Desert Solitude

Several things happened today:

Kelly called and woke me up - asked if I would work today since Lynette had to leave. Sure.

Hung up with him and was getting ready when Dad called, the scanner blew a tube and he's got the day off, wanna go out to Austin and do cache maintenance? Sure! After work...

Finally got out of work at 1pm and headed home. Woke b0neZ up and we piled into the truck to head out.

Now, awhile back, JennyCraig came through Nevada and set some virtuals up at various SHM's (State Historical Markers) along Hwy 50. At the time all was good with those, cept these two were from San Diego and shortly to be transferred out to Hawaii (tough life, eh?) and they needed someone to watch the markers for them to make sure the caches remained findable. Since I had been following them that day, they asked me. Sure thing! Well, one had coords that were wrong and they couldn't get the coords changed in time before the policy changed and look - one archived vitual. The second had the wrong type selected and they couldn't get that changed either before the policy did and there goes another one. The reviewer at the time... well... let me just say I'm glad we have a local reviewer now.

Up in Reno is a cacher named grimmie who began the SHM series - basically a hide-a-key on the back of the signs or a 35mm at the base. SUPER SIMPLE caches! So, upon learning of the archival, I went out and adopted the style of the hide-a-key and viola! Two new caches ready to go.

The first, "It's a pretty Fairview!", has had no problems aside from a full log sheet. The second "Rock Station Cache" has been no end of puzzlement for me. It started shortly after I hid it, a rookie cacher reports that "It's not there! I looked under every rock in the area and this has been muggled. Maintain your caches better." Okay, first - the hint is magnetic. Second -dump the attitude. Ran out there (103 mils as the crow flies) and the cache was there. Make a note.

Again the same issue! "It's not there!" Again the run out there.

Again another DNF "This isn't here!" Again, run out there."

Numerous emails to the various DNF's and several editing on the cache page has finally stopped the DNF's, but now it's a full log book. Joy.

The weather was cool, windy, and clear the whole way out. But once we finished the Rock Station Cache repair and headed past Cold Springs (only to learn the litle bar/restaurant/mini-mart had burned down!) the snow began falling. We climbed up into New Pass and the snow was really thick. Clearing the canyon, we discovered a desert draped in a thick white blanket of snow. A total and complete winter wonderland. Even highway 50 was a flat path of white.

All the way into Austin, had dinner at the International Hotel (now just a bar/restaurant) and then home into a blizzard. A few times on the way back in was near whiteout and the road invisible. Dad asked jokingly a couple times "Who's idea was it to come out here?" Speed limint was 70, we were going around 45.

While heading back, we played with the Tracky TrackMe program and I followed dad on my PocketPC and he followed me (Not that hard since we're in the same truck). Pretty cool little program - plus it'll download caches directly from gc.com and display them on a map! Sweet. I think I finally found my self-sustaining caching solution.

Home had us heading off to Wal-Mart for shopping - b0neZ was laughing this is the first time he's taken a girl along while shopping for a valentines present. My argument was, no, I'm grocery shopping on that side of the store, you're valentines shopping on that side. Unless you're buying me a pizza, we should be fine. We were, and we got everything done that we needed to.

So, once midnight rolled around, my Valentines present was a medium heart red Gorilla wearing a leather biker jacket with a Love Heart on the breast and LOST: Season 3 in his hands!

How in the world am I lucky enough to have had this guy come into my life so unexpectedly and just do the sweetish things? He'll never understand just how much he means to me cause I seriously suck at expressing such things. It's wierd, I don't think about my arm, or my leg, they are there, part of me, and I don't think about them - until the unthinkable happens and I lose one of them. I would miss them more than words can express and feel their loss for the rest of my life.