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August
15, 2005
"I lied about being the outdoor type"
 While
geocaching at the Mystic River beach (Sandy Beach) which I
presume is in Medford, not sure which town it is, we ran across
this little grove with cement animal figures in it. They stand
apart from the rest of the action, far, far away from where
little kids are. Which is sad, because they were so damn cool.
There
is a whole
Flickr.com set of pictures of these animals and their
one friend -- Geoff. If you want to go check them out. My
girl "C" at work told me that on the Nahant Beach
at the rotary there used to be this same little herd of alphabet
animals, and she used to play on them. She has pictures of
herself and her sister and cousin on the animals.
I
would love to have one of these animals in my yard. The "G"
had "ays" written after it on the giraffe's body.
God Bless Photoshop. Or else I couldn't have taken the nice
picture of my son I have here.
Are
there more of these around the MDC parks? I should ask at
Universal Hub or something...
By
the way -- Geoff is looking totally "Lord of the Flies"
lately. It is time for a sheering. C'mere Little Sheep! Buzzzzzzzzz
So
indeed, as per usual, over the weekend we did a little geocaching.
Yes, on Saturday especially it was hot, Africa/Monkey/Tarzan
hot. You pick the adjective to describe how hot it was and
it was most likely that hot if not hotter.
But
we do not fear the heat.
We
picked this series of Geocaches that run along the Middlesex
Canal. There are 12 caches total in this series, and each
cache is a multi-stage (meaning more than one stop) cache.
We did the first two on Saturday. They start on the Medford/Sommerville
line, and progress north to Lowell. The great thing about
the caches is the hider(s) really put a lot of time and effort
into researching the history of the Canal system between the
Merrimack river and Boston, and they provide historical tid-bits
for each stop on the caching hunt trip. Pretty cool.
We
did two more on Sunday, only to have our hunting time called
to a halt by a string of nasty thunder storms, and an attack
of bees.
Yes.
I was stung again on Sunday. So was Geoff.
We
were in Winchester, at the final stage of Part 3 of the Middlesex
Canal caches, and Doug was about 20 yards to the north of
us. I was so convinced he was totally way way off, and Geoff
and I were going through a pile of brush and logs that were
set off the trail. Caches are often hidden under brushpiles.
Which is lame and stupid, but I figured it was a good enough
place to look. I've often found caches without the GPSr in
hand, simply by looking at the "landscaping" around
on the ground. This pile of rocks doesn't belong here. These
several branches don't match this tree that they are under.
I
looked at the ground after a while and there was this hole.
And the hole seemed to be moving, bubbling if you will. They
looked like little bits of fool's gold -- shining in the sun,
wings reflecting the rays. I realized it looked like angry
fool's gold. Then it suddenly dawned on my bear-of-little-brain
mind that fool's gold doesn't fucking move.
They
were bees. Very angry bees.
So
I got stung while I stood there, and jumped and started running
as I felt about ten more bombing my head. I ran past Geoff
and yelled at him "Run!"
He
turned to me and asked "Why?"
Now,
let me tell you kids something. When you see a 200 pound old
lady running as fast as she can out of the woods, you do not
ask "Why?" Because the very next thing you will
utter is:
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Like
Geoff did, as I yelled "Bees, Geoff! Bees! Run run run!"
He
got stung once on the arm, I got stung once on my fat roll
on my back. Stupid mofo bees. I killed four of them when Geoff
caught up to me and they were walking up his pants and shirt.
I smacked them with my bare hands, left a big pink handmark
on his poor belly.
And
the retarded thing is once we got back to the truck, regrouped,
and put ice on our injuries (always prepared -- we had a cooler
with iced down waters) we drove closer to the spot where Doug
was looking and he walked right up to the cache, found it,
logged in, and wasn't stung once.
I
lied about being the outdoor type. I have decided I'm staying
in for the rest of my life and playing Playstation. Well.
I'm pissed at being stung again, I don't know that I'm officially
divorced from Mother Nature, but I'm not pleased with her
stinging bullshit.
Alright,
well... you know I'll be out there next weekend. I'm a sucker.
The
super sad thing is I'm more angry that we didn't get the third
cache of the day yesterday because that would have been #400
for Team Screamapillar... we didn't get it because of this:
Grrrrrrrr.
Bees and thunderstorms. My Sunday funday was ruined.
Mother Nature is gonna get my foot.
We
were going to go camping this weekend but Jess had
a sleep over party Friday night, and Doug doesn't like camping
for one night because it's so much effort getting everything
ready, set up, and then boom -- strike it and go home.
We've
been talking about a long weekend trip in Maine, not to Aaron
and Michelle's house but somewhere new that we haven't gone
yet. We would need to leave on a Friday night, and drive and
set up when we get there so we don't want to go farther than
three hours away. Aaron will most likely be joining us the
Saturday night after he gets out of work, so he didn't want
to ride too far on his bike into the possible darkness...
so it had to be somewhere not too far for both of us.
Doug
and Aaron were on the phone Friday night brainstorming places
for us to go.
Mount
Blue State Park in Weld, ME seems to be the best place
for us. Aaron can get there in about 3 hours. It is about
an hour longer than I wanted to drive but that's okay as long
as we can be 100% organized on Thursday night. All I want
to have to do on Friday when I get home from work is pack
the cooler with ice and throw the dogs and it into the truck
and then go. We'll see how successful I am.
The
place looks really cool. There seem to be a lot of geocaches
in the area, a ton of campsites in the state park -- I can
only hope they're not booked solid. That would suck.
So
yeah, it looks like in two weeks we'll be making a major trek
up for some tent camping and some Aaron time. I'm looking
forward to it. Gotta buy more propane for the little burner.
Woot!
And
before I forget, we mutter. Mutter
along if you so desire.
1. Idiot :: Wind
2. Rocket :: Man
3. Liability :: Lawyer
4. Harmless :: Fun
5. Stringy :: Cheese
6. Gwyneth :: Chris
7. Use it or lose it :: Vacation Time
8. Theater :: Theatre
9. Sonic :: The Hedgehog
10. Pucker :: Lemons
Number
one is a Dylan song. Number 2 courtesy of Elton John. Number
six is Paltrow and Martin, of Coldplay. The rest are self
explanatory.
And
that's about that. Have a great evening y'all.
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