Pretty Much Yesterday

I managed to snip the palm of my hand with the scissors the other day, and for some reason felt compelled to document how it happened.  So just visualize me cutting the tape a little to forcefully here.

Yesterday I happened to discover some geocaches in a spot that I didn't think there WERE any caches, and by George they were brand new!  So after work I went after them.

I took a picture of each and every one, so...SPOILERS!  Well, since I'm not telling you where they are or the names, you would have to put in some effort to figure that out.  Plus, most of you who might read this are not in the hobby anyway!

A nice large container to start off.  I took the First To Find dollar here, but left anything that was in any of the other caches.

Pretty cute hide in an interesting place. And it's in the theme, believe it or don't.

I've never seen a fence like this.

Lots and lots of flowers were blooming.  I took several out of focus pics to share here.

Another cache. Took me a while to spot it, the coordinates were off a little for me.

Another pretty flower group, but is that poison oak back there?

Icky, is that the cache?

A grinding hole, it looks like.

Another kind cache in them, took me a couple of thinks to get it.

A sort of view of the general area type of picture.  Oak trees and grasses.

Oh, over there.  Nice!

This one was pretty funny!

And this one was pretty cute!

A couple of some pretty flowers.

Wow, I think this one is in focus!

A patriotic windmill?

Probably my favorite of the day.  That expression is because I'm thinking, "I sure wish I knew what kind of plants these are around my feet!"

Scarlet Bugler, I'm guessing.  I had to look that up, I was thinking "trumpeter"

Lots and lots of foxtails!  The socks may go in the trash.

The last cache, which I found 152 feet off the posted coordinates (Fixed by the cache owner very quickly).  Found by dumb luck, let me tell you.  Also found some poison oak while floundering around, I sure hope I don't come down with THAT!

So, I got ten First To Finds today, a personal record that surely will never be exceeded by me.  It's not everyday one comes across a new series of caches.

These were exceptionally well done, I enjoyed discovering each one.  I just wish it had not been foxtail season!

Before This Day

Thursday was Pre-Bike To Work Day, with a one-way ride for me, because of...reasons.

Friday was Bike To Work Day.

More pictures at My Bicycle Musings

Saturday was the Transmitter Hunting event at Lake Murray.  I wandered around quite a bit and didn't find anything, but a couple of very helpful guys give me a bunch of tips and let me follow them around so I got the five finds.  On one of them I was very close, but the others I was way off.  I DID spot one transmitter itself before I noticed the orange tape marking the spot.

A link to San Diego Transmitter Hunters website.

It's REALLY HARD to take a selfie while holding a phone in hand, and an antenna with a radio in the other!

Don't I look a joy to be around!

I figured it would be better if I DIDN'T look at the camera...

I walked about 5.4 miles.  Boy, are my feet sore!

Koolhydraten

I'm not quite sure how many grams of carbs are in each piece of chocolate, but it sure tastes good!

Of Sprints and Belgian Chocolate

I found this video on Youtube.  You can see my hat at about the 35 second mark!

Tour Of California Sprint #2


A lovely person brought me this wonderful gift all the from Belgium.  How sweet!

And the fragrance was HEAVENLY!

And that was ALL I ate, just two sections.  I swear!

Maybe tomorrow I'll post the nutritional listing...

Hey, you DID click on the thumbnails for the BIG picture, right?

At The Races

I am not sure what I did most of the day, but I DO know I vacuumed the house.  And the keyboard. Which sorely needed it.

Matt came by today and we went to breakfast/lunch at D.Z. Akins, then came back to collect the hat, then went to watch the AmGen Tour Of California pass by on Navajo Road, there being a sprint there.

The riders pass so quickly that I really did not see anything.  I shot a little movie (missing the lead group, of course) but it's really to big to foist upon you.  So here are a few pics I took, and some stills from the movie.

Less and less traffic is coming through as we get closer to H hour...

I think the riders were just coming into El Cajon at this point.

We moved to a spot on the other side of the Big Green Things (which I think are called "kites", but I can find any documentation for that).

When a working photographer hops off the back of a motorcycle you know the riders will be here soon!  I can't explain why half the people in the picture are facing the other way, though!

These four are all from the video I shot.  The peleton arrives!

I missed the leading group, a few seconds ahead, because of technical difficulties (read: I pushed the start button twice instead of once, and didn't notice the video wasn't videoing.

Very noisy with the helicopter above, and people whooping and yelling and banging on the crowd barriers (that white thing in the lower left corner) and ringing cowbells. The usual stuff.

The pack was really moving here!

Here I was trying to snag a good view of the photographer on the back of the motorcycle.

I you were watching the television broadcast you might have seen me on the side of the road via that photographer!

That's all for now!

Sprinkling

I got up early this morning to grab some geocaches that were in normally very busy places.  I succeeded in that task, finding one in a Burger King parking lot, and one in at an Italian restaurant that I lasted visited with my Webelos den on the way back from a trip to the desert.

I took these "hair" pics this morning when I got up.  Whoops, I tell a lie, I see I took them last night before I went to bed.  Oh, well, bad hair is bad hair.

I think I like the picture above more than the one below.

In spite of the confusion about when I took the pic, I AM still wearing that shirt!

Marshall Scotty's Playland Park (link to a Youtube video) in Lakeside.

 That's Richard Benjamin in that movie clip, purportedly filmed at Marshall Scotty's.  I don't believe I ever went there my self, but it was certainly a well-known place way back then.

After this I headed back to the city to try to find a series of puzzle caches.  I solved the puzzles for the first three last night, now I had to FIND them to get the clues to the final cache.  I found the first one no problemo.  The second one I was unsure about because the coordinate checker on the geocache page was NOT giving me OK, but then it occurred to me that maybe the cache owner had not updated the checker with the new coordinates since they moved the cache a few feet when they replaced it recently.  Hmmmm.  Well, it was right on the money, found it in short order!  On to the third one.

Picture of pretty tree with my backpack hanging on a branch.  Remember these blurry pics are THUMBNAILS, click on them to see the HIGH QUALITY (well, maybe not-so-high...) images they are linked to!!!  Do it!  I'll wait!

I did not find the third cache, so I had no idea what the last number of the north and west coordinates were.  But I was NOT going to give up without a fight, so I I fired up the GPSr and just kind of walked until the coordinates got to some reasonable proximity, then I would just see what I could see.

I learned two things:

1)  The "Mark a Waypoint" screen coordinates don't change.  I walked maybe a thousand (actually, 548) feet past the spot I was looking for. before I realized that.  "Satellites" view was what I needed.

2)  Wearing shorts was a REALLY bad clothing choice this morning!

I FINALLY got to the general area, read the hint, figured it out, and made the find.  I feel very proud.  Bloody, but proud.

I seem to have lost my coordinate/info. printout somewhere along the way back to the vehicle.  I only noticed when a fellow from a car politely asked to borrow a pen and paper so he could write a note for his homeless friend who was not "in residence" at the moment.

After I got home I piddled around in the garage for a minute, looking through a VERY old box of stuff that had been removed from a vehicle (I forget exactly which one) being disposed of, and found FOUR hair brushes.  I cannot imagine WHY there were FOUR hairbrushes running around loose in any vehicle of mine.

The Ice Cream Cone container-thing was found today at puzzle cache number three, I guess in lieu of finding the cache itself.  The brushes I disposed of.  The Ice Cream Cone I am keeping!

It was sprinkling just barestly perceptible amount this morning. Totally not a problem.

That is all for today, thanks for reading!


P.S.  Just ran across this, thought I would share!  Youtube video explaining Why there are mostly (a lot?) of separate cold/hot taps in British houses.



P.

A Last Roundup

I discovered this morning that I had set (MANY years ago) the magnetic declination on my compass to west, instead of east.  It is truly a wonder that I am not lost in the woods!

After a meeting today, far away across the city, I continue to be confounded by the electric conduit and components attached to the the fence.  And why no one takes them down, as they are obviously not functioning.  Pictures from opposite sides of the fence below.

On the way home I went geocaching at a spot I've not been to before.  I have looked at it many times on the map, but it looked iffy.  Well, it went just fine.  Here there was a view down into a little canyon west of the north-south Murphy Canyon, of whom I just can not find any information of, this Murphy person I mean.  I DID find reference to "Murphy's canyon" on page 492 of The National Guard Magazine dated May, 1911.

An urban jungle it said, no kidding! Can you spot the geocache?

You may recognize THIS picture from the other day's posting.  I discovered, today, that this is very nearly almost the exact spot that the Date St. bridge used to cross over the Cabrillo Highway to Balboa Park back in the day.  How serendipitous of me to have taken a picture here!

Well, that is enough for today!

Tomorrow Is Another Wednesday

I noticed that the phone cord was offensively dirty, so I tried to clean it.  Being rather flexible it was extremely difficult.  I came up a way to hold it securely, just wrap the cord around the handle of a small broom I had handy!

I really must remember to wash my hand after touching that broom, though, it has lead-based paint and is not to be handled by children.

I got the fox hunting/portable Yagi antenna working this evening. I soldered the matching pin to the coax and clamped the whole mess together.  Hooked it up to the radio and the SWR meter and I got me a 1.5 match.  Good enough!

Selfie with antenna.  The elements, being measuring tape tape, are extremely flexible and foldy.  And very very sharp on the ends!

I also hooked up the attenuater to the radio, but didn't hear anything. Forgetting that it's a 4 MHz offset attenuater. Meaning that you have to tune 4 MHz UP from the frequency you want to listen to...

I need to figure a way to mount the radio and attenuater on the antenna boom, or grow another arm.  Which ever will be easier, I guess.

Thanks for reading!



sdfgds

Mothers Day

On Cinco de Mayo we had a bit of a do in the library for Teacher Appreciation Day/Week.

For Mothers Day I called my mother (Yes, I am so lame), then I went to the downtown to visit  my friend.  This new place certainly has a better view than the old place.

We went up on the roof level patio to look around.

I asked him to point to something for a more interesting picture.

From another window was this view of some interesting old roofs.  Isn't everyone interested in old roof?

Of course, there was geocaching involved. On the way home I stopped by one place, parked, and walked a couple of blocks to the cache.  On the ran I ran across this pony.  You may have seen this pic on Facebook.

But you certainly did NOT see this one.  I re-positioned the pony slight to take advantage of a strategically located bird poop.  At least I THINK it was bird poop!

A view of the freeway ramps from near the cache area.

That is all for today!

Wednesday

Probably was Monday evening when I took this picture of the birthday balloons still inflated and floating above the trash can.

But the next morning they were barely floating at all.  What happened to them during the night?

This week is teacher appreciation week.  Here some of the appreciation the parent foundation provided on Tuesday.  Ain't that sweet?

I should post a picture of my new antenna.  Maybe another day.

Sunday Evening Finally Finished

I went geocaching in the afternoon.  M. called while I was up this hill. Over where you see the backpack is where I was when I told him I needed to put down the phone and leave the backpack. The bit of green sticking out between the two big rocks is where I thought the cache was. Where I am taking the picture from is the cache location.

A bit farther up the road there was a beautiful view.  Here we see Lake Jennings.

And here we see El Cajon Mt.  Which is somewhere we can NOT see in the video (link below), even though this spot is not all that far from that spot.

On the way back down I passed these rock stacks.They seem a little ominous. I don't know why.

I've watched so many geocaching movies on YouTube lately that I was inspired to not make one, but I DID make one of me singing as I walked along, which I something I VERY rarely do (singing, not walking!), and you will see why if you watch the video.