The Mummy vs. Cotton

Yesterday afternoon, Brugger needed to hop over Danville to deliver some medical information to one of her doctors, so we decided, well, maybe we should both go and make a little event of it. So, she did her business, and then we headed over to the Danville Stadium Cinemas to check out Lee Cronin's The Mummy (comments below). That took us right to dinnertime, so off we went to Cotton at Riverside Mill, which has become one of our favorite restaurants. It's moderately upscale, with pleasing decor and a scenic deck that overlooks the Dan River and the nearby Riverwalk (which I have visited for the purposes of geocaching many, many times). They make a dynamite gin martini at Cotton, and Kim enjoyed the wine. My double smash burger and Kim's cast-iron-baked meatballs did more than the trick. An awesome dinner.

On Lee Cronin's The Mummy... It was moderately enjoyable, with some effective, creepy set pieces, particularly the VHS video of the ritual that sets things in motion. Mostly, it's a rehash of The Evil Dead Rise, which I liked a lot better. This one could stand to be about 30 minutes shorter, as it felt needlessly padded. A fine enough way to enjoy an afternoon, I'd say, but I have no desire to revisit it.

 

So, our more or less spontaneous Danville outing turned out to be most satisfying — as well as much-needed given the severe stress to which I alluded a couple of blog entries back. Till next time...

A very creepy Natalie Grace in Lee Cronin's The Mummy

Do or Do Not. There Is no Try.

Neither Brugger nor I feel any great affinity for Valentine's Day, but we do enjoy it as an annual opportunity for a night out that we probably wouldn't bother with otherwise. I know, really romantic, right? This isn't to say we haven't had some superb Valentine's outings in years past; we certainly have, such as at GIA and Imperial Koi in Greensboro, The Celtic Fringe in Reidsville, The Third Bay in Martinsville, and many others. (We've had our share of miserable ones as well, such as in 2020, when a seriously impaired young man—who has since died, evidently of a drug overdose—smashed into my car.) We opted to stay local last night, so we made reservations at TAD Tavern here, which has been around for a couple of years, and we've visited it on a few prior occasions.

 

I cannot tell you how much we want to love TAD Tavern. It's one of the few reasonably upscale restaurants in town, the atmosphere in the place is lovely, and we've had good food there. Unfortunately, on every one of our visits, we've had issues ranging from serious staffing shortages, unavailable menu and drink items, and an only sporadically manned bar. We pretty much expected not to have a zippy dinner last night because it was quite crowded, but sadly, all three of the above issues raised their ugly heads, which really took some of the zip out of our experience.

 

It took 30 minutes after being seated to get a couple of glasses of water, 45 minutes after ordering to receive our bar drinks (they did not even have the fixings—gin & vermouth—to make a martini), and 90 minutes to get food (we'd kept our order simple, realizing it might be a very long night—chicken tenders for both of us). I know the servers were trying hard, but they were hopelessly inadequate to handle the crowd. Since TAD Tavern promoted the hell out of their Valentine's night dinner, we'd really hoped that the place would finally come through with flying colors. Alas.

All that said, the food was very good, and this experience beat the hell out of having your car smashed for Valentine's Day. Still, given the fact that after a couple of years, the issues we've dealt with in the past have not improved (quite the contrary), I can't help but fear that TAD Tavern will be unable to fulfill their promise of becoming a top-notch restaurant. Trust me, I want to be proven wrong, and we may yet give them one more chance. I know they're trying, but as a certain Jedi knight once said, "Do or do not. There is no try."

 

Cmon, guys—let's DO. 

Out of the Park and Others

This past Sunday’s geocaching outing of the No-Dead Weight Irregulars — consisting of Old Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), not-quite-so-old Fishdownthestair (a.k.a. Natalie), and the Old Dude as the Beaver — took us back to Chapel Hill, where we sought one of our favorite varieties of geocache: one hidden in the deep, dark underground. This one is called "Out of the Park" (GC55DEF), located just off the UNC campus, in the Coker Pinetum, along Meeting of the Waters Creek. There are a couple of nice trails here, as well as what turned out to be a most colorful pathway into the depths of the earth.

The portal lies in a deep valley just off the nature trail, where a massive tree has fallen in the relatively recent past, all but obscuring the entrance from view. Getting down to it and back up from it are more difficult than negotiating the tunnel itself. To prevent tumbling into the chasm, Ms. Natalie made the mistake of grabbing a thorn-studded tree (which Scott informed us is called "The Devil's Walking Stick"), which resulted in considerable bleeding and swearing. Fortunately, no amputations were necessary. A rusty steel cable goes across the culvert, and I made the mistake of grabbing it on my way down. Unbeknownst to me, the section of cable was splintered sufficiently to bite my hand pretty deeply, which resulted in considerable bleeding and swearing. Fortunately, no amputations were necessary. A surprisingly large volume of water was gushing from the culvert's mouth, given there's been no rain to speak of in recent days. But we were all able to enter the darkness without mishap.

Apparently, this particular culvert has attracted graffiti artists of every stripe, and for almost the entire length of our journey into darkness — just under half a mile, by our calculations — the tunnel walls were decorated with intricate images, a variety of slogans, and the occasional dire warning that hell lay just ahead.

We hadn't gone but so far when Scott and I heard a holler, and we turned just in time to see Ms. Natalie take a quick seat in the chilly, rushing water. Yeah, it was pretty slick in there. Fortunately, her pride suffered more bruising than her butt, and from there, we proceeded without mishap — well, except for my flashlight going dead. I knew I should have brought that extra light along! Happily, Scott carried a spare, and he handed it over to me, if somewhat grudgingly. We pressed on and on, and — finally — our flashlight beams fell on an object that appeared slightly out of place in the deep, dark underground.

Indeed, it was the cache.

Once we had signed the log, taken a few pics, and re-secured the container, we made our about-face and hoofed it back toward the portal. To my chagrin, Scott's spare light also began to fade, so we made haste for those last few hundred feet. By the time we again emerged into daylight, this second light had also bitten the dust. But we had our smiley, and — happily — there were a couple of more caches along the nature trail, which proved a lot of fun to hunt. The woods here are gorgeous, and just enough fall color remaine to make the trip visually memorable.

We found lunch at a lovely little place called Four Corners on Franklin Street, where I availed myself to what was surely the largest half rack of ribs I've ever been served. And they were freakin' delicious.

On our way back to Greensboro, we stopped off in Hillsborough to grab a trio of hides, one along the old Occoneechee Speedway Trail, where we've hunted caches several times in the past. It's a lovely place, the oval racetrack having long ago been swallowed by forest but converted to a hiking trail.

All in all, it proved a wonderful day to add to our caching totals. Definitely a day for quality over quantity, which, for me, is always more than fine.

Cache on.

Along the Coker Pinetum Trails: A good place not to lose one's footing

So far, so good.

Oh, shit, Scott's got a camera. "No, dear, I didn't do anything foolish. Why do you ask?"

You Might Be a Geocacher If...

...someone walking down the street notices you looking like this...

Or perhaps like this...

It was a valiant attempt, I must say, but it was Old Bloody Rob (a.k.a. Robgso) who made the find on this little beast. It's a good thing I didn't immediately drink a glass of water, as there is some mighty prickly holly up in there.

Natalie (a.k.a. Ms. Fishdownthestairs), Bloody Rob (a.k.a. Robgso), and I all actually performed an impressive array of holly acrobatics over in Clemmons (just west of Winston-Salem), NC, this morning. We also found a nice grove of bamboo to play in, though it might have been nice to have a panda along to help us out. It turned out to be a profitable day out in the field, with 15 cache finds to our credit. Our team moniker today was The Walking Dead, though we carried with us no dead weight, as even Old Rob found a few. (Okay, okay, so Old Rob always pulls his weight. So what? Big deal.)

We hunted and killed some lunch at Cha Da Thai Restaurant, which made me super happy because Ms. B. and I so often gather with friends at the nearby, insanely excellent Carmine's Italian Restaurant but rarely manage to get over to its Asian neighbor. I've still got a pleasant little burn going on from the seafood basil fried rice, and that was hours ago.

So nice to be out on the caching trail again, after being on something of a forced hiatus due to hurricanes and such. There shall be more caching next weekend, I assure you.

A happy little cache guardian at "Thing 1 & Thing 2" (GC6PV1N)

That big feller is the size of a dinner plate.

Arts, Crafts, Caching, and Cowfish

Old Rodan amid the ruins of some mysterious, ancient 20th-century civilization

As a respite from the political madness in the aftermath of the November 11 election, Ms. B. and I ventured forth to Raleigh at the crack of dawn this morning, she for an arts-and-crafts seminar she's been wanting to take, and I for some geocaching, topped off with possibly the strangest lunch I've ever eaten at Cowfish Sushi Burger Bar and then some wine at Vinos Finos. Didn't find all that many caches — several were clearly gone after some serious flooding a while back, and I spent a good while on ill-fated hunts for a couple of very difficult ones — but I did get in some very enjoyable hiking in a few different wooded areas in north Raleigh. Somewhere along the line, I managed to shed the tiniest amount of blood, so I guess by Robgso's definition of fun, I had me some.

Not much sense of scale in this photo,
but this wall of boulders, with a number
of bore holes in them, along the Crabtree
Creek Trail, is quite huge

Cowfish Sushi Burger Bar is an interesting little joint, offering all kinds of strange fusion dishes (known as "burgushi") featuring sushi and other Asian treats blended with traditional American burgers and general comfort food. I had "Nature Boy's WOOOOO-shi BuffalOOOOO-shi Roll," consisting of sautéed chipotle bison, fried green tomato, grilled onions, feta cheese, and tempura flakes, topped with fresh green tomato, chipotle aioli, diced tomato, red onion, and jalapeño pepper. Yeah, it was good, not something I'd want very frequently, though. Ms. B. ordered "The Taste Explosion Roll," with beef, applewood bacon, jalapeños, spicy mayo, and tempura flakes, topped with Roma tomato, pepper jack cheese, and cashew cilantro pesto. We swapped a few pieces, and I might have actually preferred hers.

Happily, with all the reports of threats and attacks against minorities of every sort, in Raleigh, we saw people of every color, young, old, some no doubt gay, perhaps a few transgender folks, all going on about their business, playing with their kids, generally making the world move as it ought. I hope this will continue to be the norm in America.

Thank you very much and good-night.

A little waterfall at Lassiter Mill Park

Entertaining structures in a green area near Eastgate Park

Lunch — a bison sushi roll

From High Point to Haw River

Despite the winter chill, I think I've spent more time outdoors than indoors this weekend—mostly hunting and hiding geocaches, of course. Yesterday, my friend Bridget "Suntigres" Langley and I spent the better part of the day on a cache run around High Point, which included everything from simple park-and-grab micros to creatively camouflaged trail hides to terrain-intensive challenges. That's my favorite kind of day—at the end of it all, a fair number added to my total cache count, but a focus more on quality than quantity of finds. Afterward, Kimberly and I did dinner, drinks, and games with the typically uproarious Jenny Chapman and Doug Cox, all of which lasted till one-something in the morning. But lo, four new caches down the road had been published earlier in the evening, so at two in the a.m., I was back out there at it—missing being first-to-find by a matter of minutes. Evidently, I wasn't the only night owl on the hunt.

Today, it was out to Northeast Park, one of my favorite spots along the Haw River, to hide a new cache (a replacement for one of the entries in my Destroy All Monsters series that had been demolished by restless daikaiju). While out there, I decided to bushwhack out along the river for one of the more remote hides, which was actually intended to be reached by canoe or kayak. It wasn't all that long a hike—just under a mile—but a fairly arduous one, requiring a few improvised water crossings and battling legions of briers and thorns. The cache itself, "Row, Row, Row Your Boat..." (GC126G9), is pretty old and in need of owner maintenance, but by gummy, I finally get to cross it off the list. As I've mentioned many times, the Haw River is one of the most scenic rivers in the NC Piedmont, and there are plenty of caches to be found at various points along its path.

Now, I'm a little bushed, but at least I managed to work off a few bites of that oh-so-delicious burger from last night's visit to Lindley Park Filling Station....

Click the pics to enlarge.

A couple of the more entertaining hides in High Point. A little cedar log that
opens up to reveal the hidden bison tube, and a frightfully clever geocacher trap.

Cachefishing, anyone?

You never know what you'll find in the woods. The Northeast Park
Conference Center, perhaps?

One of the entertaining non-traditional bridges I used to cross the water.

The only crossing spot on the Haw River at Northeast Park, which is
not without its hazards.

Aww. These folks took the easy way.