Bicycle Art

Yesterday I picked up two bicycle statues for the house at the Dunn Brothers in Rosemount (that's a picture of the Rosemount Cycling Club standing in front of Dunn Brothers - they have this picture of themselves over the fireplace inside. I met the guy in the RAGBRAI shirt while on RAGBRAI). The coffee shop has a number of sculptures on their walls by Jaak, a local artist, and while looking at his website, I noticed that in addition to all the guitars he creates, he had bicycles made from bicycle bits. I sent him an email, and he managed to find parts to create two of them for me. I believe I'm going to hang them in the kitchen in places that wouldn't be big enough for something else, such as over the window. There's a thin space up there, and it will look like a bike is driving across the top of the window frame.

Halloween's Not Quite Over

We found the second to the last Halloween 2008 geocache yesterday. After that, it's all math to find the hidden thirteenth cache. Eryn's excited, pondering what "Coughin up a Lung" might be referring to as a container. This was our third trip back to the same place to find number twelve. The first time it was dark and we couldn't find it, although I probably touched it in retrospect. The second time, I had checked the geocaching site the day before, which was too early to get the updated coordinates by the time we checked the next day (they'd moved it because neighbors were getting excited about seeing people in a park tree). The third time was yesterday, and I was sure I knew where it was, and yet still couldn't find it, even with Eryn and Pooteewheet acting as four extra eyes. So I called the other Scott over to help me find it (as I knew he'd already found it once before) and he couldn't find it either. Out came the Blackberry to check online and pulled up new coordinates. After that, it was a piece of cake. Or toadstool.

Here I am in a tree montage. Is it any wonder the neighbors' were concerned about what was going on? According to geocaching.com, they may have felt that the tree was on some sort of association property, rather than the city park, but still, it would be concerning to have people climbing around like this within sight of your windows. Maybe they're just very bad (obvious) peeping Tom's.


Eryn was also in the tree. She was excited she could get up there by herself, despite me falling off the far side and bleeding from near my ankle. Then again, that's how I knew I was in the right tree, because I lost my shoe twice, and Scott noted he'd also lost a shoe.


Scott in the tree, checking the same place I'd checked a dozen times for the first stage of the cache.


We persevered and found this guy hanging out on the edge of the lake, every near a muskrat feeding hole in the ice. Toads make bad muskrat scarecrows. Pooteewheet clomping through the brush makes a very good muskrat scarecrow.


Eryn, hoping for a prince.


Me, hoping for a princess. Maybe a British one who looks a bit like Minnie Driver, or a French one that looks like Sophie Marceau. Given Pooteewheet was geocaching with us, that might have made for an awkward situation had it worked.


It's been a long time since I touched a statue inappropriately. This isn't quite the same, but I don't think a real toad would have appreciated me touching his geocaching hole.

Interesting Things

Freewheeling Spirit links to an article about one of my favorite beers, Dogfish. When I was visiting She Says in D.C. this summer, it was what I drank, although I can just cross the border into Wisconsin to find some. I wish by age 39 my achievements had included building a giant beer barrel out of palo santo wood at a cost that might have gotten me fired. That's much more interesting than any of my resume bullet points.

Speaking of She Says, she has a post up that identifies the gender of the blogger. I'm identified as 69% male. All that's left to question is that if it's 69% am I toe to head, or head to toe. Fortunately, you can spend a lot of time just screwing around with your blog "statistics" (quotes definitely intended. I suspect it's as much real science as astrology). Library Bytes links to a number of them. Typelyzer says I'm an ESFP Performer especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and sweet smells. Which begs the question, why am I then seen with Mean Mr. Mustard so much? Unfortunately, I also have, "qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions." Doh. The Blog Readability Test pegs me as writing like a high schooler. This can be attributed no doubt to my bad language and recommendations as to how Erik can keep his face warm. Wait...that was on Facebook, so it doesn't count. But I did check She Say's blog, and now I don't feel so bad about not being college level. Website Grader gives me all sorts of information, such as a grade of 75 (B- or C+?), my Google findable pages, and an interesting statistic that my Technorati rank of 368,739 puts me in the top 0.53% of blogs tracked by Technorati. That sounds much more impressive than just the number, which is what Technorati gives me, or the Alexa rank I get of just over four million (specifically 4,003,621 which is still in the top 13.03 % of all websites). It looks like I was once up to almost 2.5 millionth. Damn the bad economy and it's impact on my website. Finally, I can even examine individual posts at PostRank, although it seems to be about a month behind the curve. New cats seem to get the best ranking, at least on NodToNothing.

Adventure Cycling is on Facebook.

This bit was also in my Adventure Cycling e-newsletter. I protest. Scotts should not be saying things like this in case others who read Adventure Cycling mistake them for the rest of us and think we have PMS.
PTS SUFFERERS UNITE: A fellow named Scott weighed in earlier this month at the Adventure Cycling forums, where he coined a phrase for the state of mind he found himself in after riding cross-country last summer: Post Tour Syndrome, or PTS. As Scott infers, there could be worse maladies to have. Check it out here: http://tinyurl.com/6m4bn9

Boing Boing links to a Media Shift article interviewing John Scalzi about pulps, SF and the web.

Eyeteeth links to a story about MIT studying the impact of modern media on storytelling. Not what's told, but the very structure of the story. The focus is on Hollywood, but David Foster Wallace was questioning (and expanding upon) the structure of the story in The Atlantic (magazine) and Infinite Jest (book) before his death, so the impact is media-wide.

Per Cookie Queen, Gulf War Illness is official. Like anyone who knows a vet couldn't have guessed that.

Where Eryn and Dad Walk Completely Around a Lake

Eryn and I went to Thresher Fields Park today to look for one of the two Halloween caches left before we can find the mystery cache. We parked in the park and our GPS said .13 miles away, almost straight in front of the car. Like idiots, we scrambled down this muddy, concrete-ridden hill. Idiots, because a.) the cache was straight across the lake and we could have walked down the road a ways and cut in somewhere easier and b.) there was trail about 100' from the car that avoided the "danger, loose rocks" posted area.


We got to the bottom of the hill safely, however, and began our journey. The first part involved grabbing rocks and throwing them onto the ice to demonstrate why we weren't walking across the center of the lake. Here's Eryn with a few sounding stones.


Sure...it looks like the rocks are in no danger of falling in, but there were a few that stuck halfway through the ice, and another that went completely in. The first half of the lake looks like a rock garden thanks to us. In the spring, any number of fish are going to get beaned in the head after a sudden thaw.


This is where we originally thought the cache might be. Good think it wasn't. I'd have never gotten Eryn to look in the mouth of this culvert. What frightened me is that it appears to be an entrance to Marioland. One of those places where you squat down and disappear into an underground world of coins and mushrooms.


Eryn. Concrete surfing. It's all the rage in Eagan.


Just before we saw the dead deer. Half of a dead deer, really. Maybe a quarter. And nearby another 1/8th or so. It made the Halloween cache extra creepy. I took it as an opportunity to show Eryn how some bones attach to one another. Eryn was trying to be sad for this picture. Originally, she was trying to think about how much her ankles hurt, but that wasn't working. I have a more angst-ridden photo where she thought about our dead dog as part of her method acting.


The goal of the around the lake trip. Find the cache. Wear the mask.


Eryn refused to wear either scary mask, so we compromised and worked a bit with perspective.


Here's the lake we walked around. It goes quite a ways in either direction. I didn't think it was so bad, but then I wasn't wearing boots and snowpants like some people were.


Eryn, happy to be back to the starting point.

Movies, Games and Plays...oh my

After going to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe at the Children's Theatre today (which was ok, but not great. I liked the movie better, and I wasn't a big fan of the movie. But the stage isn't particularly conducive to battle scenes. And Aslan looses a bit in translation when he's really just some guy in a loin cloth and head dress, ala the stage production of The Lion King. I found myself spending more time worrying about whether there's some message about racism embedded in the story, rather than the traditional Christian motiff C.S. Lewis intended, then thinking about the story) we watched Journey to the Center of the Earth (which needed the 3D, or at least a big, widescreen t.v.) before shipping Eryn off to bed.

Then I broke out all the presents Kyle bought me for my 40th birthday. That included Dominion, a card-based game that's currently riding the top of the board game charts, and a snifter of Buffalo Trace Kentucky Straight Bourbon whiskey. The Buffalo Trace was better than the Bulliet Erik (the Hairy Swede) put me onto. It had a slightly sweeter taste to it. And although I don't usually prefer sweeter, that aspect of it was part of a more complicated taste, which made it much more interesting.

As for Dominion, I played with myself for an hour before I got it right. And then I showed Pooteewheet what I'd learned. Yeah...you heard me right. I served up three hands and pretended I was playing a few rounds to see if I could figure out the finer points. Given how easy it was to learn it, and the variety involved in only playing with a limited set of cards, and the replayability aspect of being able to change up the cards the table is playing with from game to game, I give it a thumbs up. The fact that you share the same cards instead of each player trying to formulate a deck from scratch, as in most collectible card games, makes it just a bit more about the strategy and less about who can collect the most, or read the most about card combos. It only took me about ten minutes to demonstrate the basic gameplay to Pooteewheet, so it's also an easy game for someone to learn, especially with a teacher. Tomorrow I'm going to see if Eryn can get the hang of it. That's usually my test for whether a game is in my favorites list.

Suspicious Car Troubles

Pooteewheet's car has been running a little rough, so we took it in to have it looked at. Our favorite fixit guy closed up shop when Eagan eminent domained him, so we took it to the local BP where one of the mechanics had gone. Summary:

• Hooked it up to a machine for an hour and a half and found nothing. Note, they never took it for a road test which is what our old mechanic always did. We're not imagining that it's running rougher than it did. Maybe it's just a matter of waiting until something breaks.
  
• They left it in the lot with the parking break off and the parking lights on.
• When Pooteewheet drove the car off, it wasn't just that the parking lights were on, all the lights were on, but the low beams, which had been fine when she brought it in, were burnt out. Both of them.

They've offered to replace them, but is there a way to hook up the diagnostic wrong such that it burns out your bulbs? And if you live in the Eagan area, where do you take your car? We're looking for a new mechanic. This one won't do.

40 Catches Up With Me

I was riding my bike tonight on the trainer and felt pretty beat after riding hard over the weekend. Usually that means I might be pushing it a little too much, so I checked my pulse and noticed it was above 180. The easiest formula for Maximum Heart Rate, the rate you should try to stay under, a formula I know off the top of my head (there are many better ways to compute it, but I don't usually carry a calculator on my bike), is 220-Age. Five days ago, when I was 39, a pulse rate of just over 180 would have been fine. Today, I'm out of luck. Damn it. I can only console myself with the fact that Mean Mr. Mustard must have an HRMax of about 60.

Bored

The incident my sister refers to in this comment involved an exchange between my oldest niece and myself while my sister's children were here for the evening:

Niece: "I don't like to be bored."
Me: "Oh, I don't think..."
Niece: "I don't like to be bored. But my mommy likes me to be bored."
Me: "I don't think..."
Niece: "I don't like to be bored. But my mommy likes me to be bored. I don't want to be bored. But my mommy wants me to be bored."

(Wanders off with a number of My Little Ponys, obviously not bored).

Bedtime Music

Eryn told me the night before last that I was required to sing a song to her before bedtime. I started to sing, and she made me stop. She pointed at her closet and insisted that I sing one of the songs on the list taped to the door. Based on the play list, I'm allowed to sing any of the following:

• Holiday songs from her book
• You are my Sunshine
• Twinkle Twinkle
• Row Row your Boat
• Any song by Pink Floyd

I went with You are my Sunshine, because I don't think I quite have the chops to pull off Comfortably Numb.

Halloween Geoaching - Think Tank

We went to Ritter Farm Park in Lakeville to find a Halloween cache today. It was a bit further afield from our usual caching haunts, and I suggest determining a.) the trails and b.) the roads to get into the park before you get there. There's one route into the park because of all the farms/stables around the park and it involves crossing from the frontage road on the opposite side of the highway from the park. And if you're not prepared with a trail map, it can be a long walk up and down steep hills to find a geocache 6/10 of a mile into the park. Just ask Pooteewheet. But it was a beautiful evening for a walk, despite the 30-32 degree temperature, and the little bit of sleety-snow falling just as we were walking out made it almost pretty.

So here's what we went to find, Think Tank. Eryn didn't mind this as much as some of the other Halloween caches. The difference? No eyes still in the skull sockets.


See. She was willing to get close enough to poke the skulls with a stick while I signed the log.


But all was not well in the Ritter Farm woods. Dozens of strange rock cairns littered the deepest, shady depths. My sister knows what that means. The Blair Witch lives in Lakeville!


This is me, begging Mom and Dad to forgive me just before the Blair Witch gets me. I have very long arms. It's already too late for Eryn and Pooteewheet. I saw them standing in a corner near the cross country ski trail.

Nice Moment

Oops. I meant niece moment. Excuse the typo. We had the nieces while my sister went to 007. There was a lot of wild playing with the Dora playhouse, a bit of whinging (quite a bit from my daughter as well), and some ice cream at Ring Mountain. A. was partial to Bob the Bear.

Halloween Geocaching

It was a nice enough day today that after breakfast we went out to try out the new Vista HCx handheld GPS and find a few of the Halloween 2008 caches we have yet to find. This was the one we attempted to find in the dark a few weeks ago and failed to locate because the GPS was bouncing all over the place, "Look Ma, No Hands." Here are Pooteewheet and Eryn hamming it up. I don't know what's scarier, the axe in the hand, or the fact that Pooteewheet looks just a little like Klund in this picture. I'm glad I married her before I knew him, or that would be embarassing.

This was our 100th cache! We're officially in the century club.


Here's a close up of the cache if you're interested. We looked in this log the night we missed it - we just didn't notice the opening where it resided. The log and pencil are in the axe handle.


Here's Eryn walking through an abandoned wheat field on our way to "Splitting Headache".


This is posed for effect and to get some appropriate light. It was hidden in the bole of that tree. Eryn hates skulls that still have their eyeballs. She was fine with touching the axe and severed hand, but wanted nothing to do with this cache.


However, she still stepped up and took a picture of me posing with the cache.

Meal Time

We've tasked Eryn with cooking one meal a week. With help. But she has to pick what we're going to eat and do a better than equal share of the preparation. This week was foil dinners, courtesy of the cookbook my Aunt and cousins bought me and my brother when we were kids, Betty Crocker's Cookbook for Boys and Girls. Which, just as an aside, has a price as low as $0.01 on Amazon used books and retailed for $3.95 around Christmas of 1980.

Eryn seemed o.k. with the idea of cooking dinner. She's been involved in chocolate chip cookie production before and has helped me by fetching things from the fridge as necessary. And things went pretty well at first. Here you can see her chopping up carrots and potatoes, which was a little difficult as we used only a semi-sharp knife and were overly cautious about how hard she could press to chop the vegetables.


The big trouble came when we used a mixture of pork and hamburger to give the meals a meatloaf flavor. That required mixing the meat, and I had her do it by hand instead of a with a spoon. As you can see, her interest in squishing ground cow and pig between her fingers is dubious at best. In the full set of pictures, you can see her going from unsure, to mild dislike, to this one, a bit grossed out. I promised her next time we'd use a spoon to mix it, but that most people who eat hamburger tend to use their hands so they can form appropriate patty-shaped lumps. I'm of the opinion that if you're going to eat the poor beastie(s), you should have a firm understanding of what happened to the critter, and Eryn has always sort of understood where chicken and hamburger comes from, but this did seem to drive it home a little more. Then again, she's had that same face reserved for pumpkin guts since we first carved a pumpkin.

New Art

Eryn and my niece, Sophie, made a painting at Grandpa Larry's studio. Grandpa framed it and brought it over for us to put on the wall. So last night, Pooteewheet climbed a ladder and tested whether the closet would support her weight so we could have the art appropriately situated in the kitchen. You can't see it, but while she was up there she dusted.

Fortieth

Yesterday was my 40th birthday. I recommend to anyone who feels like they don't get enough birthday cheer that they sign up for Facebook and make sure their birthday is public knowledge. It was a good day. I skipped out of work to catch the 007 movie Quantum of Solace (I liked the last one better), eat free food, and hang with my brother and nephew who came over later in the day to drink beer and play Wii. Oliver (my nephew) bought me a special present, pictured below. A Star Wars battle droid and a card telling me happy birthday big guy. The battle droid has to sit down, because he has freakishly small feet compared to his torso. I think it's a sign that in the future it will be fashionable for the rich to own basically useless robots that mimic the Chinese practice of foot binding.



I think people feel sorry for you on your 40th, or else they're just happy you lived that long despite the stupid, life threatening details of your past, because I scored a few very nice presents. My entire family (sister's family, brother's family, in-laws, my family, and my parents) went in on buying me a complete set (everything but the two commemorative posters) of Cage Design MSP bike posters to hang on our extensive kitchen wall space. I only have the Stone Arch Bridge one at the house so far as the others are still being framed. They'll go nicely with my posters of the tour, poster from RAGBRAI, various bicycling statues, the "One Fucking Speed" triptych Pooteewheet created for me, and the wall art made out of old bike parts that a local artist is making for me.

And my parents also got me a Vista HCx handheld GPS to replace my old one. Now I can download queries of caches to install on my GPS and copy them onto the handheld with a USB cable instead of hand-entering the coordinates one at a time. It's also in color, uses many more satellites for better accuracy (and faster boot time - my old one took forever), and has road maps, so it's useful for finding your way around a big city if you're just on vacation. We tried it out on a few caches today.

Thank you to everyone for the well wishes and the gifts!

I Need Monistat

I would be willing to provide Hulu with the minimum information necessary, such as checking "M" in a radio selection list, if they'd refrain from showing multiple Monistat 3 commercials during my television shows.

Obama Recession

My sister questioned why I didn't have an election day post up. The truth is, I always figured he'd win. I always figured we'd have a black president in my life time. I always figured we'll have a woman president in my life time. I have less faith that we'll have a hispanic president, but still, it's a possibility. So Obama becoming president wasn't the watershed event for me that perhaps it should have been because I just always expected to see it. My Facebook account does list my political persuasion as liberal (although it's missing the fiscal qualifier that should immediately precede that word) - is there any chance I was voting for someone else?

But apparently everyone was expecting him to be president, and that's why the economy is in the toilet. That's right...every damn Republican in the U.S. felt it was a foregone conclusion, and that's why they bought up speculative housing loans, decreased their retail spending by 2.5%, and stopped paying their mortgages. Are there any of you out there that truly believe the crap that comes out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth?

Here's the quote from the Baltimore Sun article:
"The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen," Limbaugh told his radio audience of 15 million to 20 million on Thursday. "Stocks are dying, which is a precursor of things to come. This is an Obama recession. Might turn into a depression."

Really? I saw a news article the other day (and I apologize for the lack of citation) that something like 70% of U.S. citizens have a positive attitude about the Obama presidency that isn't here for two months yet. 19-20% approve of Bush's approach. If the stock market were solely a vehicle of public perception around political individuals, you would have to draw the conclusion that the 20% who support Bush (or the 30% who disapprove of Obama) outnumber the 80% who disapprove of Bush or the 70% who support Obama. Maybe this has something to do with economic distribution and the top fifth owning 80% of the wealth. I guess in that case, it makes a certain amount of perverse sense. But if so, why are they punishing themselves (and my 401k) by screwing over the stock market and financial institutions for trillions of dollars, rather than just handing it over to validate their socialist-paranoia tendencies? I think that would have been exceptionally more efficient in the long run.

Happy National Nurse Practitioner Week

It's National Nurse Practitioner Week. So happy NNPW to any nurse practitioners related to me! You know who you are. But in case you don't know what you do, here are some facts about the 125,000 Nurse Practitioners in the United States and a press release from the American Association of Nurse Practitioners.

"Do you know where to turn when your child is sick? When you’re planning a family? For
health education? When your parents need care? Turn to a nurse practitioner. An NP
diagnoses, treats, prescribes and manages medications and treatments and provides a
wide range of preventive and acute healthcare services to individuals of all ages."

My sister should have mixed feelings about the event. She should be excited (and proud) it's National Nurse Practitioner Week and that they put an Asian-American on the NNPW poster.


And yet she should be sad that the best promotional item nurse practitioners can come up with for the celebration is an "I'm an NP Fan" fan. Soooo tacky. I'm going to assume NPs are way too busy taking care of people of all ages to spend any real time thinking about swag.

Nightmares

I guess I'm almost as bad as my father, who used to take me to see the likes of Call of the Wild and The Land that Time Forgot when I was a little too young. Last night, Pooteewheet says Eryn woke up crying because of a bad dream about clay-faced school children. And although she didn't say so, probably meat grinders as well. Can you guess what she was watching earlier in the evening on YouTube?

Addendum: It was pointed out to me that perhaps the real issue was that after letting her watch the video, we put The Wall in her CD player to play over night, and it wasn't until she got to the song matching the video that the nightmare began. In my defense, I did provide her with both The Wall and Pulse as listening alternatives.

Free Food Day

It's my birthday this Friday, and I was pondering what I should be up to for the day. In the past, I might have gone out drinking, or wrestled a faux Perkin's waitress in a pool of oil (Or a police woman. You never know if your friends have druthers that impact your wrestling partner). This year, I think I'm going to eat. Because it's my birthday, I have coupons for free food to:

• Breakfast at Louisiana Grill (or any of the Uptown-related cafes/grills/diners)
• Coffee at Caribou
• Lunch at GenghisMongolian Grill
• Coffee at Dunn Brothers
• Dinner at Cold Stone Creamery (well, dessert, but after Louisiana and Genghis, I'll probably be full)

Coupled with a matinee of the new James Bond movie, I'm going to be a very content 40 year old.

Strange Sitings

On the way to work this morning, I saw a girl hunched over her cellphone, obviously being very careful that no one could see or hear her. Ten feet away were two boys, obviously oblivious, talking and gesturing toward the oncoming cars. I'm not sure what you have to talk about at twelve or thirteen that's so crushingly important and secretive that it requires huddling in your own little bit of wet grass despite the fact that no one is paying any attention to you whatsoever, but if I see Eryn doing it, we're going to have a talk. If you're going to scheme, plot and whisper secrets, figure out a way to do it that makes it look like you're up to something else.

On the way home from work, I saw the unicyclist I often see commuting in Eagan. Except it's pitch black out this time of year at 5:30. And it was raining, and icing over on the roads and sidewalks. As a result he was in a raincoat and carrying a flashlight in one hand so he could see where he was going. I think that's a level of dedication I shall never exhibit.

The Upside To Restless Legs

There's an upside to restless leg syndrome. Specifically, as I'm not in the same bed as Pooteewheet until after my checkup with the doctor later this month, tonight the cat pooped and peed on her bed, not mine.

Things That Look Other Than They Are

What is it?

It certainly looks like something you'd find in the back door section of Smitten Kitten's online catalog.


And yet it's only the rocket launching portion of Eryn's new Nerf-style rocket launcher.

Baize

Does everyone else know the definition of baize? I swear sometimes that the only reason I read Terry Pratchett books is so that I learn new words. He used the word baize in the phrase, "But genetics roll strange dice on the green baize of life..." (Carpe Jugulum, p. 15).

So I had to look it up, despite having a vague idea that it was related to the green felt on a craps table.

"An often bright-green cotton or woolen material napped to imitate felt and used chiefly as a cover for gaming tables."

Another site offered a clever language trick:

"Tutor's tip: The Duke, with several "beys" (titles of respect), wore his "baize" (thick fabric) coat and stood outside listening to the "bays" (animal sounds)."

Is She Wearing a Skort?

LissyJo. This is why Eryn called to ask you if I'd every tied/taped you to a tree. (via Mediation)

King of Kong and League of Ordinary Gentleman

This is primarily aimed at Klund and at Mean Mr. Mustard, because I think if they haven't seen these yet, they'll find them a treat. I strongly recommend The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, about the competition to set the Donkey Kong world record. I'd been meaning to watch it forever, and finally did while bicycling on my trainer tonight. It is superb and I think the humor is precisely in line with Klund's.

And if you have the time, I think King of Kong and League of Ordinary Gentlemen, which is a documentary about bowling, would make one of the best documentary double headers out there. In some respects they're amusingly similar. Perfect 300s? Perfect Donkey Kong? Much funnier than you'd ever expect.

When I Grow Up...

Cookie Queen sent me this picture today with the caption "Always check your child's homework."


The punchline is that it's a mother selling shovels at Home Depot, and those are all the customers.

So I sent her this picture, which I told her Conner (her son) had created for a similar school assignment...
It's Cookie Queen, giving chocolate chip cookies to a customer. The response from my sister, who was also on the email chain, was to question whether I was a child. Didn't we just have a post showing me giving the finger with a geocache and taking a dump in front of a no dumping sign? Why would anyone even have to ask that question.

Geo Leftovers

We went geocaching this weekend near Rosemount, and had much more luck than tonight, when Eryn and I wandered around the woods in the dark for half an hour with the GPS constantly telling us the cache was moving around us in a circle 49 feet away. I hate it when the machine can't get a good read on a satellite.

Here's a spooky spider cache.


And a flying critter. Surprisingly, no one finds these by accident even when they're just hanging there like this. They're just too isolated for your casual hiker.


Eryn loves the new playgrounds we get to try out when we're geocaching. This one, with it's palm trees, probably looks pretty funny in the winter.


We also stuff Eryn in any old piece of junk we find while geocaching, like this messed up popup trailer behind the school in Rosemount. Pooteewheet checked for rats and wasps first.


These were cool. Someone made their own geocaching tokens in a pottery kiln. Points for originality.


On the back one says "Sandy was here" and the other says "Roses are red, violets are blue, I like geocaching and so must you."


After geocaching, it's time to go to Dunn Brothers for coffee, homework, and copying shark facts.

Like Father Like Daughter

TallBrad was wondering in my comments about who taught Eryn a rude gesture. I think I can shed some light on this issue.

Here's sweet, innocent Eryn, searching for a geocache. She's all light and smiles.


Note how she's not squeamish that I ripped up my finger while geocaching.


Wait?! What's this...it's a cache, and it's flipping you off. Pooteewheet says the shadow is very convincing.


So just to prove I'm a bad influence. Here I am just before finding the bloody finger cache.


And here's Eryn shortly after I posed. She's had to pee in the woods before while looking for a cache, so this isn't that far fetched. She thought the whole dump motif was pretty amusing.