Blah!

What a yucky day!

The middle of April and we are living in a snow-globe. After playing inside for much of the day, Ben and I decided to head out for some geocaching despite the snow/rain/sleet/ice-pellets falling outside. A friend of ours recently hid one about 2 miles from our house so we headed out with gear and clothes appropriate to the day and activity...

The cache is hidden near the Jackrabbit Trail which wanders through a big chunk of wild country between some roads that run near our home. Some of the trail runs along a power-line and is pretty open, some runs through deep woods and is like a deer-path; all of it is beautiful and a great place to walk and see lots of wildlife...

Since this was the first time I had used my GPS since returning from the Southwest, I was getting some funky readings from the compass (it had acclimatized to the level of declination out there which is about 30 degrees different, so it was giving me erratic readings). The remedy for this is to calibrate the GPS and compass, which involves telling it to do so, and then turning slowly in circles until it tells you to stop. A minute later, I was getting a clean reading (it took me to within 3 feet of the geocache), and Ben was looking at me strangely...he was also looking in the woods worriedly as I had been whooping loudly, "Crazy Ivan, Crazy Ivan" while spinning...

The cache was exactly where my GPS said that it would be (3 feet is a perfect reading, given the vagaries of communication to and from satellites of my machine and the machine of the person hiding the cache), and Ben was excited to search it for goodies. This is a cache designed specfically with kids in mind, and is filled with toys. For the occasion, Ben had gone through his own toys and selected a couple of pristine toys that he was willing to trade (we like having him pick his own trade-items, and making fair trades)...

I did the obligatory "push-n-dash" photo, which in this case involved my balancing my camera on a fallen and snow-covered tree, setting the time, composing/focussing the shot, pushing the button, and running through the knee deep snow around to Ben in a couple of seconds without disturbing the camera in the slightest...it's an art form that ordinarily evokes larger smiles from the people I am posing with than Ben gave this time around...

On the way back, Ben navigated. I customarily mark a waypoint at my car, so that if I get turned around in the woods, I can use the GPS to get me back to it. I marked a point out of habit, even though this walk was very easy; and when I asked, Ben was eager to help us get back to the car. I helped him get through the screens on the GPS, and select the, cleverly name, "CAR" waypoint, and off we went. He did a great job, not looking at the screen the whole time, as many GPS-rookies tend to do, but just checking every so often to make sure that we were going in the right direction...

Spring must come soon, despite the 20" of snow we are supposed to get tonight, and when it does, Ben will continue to take a more active role in our geocaching adventures...

Las Vegas Baby!!!

Sometimes, one of the great things about living in the Adirondacks is leaving...

I met my sister Sarah in Las Vegas for along weekend, and we had a spectacular time!!!

We played lots of Blackjack, stayed up too late, and enjoyed cocktails in some of the best, and worst, spots in town...

One of the highpoints of our visit was a visit to the Las Vegas Hilton, and more specifically Quark's Bar and Restaurant, which is a Star Trek themed eatery...

An integral part of enjoying your visit to Quark's is a full immersion in the food and drink experience...we had a lunch made up of the Smorgasborg (which is a mixed group of appetizers) and the Holy (onion) Rings of Betazed, along with 2 of their high-powered cocktails...a Warp Core Breach and a Borg Sphere...


Mmmmmm...you can really taste the warp core breach...


Sarah was only too happy to be assimilated by her Borg sphere...


Quark came by to check on us partway through our meal...he was happy to pose with Sarah at first...


...but got a little grumpy when he realized we weren't going to pay him for the pics...it's a Ferengi thing...


Next we ran into a very tall Andorian...


We also found one of the Gorn, a lizard-y species from the original series...


One of the real finds of the day was a Klingon female warrior...


We had a great time in Las Vegas overall, and a really super visit to nerd-Graceland...

Spring Geocaching Outing

My geocaching account is setup to send me an email whenever a new geocache is approved within 50 miles of my home coordinates, I like fresh geocaches...I found 3 new ones yesterday, 2 of them I was the "First-to-Find" (FTF)...Part of it is competitive, but another part is the added challenge of finding a geocache that nobody else has been to before...your not 100% sure that it's there, that the coords are accurate, there's no herd path leading you to the cache, etc.

Anyway, I got an email last night at 10:45 from the geocaching.com computer, notifying me that there was a new geocache hidden along the trails of The Wild Center, a nearby natural history museum...I thought that it would be a fun walk for a spring morning, and that we would likely be the FTFers...

When we got to the Wild Center, the Little Old Lady greeting people at the door saw our attire (boots and geo-pack) and preemptively informed us that all of the trails were closed due to ice...I asked her to expand on her warning a bit, and she had lots of dire details about pack-ice caused by snow-shoeing people and our springtime warm-day-cold-night syndrome, and was told in no uncertain terms that the ice was like a sheet of glass (but wet and hard and with pokey-things sticking up in places)...

We were bummed out, but had some fun poking around the museum for a bit...there's a live otter, and other exhibits with live beasties and stuff to touch and smell and play with...but when push came to shove, we decided to try our luck and chance the consequences (figuring that we could always turn back before the outing reached Donner Party stage)...

It was certainly slippery in a couple of spots, but the Little Old Lady at the front door (and whoever printed the dire warnings in the daily museum activities flyer we were handed on our way in) operates using an entirely different formula for risk assessment than geocachers do...it was fine...


It was a lovely walk on a lovely day through a mix of forest types and down, eventually, to the Raquette River...on the way we saw deer prints aplenty, as well as some other tracks that looked like fox...

There was a cool set of boardwalks towards the end that took us over marshy ground to the hiding spot of the geocache and some wonderful observation platforms that projected out above an oxbow of the Raquette...

We found the cache in short order, and found that some friends of ours, Shane and Doree, had gotten there before us...we suspect an incursion under cover of darkness with headlamps and ninja suits and dramatic music...we inspected the cache contents, made our trades, signed the log, and replaced the cache in its hiding spot before enjoying a snack and drink in the sun on the observation deck...

We pose for geo-photos be saying, "Geocache" instead of cheese, and Ben sometimes gives the camera a battle face...this was one of those times...we enjoyed granola bars and raisins and warm water (in the winter, I fill my camelbag with hot water to prevent the tube from freezing...it wasn't really necessary today, but my habits don't shift as quickly as the seasons up here in the ADKs)...

On the way back up we saw a great tree with numerous huge holes made by a pileated woodpecker and now overgrown (ingrown) with moss...we made it back to our car alive, drove into Tupper Lake proper for a lunch at McDonald's, and stopped at Shaheen's on the way out of town for a large piece of beautiful cow-flesh for dinner...

Ben's taking a nap, I'm on Spring Break for 2 weeks, I'll be heading West in a couple of days to wallow in turpitude of some sort in Las Vegas with my sister, and I may go do some maintenance on a couple of my nearby geocaches this afternoon while the weather holds...it's supposed to turn rainy and grey tomorrow...

Warning: Topic Shift...stop reading now if you don't want to know what we did last night...

Yesterday afternoon, I began my Spring Break with a precision strike on 3 geocaches...one that had been taunting me from under the snow for a while, and 2 that were brand new and picking at my competitive nerve endings...I found them all (YAY!!!) and made it home in time to pick Ben up from school at the normal time...when Gail got home, she proposed going out for supper to Desperadoes, the superb mexican place in Lake Placid...I one-upped her by adding a movie to the evening ("Meet the Robinsons")...the movie theater in Lake Placid, the Palace Theater, is a great old building where you pay $6 for a movie ticket, and can get a tub of popcorn for 75 cents...

We all had a great evening overall, and great food at dinner, and Ben enjoyed the movie (it had its moments, but all things being equal, I would rather have had sand in my eyes for the entire 90 minutes)...on the way back to the car, we walked to Starbucks (new last year, and the only one in 60 miles) for big and fancy coffees to end the evening...

So far, it's been a great weekend!

St. Paddy's Day Snowstorm...

Snow...snow, snow, snow, snow...

We got about 10" of new snow overnight at out place, and Ben and I went out to play during one of the lulls in the ongoing snow that has been falling on and off all day...

The snow is fun for playing, but lousy for snowballs or snowmen...Ben tried to play the game we were playing last time we went out in the snow, where he would surprise me by throwing a snowball at my back...this stuff was so light and fluffy that I couldn't feel it hitting my back...

Our plow-king had just come by, so we had huge piles of the stuff for me to throw him into (continued agoge training)...one time I hurled him from about 6-8 feet away, and he disappeared momentarily in a cloud of fluff...I was worried that he might have fallen through to hard stuff underneath, or gotten scared, but he just laughed and dug himself out, wiping the powder off of his face...

He asked me to bury him in the snow, with results that you can see below...given the loft of the snow, and it's dryness, he was really quite warm under a thick insulating layer of fun...

Agoge in Lake Clear

Gail and I went out last night for dinner and a movie in Lake Placid!!! Ben was so excited to see his babysitter that he couldn't wait for us to leave...

We enjoyed a nice dinner at the Steak and Seafood place, and then went to see "300" a great movie about the Battle of Thermopylae in Ancient Greece. In the movie, King Leonidas of Sparta blocked the only road through which the massive army of Xerxes could pass...300 Spartans held off an army led by King Xerxes numbering in the hundreds of thousands (including, according to the movie, lots of ninjas and mutant giants)...

One of the things that made the Spartans so tough was the Agoge, a rigorous and gruelling training/toughening regimen which involved taking young boys from their families at a young age, and subjecting them to all sorts of harsh training and discipline to shape them into hoplite soldiers...

This afternoon, I decided that Ben has lived much too soft a life, and decided to bring a little agoge into life in Lake Clear...



Above, you can see the young King Leonidas being lead away from his family at age 7...


I'd miss Ben if strangers in togas led him away, so instead, I threw him into a snowbank to get things started...


Next he was banished to the bottom of a steep hill, and I hurled snowballs at him from the top, teaching him important lessons about ducking and weaving and the advantages of holding the high ground...


Despite facing superior forces, as had the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, Ben rallied to return fire, and held his ground...


Here Ben can be seen trying to take advantage of natural cover to avoid overwhelming force from the sky...when I threatened to blot out the sun with my snowballs, Ben responded, "so much the better, I shall fight in the shade", as did Dienekes, a Spartan soldier when told about how numerous the Persian arrows would be in a similar strategic situation while at Thermopylae...


Ben had to face a final challenge during his experience at the bottom of Snowhill...the dark hound...luckily he knew that Zeke simply wanted to eat one of the snowballs that we were whipping back and forth at nearly light speed...


King Leonidas faced a similar challenge during his agoge, except that his snowy showdown with a large black canine ended with a really sharp stick, instead of a snowball, inside the beast's mouth...


Having conquered the beast, Ben was allowed to rejoin Lake Clear society, having successfully completed his agoge...he had suffered in the extreme, but it was certainly a different Benjamin who climbed out of that snow-pit of heck...


Before we went back inside, he used his newly acquired, battle-hardened, adversity-honed, strategic skills...as I would find out a few seconds later, he had a snowball hidden behind his back, and tricked me with the old, "look Daddy, something shiny"...I fell for it like a ton of bricks, and paid the ultimate price with a chilly neck...