A Nano on the Lake? Seriously?

The mad Arab, Abdul al-Rodan, taking a breather under bridge after having summoned
the Great Dagon from his lair beneath Lake Townsend in Greensboro

Why, yes... very seriously!

After a memorable and invigorating geocaching outing in Chapel Hill yesterday (see "Taberna Ferramentorum and Others"), three of the four members of Team No Dead Weight — Fishdownthestair (a.k.a. Natalie), Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), and Abdul al-Rodan (a.k.a. Me) — gathered again this morning to take on a couple of paddle caches on Lake Townsend, in northeast Greensboro. Today, for our collective moniker, we opted for Team No Dead Fish. After waiting considerable time for Diefenbaker, who had made the mistake of listening to the lady navigator in his GPS and ended up at the wrong lake, we left the marina in our respective kayaks and made our way to "Goose" (GC807N1), a neat little hide placed by friend Punkins19 (a.k.a. Linda) about a half mile from the marina.

Then came the big paddle. From there, we had to go almost the length of Lake Townsend — over three miles — to "A Nano on the Lake" (GC7ZYGF), hidden by Skyhawk63 (a.k.a. Tom, a.k.a. Linda's Exceptionally Old Man). It is, in fact, a nano (a magnetic container about the size of a pencil eraser) attached to the sheath around the base of an electrical tower in the middle of the lake. It took some time and fair effort to get out there, but get there we did, and it wasn't long before we found the container, happily in good condition. Once we had scrawled "Team No Dead Fish" on the logsheet, we began the long paddle back to the marina.

For afters, we planted ourselves at Uptown Charlie's, my favorite destination for chicken wings. Their Suicide Sauce is the bomb, almost literally.

Today's lake journey was my second longest lake paddle, the longest being on Philpott Lake in Virginia, when I went after my 8,000th geocache in 2015 (see "All Alone in Goblintown"), and Ms. FDTS's longest. I'm fairly certain that at least one of us is going to feel the burn tomorrow. Maybe even from the exertion.

Tomorrow, it's back to the office... and such a shame. I've been going great guns on my latest work of short fiction, and I'd sure love to spend the day making forward progress on it instead. Alas, the sadness overcomes me.

And they're off! Diefenbaker and Fishdownthestair race toward the cache.

View from under the bridge at Yanceyville Road. Our destination is visible in the distance.

Almost there.