ABC Challenge Weekend-Saturday 6/22/2008

Since Sweet was in Idaho all week and Pablo Mac was otherwise "obligated", I took it upon myself to find some Geocaches on my own. I've never been into Geocaching by myself, but what else was a Dude to do...sit around the house and watch TV? I think NOT!

I had made plans earlier with my Dad to meet in Corvallis on Saturday to try out some kayaks at Michael's Landing. Peak Sports was offering free demonstrations for people to come down and try them out. I had never paddled a kayak before, but they looked like fun and my Mom & Dad have been considering buying some. Hey, it's free and something to do! Before we went out, my Dad and I shared some pizza and some sodas overlooking the Willamette River. Then it was down to the boat launch.
I tried out two different kayaks and was amazed at how easy they are to paddle. The current on the Willamette was quite fast at this time of year, but it was quite easy to stay even on the river, or even move upstream. The kayak in this picture is a fairly inexpensive one (≈ $800). It is much heavier, less maneuverable, harder to make way, but more stable. Not too bad for a weekend warrior, but I wouldn't want to take a long trek with it.

The other kayak I tried out was longer and sleeker, and more expensive (≈ $2300). This kayak was a "performance model" kayak with carbon fiber paddles and an aramid bottom-half hull. This kayak was much more maneuverable than the one shown here, but much less stable. In fact, as I was returning to shore, I made a rookie mistake and turned the kayak sideways in the current and then paddled on the upstream side. This threw my balance off just enough that I ended up wet...up to my neck. I did manage to swim the kayak to shore, and the water-craft representatives were very impressed with my ability to rescue the kayak "so they didn't even have to get wet". I got a little embarassed, and a high-five from the rep! Fortunately I wore a swimming suit and water sandels. Unfortunately, I forgot my towel and an extra shirt!

I wrung my shirt out and headed back to the car with my Dad. We talked for a bit while I dried out. Then he said goodbye and I was left not wanting to go home yet. I just finished a nice cool swim, and had a lot of energy. Time to pull out my trusty GPSr. Wow! There is a Geocache a couple of hundred feet from the car. I decided to walk down there and grab it. Hey, why not...I'm too wet to sit in my car and drive home. I found the cache pretty quickly and then I got the Geocaching bug. I headed back to the car, changed my shoes, and starting walking into downtown Corvallis. I searched for "Welcome to Corvallis", but was unable to find it (as it turned out-it had been Muggled). I then continued south and found another ASoUC cache, DNFed another, an ended my walk with an amazingly lucky find. The coordinates took me to an obvious hiding location, but there was no cache to be found. As I was heading back to the car, I looked to my left and there it was...more than 100' away from the posted coordinates. I thought that was a great way to end my Saturday. I headed home to log my finds.

Tomorrow is another day.

How to have a "Guy's Night Out"

Step 1: Ditch all women
Step 2: Jump in a Jeep
Step 3: Explore the wilderness
Step 4: Go geocaching
Step 5: Buy some beer
Setp 6: Watch a movie and eat popcorn for dinner

Japanese Glass Fishing Floats From Alaska

It was a tough choice between going to Lincoln City, and swimming in the South Santiam River to play with Odder, but we decided to stick with our original RSVP and go to the Oregon coast. As it turned out, the weather was beautiful, but very windy; and we had a great time.

My parents met me (Dude), Sweet, and cuteTpie at the Lincoln City Community Center for some good ol' fashioned Geocaching Games. Bostonmangum hosted another fun event which draws scores of geocachers from around Oregon. He always puts on a great event and is very gracious. This days events included a variety of event-only caching games including "Find the Nano", "Find Ground Zero", "The Multi/Puzzle to Find Ground Zero", "Create a Star, Smiley Face, or Object" with your GPSr track feature, and finally "Complete the Quest" task which was similar to a letterbox in which you use clues, rather than a GPSr to locate a final location.

We all had a blast completing the games and comparing the three different GPSr's that we had brought. My Dad finally began using his Garmin iQue M5 for more than just a paperweight. A few days prior to the event, I learned how to upload a GPX file with 500 geocaches to his iQue. One of the caches was the event, and I set him up with turn-by-turn routing to the event. It all seemed to work okay as they ended up parking next to us at the event.

After completing the games, Ivan had a drawing for prizes and passed out authentic Japanese glass fishing floats. These were not the "art-glass" types of floats you'd see in a gallery, but were gathered along the beaches of Alaska. We each picked out a float as a reminder of our day. During the prize drawing, Sweet's number was called and she chose a camping headlamp. cuteTpie and I won mini-kites.

After the event, we all enjoyed a yummy picnic lunch my Mom (mummu3) had prepared. My Dad and I went on a self-guided tour of the Community Center and we were both impressed with the facility. It was nice to see how the community has supported a facility like this.

After lunch, Sweet & Mummu3 wanted to do a "quick" shopping trip at the Factory Outlet Center; and then it was off to the beach. I used my double-top secret way to the Taft Waterfront and we all found parking close by.

I think it is safe to say that we all had a great time flying our new kites, playing in the sand and water. We did work up quite a hunger and ended up walking down the beach to Mo's. After dinner, we bid farewell to my parents. Now it was time for some serious geocaching! We were able to find 7 caches, plus the event, and posted a DNF. The day was just too beautiful and we would have liked to have stayed a little longer. As it turned out, we didn't leave Lincoln City until about 10:30pm and finally arrived back in Albany at midnight.

What a fantastic day and a fun way to spend Father's Day Saturday.

And now for something completely different...

How to tell when a Catholic is driving too fast.