From Buckhorn to the Dick & Willie

Open the door, get on the floor, everybody ride the dinosaur.

A very active and very pleasant weekend so far—and a long one for me, as I took yesterday off work. The pace at the office has been quite grueling these past few weeks, and I've been suffering from a severe flare-up of tendonitis, so the break is most welcome. No doubt, it'll prove too short to be particularly recuperative, alas....

Thursday night, it was off with Ms. B., Ms. Chapman, and Mr. Cox to the midnight showing of Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows at the Palladium Theater in High Point (after grabbing a nearby cache that had proven elusive on two previous occasions). Enjoyed the movie, but not as much as I had hoped, having become a big ol' Potter geek over the past year or so. Still, it was kind of moving in its way, being it's the last of a major landmark series and all.

Yesterday morning, got together with Mr. Rob "Robgso" Isenhour, Terry "Tadabailey" Bailey, Rob "Maingray" Maile, and Diana Hartmann (half of team David & Diana) for some serious hiking and caching at the Buckhorn Gamelands in Orange County. Picked up five nice trail caches, including one that, quite literally, had me up a tree. A very decent day for it, with a wee bit of respite from the intense heat of the past week, though after three to four miles of hiking in some rugged terrain, at least some of us worked up a fair sweat. I did manage to leave a distressing amount of flesh from my arm stuck to some bark on said tree, but it was all in the line of duty. The log was signed.

Last night, since Ms. B. and I had a discount voucher for Fleming's Steakhouse, we bit the bullet and treated ourselves to some of the best dining we've ever experienced. Spicy fried oysters; carpaccio with mustard sauce, capers, and red onions; roasted mushroom ravioli; New York cheesecake; crème brulée; and a bottle of light cabernet sauvignon...it was just torture. Unfortunately, it could be all too easy to get accustomed to such torture. Discipline, old man, and all that.

Afterward, we popped up to Martinsville and, this morning, headed over to the Dick & Willie Trail, grabbed a couple of bicycles for free (which is a service here you just can't beat), and put in nine miles, riding end to end on the trail (it's not a rugged ride to say the least; even we old men can manage it). After that, we packed a very economical picnic lunch and headed over to Jaycee Park in Collinsville, where we encountered the most boisterous church group having a cookout of their own. But there was a cache there, so we persevered and, again, I signed the log. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that bunch was hollering so loud because they had these huge freaking plates of barbecue, and my lord, that stuff looked good. I'm sure God likes cooked-up dead pig too.

At that point, for some people, it was naptime. For others...well...we blogged.

Click on any of ye images to enlarge.