Tag: Cold

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Caching Christmas – Find Number 350

Prologue

I said in my last entry that I would try to find 350 caches before Christmas. I planned on finding two of them near the Birch Hill Dam. This plan met with some resistance. First, the caches were on either side of the river and we couldn’t cross the damn to get there. Second, well you will just have to wait for the second because it is basically the story of the day for Christmas Eve. Plus, it sets up for my caching Christmas story.

That, folks, is called foreshadowing. And yes, it and this ghost of an apple tree and that statement are meant to be foreboding, too.

I received a souvenir from going out on Christmas Eve. Quinn only received cold toes. Lilo, too, because she stepped on some thin ice and her front paw fell into the water. As Meatloaf said, 2 outta 3 ain’t bad. In this case, though, it most certainly was bad. Hopefully caching Christmas Eve doesn’t bring a pox on our family.

A cool new concept on Geocaching that doesn’t necessarily add anything to the hobby other than giving virtual things to collect, too.

December 24, 2021 (Day Number 111, A DNF)

Quinn chose to come with me today. We also brought the dog. A ten minute drive got us to the parking area of Birch Hill Dam about 3/4 of a mile away. I know what you’re thinking. Trust me, I thought it at first, too. However, this walk took us along a paved service road, so no chance of it increasing 3 or 4 fold like the one in Shutesbury. It took a little longer than expected because we stopped a couple of times, once for a cool ice sheet and another for a waterfall.

Cool Ice Wall with Water Behind at Birch Hill Damn
Quinn noticed the icicles in the back first.

We made it to ground zero of the geocache near the dam. If I didn’t wander across the rock wall to the actual dam, I’d have thought the name of the cache, “Water, water everwhere” was sarcastic or a joke. As evidenced by the videos, we found plenty of water on the walk, but none at the actual cache area. Unfortunately, as you probably deduced, no cache either. We tried twice with no success. I admit. Terribly unexciting and anticlimactic.

Driven by the streak, I found another cache across the river. Actually, I found it earlier as a backup and realized it was across the river when I wandered earlier in an attempt to grab it quickly after the other one fizzled. Driven by the streak, I loaded us back in the car and drove across the river. Technically, we drove over a bridge, but you get the idea. After parking, I geared up and leashed the dog. Cue the slow motion preparation montage.

December 24, 2021 (Day Number 111, Find Number 349)

We started walking. As soon as we passed the gate, I promptly slipped on a patch of snow covered ice. Aren’t you glad I cued the slow motion? Wasn’t that so much funnier in slow motion? I benefited from the slip though, when I realized that I left the bag in the car. Handing the leash off to Quinn, I slowly and painfully walked back to the car, retrieved the bag, and went carefully back to the gate. This slow motion brought to you by actual old age, not perceived coolness. Again, the hike went mostly smoothly. I need to spice these things up with more action or maybe intrigue.

You want action? Check out this tiny bridge.

Imagine if you will, Quinn, Bups, and I standing on the shore of this mighty body of water with only that single beam to cross. We give each other a knowing look. One of us may not make it to the other side alive. We have a duty to ourselves, our country, and all of you to find and extract that cache. Quinn performed his duty, crossing the bridge without hesitation. Lilo sized up the thundering river, coiled her back legs like springs and lept across the chasm with ease. I took a deep breath and then one step onto the beam. Another deep breath. Another step. Two more and then…my foot slipped! I lost my balance. Quinn reached out for me. Lilo barked and looked around for a stick in case I fell in. I saw my life flash before my eyes.

Just kidding. We all made it across without incident and continued down the path to the hiding spot. Quinn started to complain that his toes were getting cold. I doubled my efforts and checked some of the logs to see if the coordinates were solid. Turns out they weren’t, so I expanded my search. Finally found it, grabbed it, and dropped off a couple of trackables since it was a “hotel” and there weren’t any in there. When we returned to the car, I advised Quinn to take off his shoes and socks to help warm them.

If you’ve ever wondered what a cache looks like and what the heck is a “trackable”.

December 25 (Caching Christmas – NMAIN NSAL, Day Number 112, Find Number 350)

You may remember from my previous post that I wanted to find #350 before Christmas. That’s part of the reason I had two caches in the queue yesterday. Since I didn’t, that made the find on Christmas extra special. First, as usual, some background.

I bought a Jackbox bundle through Humble Bundle a few months ago. Aiden said he enjoyed playing the games. Anything to get time with your teenagers. Well, my laptop charging port went haywire and I have yet to get it fixed. So, I bought the most recent game on our XBox and we played it Christmas Eve. We enjoyed it so much, we wanted to play with the extended family. But, we forgot the XBox. Oh no!

Dad, as usual, to the rescue. I offered to get the XBox. And, caching Christmas?! I thought I found all of the caches near my in laws. Turned out I messed up a setting somehow and more appeared when I did my search. NMAIN NSAL was less than 5 miles away and a park and grab. Perfect. Cache found. XBox retrieved. Night saved?

Not so fast. The controller I picked didn’t work and we weren’t able to play Jackbox with the whole group. Bummer. But, the rest of the holiday has gone well in spite of the fact that I’ve spent the last two days searching and applying for new jobs. Oh well, can’t win em all.

Epilogue

As with many of our adventures, the first adventure has been the more adventurous. However, I’m personally excited about Christmas Day. Geocaching doesn’t recognize the 50s as official milestones, but after not being in the hobby for so long, I’m taking all the wins I can. Caching Christmas got me to 350 and that’s good enough for me. Yesterday I found another puzzle cache in the Harvard Forest among gunshots and threatening clouds. Today, I want to check out a place in Athol after dropping Liam off for work. Not sure when I’ll get around to documenting them, but stay tuned.

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Winter

Prologue

I have already written about the holidays.  I will write in a couple of weeks dedicated completely to Christmas.  I will also most likely do a “post holiday” journal in January some time.  However, I wanted to ruminate (perhaps?) briefly on the general overall joy that winter brings me.

Journal

I never used to like winter.  I didn’t actively dislike it either.  Mostly, I just fell into a weird hibernation state for the months of December, January, and February.  Some of the people around me who love and care about me wondered about seasonal depression.  While there might have been some of that as my father apparently suffered from it and depression tends to run in families, I don’t think that’s an accurate description of what I was feeling.

Sure, I had bouts of what you might call the “winter blues”.  It’s hard not to with 3, and eventually 4, other people in the house for days at a time because of cold temperatures and occasional blizzards.  Add in that one of those people vehemently hates winter and the cold and, sure, there were a few moments over the years that cabin fever set in and progressed every now and then to the winter blues that I mentioned earlier.

Generally speaking, I’m a fairly positive and “go with the flow” kind of guy.  As long as there are things to do and places to see, I’m happy.  It has taken some others in the family some coercing to feel the same way about winter.  My conversion started about 4 or 5 years ago when I went disc golfing for serious, for real with our friends.  It was at the Tully course that I visit at least twice or three times every summer now, but that was the first time that I’d actually ever been out to throw discs with the intention of making them into the basket.

And it was in the middle of winter, and there was about a foot to a foot and a half of snow on the ground.  And I loved every minute of it.  I don’t remember if this led to my purchase of snow shoes or if it was one of our trips after I purchased the snow shoes, but they have gone miles (pun fully intended) to helping us come to terms with the fact that it is dark, cold, and snowing 3 to 6 months out of the year here in Massachusetts.

I originally got the snow shoes to inspire us to take more trips during the winter.  They did for a while, but then the kids got too big to carry/drag along in the sled for very long and they started to develop some of their own anti-winter biases that have prevented us from getting use out of the show shoes in that fashion.  Instead, we’ve found that we can strap them on for quick trips into the woods behind our house or through the trails behind the schools near where we live.  We can leave the whiny kids at home (now that our oldest is 13 and able to watch them without much incident) and go out for a quick 30-45 minute hike through the snow.  Admittedly, the trips get old, but maybe we can start to branch out a bit to other local hikes.  Heck, we were even able to slip away for a couple of hours to go to a wine tasting at one of the local inns, so we might even be able to head up to one of the mountains.  We are starting to get our lives back!

Okay, maybe that isn’t completely fair.  Now that the boys are getting older, they are tolerating the cold much better.  Another reason for this general winter post, even though I haven’t had a chance to get out and enjoy the actual winter yet without the specter of holidays, is that we got our first snowfall of the year over the weekend.  We got a bit more today and there is snow in the forecast for the weekend, but no big storms yet.  In any case, January and February are usually our big months for snow, so expect a full report of our adventures in the snow coming in the next month or two.

The reason that I bring up the snow is that the boys, who have mostly been moping around the house on weekends, went outside to play in the snow every single night and they were even out there doing chores and helping out with shoveling and brushing off the cars.  Sure, they ended up coming back into the house fighting and crying, but that’s what having brothers is all about.

Look, I’m not positive that my childhood and relationship with my brothers is typical in any way, shape, or form.  As an adult, I haven’t exactly talked with friends about growing up with brothers.  And, as often happens, that just inspired something inside of me.  I should discuss these issues with friends.  In spite of any of that, I grew up in a house with three boys just like our boys.  There were times that we fought to the point of hurting one another on more than one occasion.  So, at least as far as I know, that’s par for the course as long as they kiss and make up.

Epilogue

Winter is long, cold, and sometimes depressing.  It has taken us a few years to finally come to grips with the positives of the season.  However, we have been able to open our minds and branch out to new and different things.  As a result, winter doesn’t feel quite so depressing.  Sure, it is still long, cold, and dark most of the time.

But, when you can travel back in time to Sturbridge Village and see with your eye and your imagination how things were, it makes me smile.  When you can strap on snow shoes to stomp around in the back yard (either literally or figuratively), it goes a long way to making you appreciate that hot cocoa at the end of the day that much more.

College football and then hockey viewing parties with a friend in his shed or closed porch are a reason to look forward to a random Tuesday or Wednesday near the end of winter when you can smell spring, but can’t quite feel it.  There are other activities that we’ve added to our winter fun as we’ve gone along, but I will save those for the next post when I write about how much I love Christmas.

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