GeoWoodstack III

Noisy Rodan

GeoWoodstack: the very name is sufficient to instill mind-numbing horror into the general population, but one to bring ecstasy to the hearts and minds of geocachers everywhere. This year was the third such conflagration, held last night in Oak Ridge, North Carolina, at the residence of the legendary Tom "Night-hawk" Kidd, an event featuring geocachers from all over the state (and beyond), food aplenty, fireworks, live music, and the biggest eruption of hellfire since Krakatoa.

A magnificent winged fire demon erupts from
unfathomable depths. Photo by Dan Flye

Initially, yesterday's weather appeared ominous, with rain coming down for most of the day, but by nightfall, the skies began to clear, and for the rest of the evening, there were no more tears. Ms. B. and I arrived shortly before the lighting of the twenty-some-foot stack of wood, which, no doubt due to the all the recent rains, was a bit more stubborn than its predecessors about catching fire. Several attempts to light her up by armed drone attack ended in failure, and so we resorted to the more traditional means of igniting the beast: a barrage of fire from several batteries of roman candles wielded by an army of fearsome, fire-starved geocachers. At last, success! The stack began to burn, sending  flames a hundred feet into the sky, lighting up the landscape so that it could almost certainly be seen from outer space. Shortly afterward, the fireworks began, and I'm not talking a bunch of little poppers. We had some explosions fit to make the neighbors think they had fallen into a war zone. At times, massive eruptions of sparks showered the landscape, so it is no doubt well the ground was saturated with water.

At the last of these events, two years ago — see "GeoWoodstack II," October 13, 2013 — Ms. B. and I performed a few musical numbers for a raging, bloodthirsty crowd from whom we narrowly escaped at the end of the event. This year, Kimberly decided to forego the personal danger and settled for making the requisite video of Old Rodan as, following a beautiful performance by Ms. Kristina Kidd (a.k.a. Little Night-hawk), he commandeered the stage and made a racket that forced the evacuation of several nearby properties and may have caused the demise of at least one fried chicken. If you're brave, check out the video of "Ride, Ride, Ride" below, or "Spring Hill Mine Disaster" on YouTube here.

This morning, Bloody Rob Isenhour came round for breakfast, and then we went geocaching. Not bad weekend for the caching contingent. The Old Man's total find count now stands at 8,287.

Bloody Rob, Damned Rodan, and Bonehead at Geowoodstack III, Oak Ridge, NC

GeoWoodstack II

GeoWoodstack II was a nice little social event around a wee campfire out at geocacher Tom "Night-Hawk" Kidd's place in Oak Ridge, a little way up the road from here. Despite enough drizzle to make things uncomfortable for a while, lots of geocachers attended, all providing a variety of food and drink along with the good company. Thankfully, after a while, the weather became less volatile — at least until we hit the road to make our way home.

Night-Hawk has been building the tower of wood for the fire for many moons, and when that sucker started burning, people in seven states probably knew it. His daughter Kristina, a pro musician and singer from Nashville, sang and played a number of her original songs — and nearly got electrocuted by her own sound equipment, no doubt due to the rain — and then... blammo... ye old man and Ms. B. took the stage. Happily for us, by the time we began our set, all errant electrical charges seemed to have dissipated. There were a few unrelated issues with microphone feedback, but once those were resolved, the little show went fairly swimmingly. I opened things with my original, "Scan in Progress" (see yesterday's blog and video), and Ms. B. joined me on vocals for "Bury My Lovely" (October Project), "Man in the Rain" (Mike Oldfield), and "Don't Fear the Reaper" (Blue Oyster Cult). That was going to be the end of it, but I was pressed into playing an encore ("Leslie Anne Levine," The Decemberists) by some members of the audience who are apparently more tone-deaf than I am.

Most of the caching events I have attended over the years have been enjoyable, but this one rates among the mother's finest of them, as much as anything because we had the additional pleasure of making noise without getting pelted by fruit or other foodstuffs (there were plenty of projectiles to choose from, I can assure you).

About the time we headed out, the sky opened up again, so a Man in the Rain I was.

Click 'em to enlarge 'em.

Night-hawk's friendly Llama, Joe

Release the Kraken! Er... the balloon.

A nice photo of Damned Rodan and Ms. B., taken by Christopher Hall