Joe, the Spooky Place, and Route 666

I'm seriously bummed this weekend because my friend Joe is in the hospital. By all accounts, it's not a life-threatening thing, but anytime a hospital is involved, I consider it serious. Joe and I were friends in high school; then our ways parted, and we didn't see each other again for twenty years. Once we got reacquainted — eleven-plus years ago — the two of us (and our respective families) have remained close ever since. Joe is one of those infectiously good people. I always feel better for having spent time in his and his family's company, and I have it on good authority that he only rarely projectile vomits after spending time in mine. That's not bad. Please send prayers and good thoughts out to the old dude.

I'm visiting me mum this weekend, so I spent most of this very cold day planting geocaches in and around Martinsville. Several of them have spooky themes. Yeah, I know, what a shock. One of them is at a place I've always called The Spooky Place. It's an old warehouse in Koehler where the local Jaycees used to have their haunted castle attraction at Halloween. Back in high school, and for a time thereafter, I helped them design the rooms and got to be one of the roving monsters that scared the bejezus out of you in the pitch-dark corridors. This was back in the good old days when you didn't get sued if you indavertently touched someone, so I really scared some folks. Probably scarred 'em for life, too.

Yeah, those were some of my favorite Halloweens.

And just up the road from there, we have route 666. You probably won't remember (I blogged about it somewhere), but a couple of years back, I went riding up that old country road to a little graveyard and scattered the pages of my homemade Necronomicon. As you may have guessed, there is now a geocache on route 666.

As there should be.