A Storm-Defying Cookout — HA!

Old Dude, Samaire, Bob, Brugger, & Yvonne

For at least the past month, our southern Virginia weather has been fucking insane. For most of my life, this has been a temperate area, rarely suffering extreme weather, but now it's absolutely tropical. 100% humidity and in the mid- to high-90°F range every morning, and powerful, oftentimes damaging storms later in the afternoon/evening. Rinse and repeat (literally) every single day. It's never been like this here in my lifetime, and though there's naught one can do about the weather (especially since the Orange Fuckturd has basically declared climate change a hoax), I'm absolutely over it. It's wreaking havoc on our house, and the constant, excessive water is eroding away all the topsoil, particularly around the trees that surround our lot (any one of which might take us out if it falls — and a lot of trees have fallen in the neighborhood in the past few weeks). Not to mention there have been several record-level, damaging floods in this region (though at least they haven't reached scale of the recent Texas disaster, which killed people and ruined livelihoods).

 

So, when friend, fellow writer, and publisher of Fugue Devil: Resurgence, Samaire Wynne, invited Brugger and me, as well as friends Bob & Yvonne, to an afternoon cookout at her place, we all wondered whether the weather would simply up and squash our plans. But we nonetheless decided to proceed, and — despite the weather's earnest efforts — we had a hell of a fine, fun gathering. Yep, it dumped rain, and it hit us with thunder and lightning, but we persevered. Samaire had a large stand-up canopy that we braced to keep the wind from sweeping it away, and, fortunately, it kept us — and our feast — safe from the rain and generally comfy (excepting, of course, the 90°F temps and 100% humidity). We had some fabulous burgers, chicken skewers, egg salad, pasta salad, drinks aplenty, and other goodies. It felt like a much-needed balm for the raw nerves we've all felt over the past days, weeks, and months.

 

It's going to be a busy week, with some serious home repair/maintenance to do as well as a fuck-ton of writing (I've got two novels in the works as we speak). I hope we don't get washed away or flattened before this most unloved season is over and done with.

Cache In, Trash Out, Cooking Out, Chaos In

Geocaching is not solely about hunting hidden containers and scribbling your moniker on a log sheet. Geocaching is intended to be an environmentally friendly activity, so, in keeping with that concept, geocachers periodically get together at what's known as CITO ("Cache In, Trash Out") events, where the focus is on cleaning up litter.

This morning, friends Tom & Linda (a.k.a. Skyhawk63 & Punkins19) hosted a CITO event near their place in Browns Summit, NC, along a stretch of rural road that they adopted in honor of Tom's parents. Brugger and I got up early and headed down to the event ("Bud & Ann Memorial CITO 2024") where a fair number of cachers were just gathering. For the next hour and a half, we scoured a mile-long stretch of the roadway, which passes through a lovely section of forest along the Haw River. By the time we were done, one would have been hard-pressed to find a speck of trash along there with a magnifying glass.

To cap off the morning's work, Tom & Linda then hosted a lovely post-CITO cookout event ("Bud & Ann Memorial Post-CITO Cookout Event) at their place, with grilled burgers & chicken, killer tater salad, pasta salad, homemade brownies, cookies, and other such goodies. An awesome good time with great company. I do so appreciate the geocaching communities of the NC Triad and Triangle, for which there is considerable overlap. Alas, there's scarcely a remnant of the once-vibrant caching community in our area of Virginia, but at least we don't reside very far from our longtime friends and fellow cachers.

After the event, Ms. B. and I thought we might see about a glass of wine at the not-so-distant Grove Winery, but once we arrived, we discovered they were having a pretty massive event, so that plan didn't pan out. Instead, we trucked on over to one of Skyhawk63's newest caches near Reidsville, NC, which offered a bit of a challenge ("Arboreal Chaos," as it's rightly titled). Happily, I actually managed to make a quick find once at ground zero. If I hadn't been lucky enough to spy it from the angle I did, we might have been out there for some time.

Once back home, I went for one of my long walks around the neighborhood. It was necessary because that cookout food was really, really good.