What Was Accomplished

Monday, August 31, 2015          Home at last     trip odometer 7,816 miles

            I arrived home around 10:30 this morning to be greeted by a rush of cats. Well, by Ginny rushing out to the garage because the connecting door was open and she was eager to hunt for mice; by Cassie, who actually did saunter out to greet me, sniffed my fingers thoroughly, gave an approving face rub, and accepted petting; and then, when I walked in, Molly looked up from her nap and saw it was me. She gave me the whole enthusiastic welcome treatment, from thunderous purrs to slamming her body against my legs to rub them fervently, finally giving me a series of tender licks. She and Ginny continued to be my most emotional welcomers, with Cassie looking on happily. Deanna gave me dirty looks but finally caved in when I sat for awhile. The lap was irresistible to her, and I am now forgiven for going away by Deanna. I had to go out into the workshop to greet Alex, since that’s his napping place. Once he sniffed my hand and recognized me, he allowed himself to be picked up and draped over a shoulder to be carried around purring. Rowena, five hours later, has NOT forgiven me but just grabbed a treat I put down where she could sneak it without acknowledging me as the donor. An ex-feral, she is slow to trust and easily offended. I have to wait for her to make the first move.

            It didn’t take as long to get home as I’d figured, because by the time I found a place to stay last night I’d come nearly half an hour from where I’d decided I was too tired to make it home. But here I am, safe and comfy. Now is the time to evaluate my accomplishments.

            I drove 7,816 miles in 25 days, for an average of about 313 miles a day. During that span of time I stayed in one place for multiple nights twice. My goals were to attend my friend’s daughter’s wedding, to find three of the most prestigious geocaches in the world, to attend the final Geocaching HQ Block Party, to fish the Yellowstone area and see some of its best-known sites, to pay my respects at the Native American sacred site Medicine Wheel, and to see the famous Minnesota Twine Ball. I accomplished all of these goals. I once again enjoyed catching native cutthroat trout on flies, and saw Old Faithful erupt, which I missed both previous times I was in Yellowstone. I had a profound experience at Medicine Wheel which, as such things often do, involved some pretty rigorous testing.

            During the trip I logged 70 geocaches, making August 2015 my best caching month ever, and bringing my total to 488 finds, just 12 short of my 500 milestone. I found a cache (at minimum) in each of 19 states I never had before, each earning me a virtual souvenir and boosting my US State Souvenir total to 31. I also found my first non-US caches and added Ontario, Canada to my souvenir list. The Original Stash Tribute Plaque and Geocaching HQ each have their own souvenir, as does the Block Party. Additional souvenirs earned include 4 of the 5 2015 Challenge souvenirs and International Geocaching Day. My souvenir total stands at 76! I’ve now found 84 caches more than 250 miles from home, the farthest being 2,224 miles away. The Original Stash Tribute Plaque, the HQ Cache, and Mingo, the oldest continuously-maintained cache, were the three I set out to find, but I also added the St. Louis Arch virtual and the Famous Twine Ball cache, two well-known and desirable finds. This may all be as boring as watching paint dry to most people, but I am a statistics freak (one of the things I loved about baseball), and have great fun with the geocaching personal stats pages.

            I acquired a good many geocoins and the like, dropped one each of my ASPGB proxies in Mingo and the Tribute Cache and watched, open-mouthed, as they BOTH went to the HQ Cache and arrived there before I did! I picked up the Bristol Bunny Travel Bug and gave it a 1,500 mile ride, hopefully earning its owner a pint of holiday cheer for mileage this winter. I got to tour Geocaching Headquarters, found all the Block Party Lab caches, and generally had a caching good time. Incidentally, Bruce, my trackable Subaru, has now logged 6,080 miles since activated April 8^th. Why the difference? Road miles versus line-of-sight between caches Bruce ‘visited.’

            Aside from fishing and geocaching, I’ve learned a great deal this trip. For one thing, coffee gets worse the farther one travels West. On the west coast, I had to double the sweetener and use cream (which at home I seldom do) to make it potable. For another, my brain, meaning memory, planning, and processing, is in much better shape than I’d been led to believe. My emotional state, though… I reach the proverbial ‘last nerve’ very quickly and just lose everything when I do. I’ve learned I have courage. I also possess more physical strength and stamina than I’d figured, although I do have my limits. I’ve learned that I have a benevolent guardian (call it angel, spirit-guide, or what you will), perhaps several, who subtly call my attention to lessons I should learn, point out things that will make me smile, steer me away from evil people and towards nice ones, and, most of all, cushion life’s little disasters so that I learn from them rather than becoming a statistic.

            Things I didn’t need to learn that stood me in good stead were, when something is pleasurable, enjoy it! Give people a chance to be nice, and they will almost always take it. When someone smiles, smile back; when they don’t, smile first. Most of all, see the beauty.

            I like to travel. That should be obvious by now. However, I’m looking forward to a good, long stretch of time spent almost exclusively at home. I want to digest the things I learned from this trip, perhaps make some of the truths my own and apply them to my day-to-day life. Will I make another big trip like this one? Probably, but not soon. When I once more feel stagnant, and need to change in order to grow, I will pack my suitcase, and seek my answers on the road.

Oh, Canada!

Sunday, August 30, 2015           Wellsville, NY

            Taking a short cut through Canada almost got me home today. Perhaps if I hadn’t taken those lengthy wrong turns in Buffalo, or not missed my exit in Hamilton, I might have made it. As it is, I’m totally exhausted and two more hours (the last hour in the dark) would have been more than I could feel comfortable with. Besides, I have to give the cats their last-evening-till-mom-comes-home party.

            It was an eventful day. First thing, I found myself discussing geocaching with a Canadian customs worker. They were pulling aside one car in five to take a survey on tourist visits from the US. I’ve got her really curious. She even asked the name of the cache I’d be visiting first.

            Which was my first find outside the US. On my statistics, it will now say I’ve “cached in two countries,” and the world map will show which two. It was a remarkable cache, just a repurposed plastic coffee can, but it had SIX trackables in it. If that proves anything, it proves that Canadian cachers are kinder to trackables, because two were geocoins (originals, not proxies) and their owners obviously trusted that they would not ‘vanish.’

            I had pre-downloaded five caches in the rural stretch of the Canadian motorways to make it easier to get on and off, and find more solitude to search. I missed one, daydreaming my way past the exit, but was rewarded when I went for the next one.  This was really creative. A good-sized lock-and-lock container had a magnet epoxied to the lid, and a ¾ log had a cavity chiseled from the bottom and a matching steel plate screwed to the top of the cavity. The container would not fall out even if the log was rolled vigorously. A casual seeker might lift the log and think “nothing underneath” never noticing it was hollow. The hint was “magnetic.” I lifted the log and thought it was too light-weight for an apparently non-rotted piece of wood, and looked. Clever. It was empty of swag, so I added a little.

The next one was far from solitary; it was right between the parking lot and drive-through food lane of a very busy ‘rest stop,’ which in Canada is much like the ones on the PA Turnpike only bigger and more hectic. I had to linger quite awhile pretending that a recycling bin was fascinating both before grabbing the skirt-lifter and before replacing it. This was my only micro find in Canada.

Then I went in and rewarded myself with a large iced coffee. I knew I was really in Canada when a lady I was passing said loudly to her companions, “EH?” There are fewer flags displayed than in the US, where every large business and half the residences seem to fly one. When a Canadian flag was displayed, it didn’t seem at all strange to me. The only real adjustment I had to make to Canada was using the inner, smaller-font numbers of my speedometer, as speed limits were in km/hr. Having the mile markers and signs also in kilometers was actually beneficial, because I always came to a town or interchange before my intuition said I would. It made the time pass quickly.

            The last cache I had downloaded was a “Travel Bug Hotel,” and I had decided that the Bristol Bunny would be dropped there, if I found the cache. New York State seems to have mostly micros, and once I’m home it will be at least a couple weeks until I’m in a position to hunt down anything larger. This gives the Bunny the best chance of moving on quickly and racking up more miles. I gave it a good ride, South Dakota to Ontario. I did indeed find the cache, a camouflaged food-service-sized peanut butter jar, and swapped the Bunny for a lovely geocoin from Germany that turned out to have three rabbits imprinted on one side. The damn things DO multiply! This one is visiting states and Pennsylvania is on the list.

            Shortly after that I hit the Hamilton traffic, missing the exit for the bypass. I took the QEW to Niagara, and decided at the last minute to take the Niagara border crossing instead of the Buffalo one. This decision cost me at least an hour of travel time, but I did get a view of the Falls crossing the bridge. I was so tired (and hungry) I was practically incoherent with the American customs officer and couldn’t even remember that Port Huron was where I’d entered Canada. But finally he waved me on. I got lost numerous times navigating Niagara, NY, and Buffalo, which it turns out I needed to go through to get where I was going anyway. I actually had to go west for awhile on I-90 to find my south-going exit. Déjà vu! Somehow the little two-lane road I took south eventually dumped me east of Olean, around 6:00 p.m.

            With Route 44 closed for construction, I was looking at either finding a place to stay or getting home after dark. I chose the latter. Now my journey is almost over, and I’m beginning to think of its ending, what I’ve accomplished, and, alas, what needs to be done at home. I was away from all that… sigh.

Rainy Day Troubles

Saturday, August 29, 2015         Port Huron, Michigan     trip odometer 7,425 miles

            Another slow day due mostly to rain and construction. This adds a day to my expected arrival home: Monday, considering that I’m too tired to push for miles tomorrow. First thing that will happen is I’ll enter Canada. Things will be pretty straightforward until I get close to Toronto/Niagara.

            The roads in Michigan are awful. There is also the phenomenon that was conspicuously absent out West, where posted speed limits are 80 MPH. The people here pay no attention to the posted limits and go 75 to 80 anyway. In dry weather on decently maintained roads I’d have gone the posted 70; in rain with crappy roads and/or ones torn up for construction, 65 was the most I was willing to risk. Cars were whizzing past with dubbed in zo-o-o-om sound effects. At one point this became a serious problem, and I (and many other former speed demons) were stuck for nearly two hours because of an accident that spanned all three lanes of the road, the entrance ramp at that spot, and both the median grass area and roadside grass area. Rescue personnel had more urgent priorities than getting traffic moving, and even when I finally crept past, they had only the entrance ramp open as a by-pass and I had to stop to let some rescue people cross. I thought I recognized the burned 2/3 of a car on the road verge by the intact bicycle on the rear rack. Idiots or not, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

            I stopped for four caches, which I’d pre-downloaded spaced at just the right intervals for a needed leg-stretch. Except for the last one, they didn’t take much extra time. That one required brush-busting through seventy yards of shrubs, brambles, high grass, mud, and vines. With no geotrail. Worse yet, getting back out, with no trail of any kind. In the rain. In sandals. When I got back to the car, I had to pick burrs off my socks. Later I threw them out because they were totally wrecked. Heck, I later found a burr in my underwear. I was soaked from the neck, down, too. Had I known what this smiley was going to cost me I would have passed it by, but by the time I was in deep trouble, I was less than 100 feet from the cache. Two-and-a-half terrain rating, my maiden aunt!

            But, the good news? I’m back in my normal time zone. Even, better, I’ll be home and greeting my cats the day after tomorrow!

Traffic Jam

Friday, August 28, 2015             Hammond, Indiana        trip odometer 7,095 miles

            My goal today was to find one geocache (to keep my ‘streak’ going and add miles to the Bristol Rabbit Travel Bug I’m carrying) and get past Chicago. I accomplished both, but it was not easy.

            For one thing, there was rain all day, varying from a few specks on the windshield to a steady fall, but most of the time it was just enough for me to keep my windshield wipers on “Intermittent/High” and make the road a little slick. Traffic was heavy, especially after I passed Madison, Wisconsin, and it just kept getting worse. These folks still wanted to go 70 MPH, but I am always a bit more cautious in wet weather, so we were all frustrated.

            I miscalculated the exit for the first cache I wanted to try for, going a couple exits too far and not being inclined to retrace my route. The next one was not until after Milwaukee, and was actually the last one I had marked in Wisconsin, a park-and-grab at an enormous truck stop. The hint indicated it was on or near the car vacuum, and some guy was putting air in his tires in the same spot. He asked me pointedly if I needed to use the air pump, I answered honestly that I didn’t, then I went inside the truck stop to do my other needed things while waiting for him to go. I used the restroom (first and always!), wandered around looking at the food options, and ordered and ate dinner. I used an outside table so I could keep an eye on that vacuum and air pump.

            When I finished, I sauntered casually over. Three objects: air pump, vacuum, and a light post. A skirt lifter? But that wasn’t the hint. I circled the equipment, looking it over for anything that might not belong there. Nothing. Try the lamp post. Bingo! My streak was intact, Bristol Bunny had another several hundred miles, and I paused only to fill the gas tank before heading out for goal #2.

             I found Chicago’s rush hour traffic strangely peaceful. There we were, four lanes of bumper-to-bumper vehicles, barely moving. My strategy was to pick one of the inner lanes and stick with it. Past experience has showed me that moving from lane to lane because another lane seems to be moving faster than the others accomplishes nothing but raising blood pressure and occasionally causing an accident. I just kept my car a couple of carlengths behind the flatbed truck from Maine ahead of me, and otherwise I was free to let my mind wander. I had a full stomach, a full gas tank, enough to drink, and AC/DC was playing soothing music on my car stereo. Other than a potential bladder problem, it was pleasant. Surely better at 6 MPH than 60, with the cars spaced as they were. And, believe me, during those stretches where higher speeds were possible, they didn’t allow much more room between cars. That is nerve-wracking.

            At last the beltway dumped me back onto I-94, I crossed the State Line into Indiana, and it was time to seek a room for the night. Soon I will be home. It’s a good thing, too; I’m down to two clean shirts and three pairs of clean socks.