Karaoke, Trolls, Bumbles, and Drumpfs

Last night, Ms. B. and I hadn't planned on doing anything like going out to a brewery and performing karaoke, but friends Scott & Jamie sent us a message in the afternoon and invited us to go out to a brewery and perform karaoke. So, that's what we did. Scuffle Hill Brewing, in nearby Collinsville, makes a few decent brews and, as I discovered, some pretty fine mead. In general, I'm not really a fan of mead; it's too sweet for my palate. However, I decided on a lark to try some of theirs, and damn if it didn't hit the spot. Not all that sweet, and very flavorful (it was their Wildflower variety).

Jamie's son Wesley came along, and he led the way for us to wail some serious songs. He performed several, including a wonderfully riotous rendition of "Mr. Brightside," my favorite Killers song. Brugger killed the Indigo Girls with "Galileo," and I hollered REM's "Driver 8" and Gordon Lightfoot's "Carefree Highway" (okay, well, I didn't really holler the latter as much as croon). When we left, Brugger forced us to pull into the nearby Cook Out and order a couple of burgers. Yes, she did.

Geocaching on Christmas Eve and/or Christmas Day has been something of a personal tradition since I started caching back in 2008. I didn't manage it this year, but I reckon a couple of days after Christmas is plenty good. This morning, friend Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott) and I met up in High Point, NC, to hunt some new and some older caches. On my drive down, I was in good spirits until I saw some dumbfuck had put a great big inflatable of Donald Drumpf in their front yard, and the graphic reminder of human idiocy sent my spirits plummeting for a couple of seconds. But it wasn't long until Scott and I met at High Point's Piedmont Environmental Center to kick off our day of caching.

On our hunt, we found a couple of dozen caches, a very humble bumble (though it didn't bounce for us), and a massive troll sculpture. When we arrived at the latter site, there were tons of people around, which struck us as odd because it was in a kind of run-down section of High Point. But as it turns out, there is a troll sculpture back there, one of over a hundred created by artist Thomas Dambo. I was not aware that such critters existed, but apparently, they're a fairly well-known thing. They're damned cool, I can tell you that.

 

We found lunch at B3 Smokehouse in downtown High Point, which was surpassing tasty, if a little lacking in quantity for the money. (This is actually where we found the bumble.) After this, we trucked a ways southward to Randleman, where we hunted a couple of most interesting caches. One was a two-stage multi cache, and you found the second stage by pressing a radio button found at the first stage because it chimed at you. Follow the chime, find the cache. We did. The other was a locked ammo can, and you figured out how to unlock it by watching some ancient View-Master reels and collating the info to obtain the lock's combination. Fun, fun stuff.

Tomorrow, Imma gonna be writing, real good and a whole lot.

Old Farts Amid the Ruins

This morning, the four original Old Farts — Robgso (a.k.a. Rob), Rtmlee (a.k.a. Yoda Rob), Diefenbaker (a.k.a Scott), and yours truly (Old Rodan) — after way too long a break from each other, hit the geocaching trail, specifically the Deep River Trail in Randleman. The young woman known as The Notorious FishDownTheStair (a.k.a. Natalie) had recently put out a half-dozen new geocaches on the trail, so we took what has become too rare an opportunity to get together and go after them. I had hiked after caches on the Deep River Trail any number of times in the past, but apparently only on a limited stretch of it, for we went farther on it today than I had gone previously, and oh, this was a treat. Much of the trail is relatively level and surfaced with gravel, but the eastern end becomes rugged and at times treacherous, with lots of rocks, near-vertical climbs, sheer-drop-offs, and veritable jungles of poison ivy. That is the fun part.

Old Farts emerging from a tunnel-like passage through
the rock. Their expressions say it all.

For at least some of us, the day's highlight was the first cache we went after — GC7Q5X7 (premium members only link), "Deep River Ruins" — where we discovered the remains of an extensive factory and what might have been a water filtration plant. There are crumbling brick and stone structures; a towering smokestack; a small retention pond; several portals to the Pit of Shoggoths; and, most peculiar of all, a brand-spanking-new electric meter attached to the facade of the crumbling main building. To the delight of all, we spent about as much time exploring the ruins as we did hiking on the mile-plus trail. The cache here proved challenging, but we managed to turn it up after a pretty good hunt. Old Rob took the honors for the find, so he was off the hook as far as finding a cache went. (We had named ourselves Team No Dead Weight, on the idea that each of us would find at least one of the caches on our route today, but as it turned out, we might have carried some dead weight with us today. I won't divulge who that was, except that name starts with Yoda and ends with Rob.)

Up we go!

We did find all six of the caches on our planned route, and we had fun with the high-rated terrain along the way. None of us fell and busted his ass, although at times things looked a little iffy in that regard, given how how plain klutzy some of us actually are. For afters, we had lunch at Compadres in Randleman, which is one of our longtime favorite cantinas.

May the Old Farts not have to keep having these long spells of being unable to coordinate a get-together!

Sadly, this afternoon, Ms. Brugger, along with our friends the Albaneses and the Nelsons, attended a memorial service for Kevin Houck, who had been an honorary member of our supper club for a couple of years, and who passed away on May 21, 2018. He was way too young — only 32 years old — but he did have a host of health problems that almost certainly contributed to his death. None of us knew him that well, but he was an intelligent and engaging young man whom we will miss. Adios, young Kevin.

Until another time.

The facade to the Pit of Shoggoths, with its mysterious brand-new electric meter

Looking down into the Pit of Shoggoths. I'm pretty sure I heard some blood-curdling
screams echoing out of the depths.

Old Rodan amid the ruins. Note the admonition to "Drop bodies here."

Black Sunday

Yeah, Black Sunday. It's back to work tomorrow, and after such a fine—and way too short—long weekend. Today, it was out on the caching trail again with Bridget "Suntigres" Langley and Lonnie "Moncure Bee Dude" Drain. Picked up 19 today, doing everything from park & grabs to terrain & grabs, my favorite being "Tadabailey's Revenge" (GC14AWB), which resides out in the middle of the Deep River, requiring negotiating a narrow rock dam out from the riverbank. In the pic at left, you see a couple of old men digging in the rocks for geotreasure. In the end, we prevailed, and neither of us went splash. Evidently, Alfred Hitchcock's ghost took an interest in our activities, as you may note in the photo below. We determined at "A Deep, Peaceful View" (GC30WGB) that some of us are completely unskilled at mathematics, while others have difficulty with the language arts: a comedy of errors turning what should have been a simple multi-stage cache into a brief trek to nowhere....

The other favorite I found on my way home—"Buckarilla, the Bridge Troll" (GC380PV), a fairly new one in the Forest Oaks area, which is exactly what the title implies. A cool hide, lurking in the darkness beneath a bridge on Woody Lane.

Today's total leaves me 46 caches shy of 4,000. An apt number as I soon go into my fourth year of geocaching. It is to smile.

Photos by Bridget Langley.

Found the little rascal!

Alfred Hitchcock's ghost is alive and well....