Geocaching February 2022

This month, I tried a local series of caches based on the alphabet. The caches are in sets, with the final cache requiring information from the previous caches. In the set I was looking for, the first three caches (J, K, and L) each provide a number used in finding the coordinates for the final cache (M), which has some fake coordinates on geocaching.com. The original series was set up several years ago. The geocacher made a new, second series with the same letters in the same park. So I searched for two sets at the same time! I drove over to Hammond Branch Park using the parking coordinates for Alphabet M (Move)-Redux. I thought there would be an obvious trailhead but the cache page explains how an easement between two residences follows along a row of pine trees leading to a trail into the park. If I hadn't read that information, I would not have been convinced I found the right spot.

Not much of a trail

Not much of a trailhead. At least the pine trees were there!

The good part of geocaching in February is that there's less foliage, thorns, and critters (usually bugs are a problem). But in this park, the paths are a lot less obvious in winter without all the undergrowth. I had to bushwhack a bit more than I should have to find Alphabet J (Jump) - Redux. I have a note-taking app on my phone (along with the geocaching app), so I noted the number that I would need for the M-redux cache.

J-Redux is in this picture somewhere

Next up was Alphabet_L (Look), so not one of the newer caches. My phone GPS was all over the place but the cache's hint got me back on track. 

L's in there

While walking to the next cache, I spotted a shelter clearly made by someone. It only had natural wood, no other items.

Maybe a rest stop?

Alphabet K (Kite) - Redux was not in the spot I thought it would be. That board below seemed like a dead giveaway, but the cache was elsewhere. After finding the cache, I found the nearby trail that would have saved me another load of bushwhacking.

Sometimes the obvious spot isn't the right one

My journey took me over a small tributary of Hammond Branch, the stream that runs through the park. A nice man-made bridge kept me going in the right direction.

Another human structure

Alphabet L (Look) - Redux was an easy find after the others since it followed a similar theme. 

In there somewhere

I had walked past the location of Alphabet K (Kite) because I was on the wrong side of the Hammond Branch. The write-up on the cache said there is a two-foot crossing for a stream, but I never found the spot. I think I was coming from the wrong side of the big stream, since I saw a smaller stream that connected to Hammond Branch. Plenty of fallen logs made longer-than-two-foot bridges. I was caching by myself, so I didn't want to risk the crossing. If I fell and injured myself, there'd be nobody to go for help. I decided to postpone the search to another day.

Some natural bridges

Back at home, I calculated the coordinates for M-Redux and realized I should have done my calculating in the field. The actually coordinates were a bit farther into the park! I was ready to redo the trip anyway for the regular K and the J caches.

My son had a basketball game near the trails on the following Saturday, afterward we went to find the other caches. Alphabet J-(Jump) was right near the school where the game was, so it was an easy find on the trails.

The trailhead

We had a little more trouble getting to Alphabet-K (Kite), at least we were on the right side of the waterway. With some dedicated bushwhacking, we found ground zero. The area must be very difficult in the summertime!

Somewhere in there

With a geocaching buddy, I felt more confident about crossing Hammond Branch on the log bridges. He was confident too!

Easy rider

On the way to the final location of Alphabet M (Move) - Redux, we spotted a tree that stole another tree's bark!

Maybe motivated by modesty?

The find was not hard after a longish walk. We signed the log and picked up a travel bug. We had to cross the Hammond Branch to get back to our car.

Another crossing

A shot of my crossing

We walked back through a neighborhood that had a lot of eclectic houses. I took a picture of a round house that was the most interesting of the bunch.

Where's the front door?

The travel bug we found is called BP2012 4RFUN, and is a bottle opener. I put it to good use.

A useful TB!

I had to get some stuff at our local Scout Store which is near the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. I figured that was a good spot to drop the travel bug. The first cache I found, Off the Sidewalk (Again), was too small for the bug.

Somewhere in there

A short drive away is Holiday Fun 2017, which promised to be a larger cache. I parked near the location. I supposed the cache would be along the fence below.

Lots of options

After a bit of searching, I checked the hint which was not helpful. I looked at previous logs and saw that some people had found it about fifty feet north of their GPS's ground zero. Since that was on the way back to the car, I tried it out. I found the ammo-box container and put the travel bug in!

Farewell, brief friend!

We had some nice Sunday weather and took the kids geocaching to some more of the "No Outlet" sign caches. I had found a previous cache on a road marked "No Outlet" though the street did have an outlet. The cache owner finds those annoying and has made two series of caches based on "No Outlet" signs. Our first find was another faker, YES Outlet #1 (Sweet Cherry Lane), which lets out near a reservoir to the south.

My sons by the sign that lies

This particular cache was popular because I took the kids over to the nearby Dunkin Donuts to get a snack.

Our next find was a genuine "No Outlet," Obviously No Outlet #1 (Blue Sea Drive). It's across the street from a high school and the next road over is a highway, to which Blue Sea Drive is not connected.

Walking back from the cache

Our third and final find was Obviously No Outlet #3 (Downdale Place). My phone GPS had a hard time picking which side of the street the cache was on.

In the picture somewhere

The children's schools decided they had too many snow days in December and January and declared Presidents' Day as not-a-holiday. While they were in school, we parents enjoyed more good weather geocaching. Our first find was a cemetery, King Family Cemetery. The cemetery dates back to 1829, when the area was probably all farmlands. Now, the graveyard is surrounded by industrial buildings. We looked through the headstones and found the most recent was 2020, so the grounds are still being used.

Sign at the entrance

Some of the graves

Cars, We got cars...3rd try is on a small hill in a different part of the industrial area. We parked on the wrong side of the fence and had to go around. The view from the cache explains the name, though clearly Covid shipping problems have depleted some inventory in the lot.

A mostly empty lot

Our final find was Home Away From Home. Apparently this cache owner had a second job in the neighborhood and spent a lot of time there, even on weeknights and weekends. The cache container was the micro-est micro we've ever found.

In there somewhere

We went up 15 caches this month, a very good number for a generally unfavorable month.

Book Review: Sir Edward Grey Witchfinder Vol. 6 by M. Mignola et al.

Sir Edward Grey Witchfinder Volume 6: The Reign of Darkness story by Mike Mignola and Chris Roberson, art by Christopher Mitten, colors by Michelle Madsen, and letters by Clem Robins

Sir Edward Grey investigates a number of murders in the Whitechapel neighborhood of 1889 London. He sees signs of the occult in the way the bodies have been killed but the local constabulary does not agree. Sir Edward also has his eyes on a prime suspect, Asquith. The police have found an alibi for Grey's suspect, so they marginalize him even further from the case. Grey finds a connection between Asquith and the Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra (who are never up to any good). On the bright side, Sir Edward runs across Sarah Jewell, an American occult investigator who wants to prevent more women from being victimized. Her investigation leads her to the Proserpine Home for Wayward Women, an institution recently created by a Lady who is friends with Queen Victoria. Is it really a safe haven for women of the night or a collection point for a much larger scheme?

Grey starts out as the Queen's good servant but his search for the truth takes him away from her good graces. The closer he gets to the truth, the further he gets from respectable society and the people in power. His commitment to doing the right thing is admirable and he grows as he realizes the priorities of others do not align with him or with the truth. The situation makes for good drama and an exciting story.

Recommended.

Movie Review: Downhill/When Boys Leave Home (1927)

Downhill/When Boys Leave Home (1927) directed by Alfred Hitchcock

One of two prep school friends becomes involved with a young lady who becomes unhappy with the affair. When she goes to the school to make an accusation, innocent Roddy Berwick (Ivor Novello) takes the blame for his pal. He's summarily expelled from school. Roddy returns home where his father kicks him out. On his own, he bums around London until he gets an inheritance from his godmother. With the money, he marries an actress. She turns out to be a gold digger who cleans him out, leaving him in an even worse state. Things just get worse for him from there.

The story is very melodramatic and relies on some heavy symbolism. The women in the film (aside from Roddy's mom) cause a lot of trouble and are not depicted in the best light. Visually, the movie has a lot of nice transitions (one passage of time fades from a pocket watch to the face of a clock tower!) and visual moments, early Hitchcock stylings. A good piano score accompanies the film on the Criterion Collection DVD. Novello gives a good performance though he is a bit old to be playing a prep-school student. Overall, I was underwhelmed. It's a typical life story drama.

Slightly recommended. This movie came as a second feature on The Lodger DVD and it definitely has a B-side vibe. The two titles above are the British and the American titles.

Movie Review: The Lodger (1927)

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Young blonde women are being murdered on the streets of London! On his victims' clothes, the killer pins a scrap of paper with "The Avenger" written inside a triangle. He was sighted fleeing his latest murder and the distraught elderly witness identified him as tall, well dressed, with a scarf wrapped around the lower part of his face.

Young blonde Daisy (June Tripp) works as a model in a store and lives with her parents. She's dating a cop named Joe (Malcolm Keen) who is excited to be assigned to the murder case. Once he puts a noose around the culprit, he'll put a ring on Daisy's finger. The parents are happy about that. 

The family has a room to let. One foggy night, a gentleman (Ivor Novello) comes to rent the room. He's tall and mysterious and handsome. And he has a scarf around the lower part of his face! When he gets to the room, he asks the parents to remove all the paintings of young blonde women that are on the walls. His mysterious valise is locked away in a desk. He starts wooing Daisy. He paces the floor anxiously and often goes out at night on mysterious errands.

With this set up, Hitchcock is in his usual form. All the circumstantial evidence points to the lodger as the culprit. He's distracted and prickly. The cop doesn't like him because the lodger and Daisy are getting along very well. Daisy grows in affection for the new guy, causing tension. The story drama is enhanced by the visual flare typical of Hitchcock. At one point, viewers see the lodger pacing through a glass ceiling. The family just see their plain chandelier moving about as the lodger walks around. Even after the "is he or isn't he the killer" issue is resolved, Hitchcock gets more drama and tension out of the story.

For a silent film, it is very engaging. I watched the Criterion Collection DVD which is from a restoration by the BFI. A lot of the visual flourishes seem like they'd be from later work, but filmmakers were consummate artists even in the silent era. The score goes well with the movie, imitating the famous Bernard Herrmann compositions for later classic films like North by Northwest and Vertigo.

Highly recommended--this is a hidden Hitchcock gem, probably because it is a silent film.

Also, this will be discussed on A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast, which is having a whole month of silent films!

Cute Kid Pix February 2022

More pictures that didn't make their own post...

My brother's birthday was at the beginning of the month and we went to Ginza of Tokyo to celebrate. The teppanyaki chef made a little message with our food appropriate to the holiday in the middle of the month.

A food rebus?

He also made the rice heart beat by tapping the handle-end of his spatula! It was a fun meal.

We did some other photo-worthy stuff in February but didn't take pictures! My wife and I went dancing for St. Valentine's Day but did not take any snaps of ourselves. Maybe we'll go to the St. Patrick's Day dance and get some good pictures. I'm not sure I have any green dress clothes.

We went skiing with the kids. They took lessons. My daughter went skiing again with Mom and my oldest son went with his Scouting BSA troop. The youngest did not have a good time with the lesson, so he probably won't go again any time soon.

My oldest son played basketball in a rec league in February (they started in January after a Covid-delay). He had a good time but the team did not do well.

I guess February was a bit of a doldrums for us. We did a lot of geocaching, surprisingly. Those adventures will get their own post later.

Plans for Lent 2022

It's Ash Wednesday again, a day "of fasting and abstinence," as described in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2043. Fasting is eating much less food than you normally would; abstinence in this context is not eating meat. The point of this penance is not to punish yourself. It's to "acquire mastery over our instincts and freedom of heart." Rather than being led around by our appetites, we practice saying "no" to them so that we are free to focus on other, more important things. Eating food is important but not the most important thing in our lives. Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are the two prescribed days for fast and abstinence in America, with the Fridays in Lent only requiring abstinence from meat. So the obligation is not so great. Often, people add other days for themselves or make other sacrifices, the classical "giving up something for Lent." My plan for this year is my tradition giving up of graphic novel reading, though I do have quite a backlog so it probably won't be obvious to blog readers. In fact, I am giving up written fiction in general, so no novels. I may still listen to audiobooks and short stories from the various podcasts in my subscriptions but I won't just substitute audiobooks for written books. I do read the Sunday comics (Brewster Rockit is my current favorite) but Sundays are exceptions to the penitential times.

The other traditional practices in Lent (in addition to fasting) are prayer and almsgiving. For prayer, I will be reading Praying in the Presence of Our Lord with St. Thomas Aquinas by Mike Aquilina. He's taken five poems by St. Thomas and presented them in Latin (the original language) with an English translation. Then Aquilina has written seven meditations or reflections for each poem. My plan is to read the poem and one meditation a day. With forty days of Lent, I'll come up five short, so I may restart or find something else (maybe Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week).

For almsgiving, we will continue to buy something extra for the local food pantry when we shop for groceries. That's become such a regular habit now, I should probably take it off the list of things for Lent, since it's become a thing for all year. My wife and I have been talking about focusing on one charity for extra giving (beyond our parish, since charity begins at home). We'll do some research and get that sorted this Lent.

For spiritual reading, I am working my way through The Word On Fire Bible: The Gospels. I will also read Things Worth Dying For by Charles Chaput, retired archbishop of Philadelphia, and some other volumes as time and inspiration allows.

Book Review: Slam Dunk Vols. 3 & 4 by Takehiko Inoue

Slam Dunk Volume 3 by Takehiko Inoue

Hanamichi, the first-year, first-time basketball player for Shohoku High, continues his training in fundamentals of the game. Team captain Takenori Akagi gives him some special attention and training on lay-ups. Hanamichi is less enthusiastic because he thinks the move isn't flashy (so he really doesn't know basketball). He becomes much more enthusiastic when team-follower and little-sister-to-Akagi Haruko helps Hanamichi practice before school. He's been dying to walk her home from school. The love interest is just a side-plot, since the team is about to face one of the best in the area, Ryonan. Hanamichi assumes he'll be a starter and the star of the team but things don't work out that way. The game is just about to start at the end of volume 3.

Recommended.

Slam Dunk Volume 4 by Takehiko Inoue

The big game starts but Hanamichi Sakuragi is a benchwarmer! He has a lot of childish commentary and antics as he watches the game and waits his chance to be put in as the coach's "secret weapon." The game itself is interesting, with the Ryonan team dominating. Haruko is watching the game, so Sakuragi has more to show off for than himself. Will Sakuragi's cheerleading get the Shohoku High team in high gear? Will he ever get into the game?

I still can't decide if Sakuragi is too annoying to be a real hero. It seems like if he did do well, that would just feed his ego. He really needs to grow up more. I'm interested enough to keep reading.

Mildly recommended.