Be My Frozen Valentine

Kimberly and I had our celebratory Valentine's dinner on Friday night, which was fortunate, since, at the moment, the weather has taken a rather icy turn. This was my weekend to go to Martinsville to help Mum, so Friday, on our way up, we had a fine, fine dinner at The Celtic Fringe in Reidsville, one of our favorite bistros in the area. Why, of course there was a cache to grab on the way; in fact, there we ran into our local caching legend, Mr. Tom "Night-hawk" Kidd himself. For Valentine's Day, Ms. B. presented me with one of her custom, handmade cards, which she enjoys creating (see above), along with a very cool cast iron bat — the critter, not the club — to hang on my wall. (Apparently, her dad picked it out and told her, "This is Mark." Nice one, Delmar.) After dinner, we headed on to Mom's, and after taking care of some business affairs, Kimberly and I settled in to enjoy a bit more wine and a few episodes of The Walking Dead.

"It's a trap!"

And since then, it's been a busy weekend. Yesterday, I spent the morning dealing with Mum's affairs, and then Kimberly and I headed out for Stonefield Cellars Winery in Stokesdale, where we met up with some friends to sample a few particularly enjoyable wines. Why, yes... funny you should ask... yes, I did stop for a cache, at Belews Lake. Then there were more friends, more refreshment, and, finally, the journey home, where I narrowly escaped being mauled (see accompanying photo).

This morning, I woke early to a telltale buzz from my phone, and in a sleepy haze I thought, "Well, that might be a new cache notification." For the next half eon, I lay there in the twilight zone, unwilling to reach beyond that two feet of void for the phone. Some passage of time later, I finally did this thing, and — sure enough — it's a new cache, practically right up the street. I struggled into my shoes, started down the stairs, and realized my attire was inadequate for stepping out of my front door. With some effort, I remedied the situation, and off I went, stopping along the way to grab some coffee at the nearest convenience store.

I arrived at the specified parking coordinates and noticed the temperature on my car dash read 15 freakin' degrees. Now I'm thinking this is one of those times when I might not be quite right in my head. Then, just as I start making my way to the trail head, a vehicle pulls up, and — looky — it's Mr. Feathered Friends. With some grumbles about the temperature, we headed for ground zero, about a quarter mile down this very nice, very frozen trail. Once there, a particular spot caught my eye, and I gave it a cursory examination, only to find nothing. I checked a couple of other places, but the GPS kept bringing me back to my original search site. I looked again and — ah, but yes! — the cache is there after all, very well-concealed. Opened the container and, with near-frozen fingers, fumbled my way into the log. Blank! So, Feathered Friends and I dirtied it up, snagging a nice co-first-to-find at 8:15 AM. A nice, if frigid way to start the day.

T'ain't a fit night out for man nor beast!

And tonight, here comes the snow. It wasn't supposed to begin till after midnight, but about 7:15, I paused War of the Gargantuas, glanced outside, and saw white. Now, I gotta tell you, Greensboro has a lousy track record for keeping the power on in even mildly adverse weather. Since the forecast calls for some freezing rain tomorrow, I figured I might ought to run up to the store and grab some fire logs. So I drove to Harris Teeter, which was, quite naturally, very crowded; I grabbed some fire logs and a few other items, and came out to find the snow coming down in earnest, along with a rather significant amount of accumulation. I could tell right away this was going to be a slippery one, and — oh, lord — it came so close to being a repeat of that fateful storm almost exactly two years ago (see "The Great White Beast," February 12, 2014) that I damn near kissed the snowy ground when I got back into my driveway. And when I say I barely made it, I exaggerate not even a smidgen. There were cars sliding all over the hill down the road from my house, and at least one went into the adjacent ditch. The driver did manage to get out of there, but once I arrived safely home (fifty feet from my driveway, I still had doubts), I walked down the street and watched as one car after another narrowly escaped disaster. For all I know, there may be a disaster — or one brewing — down there right now.

Me, I'm just hoping the power stays on. I already went through several days of icy temperatures in my own house a couple of weeks back, and I'd like to not go through it again, thank you very much.

Do be safe.