Juicepig's Blender

Spring Fling V3

2007-06-19T14:33:00.000-04:00

Well it's Unofficial!

Myself and 10 local geocachers just held the largest Geocaching Event in Canadian History - Close to 300 Attendants (a far cry from the over 2000 attending Geowoodstock down in the states the weekend earlier, but hey.. ours was better!)

My Personal Responsibilities were to ensure there were lots of caches for people to do in the area, and to ensure there were events that were going on throughout the day. Gillian helped out alot with that one, she kept the kidlets occupied with games while I roamed around making sure everything was in it's proper place (Note for next year - Bring a bike, Walking sucks).

You would think that with a group of so many people there would be lots of complaints - but there wasn't. The only complaints I really heard were that "It was hot as Ick" and "You should have given us Trailmaps.. we got lost!".. which was more common then you might expect from a band of 10 well armed GPS enthusiasts.

Just after lunch I held an event called the "Triforce of Horrors", a reference that many of the Uber-Geeks understood well - and stayed away from since I was hosting it.. and apparently I have a reputation. There were 3 events that I held, where people could bet tickets for double-or-nothing style prize gambling. The Strength event was a pretty impressive Cabre Toss (I made the cabre the night before by the firepit). Almost half the contestants could not meet the requirement of tossing the cabre a selected distance, perhaps I made it a little too heavy. The Wisdom event dealt with some moderatly difficult puzzles and riddles.

The Courage event had people eating my cooking (A feat in itself!). I stopped by the Asian Supermarket by my work and picked up some food that us westerners may find somewhat confusing. Chickens Feet, Pigs Intestines, and Seasame-Soy milk. Tasty Tasty! All were prepared properly, but many people just gave me their prize tickets and ran.

Click here for a whole heck of a lot of pictures from the day:
Fizbot's Photo-Log

Preperations have already begun for next years event. We are trying to get the "MEGA" designation, meaning there are more then 500 attendees, but not too hard. Geowoodstock was quite disappointing from what I hear, sometimes smaller is better.

GO'ing to work

2007-05-23T15:33:00.001-04:00

I got to "Train" in Toronto Recently, and shift my monotonous drive down to the city around a little bit. I drove to the train station and hopped on the train from Bradford to Union station in downtown toronto. From there I got onto the subway and took it to Young and Eglington. The simple process described above took about two and a half hours, meaning my daily commute times were about 5 hours a day. I did however save a whack of dough!

If I were have to driven down to Young and Eglington, it would likely have taken the same amount of time (two and a half hours each way). But I would also have to pay for the gallons of gas needed to get there, and the horrid idea of Toronto downtown parking (only 30$ daily? really?! What a steal!)

Train folk are friendly and personable it seems. Most seem to work in the bank industry, and despite my ratty clothes (hey I was on vacatio.. Training!~ give me a break!) they didnt seem to give me the cold shoulder.

My instructor for this training was impressed with the way i seemed to handle myself. All the people he has taught from the Northlands seem to be disoriented in Toronto. He told me the tale of the guy who would always arrive late at class because he was never able to get on the subways (he always used to give way to the less fortunate, and missed 3 or 4 trains before he was actually able to get onto the train).

Yes, there is a certain type of madness to Toronto Commuting. Push yourself onto the subway.. it is only there for 3 seconds. And when the doors on the go train open, BOLT FOR YOUR CAR. The first day I took it nice and easy getting to my car, and it took me 45 minutes to get out of the parking lot. The next day, with a little strategic planning, and a running pair of legs I was able to drive out right away.

Minesing Delight

2007-05-14T18:45:00.000-04:00

Took another trip into the Minesing swamp this spring. There was a discussion on the COG forums about going into the swamp in a small armada of canoes to seek out the geocaches that I had put in there. It took alot of planning and many people had to back out after the realization that it really WOULD take the entire day to canoe the 24km journey down the river.

So early morning Saturday we set off. 2 Canoes, 4 People. Scott and I shared the old red battle canoe, while Pat and Mark shared the Blue Peterborough Express canoe. Other then discovering a new subspecies of groundhog (the Arboreal Minesing Treehog) it was a rather uneventful trip with great scenery to admire. We found all the caches, safe and sound! well relatively safe.. Of the four of us, only 1 managed to stay out of the river. And a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are the pictures of the trip!

The Terrain wasn't Friendly in spots

Very Hard to get into a canoe at this angle

The Old Log Cabin

Canoeing down the River

Empty Doorway

Working on the bridge

TreeHog

FLooded Forests

Parking Lot

Dice Emulator

2007-04-24T14:20:00.000-04:00

Well.. everyone else seems to be doing it nowadays..

int getRandomNumber(){
return 4; //Determined by a completely unabited
//roll of a dice. Guaranteed Random.
}

Adventures in Pain - The Saga

2007-04-17T13:44:00.000-04:00

After coming up with the title for this one, I decided I needed to look up the definition of saga. Now that I know what it means, I will attempt to write it as defined in the spirit of icelandic settlement!

After Battling the Grueling tortures of the voyage to the weekend, and the rough rocky wrong coast of Saturday, which was spent attempting to murderously hack away at the drywall in the nursury armed with wallpaper and a paintbrush, the trials and tribulations of exploring the inland were upon me. I had decided to Conquer an unpeopled trail known as the Bruce in the land maps refer to as Caledon - no doubt a Saxon named relic of previous failed settlements.

I rode my steed, famed Swift+, to the base of the escarpment that was before me. Knowing full well that the rough trails would not allow for his particular footprint I let him graze while I traversed the hilly peaks, and valleys above.

Included in my assortment of navigational tools was a map of 12 treasures, no doubt left by the Saxons of Caledon to tempt wrong coastal settlers such as myself. I worked my way through the mountains, and to my own suprise I did not fall from the escarpment (which is a personal best! I don't think I have ever walked the bruce without injuring myself!). I conquered the 20 kilometer stretch finding all the treasure and looting it fullheartedly. The Trek however was not without it's toils.

After my collapse at Swift+'s manly hooves, I gathered myself into the stirrups and assessed my situation. The hike may have been only 20 km laterally, but the vertical terrain range must have been much more then that. My feet were bleeding quite badly and I was in no shape to carry on. Swift+ however had another idea! While I was gone he had collected maps of other treasures!

We carried on for another 6 hours or so, until the point at which I could barely walk. Swift+ had had enough as well, and we decided to call it a day. Back to the wrong coast, and some time off my feet!

Despite being so very tired, I did not rest well that night. The Pus draining from my feet was quite disconcerting, and actually quite ticklish. All is fair, i guess!

The End

Surely, There must be a better way..

2007-04-04T07:02:00.000-04:00

So, I asks Google, I asks "How does I get from Lefroy to London"

And Google says, 'e says
Use this map and follow the directions

Step 27 is a bit much for me, but dont you think they could come up with a better place then Boston harbour to go swimming?

April Fool, and The horse who got jiggy

2007-04-02T14:13:00.001-04:00

Finally a weekend worth mentioning!

This Sunday was the much anticipated April fools Geocaching event that is held in Stouffville every year. I actually decided to participate this year instead of just coming to the pub, because I was invited to join a team "dedicated to winning" it, so I did! The Team Consisted of Myself, Tequila, AdventureRat, OwlNebula and Barnies Band Of Gold. Normally the April Fools caches are meant to expose the political boondogles of the Ontario and Federal Government, and take you to places that really show how messed up the situation is - But this year it was pretty straight forward, implying to me atleast that the cache owner is a conservative. :)

FOOLED YOU!
We started off in Markham at 10pm on Saturday for a strategy meeting (which is quite difficult because the rules of the game wouldn't be announced until midnight). We headed out to Stouffville for midnight, and parked the vehicles in the Go Station Parking lot while we set up the wireless laptops and blackberries in anticipation of the publishing of the rules for the midnight series. At midnight the much anticipated coordinates were published, and off we went.

The coordinates took us to a country intersection, which would normally be pretty quiet at midnight on a Sunday morning, but tonight it was swarming with geocachers turning over every rock, and inspecting every roadsign very carefully. After a short search the container was found, we gathered the coordinates and bailed out of there to the second stage. We gained an early lead after anticipating how access to this stage would best be attempted en-route. After that we had our lead all the way to the final. Despite what we were hopeing for - there was no helpful information in the cache - It was just an attempt to make us loose sleep by the cache owner so we would be more edgy tommorow when the real marathon started. We had guessed that this is probably what was going to happen, but didn't want to risk loosing potentially helpful information for the race tommorow.

On the walk back to the cars I lost my GPS. That is what happens sometimes, especially when it is loosely strapped on, and you are trudging through thick forest and swamp. I went to work after that (for 2am) just in case something bad was going to happen to the servers after the "Original" Daylight savings time switch - Nothing did! So I went to the teams house, got 2 hours of sleep, then got up to start the next round!

We arrived at the trail again around 6am to look for my GPS. I had a suspicion where it was.. Somewhere in an 800m trek through the forest may seem vague, but I have dropped my GPS a few times and always managed to find it. AdventureRat lent me his BFL while he gathered some breakfast from the local Timmies and waited at the GO station launch point.

At 7am the second round began, the owner released 2 sets of coordinates from which to start, we chose to go to the south checkpoint due to its proximity to the Go station. From there we began doing stage after stage, each one being a First-Find, which was great! We didnt see anyone else until we started doing the stages that began at the north checkpoint.

After finding 14 of the 15 stages we were pretty sure we knew the equation to determine the final stage. We went for it, and turned up a prank cache left by the owner. We decided that we needed to find the last stage, and found that as well - but it gave us nothing new, so we returned to our original suspicion of where the final might be. It was hidden very well, but to tell you more would ruin the suprise to those wishing to find it. We were first-finders, and quite happy about it. But we were also quite exhausted (no where near as much as the guy who rode his bike though).

While I was doing that, Wife was going on an expedition trying to prove the vetrenarian wrong! She has a stud colt that has been diagnosed as "Psychologically Emasculated", meaning he still thinks he is a baby horse, and doesn't want to grow up. In this case it is because he is so far down the social heirarchy at the farm that he just doesn't try to climb it, despite being the only horse on the farm with a pair of testicles (which are quite small due to his condition). Vets didn't see much hope of the horse ever mounting another horse, let alone being able to breed.

Crystal went on a mission to try and find a young horse that was so submissive that the young stallion would have to feel higher on the social pecking order. Apparently it worked. As soon as the young mare got to the farm she got quite the welcome!

My Run-in with the Aliens

2007-03-14T08:42:00.000-04:00

Well to further add a fling of unbelievability to my life, I will talk today about my run-in with a UFO on Sunday.

The story isn't really all that interesting, but it certainly adds a little flare to my monotonous life lately. I had spent the earlier part of the day scoping out a site for an earth day cleanup this year (more on this later), when I got paged into work (This typically happens when I am not at work). So I take off and start heading down to Toronto. Heading south on the 9th line of Essa, slightly west of Thornton Ontario, I saw what i thought to be an airplane in the sky along my field of vision (straight over the road). I really didn't think much of it, except that it was awfully reflective, and flying low to the ground. Then, as I was watching it, it completely disappeared. I looked around, and couldn’t see anything. I stopped, and looked around.. Nothing but farm fields and blue sky.

Well that’s my story. Interesting? Sure! Awe-inspiring? no.. Sorry. I’ve been working too much lately to really have any real adventures. I can completely believe that it was a reflection off my broken-windshield, or swampgas.. But I doubt it. Later that day, thousands of people apparently saw a pretty wicked meteor shower over highway 401 in Toronto. A lot of reports saying that it “couldn’t” be a shooting star because it was green and blue and it exploded. To them I say – It was a shooting star, they do that.

On the plus side, The world didn't end when Daylight savings time flipped over! Whoo hoo! I saved the world once again. No doubt the aliens were there to congratulate me.

The longest trip home that I didn't make

2007-03-06T08:13:00.000-05:00

Last night the weather was bad. All of yesterday the weather was bad. When I went to work there were whiteouts, and snowdrifts on the road, which isn't out of the ordinary really. I got to work a little later then usual, as can be expected under the conditions.

I headed out from work around 3:30pm, and drove back North. I heard on the radio about the closure of the 400 highway, the main roadway between Toronto and Barrie, so I switched to the traffic station on the radio to find out the extent of it. The highway had been closed since about 11am due to a 75 car pileup. As I got closer to Newmarket, the traffic got real slow. I decided to get off the main routes, and take the back roads to the Holland River. There are only 2 ways to get across the Holland River, the 400 (which was closed) and Younge Street. The road was a parking lot. After about half an hour I made it across the bridge into town. Tried to take the bypass route, but it was a parking lot too. Every road in town was just crammed with cars, and it wasn't even rush hour. I found a place to park my car, and decided to walk around (much quicker then driving).

After a while I found myself in a Bar with a bunch of other strandee's trying to wait out the traffic. Occassionally we would get people coming in and giving us reports of where they had been, and what is going on. Every road out of town had an accident on it, and police had closed the roads down. I waited until about 8pm, and then decided the only way I was getting out of town was if I went south. Back to Toronto I go!

I headed back to work, had a coffee in Operations, fixed some software bugs they were having, then crashed on a couch in the lounge. When I woke up this morning, I turned on the TV, and the highway was still closed.

London, Paris, Berlin.. Detroit

2007-02-26T16:03:00.000-05:00

My Wife needed some time away from the farm during her reading week, so I took her on a trip of South Ontario. We had originally planned on Something a little warmer, but it wasn't in the budget. I was planning on getting all the geocaches in a particular carribean country for what its worth! Instead we headed as far south as I could afford - Windsor!

Our first stop was in London, but on the way we had one thing planned - The ONLY thing we had planned to do during our entire week - visit a butterfly conservatory in Burlington. It was a neat place, with (you guessed it!) Butterflies and flowers, waterfalls, and various tropical Flora. My wife has this odd fear of Moths, she is quite terrified of them, but wanted to go see the Butterflies because for some reason they don't scare her. I made specific note of the differences between moths and butterflies - a board on display at the time - but it didn't seem to phase her.. She knew very well that they left the whole "Brain-sucking" aspect out of the list of differences.

Butterfly Hatchery

The Puzzle Stone of Doctor Bean

We made our way to London, checked into the hotel, had some dinner, and headed for downtown! My first London Cache!! A Webcam! With the help of swifteroo I was able to get a few decent shots of myself on the streets of downtown London. Day broke, as it typically does, and I had a day full of nothing to do! So begins the saga of the most productive week of geocaching I have ever had. London, Windsor, and Sarnia were the 3 cities we visited. At each one, the wife asked me to leave for the day so she could get some studying done for school. I completely cleaned house, Over 100 finds, and probably over 100 no finds (but I didn't log them). I visited the famed Elephant statue of St. Thomas, and the perverted statue of Sarnia, and even hopped over to Detroit to pick up my badge for "Michigan" caching.

The Elephant of St. Thomas

Canada has its problems. Jane and Finch in Toronto is hard for some people to stomach some days, but it is really nothing compared to Detroit. It is a city with some deeeeeep problems. I went around 6am in hopes of not wakeing the Ghetto. There was one cache that I wanted to do in the downtown core before heading to a more civilized part of the state. The Detroit Salt Mines is an Industrial complex that borders a residental area. Its not the worst part of town, but its certainly not the best. There was not any significant activity in the area, so I figured it was fine to park the car, grab the cache, and skedaddle. Simple enough. I presented myself to the guard at the mine entrance and explained what I was doing (they were aware of the cache, but still kept their hand on their weapon while talking to me). As soon as I was done, I booted out of there, and headed for Belle Island.

Detroit Skyline - as seen from Windsor
As I have no maps of the American side, I had a rough map of my position in relation to the detroit river, and the various lakes in the area. I made my way to where I thought the highway was, and ended up in bad detroit. There was a car burning on the road, and noone around stopping it. Stop-lights be damned, I was getting out of there.

Pier on Belle Island

Belle Island is a nice island park in Detroit, very little activity from what I saw that morning. Scenic fountains, and gardens, a nice waterfront with fishing piers, and statues dotting the surrounding tree lines. This is good Detroit. I cached here until about lunch time then made my way back to the Border. On the way through downtown I heard a gunshot, in what i thought was a burnt out house (which was apparently occupied). Again - I skedaddled. I don't need to rack up any more body finding points to my geocaching record.

Fountain on Belle Island

When I got to the border, the border guard asked why I had gone to detroit - I am on vacation i responded. Laughter ensued. She told me about the 3 or 4 shootings a day that happen in the downtown area that you don't hear about, and how it is never wise to stop your car in the city centre.

Detroit is a beutiful city if you can ignore the violence around you. I have nothing against the place, but I don't think I will be heading back any time soon.

On the way home I tried to do a few caches in Paris, Hamburg, Berlin and Lisbon (just in case anyone asks where I went on vacation), but most of them were not very winter friendly, and under a few feet of snow. I had to give up! It was a nice vacation and the wife came back quite relaxed. She enjoyed it too, despite only seeing me for movies, meals, and shopping trips.

My Final word on this trip is - FLAT. It is very hard to find any kind of challenging terrain in South Ontario. Its like the Praries!

To the Middle of Nowhere and Back Again

2007-02-26T14:26:00.000-05:00

I have a new "Most Painful" adventure it seems! Earlier this month what started out as a taunt, turned into a full blown event and days worth of geocaching. A few of my ribs had been broken about a month earlier by a nasty fall, so I had been less then active in recent weeks, so I was quite excited to get a nasty cache like On a Wing and a Prayer" off my list of most wanted.

There were about 20 or so of us that arrived for the early morning start. We wanted to be ready to go at the trailhead by sunrise because it would take quite a while to get out to the middle of nowhere and back again. Everyone seemed to be dressed appropriatly for the nasty weather that was in the air. Winter had greeted us with avengance! Cold bitter air, but at least visability was good.

25km Hike with no roads in sight

About 9 km in I made a stupid decision.. That is why everyone brings me along anyways - for the comic relief! Instead of following the trail that was heading away from the cache, I would take the bush wacking route for the next 2 kilometers or so. It was great, I was making good progress until I hit a lake. I walked around the lake thinking that it would end, but it never seemed to. I saw a spot in the lake where it narrowed to about 10 meters, and decided to risk going out on the ice.

An old mini bus on the way

Well here is the part where I almost die. Ice buckles, and I go in. For a 10 meter gap in a "seasonal" lake, the water was quite deep. Every muscle in my body instantly charlie-horsed and that was some pain for the record books. I managed to grab ahold of a nearby beaver lodge and pull myself to dry-dom, then radioed to my intelligent companions who decided instead to follow the trails. I assured them I was ok - but my shortcut had put me well ahead of them on the race to the cache site.

A Jack Russel needed a break
I eventually found the trail again, and met up with the front runners - a groups of insanely physically-fit military cachers who were keeping quite the pace. They were suprised to see me ahead of them. We got to the gorge and didn't quite know what to do from there. The gorge was far too steep to climb into in the current snowfall conditions. We peered over the gorge and saw the notorious "Bridge of Death" that had been described to us in previous logs, as well as taunts from other cachers who had already done the cache earlier. We made our way to the bridge of death, and radioed back to group that was behind us to follow a certain route that would take them on a far safer route around the gorge. We crossed the bridge, and the military group steamed ahead and started a fire.

By the time we got to the cache site, the fire was such a welcome sight that we all proceeded directly to it, and probably didnt get around to looking for the cache for a good 30 minutes. My clothes were like a suit of steel armour. Completely hardened to the point that I could hit them with my first, and it would hurt my fist. I really enjoyed that fire, we were really good friends..

smoke in the eyes
We found the cache (it was quite easy, just sitting out in the open), and snuffed out the fire. The soles of my boots had melted (from standing pretty much right inside the fire for too long), but I didn't notice it. Right now my focus was on getting out of there in one piece. About halfway back was when my bones could not take any more of the lactic acid running through my veins. I needed to take a sit down break every hour or so to rest my weary hips and legs. There were people far better off then me, and people far worse off then me. I would like to say I was about average, but I think the fall through the ice had sapped my energy a little more then the rest of the group. I was hurting.

Eventually we started to see cabins, and snowmobilers again. Hurrah! Civilization! After about 25 kilometers of hiking, we made it back to the place we started, made sure everyone was accounted for and headed for the pub in Minden. The "Rockcliffe Tavern" is apparently world famous, but like many of the northland pubs - they turn into snowmobile pirate pubs during the winter. Alot of Rowdy men saying ARGHHHH! alot would best describe it. They also did not seem to want to turn on the heat in the place. Despite being outside all day, the place was freezing! It was nice to just sit down though. It wasn't the best pub night, as we were all quite tired, but we had a nice story to tell!

Death of an e-Salesman

2007-01-09T14:04:00.000-05:00

Wow, my very own storefront..

Well not really "mine", so much as "COG's" storefront, but those coins I designed are now officially on sale! We havent announced it yet to the general public yet, we are attempting to guage local reaction at the moment, but in a couple of days the full torrent of the world wide geocoin market will come crashing down our servers, and wreaking havoc on an unsuspecting e-shopping cart.

I doubt I will be making a lot of profit on this, but it was a neat process to be involved in. So! Snatch them up blog readers! before the geocachers know about it!

2005+2

2007-01-02T09:51:00.001-05:00

Happy New year! Its Two-Thousand and Seven (when are people just going to start saying twenty-o'seven'en McTwoshoes like me? Its a trend Im starting, just go along! You will thank me later!) and boy does the weather suck!

Its January in Canada, and the grass is green, the birds are chirping, and I still seem to hit bugs on my way home from work.. That isn't how it should be!

I am actually considering another canoe trip this weekend, simply for the novelty of January canoeing, not that it will be a novelty for much longer. I doubt the ice will come this year to the extent that walking to an island will be very practical or dry.

If you still don't believe in Global warming, please put a reply to this post so that we may ridicule you.

Christmas - What not to give

2006-12-24T09:22:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas everyone!

I am completely burnt out, so I am taking a break at the computer for a while, which gives me the perfect oppurtunity to warn you all not to make the same mistake i made! I saw something new in the grocery store the other day, Coke's new product "Blāk", which is aptly named, as that was the sound I made after tasting it. Most of you would not even dare attempt it, as the price I bought it for was outrageous to begin with (about 7 dollars for less then a litre). But hey, New coke products sometimes give me weird sensations.

Coke Blāk tastes like liquified coffee beans (not coffee) mixed with carbonated water. Unless you actually enjoy raw coffee beans then you probably won't like this. The only possible benefit that they might think this have is the caffine boost, which didn't even seem to be there as I went to be right after drinking 2 small bottles on the stuff.

As for everything else: Moving is fine, but I hurt. Chistmas is saved!! I found all my gifts, after I had apparently lost them.. Turns out that I had wrapped them and put them under the tree and forgot about this very important point, leading me to begin tearing boxes of stuff apart looking for all my gifts (my brain is mush right now, see second paragraph). Prego-wife is sick all the time. On the plus side, I do have high speed internet now, which is such a releif after over a year with a 14.4 modem, no thanks to Bell who ignored my many phone calls asking them to activate the ADSL lines in the area *takes a flick of a switch no doubt*, ya thanks for your concern Bell, I will be going with Rogers this time.

Have a great christmas everyone, and happy new year!

The Demographics of Dave-Land

2006-12-14T15:30:00.000-05:00

I now jointly own 0.0000000000415408% of Earth with my wife. The population here is 3 and is expected to climb 33% by the end of 2007. This land is currently under the Juristiction of the Federal state of Canada, but Nationalism is on the rise and a referendum is imminent; but expected to fail. The Official language is english, but Jibberish is affluent, especially in the North. Native Species include cats, Ladybugs, and possibly Morlocks. The Flora includes grass but Trees from other lands are being moved in by order of the governing body.

So, Yes- I am a house owner. Yes, Wife is having a baby sometime in the Late June/Early July area (and I am now able to tell people!). The house is in Alcona Beach, and I have a tenant that rents out the Basement (he came with the place, like one of the appliances!) - I don't know much about him, but wife seems to think hes nice so thats all good.

On Hold - Time for an Update

2006-11-20T15:50:00.000-05:00

I just noticed something. HP/Compaq seems to have this song playing in a loop when they put you on hold. Its funny, but at the same time annoying. Here are the lyrics for Jack Johnson – Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

Why I don't like Geocaching in Toronto

2006-11-19T13:46:00.000-05:00

Hi everybody! WARNING - THIS STORY IS CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT

Well here is a story, that you may not be inclined to believe, as it just seems absolutely ludicrous. It is noon on Sunday, and I am writing this down because my weekend is over. I am just going to lye on the couch now, and hope nothing more happens.

As some of you may know, I am the type of geocacher who goes for territory. I try and clear a distance as wide as possible between myself and the nearest caches. My Cache-free bubble now extends into Toronto. This sometimes takes me to places that I am not fond of. Jane and Finch area for example.. but it must be done.

Anyway, the story. Saturday I decided to clear a swath of caches in Brampton. Brampton is actually a nice place for an urban centre. The people on the paths actually return your greetings, unlike in Toronto where nine times out of ten I am responded to by an awkward look. One cache in Brampton has right downtown at the Art Gallery. A peice of art in front held a suprisingly large tin cache inside of it. After spotting the cache I went to grab it and just as I was pulling it out the Museum Archivist pulls in and starts the usual interrogation.

"Hi there, Can I ask what your doing?"
"Looking for this" I replied, showing him the container.
"Do you work with the museum?" He asked, still with a hint of accusation.
"Nope, just in town doing a little tour"
"Can I ask what that is?"

"A geocache" I responded, begining my speil on what a geocache is, showing him the log book, contents, container. He was ecstatic, as I pointed out names from Toronto, Hamilton, and Isquba and Nawtys signature from Barrie. He said he would like to discuss it more over lunch, and I should return in an hour or so. Giving my just enough time to do the nearby Multi.

I did the multi, and bought a steak and kidney pie at a nearby bakery (yum!). After all, I didn't want to impose. I went into the museum, and took a tour, and eventually found the archivists office. Knocked on the door, and began talking. He showed me around, gave me a ride in the elevator, took me to some of the lesser known rooms of the museum.

His eyes kept checking me out, and his questions were begining to become a little uncomfortable. It was then that I realized I was on a date with this 50-something year old man. He began wanting to know about the "unconventional" things I did in my life, and I had to start pulling the wife card out, making sure to point out that I wasn't into that particular ball game.. After that I made a few remarks about not letting the weekend pass by with such a low geocaching score, and bailed as fast as I could.

I made it home as the sun was setting, and went to bed for a late night at work. Woke up early (early is midnight, early as can be) and set out to work. Got out of work around 3:30 and decided to cache my way over to Oshawa where I was meeting a friend for breakfast and beers (They were working a night shift too, so its not really beer at 9am.. thats what I tell myself).

Anyway, night cache, night cache, night cache, then a group of 3 on the same bridge. The Lawrence street bridge goes over a ravine. Each side of the bridge has a res2100 cache on it, and there is a cache in the middle by Geofellas. Around 5am, I did the two ends of the bridge, and walked to where the coordinates were telling me to go for the cache in the middle. There was no virtual waymark at that point, so I deduced it must be under the bridge. Down the slope I went, and under the bridge. I looked at the concrete pillars under the bridge and heard a voice from down near the river. I decided to keep quiet, as not to disturb them. The voice eventually passed me, It was a lady talking on her cell phone. I couldn't make out what she was saying, but didn't much care at the time either.

Eventually I made it all the way to the river, and still couldn't find the virtual waymark. As I reached the riverside concrete path I noticed what seemed to be a man who was lying face down in vomit. Not suprising, that is the way some people look after Saturday night! I stepped around him, careful not to wake him up, and began walking the path out from under the bridge, so I could see if I could get better reception to find out where this waymark was. I looked up for birds, and saw the red swirly lights of a police cruiser. A womans head looked over the railing, and I called up to her "He's Down here" suspecting that they were looking for the drunk man.

Two officers eventually came running down the path, I flashed them with my headlamp. They arrived and took a look at the man.. That wasn't vomit... it was blood. YIKES. I hadn't actually used my flashlight on him so i wouldn't wake him up, but obviously that wouldn't have mattered.

After a while, about 10 more officers arrived, a crew of medics, and about 5 firefighters. CPR and other methods didn't work. The lady who was on the phone earlier also showed up, she was calling 911 and meeting the officers at the trailhead. I was interogated for about an hour and a half, met the detectives on the case, and was let go, depite the fact I was a SERIOUSLY suspicious character; hanging around in black clothes under a bridge, at 5am, a good hour and a bit from home. One of the questions on my statement was "What is geocaching".

After that was done, I was escorted back to my car (I accept the DNF when escorted by police). The Officer says it looked like a suicide - The same bridge that attracts 3 geocaches, also apparently attracts jumpers.

So the lesson folks - Always make sure you keep your tracking on! It may just be an electronic Alibi, but its an alibi none the less.. Oh, and they asked for my paper caching sheet, leaving me with nothing to do for the next hour or so... Oh well, guess it could be worse, right?

The Fall, in Western Civilization

2006-10-25T09:02:00.000-04:00

Dearest Uncle Screwtape

It has been far too long since I sent the last letter, and for that I appologize. My folly knows no bounds!

Everything has been harder then I had originally thought. Getting a house is not an easy thing to do, as all i can hope to afford seems to be on the verge of collapse, or an inferno waiting to happen. Who ever thought that spending 25 years worth of paycheques would be so complicated!? We have a current hopeful, but at the moment, it seems to be a long shot. I will keep you informed should this be the one.

The new job is going well. I am still on a nasty steep learning curve, which I can probably expect for another year or so. As I cannot really talk about the contents of the job, I will have to leave it at that!

About the only thing that went as planned was the haircut, but there really isnt any need to talk about that in detail. I wanted to change my look for my new position so that people didn't mistake me for someone in my previous position (which is a position few people on this side of the coin actually have positive feelings for).

I have been taking advantage of the amazing geocaching weather as well. The cool weather keeps the bugs away, the trees have no leaves to interfere with satellite reception, and the locations tend to be drier. I made a point of attempting a "Jeeps only" cache series before winter. Since all my friends with jeeps seemed unable to come with me (since spring), I did most of the series in my little suzuki swift. There were only 2 of 6 that I did not attempt behind the wheel, and decided to walk about 15km instead. Otherwise, my car makes a pretty good jeep! (although it doesn't handle going through lakes all too well..)

Don Valley in Toronto

A friend and I have begun placing a series of "difficult to get to" caches called the punisher series. They are Barries first attempt at relatively difficult geocaches, and has generated quite a few hopeful watchers from around the province, some coming from as far as Oshawa just to attempt them.. and the series isn't even complete yet
!

The entrance to one of the mazes that the geocache lies in

Urban Spelunking

Hope your health is well, and your life remains profitable,
Your forever grateful nephew,
Wormwood

PS - big news soon.

New job | new house | new Haircut?

2006-09-20T11:28:00.000-04:00

Its been an exciting week! My last shift-work weekend involved a geocaching event called GHAGAFAP 5. This was an annual event, and my first time attending. GHAGAFAP is the largest event in Ontario, so I pretty much HAD to go, as I am a superstar now. There were various events, a lot of neat camoflauge caches that forced us to check every duck in the pond, and every fire department connection on the buildings. When the night came we got a huge fire going, and set up a movie theatre in the woods (just wait.. it gets geekier). An American cacher by the name of Mr.Mom brought out the illegal flashlights (you could probably see our light show from space), and Tomtec brought out a few of his slightly modified lights, and a bunch of green laser pens. We put on an absolutely amazing laser light show that night. I went over and helped out so that the hosts of the makeshift light show could go check out how amazing it looked from the campsite. It even blew their minds how well it turned out!

Click each for a larger view:

Here is a complete Gallery of the event for those interested.

After a weekend of GHAGAFAPing, I returned to the flat and got a good rest for the first day at my new job as a Systems administrator. I haven't got my biometrics scanned into the system yet, so I am basically desk bound near the entrance. They have me running through mountains of documentation and building solaris boxes as the moment, so nothing to exciting, but I seem to be picking up on things quicker then the normal hires that they do, so I expect I will be staying in this position for a while, which is a good thing!

On Tuesday the wife and I went and looked at yet another house. This time the house wasn't about to fall over, spontaneously set on fire, drown, or get shot at.. and best of all, it was in our price range!! we were suspicious at first, there must be something drastically wrong with the place if we can afford it. It is a huge house with 4 bedrooms, and is a 5 second sprint to the lake (a 20 meter portage to the beach). The budget says we can afford it, so we will have to see how good we are with budgeting. Our Real Estate agent was told to go forward with the paperwork. This will be amazing if everything goes well. I can't wait!!

As for the haircut, well.. I started growing a beard in, as it seems to make me look older and more serious. Alot different as well. People I have known for over a year at work are coming over and introducing themselves.. weird. I do really need a haircut, which was planned for this weekend, but I never got around to. So depending how this weekend goes, I may look much different soon.

Silver Peak

2006-09-12T00:07:00.000-04:00

As my last shift-work-weekend, I decided I needed to do something special. A cache that would challenge my ability physically, and push me to the extreme limits of my sanity. This one pushed me a little over that on both accounts, but I made it. After the sanity was broke, it didn't much care for the bodies complaints!

The first day was for driving. We set out around 11 after figuring out how to attach the canoe to my cousins Grand Cherokee, and set out for Parry sound, with the final days destination set on Sudbury. We visited a few sites of interest including various beaches and inlets in the area, and made our way to the Ghost Town of Depot Harbor. I had camped out here before, but turned back due to insect infestations. There were many hollowed out buildings, and the train turnstile was still standing as I remember it. Some old tractors, cars, and boats lay in the main street of this once Grande port town. I didn’t think the cache placed there did a great job of giving a tour of the area, but I wasn't willing to place another one, so it had to do. I probably knew this area better then they did anyway!

Depot Harbour

We visited some stops by the French river. I had passed out by this time. I had been up for about 30 hours, and it is amazing how refreshing 30 minutes of sleep can feel. Found some caches, some animal bones, and some neat buildings, then made our way up to Sudbury. By this time it was beginning to get dark, so we jumped into a hotel just in town and made sure we had a place to sleep. Then it was out for more caching, making sure that I got up to 999 for tomorrows Kilo-cache adventure.

Above the French River

The day started a little later then expected. We started at 11am which was about 5 hours later then I had planned. We dropped off the car, loaded the battle canoe, and went about looking for a free campsite on Bell Lake. Every campsite we came across was either taken or reserved (which is something Ontario parks told me I could not do), so I was just about angry enough at them to pitch tent in the middle of the bush and camp there. So that is what we did!

Killarney Park - alot of trees

A Battle Canoe? Why? Well this is the only canoe I had. The thing weighs close to 100 pounds, and is not something that is meant to be carried. Other portagers on the trail gloated about their canoes being only 20 pounds, but the likely drowned later that day as soon as they ran into their first rock.. hehehe suckers.

Battle Canoe

We found a small inlet, unloaded everything we didn’t need for the hike, pitched a tent, and hung the food off the ground, then loaded up the canoe again and started paddling. Greeting us at our first portage was a moose enjoying moose food in the shallow beaches of the lakes end. We didn’t get very close to this one, and it took off before we could get close enough for a photo. The first portage was awkward, and painful. It was approximately one kilometer over rocky and sometimes boarded mud terrain. We made it to the second lake, and I assured him that the next one wouldn't be anything near as bad as that one.

Moooooose

We paddled through this lake, unnamed on the map, and came across many beaver lodges and dams. At the entrance to the second portage there was another moose munching on moose food, and this one didn’t seem to care as much if we took it's picture, so we did. We sat and watched it for a while, and had a snack of our own - Doritos, Granola bars and water. Our second portage was much easier, and took almost no effort at all, especially compared with the other one.

Portag'n

We entered the third lake - David Lake - and it began to rain pretty hard. We canoed across the lake, and as we were pulling the canoe ashore the thunder and lightning broke out. My cousin had a rain suit, but I had to make due with a jean jacket. I had marked the trail earlier on my GPS and we decided we could have about 2 kilometers off the trip by bushwhacking about 200 meters. We walked right across the trail without even noticing, and ended up face to face with a river. We found a beaver dam that made short work of the river, and decided to try and find the trail on the other side of the river, according to a topo-map. Eventually we found it, and began the long hike up to the final summit.

Route to Silver Mountain

We made base camp twice along the way, stopping for food and water, but each time we did we nearly froze as the lack of activity mixed with our wet clothing, freezing rain, and biting winds. As we got closer to the top, the storm got more vicious as the trees began to give way to the bare quartzite rock that formed the peak of the mountain. The water was coming off the mountain down the trail in waterfalls at points, and our hands froze as we worked our way up the cold rocks. At the peak, the rain was coming in sideways from all directions, and at times, from below. The swirling clouds all around us, and the thunder and lightning made it quite clear that we were actually inside the thundercloud.

We stayed as low as possible, making sure there was always something taller then us at every step, at times on our hands and knees, working our way to the peak. We found the peak, and where the cache should have been, but it was not. The owner of the cache had contacted me earlier as he had a suspicion that the cache may be missing. I had a replacement which I left in position and filled back up with loose rocks in the area. My cousin was more then happy to leave at this point.

thunder mountain

We made our way down the slippery slope of the mountain, and through the forests, over the river, and through the hills to the next mountain, which gave us a beautiful view of Silver peak still covered in the thundercloud that had enveloped us. We made a dash for the canoe, and hurried to the first portage. I felt that instead of going to the path that we had originally taken here, we should try the other path! WHAT A STUPID IDEA! after an 900m portage detour we made it back to the trailhead, and picked the correct trail.

After canoeing the second lake, we arrived at the long portage and decided we best pull out the flashlights. The dark portage went surprisingly well considering that it was, well, dark. We found our campsite thanks to my handy GPS (we really couldn't see anything at all), and went straight to bed. The pain is what we felt the next morning.

fire ants

We packed our stuff into the canoe the next morning, and checked our bodies over for any missing limbs. We survived Silver mountain relatively unscathed, with only a few cuts and bruises. The Painful canoe back to the car was enough of a wakeup call to realize that the adventure ended here. No extreme geocaching today!

Killarney Shores

We did manage to hit a small one in the town of killarney when we hoped into town to dry off our clothes. It was on the south shore, outside of town, it had beautiful red-stone beaches, that looked amazingly like paintings by the Group of seven. Very scenic! We had some of the famous local fish and chips straight off the boat, got our clothes then headed for the campground. The canoe this time was left on the jeep, and we just decided to take it easy the rest of the day and let our muscles take a break.

We awoke the next morning to a war between the neighbors dog, and a band of rowdy squirrels. They seemed to be taunting the dog from the trees. This early morning alarm clock got us up and out of there on time, and we had a rather uneventful drive home!

See all Pictures

Off to conquer La Cloche!

2006-09-07T06:04:00.000-04:00

In 2 hours I will be departing for the La Cloche mountain range, and my last shift-work-weekend adventure. I have been quite excited about it, but my planning for this trip is rather inept.

I will begin my trip coming straight off an 84 hour work week, night shifts. I hope that 2 hours of sleep on the way to Parry sound will satisfy the nods until we get to Sudbury. As I will be going for my 1000th geocache, I will need to collect about 14 geocaches before I attempt the mountain. Hopefully I can get those all today on the way to, and in, Sudbury.

I am pretty sure that the adventure up the mountain will be ill timed as well. I am guessing that we will probably need 6 hours to get there, and 6 hours to get back. As there is not 12 hours of daylight anymore, and also scheduled for that day we have to go to the Killarney main office to get the camping permits, and set up camp before we head out, I suspect we will need to do some night canoeing.

This will be a fun blog entry when I get back folks, wish us luck!

An unlikely role Model

2006-09-07T00:11:00.000-04:00

Best US President ever? Alexander Joseph Luthor. Yeah, I admit; I cheer for the bad guy.

There are some things that strike me as unique to the plight of Lex Luthor. First and foremost - He wants the best for humanity. Why does he hate superman so much? Because he is an alien who goes around solving humanities problems. He feels as though humans are a still developing species, and if superman goes around fixing all our problems then we will stop developing and learning to deal with the problems we have caused. In order for humanity to develop the way it should, it must have no external influences, and deal with its own problems.

Since the 1940s, Luthors character has changed many times, from a brain-stealing red haired scientist, to superboy's best friend, to alien fighting commando soldier, to president of the USA. He has come up with various plots to destroy Superman; including the synthesizing of kryptonite, travelling back in time, creating clones, robots, genetic monsters, detonated H-Bombs, and even summoning beings from the 4rth dimension. His history is also chaotic, as peoples tastes over the decades change. Sometimes he is a self-made man, who grew up in the slums of metropolis, sometimes he inherited his money, sometimes he stole it all. The one thing in the stories, that seems to drive him, is revenge.

Luthor became president in the year 2000 after detering an alien fleet of warships with human-alien technology hybrids. He Married Lana Lang, and with Pete Ross as the Vice President, led the world into a new golden age... Or so it goes.

The "new" Lex as portrayed in the TV series Smallville is a far more 'realistic' version of the fantastic story of superman. In the show he is portrayed as a rich twenty-something who uses his money to help the people of the world, and performing extensive research and development. Clark Kent (oh sorry, I should have warned you about the spoiler) always seems to foil his research plans though, as they often make him sick (because he doesn't like Kryptonite, a key ingredient in most of the experimentation). This is the Lex I Cheer for, the one who is relatable. Sometimes I watch the show, and think to myself, man, this superman guy is a real prick.

In the new superman movie however, he seems a bit too money hungry to seem realistic. Superman is the hero in this story only because there doesn't seem to be anyone better for the role. He still seems like a clumsy, dim-wit who just happens to have biological superiority over everyone. I liked the superman movie, but didn't like the way Lex was portrayed in it, or superman for that matter. The real superman would have made his court date!

Anyway, VOTE LEX FOR PRESIDENT, that is all I can say. peace out.

Wearing my day

2006-09-05T06:58:00.000-04:00

As I approach the 24 hour mark on my day I look down at my clothes. I am a horrible horrible mess. I have light coloured jeans on and a white t-shirt. I am covered in the following colours & filth: Black powder printer ink, Brown wood stain, beige saw dust, green and yellow grass stains, dirt & mud, and last but not least, coffee. I am after all, a slob that has been up 24 hours..

add a computer, and its meeeeee...

Why Pluto MUST NOT be given planet status

2006-09-01T14:30:00.000-04:00

A tribute comic to the Perry Bible Fellowship:

Quest for Silver peak and Promotion V2.0

2006-09-01T10:33:00.000-04:00

I will be moving up the ladder once again! Earlier today I accepted a promotion to government services systems administrator. Not much can be said about the job other then I am now responsible for maintaining a network of large fancy computers. OooOOO!

The bad news is, that I have given up my 7 day weekends, and will be working the M-F 9-5 shifts, meaning an extra day of commuting into the city, and far less extravagant adventures in the outback. My last adventure it seems will be Silver Mountain in the heart of killarney. I have been putting some research into the trip. Looking at topo maps, reading log entries, plotting possible courses, and trying to muster a crew for this most perilous of journeys. Alain, my street-savvy cousin, has agreed to partake on the challenge with me.

We will launch the canoe at David lake, and likely camp at site 102. From there, we will follow the trail back to the "thunder box" (a valley), cross the river, and pick up the path to Silver peak. The hike will only be about 2km which is really nothing when you think about it, but will probably also incur an elevation increase of about 300m.

This hike will be my 1000th geocache, if I time it right, and will be a super-wicked way to end my geocaching full-timers career. Spots are still open if anyone wants to join us this Thursday :D

Labour day weekend = Labour full weekend

2006-08-31T15:55:00.000-04:00

I have just started my 84 hour work week. Ironically, it begins before labour day, and ends after it. So far it isn't going to well. 8 hours in and I am having chest pains, and 2 very nasty meetings in the next couple of hours. Short blog entry, yes. I am busy.

Geocaching - All Quiet on the Western Front

2006-08-29T15:09:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I had completed a milestone that I had my eye on for the last few weeks. I have cleared all the active geocaches within 50km of my home. I am slowing down my march towards 1000 as september looks to be a tricky month to maneuver a four day trip into. Instead it seems like I will be making my 1000th geocache the annual GHAGAFAP event (Golden Horseshoe Area Geocachers And Friends Annual Picnic) being hosted this year near London Ontario. Not quite as much a feat of accomplishment as I had been hoping to brag about (as all I really have to do to claim it is to show up), but I will share the podium with a few friends who will also be celebrating milestones that day. We will be doing some camping in the area that night, and pulling out the BFLs for a little night hunting.

The last cache I needed to conclude my 50km bubble was a series finale cache located around Orangeville, in the Hockley Highlands. Caledon is a really neat spot geologically, as you have both the Bruce trail and the oak ridges morrain intersecting.

This leads to some really neat mountains and hills. I finished off the day 10 points ahead, with one cache that I could not account for. The cache "Bailey's Bridge" has foiled me 6 times so far. This time was probably the most dramatic though. I thought that I had grabbed the cache twice while reaching under the bridge. Both times I pulled out a hand full of hornets and their nests. Good thing I am in shape now, otherwise the next geocacher might just find a stinger-ridden corpse at the site. I gave up after the 2 hornet clans (both of different species) began fighting eachother on the bridge. A really interesting sight, but I wasn't staying to see how it turned out. I will come back in the fall or winter when things have cooled down a bit.

Tommorow I am meeting some folks out on the Bruce trail to attempt a cache called "The Eagles Nest". We have all tried the cache before, and have all failed. The terrain is rated four out of five, and I would agree with that.. Almost saying it would be a four and a half. George and I went out here a while back and made it to the last stage, but were unable to find anything, so hopefully more luck will befall the group tommorow. I will probably try and replace a cache of mine as well tommorow that was stolen as a result of a careless finder being unable to put it back the way the found it.. There is a place for people like that. Pluto.

Pluto - Get out of here. You smell.

2006-08-24T10:19:00.000-04:00

Well, After many angry letters (my exclamation key has the paint worn off it), the Astronomers union finally agrees with me:

BBC Article

CBC Article

Pluto isnt a planet. Charon isn't a planet. Ceres isnt a planet. 2003-UB313 (aka Xena, aka the planetoid of the prickoids) isn't a planet. So a big thank you goes out to the tireless astronomers out there, who get to fly all the way around the world to argue the definition of a word. Thank you for getting it right this time..

UPDATE: The TARDS at fox news disagree with me because they shouldn't have to unlearn things, despite the fact they didn't even bother to read the reason why the planet was demoted - see link

UPDATE: Swifteroo has purchased the domain "SavePluto.com" just to spite me. He did this because he is probably just as much a floating space turd as pluto is. YEAH! I am a hater.

Ceres-1, welcome to the solar system

2006-08-19T01:58:00.000-04:00

How many planets in our solar system? 12!

After about 150 years of debate, scientists have FINALLY named the Ceres-1 planetiod a member of the Sol system planets. The Sol system now contains the classical 8 planets, and three contested planetoids Ceres-1, Pluto & Charon, and 2003-UB313, as "Planets". The definition of Planet has actually been defined as something that satisfies 2 conditions:

1. The object must be in orbit around a star, but must not itself be a star
2. It must have enough mass for the body's own gravity to pull it into a nearly spherical shape

So, Pluto is a planet, Charon (I thought it was a moon!) is now considered a planet, Ceres is a planet (formerly known as an asteroid), and 2003-UB313 is a planet as well. There will likely be more planets discovered in the solar system from time to time, but the current total is 12.

Am I happy with this news? NO. Am I going to tell you why? NO. I am just going to sulk now. Enjoy your status Ceres-1. ENJOY.

COG coin - ready to be minted!

2006-08-18T02:21:00.000-04:00

Lately I have been in email negotiations with a minter in BC regarding the minting of a coin for the Central Ontario Geocachers. Below are the options that the minter and myself have generated based on the feedback of the group forums for the coin (click to enlarge):

So far it looks like the majority of votes are going to option B and option 2, which I agree with. What do other people think? Any votes out there?

Coins should go into production later this year. Contact me if you would like one. Members only coins will be Copper, and coins made with silver and gold will be availiable for purchase for approx 10$.

10^4, little buddy

2006-08-14T03:55:00.000-04:00

If any of you have been keeping track of the little icon on the right hand side of the page (with the angry frog?), you may have noticed that my number of finds is approaching 1000. This is quite the milestone, as it will likely be the last time that the number will ever grow in character size.

So now the preperation begins. I have picked quite a doozy for the milestone. Silver mountain in killarney provincial park. The third largest mountain in Ontario. My options are either a 20km hike in from the road, or a 2 hour canoe ride with a one hour mountain climb (which seems much more plesant!). One of the mountains I had to climb in Banff after all, took about 4 hours to get up. Elevation of this cache, which is right at the peak, is 539 meters, which again, is a far cry from my record elevation of 2311 meters.

The mountain is made of pure white quartz, and the view from the top encompasses much of the area, including manitoulin island on a clear day.

Links:
Location of Silver Peak
Picture of someone atop the peak

I am not sure of the dates (minimum 3 days) that I will do this one, but if anyone wants to come, please let me know. I will try and arrange it! After all, canoeing is so much easier with 2 people.

Colouring in my map..

2006-08-11T02:53:00.000-04:00

I decided that I would go to Ottawa for a few days to enjoy the company of friends, try and get one friend out of a really discusting situation, and try and get caches from all the eastern ontario counties. I am convinced that this adventure will not wow people to my adventures as other articles have, and I feel as though the reason is that there will be no pictures! The reason? My camera is still on one of the barrier islands in Cornwall. Uhgg..

Day one involved mostly driving and picking up a bunch of pre-selected caches along my route. I visited the Peterbourough lift locks, and the Holleford Meteor Impact Crater, and a few other interesting places along the way. I ended up hoping across the border into New york state, as it was kind of on the way! It was the first time I have known the pleasure of explaining to a border guard how I want to go into his country and look for hidden containers. I didn't realize it at the time, but I had a huge knife sitting on the front seat which I am quite glad they didnt question me about. I got into Ottawa and got apprised of the current "trouble" situation of my friend (which I am not going to delve into this time! Sorry!) , and ended up late at bridgets without the pizza that I promised. The pizza eventually got there, but an 11pm dinner time is a real bummer. Sorry!

Day 2 I drove along the ottawa river and into quebec picking up caches along the way. In Cornwall I was out on one of the barrier islands and, as stated earlier, lost my camera. It is in the section between the trail and the survay marker on the barrier island, somewhere amongst the 7 foot grass. I ended up running for my life after a rainstorm swooped in, leaving me as the tallest thing around for kilometers. I made it out alive, but *sniff* my camera is still out there somewhere! Shortly afterwards I was called back to Ottawa to deal with "the situation" again.

Day 3 started off in the Gatineau Mountains. I did a few long distance mountain caches and headed back for the appartment. Then I taught a friend how to geocache on the ones I just did. We did about 4km of mountain running in an hour, and then ran into a huge black bear on the way home. It decided to turn tail before we did, but MAN that thing was HUGE. A local quebec geocacher was also offering a reward for the return of his spiffy high-tech walking stick. I took the challenge, and found that too. The reward should be in the mail! Later that evening we met up with some Ottawa area geocachers for dinner in the Byward Market at a place called the blue cactus. I remember this place being considerably less expensive!

Day 4 started off with my trying to close up the situation, or cutting my strings and bailing, depending on how you look at it. I left it in quite a mess, but it is probably in a better place then it would be had I not shown up. Then met some friends for a vietnamese lunch on the way out of town. Ride home was uneventful, but hey! look at my spiffy counties cached list!

1 week to the iron man competition!

2006-07-31T13:51:00.000-04:00

..Or so it would seem..

As I explained to my coworkers today what I did over the weekend I had to question it myself.. I portaged a canoe by my loneself to various bodies of water, to explore various islands. The water was often above the bow of the boat as it broke the waves, but I continued to paddle away from the shore. The next day I biked close to 50 kilometers in a marathon geocaching spree. Why? Fundraiser? who did it benefit? no one! except perhaps you the reader, who now has something to read about!

Happier Days ahead?

2006-07-26T18:12:00.000-04:00

Well that was a rough weekend.

Angies funeral was catholic, and the family asked me to read some scripture from the book of wisdom, essentially reading that Angie was recalled to heaven so that she can be on the front lines of the apocalypse when Jesus comes to destroy the world. It's very hard thinking of her that way, and even harder trying to comprehend how that might make anyone feel better about the situation.

I went to a place I will call the fields of misery (for lack of a better name). Its this place about 3 hours north that has these giant 20 foot tall sculptures made of concrete. Most of them are screaming faces. There is also a castle on the grounds, and peacocks running around freely. It is quite surreal. I had never been there before, but I heard it was a great place to loose oneself.

Chris will be singing tommorow night at the foundation in Barrie. It will bring my spirits up, I am sure!

Angie..

2006-07-23T10:02:00.000-04:00

It's still pretty fresh, The visitation is this afternoon, and I have been asked to speak at the funeral Monday..

Lightning kills Angus woman

One of three family members struck during beach outing

BY RAYMOND BOWE
Local News - Friday, July 21, 2006 @ 07:00

WASAGA BEACH A family trip to the beach turned deadly when a 26-year-old woman was struck by lightning yesterday afternoon.

The victim was identified by police as Angela Exell, of Angus. She died shortly after 3 p.m. at Collingwood General & Marine Hospital.

Two other women, who are related to the victim, were treated for minor injuries and transported to the same hospital.

Huronia West OPP Const.Mark Kinney was nearby conducting an interview about a recent drowning when the incident occurred.

I was walking along the boardwalk when I heard a loud bang, he said.

I was alerted by a passerby (to the scene) and started CPR (on the victim). When you see that large of a flash, no matter where it is, youll see it, Kinney added.

Jennifer Bellissimo was sitting in her car just metres from the scene when the incident occurred. However, her car was backed into the parking spot, so she didnt see the woman get hit.

But I could feel it the car jerked, Bellissimo said. We heard a big crack and a big bang right after.

Christina Balkenende, who works at a nearby jewelry store, also saw the lightning bolt come down. I saw a huge white stripe, Balkenende said. My heart felt like it stopped. All I heard was everybody gasping.

Joanne Smith, who was walking down to Beach Area No. 1, said, I heard a loud, loud crack and I jumped. I knew it hit something.

Last month, two women were injured when lightning struck one of the women and a tree. The second woman was injured when the tree fell on her.

I had heard there was an accident earlier in the day and that she had died. I assumed it was a vehicle accident, simply because she was a stay-at-home mom, and that there really isn't too much risk involved in her life. When I got to the families home her 5 year old son explained in pretty graphic detail to me how mommy got hit in the head with lightning, and then set on fire. Her son, husband, daughter and some other friends on the beach were all thrown back from the blast, 2 were injured.

The family is a real mess. They asked me to get all her friends into town for Mondays funeral, and to speak at it. What to say..

Last time I saw her she was at our wedding, in charge of herding the kids. Her son was the ringbearer, and her daughter (2) was one of the less cooperative flowergirls, who got scared by the photographer half way down the aisle, and ran back to her mom at the back.

What a mess..

annual geocachiversary

2006-07-20T08:03:00.000-04:00

Today it has been one year since I have gotten my first geocache. My total count up to this point over 820, which as far as I know is unprecidented, atleast by relativly sane people. Of course maybe they started off sane..

I was planning a trip to Mattawa this weekend with other cachers for a party, but the place we were going was destroyed by a tornado, and is now closed indefinatley. We are still planning on heading up somewhere, so I will post something new when I have something to tell!

Cheers!

Vacation to the moon!

2006-07-13T00:08:00.000-04:00

Honeymoon that is! (see all pictures)

We went to Alberta, which is quite warm, and has much more oxygen then the afforementioned moon. We arrived by plane in Calgary and stayed in a small country inn in the village of Okotoks, which has the claim to fame of having a very large rock (the largest glacial eratic in the world!). This place has murals depicting famous world structures, like the statue of liberty, niagra falls, eiffel tower, along side the famous eratic of Okotoks. I got a laugh out of it.

After a night in glorious Okotoks we headed for Banff, and Kananaskis country. We had opted to stay in a teepee village set up by the Blood tribes in the area as a source of tourism. Beutiful and unpeopled area, which is something I cannot say of Banff! The place was packed, and quite unpleasent for someone as homophobic (the sapien reference)as myself. My new wife had twisted her ankle on the first trail, and was not up for the many 6-8h hikes that my treasure hunting required of me. Luckily she enjoyed touring the horribly expensive shops that made up the bulk of the city, and trail riding in the mountains, while I took to a bike. I conquered 3 mountains while I was there (1 of them I had conquered before, so I took the gondola up this time). Another mountain, I dragged a bike up to the top (right past the no bikes sign), and had the time of my life riding the bike to the bottom. It was the first time I had ever gotten to ride a "shimano" bike, which is apparently top of the line!

Geocaching brought me to an interesting ghost town inside of Banff park, Bankhead, which was abandonned as the park expanded over top of it. The town still had mountains of unprocessed coal that had been extracted from the many mines across the town. The wife and I made it through both the industrial and residential sides of town, and this was by far the most extensive ghost town I had ever visited (and I have been to quite a few). On the way out of town I cought a glimpse of our first wilflife encounter - A wolf - who was startled and likely confused by our presence in town. We parted ways without incident.

Other wildlife I encountered was not so lucky. There was an abundance of ground squirrels in the park as well as deer. We saw a heard of elk, a heard of mountain sheep, and I saw a forest weasel of some sort while out geocaching, who followed me for about 2km. The wife and I got a little too close to one elk who ended up giving me a poke to the ribs with its velvet-clad antlers. This trip, I got off with a warning it seems. Now I can add "elk" to my close encounters list.

After a few days in Banff, we headed to spruce meadows for an equestrian tournament. We saw many horses jump over many fences, and met one of the wifes long-lost uncles in the process. I took off to view some of the geocaches that Calgary had to offer.. I think that my curse of urban caching seems to extend outside of Toronto.. I seem to have a very poor success rate inside cities, no doubt because they must be so much better hidden to avoid detection by the hordes of humans.

After Calgary we proceeded on a day trip to Edmonton, as we just had to do the west edmonton mall. We were disappointed to find out that the submarines in the mall had been closed for over a year, as well as the zoo and a fwe other features we had looked forward too. I bailed after about the 3rd clothing store and decided to try my hand at Edmonton Geocaches for a few hours. I had only 2 on my list, and managed to find them both, despite one of them being only slightly bigger then a pencil eraser. At the second cache (the must do for any self-respecting geocacher), I encountered 2 other groups of geocachers. There was a couple from Poland who were in town training for the olympics, and a large Edmontonian who wasn't very sociable. The Polanders and I made for the European part of town where I was shown the best place to get a gelato and bruchetta. We talked about a variety of things including the poor driving skills of spaniards, Italians, and ultimately Edmontonians. After having feasted on the delecasies presented to me, I bid Adieu, and made a dash for my car on the other side of the river in hopes that I could get back to the mall in time for "Superman". They have a large fire breathing dragon at the movie theatre which is quite neat!

After Edmonton we made the last major drive to Drumheller, aka Dinosaur town. I was simply gitty at the geology of the area, so much so that I was asked to pull over and let the wife drive so I would stop driving off the road. Many multicouloured cliffs, hoo-doos and geocaches surrounded by cacti. Simply great! We made the rounds to the various sights in the area including the Tyrell Museum, and an old abandonned coal tipple evelator and mine shaft. We rented a few horses and rode around the wayne valley, experiencing first hand the "Last chance Saloon" by horseback. We camped out on the Praries jeast of Drumheller, and ended up leaving a day early due to extreme heat, and running out of things to do. We decided to forgoe our meticulously planned schedule, and go west. The wife had been trying very hard to visit every tack store and attempt to find someone who would teach her the fine art of cattle cutting. She got a lead, and we headed for a small town just outside of Calgary. It turnout out to be a dead end, and we were stuck looking for a hotel room in Calgary, on opening weekend of the stampede.. not good.

We eventually came upon a set of small cabins that were set up near Cochrane, that were a bit costy, but well worth it, especially after camping in the praries (we felt like fricking kings). We slept in, gawked at the miracles of telivision, and then made a second run at finding the horse ranch, to no avail. We eventually had to go to the stampede as one of the shows that we had tickets for was begining. We got to see the chuckwagon races, which unfortunately resulted in the deaths of 2 horses. There was a cheesy opening ceremony as well that went on, that was impressive considering that all the actors put on a 3 hour show, and they were all under 18.

The best room we got to stay in was larger then out appartment, included a jacuzzi, king size bed, a set of bunk beds, leather couches, and cow skin rugs. Various artwork addorned the walls. Expensive, yes. But it was alot of fun! We headed back to the stampede the next day and watched the Bronco, and Bull riding competitions, and checked out all the stores with various ways of cooking cow. Funny thing though.. when it rained, everyone ran for cover.. The wife and I were left alone walking the stampede grounds in the rain as all these "cowboys" had taken shelter, or were scampering from tent to tent.

It was a great vacation, and despite me collecting close to 50 geocaches, the wife said it was the best time shes ever had. [Sweeeeet, i pulled it off!!] Oh well, back to the grindstone!

..Never the Bride

2006-06-16T01:16:00.000-04:00

I am hitched. I have a wife now, who just happens to be the same person I have been with for the last 7 years. This will be a tricky blog article as I still don't have permission to talk about her..

The weather didn't hold up for us but noone seemed to mind. We were muddy, we were wet, but it was a great wedding! In fact, about an hour before the ceremony I was attempting to push a car out of the mud and made a mess of my tux shirt. Not so much that anyone could see it without pointing it out though.

Ceremony went off without incident, except for the inevitable confusion that comes with wedding signing.. but you have to wonder about people who have that talent mastered..

As the day dragged into night, the ground became one big puddle. My dad (the only one with enough Gall to bring rubber boots to the ceremony) was laughing it up. The bride changes into something a little shorter so her dress could be saved somewhat. One thing that I am sure everyone was suprised about though, I can make MC Hammer, and kilts work!

Well Ladies! I am officially off the market. My cousin however, is recently singled, and a far nicer guy then me. So all you attractive young Mams from the Tdot, Shoot him an email ;)

I will soon be going on a 2 week adventure in the rockies. I will update again if I survive the Grizzlies and relentless beatings of mountain goats that seem inevitable.. as I just don't know when to stop bugging nature!

Batchelor Party Hike

2006-05-29T16:41:00.000-04:00

Went on a hike for my bachelor party, much to the disagreement of one of the attendants who got fed up, threw a fit and went home (upset due to lack of peelers, i assume).

Friday began with us giving up on going camping in the dark and rain, to go see a movie, then hit the Glitzy Glamour of the Barrie club scene. There are really only 4 clubs in Barrie, and we hit 3 of them. We ran into a lot of opposing bridal showers who were showing up their girls one last time, as well as the odd upset girl peeing on the sidewalk.. Of the 2 single guys in our party, one guy (already juggling 3 girls) picked up 3 more, and the other guy who had just broken up a 6 year relationship met a nice girl at a country music romp and really hit it off. Now all he has to do is figure out if he wants to continue a relationship between Barrie and Mississauga, or just live the single life!

The bars closed, and we stumbled our drunken selves back to the cold floors at which we threw our sleeping bags earlier. We passed out at 3am, and then got up for 8 for the road trip out west. We drove for about 3 hours to the mighty Owen Sound, and then got out for some lunch and some treasure hunting. Someone up there has some mad camouflage skills, as the containers were just hollowed out every day objects like rail spikes, sign bolts, and sticks on the ground. We managed to find everything that we were looking for, and continued north up the Bruce peninsula. We got to the campground, set up our tents and headed for the beach; about 30 minutes walk from the campgrounds.

Beach was great; everyone had fun climbing the cliff down although no one dared swim in the 1 degree water. All were impressed with the caves, but I really can't describe it without using pictures (which even then do the area little justice!)

The rest of the night was spent poking fun at the X-men, pimps, pimp canes, my brothers housing arrangements, various condiments, and a multitude of other topics until one of us gathered the guts to go to bed and risk a shaming. The morning came, and none of us woke up with mustaches, or whipped cream hair, so we packed up and went to Tobermory. I made my pilgrimage to the stone cairn at the harbour in Tobermory that marked the beginning of the Bruce trail. A decidedly boring cairn to anyone who doesn't do the amount of hiking to me, but I actually found it rather exciting [not that I would ever consider walking the entire trail!]

Along the way back southbound we went to a geocache called Lucifer's Lookout (AKA Devil's Monument). Giant stone cliffs rose about 200m from the loose shoreline of Georgian bay. To stand near the edge was absolutely mortifying! Despite my fear of heights I managed to get the closest to deaths mouth by a few inches. At that height though, I think everyone is afraid of heights...

After that we hit the opposite side of the peninsula, and went to Sauble Beach. Great area, and almost completely devoid of tourists (probably because its May!). Went to see some waterfalls and pretty places, then my brother and my cousin took off for the road back to the city. George and I continued on to Another waterfall of two on the way home, then hit Wasaga Beach for one last beer and some Nachos. I felt completely out of place! The bar was filled to the brim with attractive people in their tight clothing, no doubt to bring attention to very very very nice features that we saw there. George and I, having been out in the bush for a few days were unshaven, covered in mud with messy hair, smelling of bug spray which only barely covered up the horrible stench of our wicked weekend.

Complete Photo Album can be found on my MSN space

Lately Happenings

2006-05-24T04:08:00.000-04:00

Only about a week left until single dave is no more. We hardly knew yee!

The wedding plans are still on track, although I still need to learn how to dance. Tried convincing C to practice a few times without success. I am pretty sure she needs more help then I do. What will the wedding be like? sort of a scottish-western mix.. highlander meets clint eastwood sort of deal. There will be horses, there will be kilts. My dad has finished up work on his electrical system, which includes a 600kg solar-battery system. After the wedding, the power and the building will likely be used to house parents of C's riding school while their kids are riding around. A nice gazeebo!

Some projects that I am currently working on include: a video game, (loosely based on the kingdom of loathing) which at present is written, but the grammer and spelling is absolutely horrible (All my base are belong to me, dammit); Migration of an ecommerce trouble ticket shift migration application (for work duh, although I am still not technically employed as a programmer, so it takes a back seat); the wedding.. really should get on that; a 3 day batchelor party to the bruce penninsula, which I am trustingly leaving in my best friend Georges hands; Honeymoon planning; and of course, wine making.

It seems like a lot when i write it out.. doesn't it.. On top of all that, I seem to be working more and more lately. Last week I pulled of 84 hours, thankfully this week only involves 60 hours. You would think that I would be rolling naked in money, but the government sees me as too rich, so they take it all away and push me further into debt. For instance(After taxes): 40 hours worked = approx 1000$, 84 hours worked = approx 1300$... fair? noooooooo.

I recently pulled off a canoe trip with Wilfredo as well. It was fabulous.. even though it rained the entire time. The trip was 6 hours long, and encompassed over 20 kilometers of the Nottawasaga river. The rain kept the bugs from eating us alive so that was a plus. The best thing of the trip was the absolute solitary that it provided. There were no roads, no houses, no people. The only structures that we saw were of a hundred year old ghost town in the center.

We placed 4 geocaches while on the trip. To this date only 2 of them have been found, as people don't seem to be willing to venture as deep into the swamp as we did. Probably a good idea too. It really was fun hauling a canoe on a half a kilometer portage. We took a break each portage, got food and water, sat down for a nice break, rested our poor arms. If I were to do it again, I think I would remember to bring a bow saw so that I can get through the log jams a bit more elegantly.

Oh, did I mention that I stuck some geocaches in there? (yes, its redundant.. I KNOW that I did.. yes). Took me and the central Ontario Geocachers about 2 months to convince the Nottawasaga Conservation Authority that it was a good idea. Geocaching in the area has received quite a bad rap lately.. In September we were accused of grave robbing (About a million things wrong with their theory, but anyways..), and then just a month ago, a person came across a geocache and thought it was a bomb.. then, the 'LOGICALLY' stuck the bomb in their car, and drove it to the police station, and handed it to the officer at the front desk. The building was evacuated.. yadda yadda yadda.. Anyways, big mess, summary: people are idiots.

The Last month in review

2006-02-26T03:37:00.000-05:00

Wedding - preparations are nearly complete. Convinced 2 of 3 groomsmen to join me in wearing kilts. The other will be fitted of one soon. Got the family sword upgraded, so its now quite a bit bigger, shinier, and tempered. I'm still going to wait until after the wedding to start wacking watermelons with it though. C and I took the compatibility test the other day at our Pastors request. Some of the questions were quite funny such as "Having Children will likely solve any relationship issues we have AGREE ---- DISAGREE" or "When watching television, custody of the remote controls belongs to Whomever is stronger AGREE ----- DISAGREE". There were a few toughies, but after 7 years, I am sure we know where our problems lie.. Besides, im stronger so that means I always win.

Geocaching - been working myself up the rankings list.. Not that the numbers matter, but hey. I made up a pretty good gallery in my MSN space, people have actually told me that I should sell some of the photos, or that I should become a photographer. I am a firm believer however that I suck at photography, and that I just visit photogenic places. My favorite area is quickly becoming the Bruce Trail. I seem to like the cliffs when I am not falling off of them (still recovering after quite the call about a week ago). I am starting to get a few visitors to the caches around my house, but most people complain that the terrain is nearly impossible due to the fact that its a swamp. They obviously don't want it bad enough!

Job - I am searching for something in programming, as it seems more and more evident that my present job is a dead end. Putting out resumes is depressing, I seriously hate it. You put hours of work into a perfectly crafted cover letter, only to get no reply, time after time. Every job seems to require 5-10 years experience in the exact SAME job to qualify. Needless to say, I am not getting any call backs despite my efforts to continuously pump out the resumes. I have started working for Central Ontario Geocachers as a Web-app developer and DB administrator. I wrote a pretty nifty application that uploads an XML file to the server, read out the contents and displays it to a Google Map. I have found it to be quite handy. Hopefully someone will take note that I am competant, but I am not holding my breath.

open mouthed oxygen thieves

2006-01-22T03:01:00.000-05:00

They exist. You know who you are.. Your the 2% of the audience in "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" who vote captain asparagus to the question of the 43rd president of the US.. Dont you think these people should be identified and ridiculed? Should not the spotlight shine on them after answering like that so the entire TV audience can huck a fruit at them should the be observed in public?

On the plus side, how many times do I get to answer the "How was your night at work?" with "Full of high speed car chases, crashes, lots of noise and silence. I had to put a fire, and sprinted for about 10 minutes straight. All in all, it was moderatly productive".

Excellent Midnight Adventure

2006-01-13T00:09:00.000-05:00

The much anticipated TOMTECs Excellent Midnight Adventure was indeed Excellent. It turned out to be very similar to an episode of "the amazing race" except we were the ones competing, and it was the middle of the night in the barren northern winter woods of Canada. First off I would like to thank Tomtec (Dan) for hosting an amazing event. It was sweeeet, and definitely the most fun I have had in a long time. I want to thank the holy order of the BFL for the organization, administration, and creepy secretive ways that added to the nights fun.

The night started off at a small pub in the town of Bolton Ontario called the Black Bull. We ate, we drank, we were Merry. My team mates consisted of Swifteroo, Earthquake, and a friend I had conscripted and trained for the event, Wiggity_wack (aka Nelan). Nelan was trained hard the day before in the Oak Ridges Moraine. We did a lot of hiking, I made him do all the retrieval, which involved being birthed by a tree, and climbing another tree about 30 feet tall. He succeeded, and I considered him well prepared for team Lethargy (yes, actual team name).

After dinner there was a draw for a mighty BFL from the holy order of the BFL. To enter, you must eat 5 things that aren't normally eaten. Nelan and I laughed at the weakness of the items, as we had done Llamalympics many times before, and it had involved things that definitely would not be allowed on the property of the Black bull for health and safety reasons. In the end we had no problem eating the hot sauce, raw sardines, dog bacon snacks, spinach, and stale Tim Horton’s donuts. We qualified for the draw, but alas, we did not win.

Now for the main event; I will describe this in detail, as someday I hope to make something better, and don't want my memory skewed with time. The race began in the bar. We were each given identical jigsaw puzzles, and told the initial coordinates were located on the back of the puzzle. We were second to complete the puzzle, gathered our things and rushed out the door (after settling our dues with the barkeep of course). We had some trouble acquiring a GPS signal in the parking lot. 4 people in a car, 5 GPS receivers, one driver (poor guy). After initially heading off in the wrong direction, we headed out of Bolton towards our first goal, out in the country. We found the first clue in someone’s mailbox (marked G.Cache). We rushed off towards the second clue. It gave us two sets of coordinates, and implied that the second one was the one we were looking for. Nelan and Swifteroo headed for the first, I headed for the second. At their set, they found a key and 5 sets of coordinates. Nelan got on the FRS radio, and radioed for my return. We sped off in the direction of the coordinates. While en-route the car went air born, dukes of hazard style, over a railroad crossing. The car seemed ok (later found out that we had destroyed the transmission pan, but that’s another story).

We arrived at the specified parking coordinates, 3rd place so far. Many people were still looking for the second stage, and were quite lost. We could make out their confused banter on the radio. The purpose of the key soon became evident. At each of the 5 coordinates there was a locked ammunition box. 2 keys were available for each box (10 teams). We found and tried all five boxes, and of course it was the last one. After making quite the hussle to make up for lost ground, we followed the coordinates to the next stage. A 12 foot fence. We were carrying for speed at this point, all our gear was back at the car, including the mandatory rope and climbing equipment that would have been quite helpful for this stage, as the clue for the next stage was on top.

This clue brought us to an old firing range, the eerie night and the pock-marked buildings gave quite an atmosphere. We were looking for Spike (Holy order of the BFL member) in one of the broken up buildings. To him we gave the tag received atop the 12 foot fence (human ladder created at the expense of my back). He gave us the option of 2 trivia sheets, one to the east, one to the west. We headed west, and found various plaques along the trail giving us information that often had nothing to do with the questions asked. We completed our trivia questionnaire, and rushed back to spike of the mighty holy order of the BFL. Upon presenting this wisdom to he we were endowed with a mighty riddle, to which I gave 3 immediate answers, only one seemed relevant at the time. We followed my hunch, and seemed to be going in the right direction. A path through the bush, guided along only by the occasional reflective circle nailed to a tree. We ran along the trail, knowing we were in first place, and hoping that the pain in our legs and backs would soon come to an end, or be killed by the wet-cold. The moraine was icy that day my friends..

After running and falling and kicking and tripping, we finally came to a crossroads at the end of the trail. It gave us some coordinates, and told us we were looking for an ammo box at an old barn. Following the coordinates, and loving every minute of the unending run we found the barn and spread out. Upon finding the ammo can we took the next clue, and closed the can up quickly (2nd place was rounding the hill, their flashlights could be seen, their panting could be heard). On the form were a set of variables. Number of fencepost on the Perimeter fence, number of windows in the upper level of the barn, number of reflectors on the stalls, etc. A multiplication and addition were done to retrieve the next set of coordinates and off we went, knowing that we were being trailed. This clue led us to a post, in the middle of a farmers field. Upon the post lay the words: "Like a needle in a haystack, you must find the ammo can in the hayfield". after about an hour of searching, we decided to walk shoulder and shoulder with the team trailing us across the field until we found it. wow.

It led us to a light post, which seemed quite out of place in the middle of the forest. There might have been a road under the snow, but certainly nothing that had been used in a few months. We took our prize stickers and returned to the holy order of the BFL to claim our victory, and hot chocolate. The Oil drum fire at the order was quite inviting, end everyone thought this was a great event.. Little did we know that the pain would last in excess of a week. Running 10km while being pursued would seemingly due that though! Still, very sweeeet.

Oh, and in other geocaching news I made front-sports page news in Bracebridge! Weird eh?

This Warrants a blog entry

2006-01-04T15:59:00.000-05:00

Ok, so after my 10 day holiday vacation, I am at the end of my shift rotation, and get a week off.. meaning of the 20 days around here, I will have only worked 3 of them. SWEEEET

I am looking forward to teaching my friend Chris some Geocaching, as he is looking to get into the sport. I will hopefully be taking him to TOMTECs midnight adventure Saturday as part of Team Lethargy (a sort of Llama-Olympic style pub and then tromping around the forest until the wee hours kind of event).

Hopefully I will find the time to post some interesting pictures of our escapades.

New years adventures

2006-01-02T12:56:00.000-05:00

Winter Snowphooning

I was busy over the holidays but nothing overly exciting that I wish to discuss with the world. C and I did some wedding planning, and got a guest list together (5 months to go!). We took a trip to the Blue mountains near collingwood. The original idea was to go for skiiing, but she didn't feel up to it so we just chilled out for a few days. It was one of those wonderful vacations where you just stay in the hotel room and eat pizza and potatoe chips. Sweeeeet! I was quite active during the light hours, cleared out the Blue Mountain range, except for the town of Meaford which seems to be my bane (only able to find 1 out of 7!!!).

Atop the blue mountains

Then it was off to meet some treasure hunters out in Bracebridge for the annual snowshoe and pub event. Met some fun people, saw some amazing waterfalls! The day was finished off at a local pub, which turned out to be way too small for everyone. There were about 12 of us, but only 4 seats availiable. It made for a cramped evening! Of course, this little place wasn't able to provide enough food.. atleast what we would have liked off the menu. It had a street address, which none of us were able to find because It wasn't anywhere near a street.. how many treasure hunters does it take to find a bar you ask? 12 apparently! Why would a bar accept a reservation for more people then it could hold? Pirates of course! barkeep had an eye patch.. gotta love geocaching!

Icefalls

Happly Holidays!

2005-12-22T06:48:00.000-05:00

I probably wont be blogging much over the holidays. I will be working hard to earn my rank in the top 100 geocachers in Ontario (of about 1400). Happy Christmas, Merry Holidays, and may the Flying Spaghetti Monster touch you with his noodly appendage. Cheers!

Disaster brewing in the Midwest?

2005-12-21T01:30:00.000-05:00

Ever heard of the new Madrid Fault line? Most probably have not.

In 1811 & 1812 a series of catastophic earthquakes completely reconfigured the landscape, creating new lakes, destroying 600 square km of forests, and wiping out entire cities (like new Madrid). Since 1974 over 4000 minor earthquakes have occurred here, averaging one a year that can be felt by the locals.

(From wikipedia article)

Anyways, so why am I writing about this. Looks like there has been interesting news in the area lately. Just thought I would let you know!

December 9:
Trail Derailment in Logan county

December 11:
Officials Puzzled by Oklahoma Gas Geysers

Gas spewing Geysers pop up near Kingfisher

December 15:
Hydro dam breaks open, flood

December 17:
Meridian Mississippi Train jumps tracks

December 19:
coal train bound for St. Louis derails

References various ubersite articles by electrictoothsydrome, and the mighty wikipedia

Killing Kittens, part 2

2005-12-20T00:10:00.000-05:00

2 Cats later we have determined the source of the poison. The cat food. It appears No Name Brand Hairball Formula cat food has a nasty habit of killing its customers. The vet recognized it when we came in. Apparently the cat food crystalizes urine in the urethra and the kidneys fail. extremely painful death.

RIP Raff

So the question is, If the vet knows that this cat food kills cats, do the companies that sell it know? does the "No Name" brand give them the right to sell poison without legal liability? Its still on the shelf people. enjoy your dinner.

Anonymous Commenters are cowards!

2005-12-15T07:52:00.000-05:00

1. -Would you rather get 1st dibs or last laugh?

2. -Would you rather give bad advice or take it?

3. -Would you rather have sand in your shorts or water in your ear?

4. -Would you rather leave the house and realize you forgot your shirt or you forgot your pants?

5. -Would you rather kiss a jellyfish or step on a snake?

A step closer to vegetarian

2005-12-14T00:36:00.000-05:00

After about a week of denial I have determined that I have lost the ability to produce enzymes necessary to process bovine protien. In other words I get sick when i eat beef.

The sickness typically comes in the form of gas. lots and lots of gas for about a 3 day period. Looking back I realized that I havent been eating beef since I moved in with C.. about 7 months ago. I havent had any meat but pork, chicken and fish. no beef.

So what did I do? started eating beef at every meal, of course! This made me very sick. "Victory or death!" i kept telling myself. My toilet bowl is full of liquids from both ends, and I couldn't be happier!

Reading over what I have just wrote, I realize that this may sound odd. So to give you some insight: I like steak.

Killing Kittens

2005-12-13T05:41:00.000-05:00

I had to put a cat down yesterday. This marks the first time I had signed something that resulted in death. I disagree with the decision, but it wasn't my cat. The Cat was poisoned. We dont know by what, or how. RIP Sage.

Juicepig hangs a little to the left when he walks

2005-12-09T17:06:00.001-05:00

Took an interesting test. Fun for the politically minded. Found I was less of a Lefty then I thought, commrade. I was somewhat suprised at the results. I figured I would fit into one of the less popular categories. What did you get?

Juicepig is a
Social Liberal
(63% permissive)

and an...
Economic Liberal
(28% permissive)

Juicepig is best described as a:

Democrat

Link: The Politics Test

Longer Drive, Shorter Blog

2005-12-09T10:21:00.000-05:00

Ok.. 3.5 hours. It took me 3.5 hours to get into work. 3 hours and 30 minutes.

The worst snowfall was in my area, about 6-7". I was fishtailing but making great time. I get into Toronto which got 3", and dead stop. no movement. Cars in the ditches, human corpses in parking lots. insane.

Lovely drive in the country

2005-12-08T10:13:00.000-05:00

Decided to go up to the Lake Huron Snow Belt on my day off to pursue my dream of shoving the number 48 down someone’s throat. Geocaching that is.

The roads were horrible, my car is small. But the parking coordinates were the only place not in the path of a plow that I could perceive parking. Instead of just continuing on, I decided to giv'r a go.

Ran my car full speed into the snow bank. Kept running it until it wouldn't go any further to ensure It didn’t get covered by the snowplow. Of course, my car is now stuck. Snow is above the hood. My fancy new snow tires do nothing but spin.

Eventually after sacrificing a few bushels of vegetation to stick under the tires for traction, I forced myself onto the road. VICTORY!!!

The gaping hole in the snow where my car used to be was now tempting me to park in that spot. An ideal parking spot! With so little snow! well why don’t we try and stick my car in there! So I did. And I got it stuck again. This time I just left it and went for my walk in the bush, then came back in an hour. Not only was the car still stuck, but the snowplow had come by and covered it in by another foot of snow.

Pre Xmas rush

2005-12-04T15:25:00.000-05:00

This is to commemorate my first speeding ticket, which will cost me much more then the original 205$ (for 20 over??) fine. The rest will be spent fighting it. Lets hope I can resurect this damn dirty dog.

Daves Political Commentary

2005-12-01T20:10:00.000-05:00

Who needs the CBC to tell who to vote for in the Canadian Federal Election? I can do it right here.

The Right Wing - Conservative Party of Canada. - For smaller government, less taxes, and less government spending. In theory. The last time they were in power they introduced the largest tax hike in Canadian History.

Their Leader: Steven Harper. Apparently he eats Puppies. He imports them from Thailand and only pays 2$ for each one. He only eats half his meals and gives the rest to the immigrant children working in his house.

The Political Centre - Liberal Party of Canada. - Being in power for the last 15 years, the Liberal Party looks to be in big trouble, after a government inquiry suggested that the party had a culture of corruption and illegally shuffling funds into their own parties pocket. The Liberal Party is seen as the default choice by many however, simply because Steven Harpers scares them.

Their Leader: Paul Martin. Apparently he eats Puppies. His side salad is a bowl of money, and his dinner time entertainment is anyone but U2.

The Left Wing - New Democratic Party - All for busting the bank, money for school, health care, decriminalization of prostatution and marijuana, gay weddings for everyone. Even they don't think they can win, but plead with canadians to give them a good standing in the house of commons. Jack Lenin *ahem* Layton, is seen as unrealistic for the most part.. but interesting non-the-less

Their Leader: Jack Layton. Apparently he eats Puppies. He eats them with a hammer and scithe.

The Seperatists - Bloc Quebecouis - A Federal party whos sole intention is to disrupt the federal system long enough for Quebec to leave.. and hope that no one notices that money still goes to them. They are quite popular in quebec because they try and convince the quebec public that the federal government has it in for quebec, despite the fact that most of the government is from quebec. Statistically unlikely that they will win.

Their Leader: Gil Duceppe. Apparently he eats Puppies; And thanks to his opposable jaw, he is able to swallow them live. He will of course deny it unless you ask if he 'mangez les chiots'. To this he will stand proud and say Oui!

THe Awkward - The Green Party - They fell they should be there, but have no nationaly plan it seems. Proove me wrong people.. proove me wrong.

Their Leader: Jim Harris. He's a Vegetarian. His Protein generally comes from bags of nuts.

There are other candidates from other parties, but none of them stands to win any seats. So these are your choices.

BA..BA..BAAA ... Loons

2005-11-25T06:54:00.000-05:00

No seriously officer, I thought they were real..

Give thanks to the mighty Norris

2005-11-25T03:15:00.000-05:00

As the American Thanksgiving is coming up, I thought it prudent to provide some interesting facts about Chuck Norris. Only one of these came from reliable sources. I leave it to commenters to guess which one!

1. Chuck Norris wrote every single edition of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. He wrote them all under pennames to hide the fact that they are autobiographical.

2. Chuck Norris prefers Mr. Pibb to Dr. Pepper. When asked why, he responded, "I don't trust doctors." He proceeded to shot laser beams out of his eyes and ate the hearts of everyone in the room.

3. Chuck Norris is actually Jeeves from AskJeeves.com.. go ahead and ask jeeves who he really is!

4. Rather that being birthed like a normal child, Chuck Norris instead decided to punch his way from his mother's womb. Shortly thereafter he grew a beard.

5. The orginal them song to the Transformers was actually "Chuck Norris-more than meets the eye, Chuck Norris robot in disguise," and starred Chuck Norris as a Texas Ranger who defended the earth from drug-dealing Decepticons and could turn into a pick-up truck. This was far too much awesome for a single show, however, so it was divided.

6. Chuck Norris has every single copy of National Geographic in his basement. He also has the ability to lift every single one of them at once.

7. Chuck Norris wears a rattlesnake as a live condom.

8. Chuck Norris lives by one rule: No Asian Chicks.

9. Chuck Norris can make a woman climax by simply pointing at a woman and saying "booya".

10. The role of Alf, from the hit 80s TV show of the same name was actually played by Chuck Norris' penis.

11. Chuck Norris eats pieces of metal for breafast and craps out a tool shed at lunch.

12. In 1945, Adolf Hitler was really kicked to death by a five year old Chuck Norris.

13. Mr. Clean is really Chuck Norris with a shaved head and an ear-ring.

14. Chuck Norris also played the Black guy in Walker Texas Ranger.

15. Chuck Norris found a portal to Hell where he repeatedly gave the Devil a round house kick to the face.

16. Chuck Norris invented american flag pants.

17. Chuck Norris has slept with a woman from every country except China and Japan.
"No Asian chicks."

18. Chuck Norris invented the beard.

19. In the 80's it was discovered that President Reagan had an inoperable growth on his brain. Rather than letting him die, they shrunk Chuck Norris and injected him into President Reagan. There, he fought the tumor and defeated it with a round house kick to the face. The tumor died and Chuck Norris safely exited Ronald Regan's body. Chuck Norris then had Reagan's tumor mounted on his wall next to the elephant that he killed with his bare hands and the dinosaur he shot on his hunting expedition to the Jurassic Period.

20. Chuck Norris has no use for books since he has a little computer that just downloads information into his brain. He likes to think Charles Dickens' stories while he works out.

21. During the 1970's he taught The Price is Right host Bob Barker karate.

22. Every night at 8:00, a truck pulls up to Chuck Norris' house. In the truck are a bunch of orphans. For the next half-hour, Chuck Norris practices roundhouse kicks on the orphans while "It's a Hard Knock Life" plays in the background. At the end of the session, the orphans say "Thank you, Mr. Norris." in perfect unison, then march into the truck in silence.

23. Chuck Norris' penis is so large, that he in fact has to tie it around his left leg so that it doesn't get in the way of his round-house kick.

24. Chuck Norris killed the Pope with a roundhouse kick to the chest after an argument over who had a better beard, Jesus or Norris.

25. Chuck Norris told Kid Rock that God doesn't know why, but Chuck Norris does.

26. Chuck Norris saw evil, spoke evil, and heard evil. Then he gave evil a sharp roundhouse kick to the head.

27. Chuck Norris diabolically invented Vin Diesel in an effort to help win WWII.

28. Chuck Norris came up with the idea for the Total Gym after trying to bench press his own penis. He found that he needed to start with a lighter weight and work his way up.

29. Chuck Norris commands all five lions of Voltron simultaneously.

30. After reading the Letters to the Editor in his local newspaper, Chuck Norris became enraged at the fact that Richard Dean Anderson was considered sexier by women in the coveted 65+ demographic. To increase his sex appeal to older women, Chuck Norris tried to build a Missle Defense System out of a tube of chapstick, six rubber bands, a spork from KFC and a copy of Sports by Huey Lewis and the News. This soon became the prototype for the Total Body Gym Workout Machine.

31. Chuck Norris is actually just Bob Saget in his invincible mech suit.

32. Chuck Norris has covered his entire house in tinfoil to prevent Steven Seagal and Vin Diesel from collectively applying the force-choke to him. When applying the tinfoil, he inadvertantly applied it shiny-side down, thus effectively drawing heat from teh sun into his house. The resulting oven-like enclosure actually damaged his skin and deadened his nerve-endings, giving him his freakish ability to withstand pain.

33. Chuck Norris is a mammal. Chuck Norris fights ALL the time. The purpose of Chuck Norris is to flip out and roundhouse kick people.

Now let's all give thanks to the mighty Norris. Amen.

Gazeebo buried under snow

2005-11-25T02:28:00.000-05:00

My dad and I constructed the final parts of the Gazeebo before the snow hit. Here is some pictures of the base and the top (use your imagination). We left the top off so the winter, or Alcona-Boyz wouldn't take it during the winter.

The 'Xeebo base

The 'Xeebo base

Welcome Winter; Destroyer of SUVs

2005-11-18T03:39:00.000-05:00

Barries first substantial snowfall has hit, bringing a (hopefully) end to the tornadoe season, and start to the 10 feet of snow blocking the doorway season. Shown below are various webcams that probably arent very visable, as the images were taken at 4am (except for the moonstone one).

Bring it on. Apparently I am not a professional cacher until I have found atleast 60 caches in the snow; 2 down, 58 to go. My new snow tires work. I saw atleast 5 SUVs in the ditches yesterday, some of them flipped. I didnt have any problems at all maneuvering.. in fact it wasn't very fun at all! No slipping, no sense of immenent death.. whats the point of snow?

45km on a broken foot

2005-11-18T01:44:00.000-05:00

Girl on couch: Why are you limping?
Juicepig: I walked alot while I was in Ottawa, i hurt my leg.
GOC: You shouldn't be limping, it implies that there is something wrong with one leg that isn't wrong with the other. Did you hop on one leg?
JP: no. My foot is in alot of pain, I figure it's broken
GOC: here let me see..

* CRACK CRACK * SCREAM *

GOC: Yup its broken. Stop limping, it will just heal weird.

Awesome trip to Ottawa, saw some interesting sites, and best of all got free board with an open fridge policy (which I gladly abused). 2 new favorites I found were a portagers trail along the ottawa river in quebec, and "The acid tower" which is the ruins of an old fertilizer factory out in the gatineau hills. I brought Will along with me for that one, and it blew his frickin' mind.

At the Acid Tower

Factory power source

Geo Caching Stats: [Area, Successful, Failed]
Thursday night: [Carleton University Campus, 4, 0]
Friday: [Ottawa/Gatineau/Hull/Rockcliffe , 14, 5] - 45km walk, likely where i broke my foot
Saturday: [West Gatineau, 8, 4]
Sunday : [Meech Lake Region, 4, 0] - 14km walk for a single cache on top of a mountain
TOTAL:
Found : 30
Missed : 9
Not even looked for: 23

I got to see some friends while I was in the O-dot too. One of them invited me to come stay in Manhattan with them for the remainder of my vacation. I am afraid of new york for very non-obvious reasons, but I somewhat regret not going. That would have kicked ass! Instead I opted to stay in ottawa and hunt down tupperware containers... hmm....

The rest of my 7 days were kind of a blur.. mostly because of the blinding pain or walking around with a broken foot. My dad told me that it sounded like my arches had fallen, and that I should grab my toes and ankle and then wring my foot out like a towel. That seems to have helped quite a bit!

Ottawa Vacation Checklist

2005-11-09T16:10:00.000-05:00

So I am going to Ottawa for a few days. Driving Will back on Thursday, and caching Friday, Saturday and Sunday with Partying during the evenings with friends. Then Monday morning (1am-ish), Driving Will Back to work. poor Will, the commute is killer!

Here is the Checklist for Caches I wanna Grab while I am there (by day)

Ottawa:

Hull:

Meech Lake:

These are by no means all the caches in the area, but it is certainly more then I will ever get through in 3 days.

The wrong side of Vengeance

2005-10-27T02:52:00.000-04:00

Vengeance is a dish best served cold.

I won't say that I have run out of people to hate, but I definitely seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel lately. Everyone seems to have what’s coming to them i guess. Oh well..

Recommended Geocaches

2005-10-25T00:03:00.000-04:00

The Rock Wall-scenic
Maximus Inclino Numerus Novum-scenic
Midnight Hat-Trick Multicache-absolute madness. requires a full moon and about 3 hours running through the bush with a flashlight.
Mono-Cliffhanger-scenic
Lookout Valley-scenic
WTL Series: #4 Inukshuk-requires the construction of an inukshuk
Book' em Dano 2-for the little suprise at the end
European Hill - For letting me know how bad I am at logic puzzles
Hawk Lake Log Chute-Scenic/Historic
We all Fall Down-Little known waterfall system
Worldly Traveller - For making me realize how truely insane I am (Cliff hanging, holding onto a rope, in the rain at 1:30am..)

Wedding Construction

2005-10-24T23:26:00.000-04:00

I Began work with a Gazeebo my father has been building for my wedding. He has built the entire thing in the garage, and is ready to set it up in Crystals field. We used my GPS unit to map the field and take measurements for the placement of the gazeebo.

We were originally expecting Ground work to have to be done, but as it turns out the ground is quite solid, and completely level. No ground work is needed, and the gazeebo can just sit on deck anchors in the field.

Winter Tires : A Cartoon

2005-10-24T22:58:00.000-04:00

A note on fashion

2005-10-24T21:38:00.000-04:00

I was just thinking. So say your trying to pick up a girl at a bar, and if successful, the inevitable question will come up "What do you do for a living?". Now lets just say you do something that is really funny, but not too respectible, like making halloween costumes for dogs. Do you lie? Do you stretch the truth, like saying a fashion designer? What other professions would bring about this dilemma?

Blogging

2005-10-16T17:30:00.000-04:00

I took advantage of bloggers "next blog" feature today and looked over various random blogs that were generated by people. The only one that I found that I read all the way through was this one:

http://reparaizins.blogspot.com/

I details the trials and tribulations of a racist black man. Read it for your self.

The top article (at the time of this post details) details an event where he walked into an office supply store, and a salesperson approached him and asked if he could help him. This of course, prooved insulting to the man, who felt the need to proove his purchasing power to the sales person.

The great thing about the internet is that sometimes the people on it are serious!

Coke v. Pepsi. which is more accurate?

2005-10-16T14:53:00.000-04:00

Things that are crap about my GPS:

1. The thing freezes sometimes when I am uploading. I have to take it apart, and remove the power cell as I am unable to power it off.
2. I have anoying 0 byte files that I am unable to delete without them re-appearing. (I can rename the files, but they are still annoying)
3. no way to plug it into your car battery unless you buy the extras.
4. The software is crap, and I find it much easier to just modify the files using notepad.

Things that might be crap, but I am not sure.

1. Near large bodies of water such as lakes the GPSr will will often tell me that the cache is well off into the lake (often up to 150 meters out there, with a 9m accuracy). This might be a problem with the magellan GPS (the Pepsi), or it might be a problem with the Garmin GPS (The Coke) regardless, one of them has a problem.

I am planning on doing a little experiment with my garmin next time I am by the lake with some aluminum foil. I need to know.. I may have to buy into a backup GPS. Still this is a pretty inexpensive hobby considering these expenses.

So what I want to get, should my aluminum foil plan fail:

1. Garmin Gps
2. Has waypoint Projection ability
3. cheap but not 'cheap' cheap ie. crap

Any suggestions?

Midnight date

2005-10-16T11:30:00.000-04:00

The full moon has come (I have been eagerly anticipating it!), and I will be attempting the midnight hat trick cache in tottenham tonight with my swank new illumination bazooka. I will be tromping around the bush looking for reflective markers on trees and rocks from about 10 until midnight I assume. I will likely also be grappling the people that come along for this one, because that’s what I like doing to people in the forest on a full moon. WHA HA!

Happy Samhain everybody!

(School) Debt free

2005-10-16T11:17:00.000-04:00

I received the notification from OSAP that they would begin charging me interest on my school debt now. The interest rate was much larger then I had expected (7.6% !!), I happily replied to them with a cheque for the full amount of my debt that I had been working to collect.

Now I just have to pay off my car (~15k$), wedding (~10k$), house down payment (~20k$), and I will enjoy the financial freedom of being able to pay a mortgage(~400k$)! BOO-YAH! *a tear rolls down my cheek

Sun Tzu has all the fun

2005-10-15T19:02:00.000-04:00

培养主人的十万个人和参与他们在战争中需要严重损失在人民和流失在资源。每日开支将共计一千盎司银。有将是混乱国内外, 并且人将滴下用尽。

敌对部队也许互相面对几年来, 力争也许被决定在一天的胜利。这将如此, 保留在对敌人的情况的无知因为你吝惜一百盎司的费用额银简单地是高度愚蠢。

一个谁行动得因而是人没有领导, 没有当前帮助对他的起因, 胜利没有大师。因而, 什么使明智的司令员触击和征服, 并且达到事在伸手可及的距离普通的人之外, 是预知。现在这预知无法被得出从精神; 它无法由任何演绎的演算引人地获得从经验, 亦不。敌人的性格的知识可能只被获得从其它人。

Such is how i must be. Such is how it must end.

new weapon against dark forces

2005-10-15T15:49:00.000-04:00

WHA HAHAHAHA!!! I just got this, and initial testing has got me gitty. I find that too often I am in the woods when the sun goes down. This is not a new thing, just happens more often nowadays. I have never had a flashlight with a safety switch on it. It makes sense of course, now that i have looked directly into the light (how else would you test it?)

L337 for G337

2005-10-14T17:32:00.000-04:00

Swifteroo brought to my attention a device called the GEET Engine, which supposedly runs on Petroleum-bases or other combustables to produce the same effects as a normal combustion engine, but has zero-emissions.

Now I fully admit, I am a gullible person. My girlfriend still laughs at the story of me getting all excited about a Discover magazine article I read in 1995 about burrowing hot-headed mole rats that burned through the ice in antarctica to capture penguins (see text here). I didnt figure out it was an april fools joke until I did some research on it 6 years later in an attempt to win a bet. Ugh.

Back to the GEET. The question is raised but not answered in the article, why has this technology not been adopted? Why hasn't anyone heard of it?

I got stabbed in the arm by a plant

2005-10-14T09:55:00.000-04:00

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave
with the intention of arriving safely
in a pretty and well preserved body,
......
but rather to skid in broadside,
thoroughly used up, totally worn out,
and loudly proclaiming,..
"WOW! WHAT A RIDE!"

--Hunter S. Thompson

Monday-Wednesday Plans

2005-10-07T19:41:00.000-04:00

Anyone up for a little treasure hunt? Here are my plans for my weekend.

To Top me out around 99..
NSR1 - Chip Wagon
NSR2 - T Time
NSR3 - Matheson Creek
NSR Final - Crossings
4 new Barrie Caches by the infamous team Isquaba&Nawty

And my 100th.. A day long treck through the mono cliff lands!

Mono-Cliffhanger, REV-B

Is anyone up for a 20km bike ride and mountain climb? No seriously..

UPDATE : Joey Deng is shootin da shits with me! HAHA!

Dave Ross - Pro Photographer!

2005-10-03T01:11:00.000-04:00

Someone actually likes my work! Hurray!

Someone contacted me asking me if they could publish my beutiful work on their website. I agreed. Such is my entrance into the world of professional water tower photography! Engineering is for losers!

Getting dressed is painful sometimes..

2005-10-02T20:43:00.000-04:00

I have now had the full experience, this pseudo-summer. This morning (around 6pm) I woke up and put my shirt on, only to feel the unpleasantness of tiny venomous needles sticking into me.

There were about 3 hornets living in my shirt (that was folded and put in my chest of drawers by the way). They apparently didn't like me wearing their home, so they went sting crazy.

I haven’t been stung by hornets or bees since I was a wee kid, and this summer I have been stung by both. Here are my findings!

Bees - Hurt like a bitch and then leave a large poison sac pulsating in your skin, oozing venom into your blood, and will probably take about 10 hours to completely get rid of the pain. The area will be numb for days.

Hornets - Bigger and scarier looking, but their stings are far less painful. They have the exact same sensation as a bee sting, but without the pumping venom feeling.

I hopefully have gotten through to those who are allergic to bee stings. Now that you know what it feels like given my vivid description, and eloquent wording, you won’t be tempted to go out and try it!

Indiana Dave and the Devils Glen

2005-09-30T00:26:00.000-04:00

Here are some more adventures that I went on. As a prefix, instead of using geocaches as the goal of these adventures, I will be using ancient and sacred artifacts so that the non-geocaching public will retain interest! After all, using multi-billion dollar military satellites to hunt down Tupperware containers in the woods sounds kind of odd when you say it out loud. This will be the theme for all my adventures now on, so be aware that I will be cheesing it up to make the story more interesting.

It began the morning of the 26th. I had been researching the facts about the area for some time, but very little was known. This was an area forgotten by time, and scoffed at by the locals. Only historians and wacko-relic hunters like myself would dare venture this far from society without any ...

Ok screw that idea. I went out and visited the lost town of Josephine on my way to the Devils Glen. While in the town I saw a strange man, and hid in the ruins. He was either a ghost or a Mennonite, but the oddest thing about him was that he was walking a cow around using a turning stick.. Have you ever seen a man walking a cow outside a national geographic special? no me neither.

Photos of Ghost town Josephine

I got to Devils glen, and did not adequately prepare myself for what was ahead. I had figured it was about a 5km trip one way and 5 km back, which is fine typically. The terrain was way off the chart though, especially since I tend not to follow trails. The treasure I was looking for was on top of a hill. What stood between me and it was a 50 foot vertical cliff. On the way up the cliff I came across some very interesting caves, which I explored, and also a bought of dehydration. The dehydration lasted for at least another 3 hours, and I was tempted to eat the moist looking moss growing in the crevasses. I never did get THAT dehydrated though. There was also some snow in some of the deeper parts, but it was discolored, and had probably been there since March, so I didn’t touch that either.

Devils Glen is part of the Niagara escarpment which is most famous for Niagara falls which falls over it between lake Erie and lake Ontario. It is a nasty cliff that runs the length of southern Ontario, and I was forced to climb up and down 6 times that day.

Photos from Devils Glen

Disappointing photos from inside the trench

On my way home I went into the town of Creemore, home of creemore springs beer, and tryed to rehydrate myself by drinking 2 litres of cranberry juice ( I came up for air twice if you must know). They were shooting a movie about werewolves and I caught a pretty good gun scene. I snuck into the set looking like one of the union cable-carriers (like the ones homer got into a "who's lazier" match with).

Then after hydrating, I went strolling along the nottawasaga. Nice river, tasty fish.

miscellaneous adventures

2 things that pissed me off today

2005-09-24T05:39:00.000-04:00

People too dumb to use the metric system - I saw a sign today at a used car dealership. They were advertising a '96 car with 151 kms. I find this unlikely.. But at the same time I am sure that if they used the term 151 Mms people would get confused and drive into a ditch.. people are stupid.

Why I was asked for my postal code from a walmart employee - Really.. What purpose would it serve? They could remind me of their christmas gun sale sure.. If I wasn't rural and my postal code actually gave some indication as to where I live. I told them it was H0H 0H0, so Santa's going be bringing me coal this year. Hopefully enough that I can power my car with it..

Best eBay Item ever

2005-09-24T05:37:00.000-04:00

This is gold.. Gold i tell ya..

Win a Vacation with my Hippy brother in law

At the risk of sounding geekier..

2005-09-24T04:46:00.000-04:00

So.. What has JP been up to?

I have been dinkin around with the Google maps API. I make myself geocaching reports for areas that I dont know to well so I can see all the caches in relation to eachother, and determine a map. Here is one for an area of Alliston:

As you can see there are two types of caches, and it also displays the parking coordinates. I have made icons for the other types of caches too, but at the moment the program is buggy, and I wont work on it again until Sunday morning.

For those of you who don't know what caching is, consider yourself lucky... It takes over your life... uhg...

Camping at Lake Sherbourne

2005-09-22T22:08:00.000-04:00

After years in university, and working my tail off during the weekends, I was finally able to go camping with some friends at Lake Sherbourne, a secret campsite on crown land in the Minden region of the Haliburton Highlands. A jeep trail allows people access (not easy access) to the lake after about 40 minutes of driving. Now this is not good driving, but it is HELLA fun. The trail dips and winds through the bush, on a single lane. Me and my little swift did very well for the trail, although I should really appologize to my shocks.. We kept up with the Jeep cherokee in front of us.

check out our phoon!

I was going to say that the nearest road to where we were was Hwy 35, but upon closer inspection from Google maps, it appears not! Click here for the exact location of our secret camping spot. Why am I giving away the location? Do I never want to camp with my friends again? The government is making the place into a park next spring, and start CHARGING people to stay there.. no more free camping here atleast!

It was a few wonderful days of relaxation and bliss. Very few humans, and the only work to do was to chop some wood, and find non-toxic leaves to use for TP. Of course, no vacation I have comes without its downers..

So what happens when you get a bunch of buddies in the back woods with a jeep, and have nothing to do but chop wood? Why, you start driving the jeep through a lake of course! Poor Jeep.. Hydrolocked the Engine of course, and we had to get it towed by a rag-tag band of criminals that were hiding in the nearby woods with a truck. They were quite good people! A nice lady named 'smurf' with a truck helped us out.

We had a fire that night with them as we dried the engine components on the beach. They had brought plenty of weed and interesting stories of them setting cops on fire, and high speed chases. It may not have been too eventful (especially considering the stories they told), but It was a great weekend none the less!!

Here are some links to pix I took. Enjoy!

Jeep in Lake
Jeep - Setting up for the Pull out
Jeep - Haul ass backwards
Jeep - Flooded interior
Jeep - Flooded interior
Jeep - Mechanics on the beach
Campsite
Lake in the morning
Walkin the dog
Lake Sherbourne
George make Fire (a picture worthy moment)
A Lake I found with GPS, no sign of habitation

While I was up there, I did some geocaching on the way in and the way out. Here are some pictures from that venture:
Town of Big Halk Landing (entire town)
Town of Big Halk Landing (surroundings)
A Bear I saw
Buttermilk falls 1
Buttermilk falls 2
Buttermilk falls 3
Buttermilk falls 4
Town of Dorset (entire town)
Dorset tower
From afar
view from tower
view from tower 2
Binocular view

A spectactular waterfall far from any road:
Kawagama falls 1
Survey Monument in rocks
Survey Monument with falls (I'm an engineer, it's interesting!)
Kawagama falls 2
Kawagama - Bad picture from cliff
Kawagama - Good picture from cliff

Shake your money maker

2005-09-22T02:01:00.000-04:00

My replacement of addiction policy is working. After a fairly hectic weekend of caching and camping, my weight measurement is down 30 pounds from Gatineau levels. A treasure hunting addiction has replaced the Pepsi drinking addiction. This is much healthier physically, but the emotional scaring coming from people laughing when I tell them this seems to be damaging psychologically.

Why am I bringing this up now? A proposition was made last night of me.

I was pumping gas, and the gas attendant asked if I would stip at a birthday party for his wife. 200$ for a dance for some ladies! I of course, sent notification via email to my recently married friend.

Besides, I am already working that night... Yeah baby!

JP's guide to the universe

2005-09-15T00:39:00.000-04:00

Top 3 things that Blow

Time - Time blows. There is always too much or too little, but it is never just the right amount. Now I know what you are going to say, 'Hey jackass! Time prevents everything from happening all at once!'. But I ask you then, why wouldn't that be super groovy? You would know what was happening, what has happened, what is going to happen, as well as the consequences! Oh, and we wouldn’t have to meet appointments either, because you wouldn’t need to worry about what happens if you miss it, and already know what is going to happen so there is no point in talking to someone about it.

Gravity - Gravity Blows. For many of you this is probably obvious because you have seen videos of planes crashing, and skateboarders crushing their nuts on poles. But I really want to drill it home. Without Gravity we could eliminate hunger, disease, Hollywood, greed, annoying people, and phallus shaped rocks. Makes you wonder, huh?

Lame People - This goes without saying. But the one, and arguably only good feature of gravity is that it often finishes lame people off. Lame people are not to be confused with Llamas or Llama People, which actually kick ass.

Top 3 things that Kick loads of Ass

Friction - Counter-acts all the horrible affects of Gravity. For instance, take the skateboarder crushing his nuts on a pole. If instead he just wrapped himself in carpet and walked around, then he wouldn't get hurt! This of course, leads me to my next most kick ass thing:

Llamas - Llamas are of course, the Spiritual leaders of at least 5 of the universes most popular religions. Llamas can fly and are completely immune to the affects of gravity because of the high amount of friction caused by their magnificent coat of fur.

Kam Pong Gi - A Korean dish, made with spicy chicken and carrots.

My guide to the universe is always growing, please feel free to comment.

Promotion

2005-09-14T03:55:00.000-04:00

Turns out I am up for a promotion. Yes, the job that I have had for a whole 4 months, and despite many horrible HORRIBLE mistakes, has resulted in an honor fit for the best employee ever! ME! Or so the story goes…

I am told this is not the case however. It turns out that many of the other employees, some who have been at this job for over 10 years, do not want to get promoted, because you put up with far more crap for far less money then its worth. I was actually hired with the intention of management to fast track me into a managerial position because no one else would take it!

So the points of this new job are the following:

Small raise
Much more work
Ability to order people with 10+ years more experience then me around (in theory)

Unfortunately this means the dissolution of my carpool, as I will have to be moved to another shift. This means that the 'raise' will definately not be worth it, as I will have to commute by myself every day.

What Am I looking forward to with this promotion? A managerial job on my resume. Hurray.

Livejournal Favorites

2005-09-12T23:42:00.000-04:00

Here is a list of some of my favorite and most popular postings on live Journal. My creativity has been relatively lax lately, but I hope that the move to blogspot will revive it.

Random Utterances

The problem with literature - my first blog entry
My addiction to stimulants - A listing of recipes for all things pepsi, as well as a look into my horrible addiction
Tatoos are out, Bat wings are in! - Dave on Genetic Alteration and how messed up his kids are going to be
Why i need my own domain - A rant about how I am cheap, as well as a recipe for a Cran-tastic Buffalo & beer steak.
My Death is Immanent - Update on Pepsi addiction

Poetry

A tribute to ECHLON
My Elegy
ts too Late, I need sleep

Mildly Funny Crap

Changing the outcome by observing the results - results from a quantum mechanics test
Blood flow to the organ - an example of my intrigue with the english language
Fun with idiots - Replying to email that is obviously not to me
New student Letter - Fun with idiots II
Recent Physchology notes on my alarm clock
Dave in womens clothing.. again

Troubles with da man

Rage against the Language Police - Problems with people taking down my english signs
Grad Mugshot - My Graduation after being kicked in the back
Confessions of an insane rambling madman - Discussion as to why im on the terrorist watch list, and some events that didn't get onto my blog but probably should have

Nature

Trip to snake country via water cab - Preping for a trip to Baeusoleil island
Lick of the wind - Tornadoes and their tendancy to follow me
Adventure to the island of tornadoes and burning - Trip to Beausoleil Island

Anyone have favorites? Think i missed a good one? Dislike all my work? Please feel free to comment!

Loading the chuck wagons to the blender

2005-09-08T07:24:00.000-04:00

I have decided to finally make to move to blogpot, following in jonbens footsteps in a move away from Livejournal. THe only reason I think I stayed at livejournal for so long is because I have alot of good crap on livejournal.

So to make this the best of both worlds, I will be putting a section up for my favorite Livejournal entries, this monday.

Until then, you can read my previous blog at http://www.livejournal.com/~juicepig