching world. As a function of that, I've adopted a Gollum persona on the dixiecachers board, so before we moved on, I had to strike my best Gollum pose with my prize from the cache, which I decided was My Precious.



After we dawdled around a while, saying goodbye to the cave and psyching ourselves up for our trip up. Finally, we decided it wasn't going to get any easier with us sitting around so we pressed on.

The trip up was relatively uneventful. Mad Mike's knee was still giving him some problems from the fall in the cave but he made it up ok with help from Fish. Ashlynne and I stayed back to make sure Tserof survived the trek up. To Tserof's credit, he did at least learn from his previous mistakes and didn't rack himself on the over-under tree.

After some walking and some serious heavy-breathing, we made it to the top! The hobbits have officially not beaten us! We took a picture at the top to commemorate the occasion.



From there we broke for lunch and enjoyed some good Chinese food from the Royal Buffet. We were elated to have defeated Monte Sano and so took our time to enjoy the food. As we got ready to leave, I got the strangest fortune cookie I've ever gotten in my many, many trip to Chinese restaurants. I can quote it exactly because Ashlynne saved it and taped it to my computer desk. It said "Come back later... I am sleeping. (yes, cookies need their sleep too).

Can someone explain that one to me? I think there may be some zen in there somewhere and, being a ZEN bassmaster, I feel like I should know the answer. Someone once told me that the secret to fortune cookies was to add ...in bed to the end of it. I supposed "yes, cookies need their sleep too... in bed" makes sense, but it doesn't really change the meaning much. The possibilities keep me awake at night...

From there, we headed out to do a series of caches called "Schoolhouse Rock." This was one of Ashlynne's requests, having been a big fan of the Schoolhouse Rock programs when she was a kid and currently owning the Schoolhouse Rock box set and the Schoolhouse Rock Rocks! soundtrack.

Not much to say about all of these. They were all little magneto micros that gave us varying degrees of problems trying to find them. There was much singing of the songs as we all grew up with Schoolhouse Rock. I was a bit disappointed, since we were near the Huntsville government buildings, that there wasn't a cache dedicated to my favorite Schoolhouse Rock song "I'm just a bill."

In preparation for the caches the day before, Ash and I watched the entire box set and, I have to say, someone in the Schoolhouse Rock camp was the modern day Nostradamus. If you please, I present you the song for today, Energy Blues.

Energy...
Sometimes I think I'm runnin' out of energy
Seems like we use an awful lot for
Heatin' and lightin' and drivin'
Readin' and writin' and jivin'
Energy ... You'd think we'd be savin' it up.

Energy ... You can get it by dammin' up a river
Energy ... A windmill can make the breeze deliver
But even with millin' and dammin'
Our needs are so much more demanding
For energy ... We have to use some kind of fuel.

Chop, chop, chop, he cavemen used wood to start their fires.
Chop, chop, chop, they made all the tools that they required.
Chop, chop, chop, inventions got more and more inspired.
The fires got higher and higher,
And clearings got wider and wider.
Energy ... They were burnin' 'bout all their wood up.

Then one day men discovered that coal would do it better
Miners dug, and it looked like it might just last forever.
It seemed like the final solution.
It started the Industrial Revolution.
Energy ... We could just keep on diggin' it up.

Now in 1859 - way out in western Pennsylvania -
A man had built a rig that got some laughs from folks who came there
But suddenly, a mighty roar came up from under the ground.
And soon a gusher, gushin' oil, soaked all who stood around.
Now no-one knew, when that gusher blew,
The petroleum years were on us,
Or that so many cars and trucks would come to cause a crisis.

Energy ... We're looking to try and find some new kinds.
Energy ... Exploring to try and make a new find.
Nuclear and thermal and solar,
If we miss we'll get colder and colder.
Energy ... We've gotta stop usin' you up.

So don't be cross when momma says turn that extra light out.
Just turn it off till we find us a fuel that never runs out.
If everyone tries a bit harder,
Our fuel will go farther and farther.
Energy ... We're gonna be stretchin' you out.

Fast forward 25 years and I kind of wish I'd listened to that sad little Earth man singing as I put the $2.25 gas in my minivan...

From there, we went on to "Is this where they get the fresh fish" by our old "friend" and hobbit sympathizer Rick618. This is a cache that could present a lot of muggle problems at times but the place was empty when we came out and we found the cache pretty easily. Woohoo! Two victories over the hobbity types!

From there, we went to "Dead Children's Playground" which is apparently a well-known ghost tale in the Huntsville area. How well known we discovered soon enough. As we got there, we saw a problem. A family was there with a couple of kids playing right inside the playground, in the area where the GPSr was pointing.

We wandered around a bit as the parents asked if we were "ghost hunting." Kind of. Finally, we hit on a plan. We poke around outside the playground hoping to draw the family's attention and we send Ashlynne in with one of the GPSr to see if she can find the area we're looking for. No dice. The little kids see her and immediately leave their playing to follow her around, asking about the GPS, what she's doing, and then, to all of our amusement, to tell her about the legend of the Dead Children's Playground. We chuckled a bit as the father said he'd heard the story when he was a kid. We decided we weren't getting the cache without risking it being muggled and moved on.

Our final cache of the day was "The Bibbs", which is a cemetary cache. We like cemetary caches and are sad that some ancient law has now made them banned in Tennessee. How do you expect people to see history, to care about the people who came before, to give a damn about the folks who shaped the world they live in, unless you give them a reason to go out and make it fun. I don't have time to go research every cemetary in the world to seek out famous people. Geocaching has introduced me to people I never even knew lived but who made history in some way. Now that's lost to Tennessee due to some short-sighted law against "gaming" inside a cemetary and it makes me sad. We have the time in Tennessee to pass laws that make it legal to scoop up the possum you hit with your car and eat it, but we have to protect society from evil geocachers who want to learn a little history, honor the dead by celebrating their lives in cache descriptions, and have a little fun doing so...

Ok, off the soap box now. The Bibbs celebrates a former Alabama governor and his bride who died young (and, to be fair, none to bright. She ate poison instead of epsom salts). We walked around the cemetary for a bit and saw lots of governors and other luminaries. Good stuff.

Well, that's it. 50 lbs and 40 degrees of difference definitely made the difference today. But I don't think that's all of it. I think we've maybe grown up a little. The first time we did Monte Sano, we were almost comically unprepared. We only had the coords for parking, we didn't even know to solve the puzzle to get the coordinates. We didn't have water, and we were just generally unprepared. Some time has passed since then and, while the Bassmasters are certainly no well-oiled machine, we've at least applied a little WD-40 to the gears and are slowly moving along.

It's kind of like when you go back to your hometown for the class reunion. You go out to the creek you played in as a kid and are shocked at how small it is, and how big it seemed in your little kid's eyes. You walk through the hallways of your school and everything seems so little. You see pictures of yourself as a kid and laugh at how you could ever be so small, so naive, so full of yourself and ignorant of the world that you feel you can conquer everything, in spite of all the odds.

And, you know what? You usually could...

Until next time,

-Gryph