Saturday, 15 September 2012

• Life Lately

  
  Yesterday was nice. @Bookmark61 took the day off to hang out with me on our 32nd anniversary. We didn't do anything really exciting. My van was in the shop for an oil change so we ran around in Brett's Dakota pickup truck with the duct taped fenders. It's just amazing how quickly you can find a vehicle with duct taped fenders in a crowded parking lot! Usually when we have an anniversary that doesn't end in 5 or 0, we just go out to dinner and a movie. There are absolutely no movies out right now that we want to see. So we ran a few errands together and I picked up the little six inch wedding cake I'd ordered.
  
  

  
  Isn't it cute?
  
  

  @Joyouswind and I are planning to perform maintenance on all our geocaches today and we need something we haven't been able to find locally. So Brett and I ran to the mall in South Bend and we didn't find it there, either. But since we were already so close and it was a gorgeous day, we decided to go on about ten miles to Elkhart and find the oldest geocache in Indiana. It was a nice little walk in the woods, not too much bushwhacking, and I spotted the unnatural pile of sticks that marked the hiding place.
  
  

  
  

  
  When we got back to the truck, there was a wrapped gift on the front seat. I thought we weren't giving gifts this year (although I didn't tell Brett I was ordering the cake). I opened the gift and found a beautiful geocoin inside.
  

  
  
  
  

  Yep, I'm celebrating my 1000th cache find this weekend. My friend @Karhu_Kasha is hiding a cache in honor of @murisopsis , @OldDogSparky and me reaching our 1000th find and we are all going to find it tomorrow evening.
  
  As I said earlier, Krysten and I are planning a Cache Maintenance Day today. I have an old tackle box packed full of supplies for repairing, replacing or restocking caches and we're going to visit all of ours and make sure they're in good shape. Except the one in the spider infested tunnel. Krysten is going to visit that one while I stand outside and shout encouragement. It will be a fun day.
  
  We are going to be in Arkansas for a family wedding next weekend. I thought I'd be a responsible vehicle owner and get the oil changed and tires rotated on the van before the next road trip, so I dropped it off Thursday night and expected to have it back by late Friday morning. I finally got a phone call from Marty (our wonderful mechanic) while Brett and I were in the middle of the woods. After regular oil changes over the past 230,000 miles, the plug on the oil pan will no longer come off. The threads are stripped. This means a new oil pan, which Marty had to order, I'm without my van for the entire weekend because they cut the old oil pan off, and my $30 oil change is now a $300 oil change. Major bummer. Marty gave me a loaner car for the weekend, but I have to return it Sunday night, my van won't be ready until sometime Monday, and Brett's truck is going in for an oil change Monday morning. Yikes!
  
  At some point in the afternoon I remembered I had Krysten's bike in the back of the van. I called and talked to somebody at the shop and he had the van lowered back down, took the bike out of the back and we managed to pick it up before Marty sold it. If we finish visiting all our caches in good time and are not too tired, Krysten and I are thinking about going for a bike ride this evening. We went out earlier in the week and it was really nice. When I'm biking around The 'Duh, I'm basically doing laps and just thinking about how far I've gone. Two miles seems an eternity. Krysten and I did 4.33 miles and it was just that last third of a mile that felt long to my poor old arthritic knees. It's amazing how much difference it makes to have a companion and a destination.
  

   
  
  Krysten took this photo.
  
  

  And that's what I've been up to lately. Nothing exciting. I like it when life is quiet and the most exciting thing is a hike in the woods or a bicycle ride in the country.
  

  
  

  
  

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