100 and counting!!

what a great weekend!!!

friday night was spent with shanon. he’s been home from spring break all week, but i had barely seen him. rpg’s do that i guess?! anyway, we went to see, of course, jersey girl. went to toledo, as the “big ass theatre” was the only choice! shanon wanted to stop at every bar we passed along the way, so we did, and of course we had to stop at the gas station about 1/2 way there and slug a tall boy. ended up being almost 20 minutes late! and how could we call ourselves true fans? well, kevin smith would understand – he’d want us to have a nice buzz for the movie.

i’ll save my opinions on jersey girl for a separate post.

saturday am was the nwogeo (northwest ohio geocachers) spring breakfast. I am on the steering committee, so I had to be there early… 8:15. drinking and movies the night before, so I had maybe 4 hours of sleep? the breakfast was an amazing turnout. I was thinking maybe 15-20 people, but ended up being probably about 40. we overtook half of bob evans! paid 7 dollars for dry eggs and pancakes…

after that, jason and myself decided to pretty much spend the entire rest of the weekend geocaching. did a few of the bowling green caches, but not all since jason had already found most of them… then to findlay and area… but, we had to stop at my 99th cache, as i wanted to make sure my 100th find was memorable.

so, after thinking about it, i decided to do power lady at night! most people, jason included, say that power lady is a creepy cache to find even in broad daylight. it’s on the grounds of an old abandoned summer camp for an orphanage, and the old gate, sign, and remains of buildings are everywhere. and, there is a huge coal power plant right next to it. jason had been out there before, and really didn’t want to go back, but after some convincing he agreed.

i wanted it to be very, very dark and late for power lady, so we had some time to celebrate before going out for the big one oh oh. went to jeds, became sufficiently buzzed, had some cajun balls (oh how i’d missed them), and enjoyed the jeds hotties while shooting the shit about potato guns.

jason suggested that a third person may be in order, so we picked his friend brian up. brian was a cool guy, even after being shot at by jason with a pellet gun.

it was almost midnight, extremely foggy, pitch black, and creepier than almost any other situation i’ve ever been in. the flashlight beam just illuminated a cloud of fog, and visibility was maybe 5-10 feet in front of you. you have to navigate through the woods and then through a field of straw, all while listening to the clanking and hissing of the power plant. freaky stuff! it was an easy find though. after the find, we went to the nearby lakeshore, enjoyed the complete lack of view (being pitch dark), then took another path back to the car.

a very memorable experience overall – one of those things that words can’t really accurately cover.

in addition to all of the above, and a few more past-midnight caches, we managed to hide five new caches in the toledo area. a quick visit to meijer gave us the supplies we needed to put together some micros. one of them i hid at hampshire heights on middlesex — my old stomping grounds! it’s about 50 feet away from my old apartment building, and i’m calling it the good, the bad, and the ugly after the many memories of my days in the area.

it was about 3am when we made it back to jason’s apartment. about that time, a very surprising call came in. tried to help and be a good friend, i do hope i succeeded in that.

then, a few hours of sleep. for some reason i woke up at around 8:30, but jason and heather didn’t get up until damn near noon. i was jonesing for scrambled eggs and tobassco sauce, but being after noon we just grabbed some crap fast food and hopped in my now very muddy cachingmobile. this time we drove up to trenton, mi for some caching. lots of virtuals up there – gawd do i hate virtuals. 26 finds later, it was time to make it home.

i was filthy. my shoes were completely soaked and completely caked in thick mud. i had less than 9 hours of sleep for the whole weekend, and i was damn ready to go to bed.

all in all, a great weekend!! here are some of the better pics from the various stuff that went on…

power lady:
preparing for power lady – as you can see, it was mega foggy.
no trespassing – shyea!
getting foggier and creepier
100th find!

hiding a cache:
the giant wang machine
my giant wang

out caching:
slagle and a parking meter
moi – must advertise while caching
moi 2 – taking bad pictures
moi 3 – self potraits are not my forte
moi 4 – neither are not-self potraits