Hobby | The Habitation of Justice

Geocaching Adventures in Amish Land

Lincoln Adams | November 7, 2009 @ 9:56 pm

So aside from the poison ivy rashes (which reared its ugly head once I came home), I had a nice time in Pennsylvania for a few days.

I stayed at the Fulton Steamboat Inn, probably THE place to stay at if you’re ever visiting this area (and I don’t merely say that because of the sweet hotel girl I met here.) :ggrin: As soon as you come near you can hear folksy music playing in the background, and the hotel is especially a treat to the eyes at night:

Look at all the purdy lights!

Awesome rooms too:

LOVE

After catching a bluegrass show the first night, it was off to go geocaching for the remainder of my trip there. One of the things that I should have realized about this pastime is that when you go outdoors, you expose yourself to unpleasant, outdoorsy things. Like say, poison ivy.

And course, only me, would catch a BAD case of poison ivy by looking around for a geocache at a Walmart parking lot. Yes, seriously. A week later the rashes have left me weeping in a corner for several days now, while wishing death and destruction on the idiot douche monkey cache owner for hiding this thing in a jungle of this VILE, EVIL WEED. Seriously, who expects to run into poison ivy at WALMART? Oy.

I did fare better on future cache hunts though, the most rewarding of which was hidden at a covered bridge here:

Wow... it really covers!

You would thinking finding a cache here would be easy right? Well, aside from almost getting mowed down by passing cars who liked to drive 300 miles an hour over the bridge, when I realized where I had to look…

Errmm...

Are you kidding me?

Oh boy. There was a tiny ledge underneath the bridge, but the only way to get to it was to swing under by holding one of the wooden beams. I’m telling you, I came THISCLOSE to falling into the water. I was sure the wood was going to give way and I would wind up spending the night at a hospital with splinters and pneumonia. Somehow though I pulled it off, grabbed the cache while holding on to one of the beams, and swung out. Behold:

Who does your Daddy work for now, punk?

Inside were several items known as swag (trade items geocachers leave behind) and a geocoin that came from British Columbia, which I took as my reward. Due to their nature though I can’t hold on to it, so I’ll need to drop the coin off at another cache soon, where it will continue its worldwide journey.

After that near brush with death and swimming with the fishes, I decided to avoid the more riskier caches and opt for those that took me to various areas around Lancaster, preferably those places that didn’t require bushwhacking my way through the forests where evil, dangerous things like groundhogs lurked. Filtering those out, I ended up finding one near a game farm:

What are YOU lookin' at?

And one near an Amish store, where I bought a homemade sausage pretzel from a pretty Amish babe. Mmmmmm, mmmmmm, MMMM! She can do Rumspringa with me anytime. :naughty:

But anyhoo, *ahem*, I have to say, geocaching is definitely providing some helpful fodder for my blogging, primarily because it leads me to places I normally wouldn’t go on my own. Usually I’m just driving around aimlessly when I’m unsure of what to do, (which is pretty much the case for me 90 percent of the time,) so it’s nice to finally come across a hobby that can provide some much needed focus to my otherwise meandering and boring life.

I have more pictures from the trip by the way, so if you’d like to see them you can check them out at my gallery or on Flickr. Enjoy!

Tags: Amish, blogging, bluegrass, country, covered bridge, geocache, geocaching, hobby, hotel, Pennsylvania, photo, Photos, poison ivy, walmart
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log

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Just went geocaching for the first time ever today! And well, I suck.

Lincoln Adams | October 24, 2009 @ 10:08 pm

While I was researching GPS devices to get for my car, I inadvertently came upon a wondrous thing called geocaching.

The idea behind it is pretty simple: use a GPS device to discover hidden caches around the world that were placed by geocaching enthusiasts. Once you find a geocache, you can sign the logbook to note that you were there, and also post a field note online to indicate your discovery of the cache, and your experiences in finding it too if you so desire. People also sometimes leave items that you can take with you, as long as you replace it with one of equal or greater value.

It’s the kind of hobby that for me would be an answer to prayer. It was becoming a ritual for me to spend my free time by either gluing myself to the Internet in the vain hope that I might finally get a tweet from some smoking hot virginal babe professing her undying love to me, or playing Nancy Drew mystery games and watching movies from Netflix while chowing down on Cheetos. I needed something that would put me out there and give me a reason to move around again, instead of just driving aimlessly around New York with a violent urge to mow down anyone who got in my way.

There were many fascinating geocaches in Lake Placid too, so much that I’m kicking myself for not finding out about it sooner while I was up there, but fortunately, there are tons of local caches in my area to choose from, and I decided my very first geocaching experience would involve finding one hidden in a lamp post somewhere in town.

So off I went for my very first geocaching hunt, and in the dark, cold, pouring rain too! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee! :spinna:

I arrived at the location, then followed the steps to locate the right lamp post. I had to take a certain number of steps in various directions to find the correct spot, akin to finding buried treasure, and I was exhilarated. Even the bad weather couldn’t bring me down.

Except, I couldn’t find the cache. I looked and looked, retraced my steps, looked again, and still could not find a thing. I ended up looking at each lamp post within a 100 yards of me in addition to the one that was SUPPOSED to hold the cache, and apparently I was getting noticed, as people were starting to stare at me in curiosity as they walked by. I looked up after feeling around under one lamp post to see one group walking by and eyeing me in suspicion.

“Don’t worry, I’m the lamp post inspector, just here to make sure these lights are all working smoothly.” I made a satisfactory gesture as I knocked on the lamp post. They continued walking on.

Where the crap was this @#$% thing already, son-of-a… :rant:

So then a police car pulls up near me.

Oh Lord, please don’t tell me these numbnuts actually called the cops on me…

But fortunately it kept moving on. Whoooooo… man, I really have had just about enough of cops getting all up in my space lately too. The last thing I needed was to get yet another stupid ticket, or worse, wind up in jail because I don’t know how to keep my mouth shut for nothing.

Finally, after 30 minutes of getting drenched in the rain and learning how to breathe again after the cop scare, I gave up. I’m convinced somebody had stolen this cache, and that’s what I’m gonna go with, especially considering people had been posting online that this was one of the easiest caches they ever found too, so I’ll insist that the cache was really stolen and not accept the possibility that it was right under my nose all along, and only schmucky idiot buffoons like me would be incapable of finding it.

Sigh.

Ah well, tomorrow’s another day. I’m planning to head down to South Street for a relaxing afternoon by the water, and supposedly there’s another cache right by the seaport that I can go look for. Yeah, we’ll see. I bet that’s probably long gone by now too. :nyah:

Tags: driving, free time, geocache, geocaching, gps, hobby, lake placid, lamp post, new york, rain
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log

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I HATE HARRY POTTER (and the Christian morons who adore him)

Lincoln Adams | July 23, 2007 @ 7:23 pm

I hate that kid. I hate his nerdy glasses, I hate his friends, I hate his friend’s friends, and I hate his stupid broom too.

But worst of all, I hate people who are willing to camp out for days at their local bookstores just so they can get the latest and greatest copy of the book starring, whose else, but that wand wielding little twerp.

I mean seriously people, what is this, Star Wars? Get a frakking life already.

Honestly, it’s not that I’m opposed to the idea of reading the Harry Potter series (or watching the movies), and getting a cheap thrill out of doing so. But when I see you wearing the wizard hat and pulling up your bedsheets with its Harry Potter icons while you snuggle down with one of J.K. Rowling’s books for a good read, (and you’re in your 40s for crying out loud), I don’t see someone who merely has a hobby he or she loves. I see someone who’s gone completely around the bend and is a prime candidate for drugs and lots of therapy.

And this is just the Christians I’m talking about. Really, go here and tell me if you don’t find this obsession just a little bit disconcerting.

I really don’t get this. Maybe it’s because overhyped fiction has always been a turnoff for me, a personality trait that also proved to be one of the reasons why I’ve never seen the movie Titanic either. Whatever everybody and their mother did, I tended to do the exact opposite, if for no other reason than just to maintain my individuality. Worldly fads simply didn’t appeal to me, and following after it with any degree of enthusiasm always left a bad taste in my mouth.

And yet Christians go bonkers just as much as the world does whenever there’s word that a new book or film is coming out. So let me ask you Christian Potterheads: why does Harry Potter, a fictional character no less, thrill you and move you more than Christ does? Why isn’t it enough to simply read one of the books in the series and go, “Hmm, that was interesting?”

Nope, can’t stop there. You have to camp out at bookstores, turn your bedroom into a museum of Harry Potter paraphernalia, scream like a banshee at people who threaten to reveal spoilers, and whenever you get the chance to talk about it, (which is every 5 seconds), it’s Harry this and Harry that, and Harry, Harry, Harry, HarryHarryHarryHarry…

Obsessed, MUCH? :gaga: Some of you I swear need to get a good smack upside the head… with by a 2×4.

Do you not see anything wrong with this at all? Do you not even feel a teensy weensy bit embarassed? Forget about the witchcraft and the occultic elements and the controversy therein. This is about taking a hobby and pushing it to the point of obsession, an obsession that even goes so far as attempting to demonstrate Christian symbolism in Rowling’s works, as if by doing so it would somehow be seen as a validation of sorts for Christians to continue obsessing over literature that revolves around magic and witchcraft.

Please. I’m sure I myself could find Christian imagery in the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show if I looked hard enough. “Ooooooo, see Rocky flying and coming to save Bullwinkle?? Just like the Lord Jesus came to save us!”

In the end, I have to say there’s something truly disconcerting about living in a world where not having read a single Harry Potter book makes ME the weird one. :wideeyed: