Sunday, November 02, 2003

Geocaching, pictures and oysters

What a lucky thing for us that Saturday turned out to be the stellar day and Sunday is poopy. We are Sunday layabouts. If we go to church, the afternoon is more oft than not spent lounging with Big TV and way too much football. Today is no exception. It is helpful that the rain is starting and no one can give us crap for not going out to play.

Yesterday was a sterling, sunny day, and we blew off Geoff's soccer game in order to get dressed and ready to head out caching. I'd gotten an email late on Halloween night stating that one of the clues was missing in the multi stage cache that I just put out the other day, so I panicked. I knew at least two other local teams who would be heading over there this weekend to make the grab, so I wanted to check on the report.

We trekked over to the cache and confirmed that the clue was indeed in its rightful spot. On the way out we ran into one of the two aforementioned teams that I knew would be on the hunt for our cache, and had a wonderful time chatting with them.


Simon says: "Shut your yaps, Let's go Cache!"

Huzzah! Then, it was off to Rye NH.

We were cruising up Rte 1A in Seabrook, and Doug suddenly slammed on the brakes. "Did you see that!?" he yelled.

No. I hadn't seen whatever that was.

"There is a ton of beanie babies in the road!" We were driving again at that point. I told him I thought it was sad. So he banged a reverse turn and headed back to do a Roadkill Rescue. We parked on the side of the road, and I watched for cars while Doug collected the hapless abandoned lovies.


How retarded are we?

We were giggling like freaks as he ran all over the road picking these stupid things up. The catch of the bunch is a little sock puppet dog that Geoff has latched on to. It lost its nose this morning, which is sad. I'll have to make a new one. We figured some of these were in good enough shape to go into caches. Some aren't. There's a bugs bunny there who is missing an eye. He's ... destined for the trash, I'm sad to say. He's not in good shape.

I've always had a soft spot for abandoned toys. When I drive past a house that has had a garage sale, and there are stuffed animals sticking out of the "free" box or the rubbish bin, I feel horrible and it makes me sort of weepy. Don't you laugh. Shut up.

It's true. I'm a mush in that respect.

So I'm proud of us for this roadkill rescue. Nyeah.

We did three caches yesterday. The first was a piece of cake but a Muggle couple watched us as Doug pulled it out from between the very open and chucked me the container. I then had to explain it to them, because they were somewhat incredulous that we went to that spot and found something in this manner. The Muggle woman thought we had lost something and rejoiced for us that it was found. Perhaps they'll be converts to the way of the cache.

Took a couple cool pictures along the stretch of road in Rye there.

Jack wouldn't turn around, but at least I got Kinger and Jess here. And check out my cool tree picture... ocean waves and rocks in the back. I'm all arthouse, yo.

Next we hit a cache at an old abandoned fort. A year or so ago we took my mom to another cache at a fort just on the other side of the harbor in Portsmouth. This fort was not in as good preservationist condition, but it was cool to spelunk through and check out. We found the cache easily, and took the opportunity to spend some relaxing time by the ocean at the jetty before Jack tried to run off with another dog's family.
I have been trying to get a good picture of the kids for our Christmas cards. I got them to pose here on the rocks -- it was gorgeous, but they don't look their best. Not a Christmas card worthy picture... but an okay shot nonetheless. Right then is when Jack decided to run off, so I couldn't get them repointed to have less squintiness in their faces. Such is life with dogs.


A rather closeup look at some bittersweet
on the vine at the cacheside

The final cache was yet another example of me knowing better and Doug being a renegade. We headed in the wrong direction, and after a certain period of time we had recircled around to point in the right direction go get to the cache, we found ourselves on The Cliffs Of Peril on the Piscataqua River. I wanted to turn around and go back around the building and fence and approach from the correct side. We were about 200 feet from the cache according to the GPSr, and Doug wanted to press on.

Everyone should always listen to ME. No one does.

We had to cling for dear life along a rock face, Jessie behind me quivering with fear and Geoff not exactly knowing what to do with poor vision and lack of discernment, me between them trying to guide and comfort them, and Doug scurrying like a friggin' billy goat up the scree to get to the cache yelling 'See, It's EASY!'

Yes it IS easy, but not with the kind of baggage I'm totin'. Not to mention the dogs kept jumping up from the river and running on the rocks, causing our only locations for footfalls to become butter slick.

We made it. But it would have taken less time to walk around and approach from safety.


This is the view from the Cliffs of Peril and Doom

We then jumped back into the truck to head home, over an hour late getting back in time to get all cleany and down to Michael's for dinner. We were excessively later than intended (uh, two hours!) but dinner was fun and all had a good time. I got to see the unabridged version of the Vacation Pictures, and lived vicariously through his camera eye.

We got home at 1am.

I'm incredibly tired today... I have dead stuffed animals in my truck. I need a nap. But yesterday was a fabulous and wonderful day, peril not withstanding.

Today is our usual hangabout day. At dinner last night with Jon and Michael, Jon gave Doug a bigassed bag of Oysters that he'd gotten from Wellfleet. Today Doug ate some raw on the shell and grilled a bunch of them out in the rain.

I thought I'd be brave and try one, thinking it was great that they were cooked. Raw oysters to me are nothing more than very large phlegmballs, and I gag when I have a cold and I'm coughing and one hits the back of my throat so I couldn't imagine trying to down one of these suckers... So Doug took one fresh off the grill and inserted it into my somewhat skeptical but willing mouth.

Regretted it the instant the thing hit my tongue. Not only was it still a giant phlemmish thing, it was a warm phlemmish thing, and I balked. "Geh ih ough mah mouf!" I gagged, and he laughed at me, put the shell in front of me and I spit it out.

So glad we did this at home instead of some highclass hoity toity restaurant. It would have been slightly unclassy for me to hawk one of these things out of my mouth and back into the shell at a 35 dollar a plate meal.

Doug got the most joy out of the oysters, and it was fun watching him shuck them (is that how it is spelled?) and get his chef on. The rest of us landlubbers had burgers on the grill after he finished with his culinary art efforts.

So Jon -- thank you immensely for the oysters, even if I'm with Michael on the not wanting to eat them side of the aisle.

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