I Axed for It!

Many days of nasty weather has about had me going stir crazy, so it was nice to have a beautiful, if cold, Saturday morning. It was just right for heading up to Fairy Stone Park to hunt a relatively new geocache. After so much rainfall, I was surprised to find the trail as dry as it was. In a few low-lying areas, it was waterlogged — or, in many places, ice-logged. The temperature hovered right at freezing, so the wind made for a very brisk walk, but I needed to get back out on the trail. The cache lurks at one of the familiar overlooks above the lake, so I didn’t need to pull out the GPS. A quick look around, and I had the cache in hand. After a helluva week, an enjoyable morning on the trail was just the ticket.

Not just the ticket was another of those annoying first-world problems that have been hitting me non-stop over the past couple of weeks. I needed to head to the old homestead in Martinsville last night, so I figured I’d just order dinner from one of the nice local restaurants and have Doordash deliver it. In most cases, in recent days, Doordash has been a godsend; I have had very few problems and some excellent experiences. Not so much last night. I placed an order, the delivery person picked it up, and the GPS map showed him approaching my (very well lit) house. So the dude drives slowly by, clearly not sure where he is. Drives past the house, turns around, comes back, drives slowly past the house again, goes down to end of road, comes back yet again. By now I’m out in the yard waving at the driver, who passes slowly by, starts checking out other houses, eventually gives up, and drives away. Pleasant Hill is not a goddamn difficult place to find — particularly when it’s lit up like a fucking Christmas tree — and if you’re working for Doordash, you hopefully have a GPS, and/or a phone by which one can communicate. Nope; this chap provided no contact info. Above and beyond my personal inconvenience, this kind of stupidity hurts Doordash, since I’m less likely to use them in the future. Pity they can’t really give the drivers a test to determine whether they are morons. Fortunately, Doordash does give immediate cash credit, which I’ve received, but for the love of god... this particular driver clearly ought not be working as a driver.

I ended up ordering dinner — an excellent ribeye steak — from The Third Bay up the street and picked it up. At least it proved fantastic. And there was enough left for me to have a trail snack this morning. Better than the typical beef jerky, I must say!

Cin-cin.

After so much rainfall, I was surprised to find the trail mostly dry. I did encounter icy patches here and there. 

One of my favorite and most familiar views of Fairy Stone Lake from the trail overlook