Hiking Woodlawn Preserve...Again - May 23, 2010

Dave and I have been anxious for the hiking and geocaching binge to continue, so we made plans to get together at 7:30am today to do a little of both. The weather forecast was for cool overcast skies and scattered showers, but we both agreed that the chance to get out was worth it, even if the weather was less than ideal. Unless we woke to a heavy rain, Dave would meet me at my house and we would head over to a hike I had mapped out in the Woodlawn Preserve. I am still amazed at the amount of hiking trails in that area, all within a 10 minute drive of my house. Before I got involved in geocaching, I never paid any attention to that area, which turns out to have been my loss.

My job last night was to plan our hike. With all due diligence, I did my obsessive best to be prepared... Satellite image printouts, cache descriptions, trail maps, and a laminated trail plan. All of which came in very handy this morning when the day turned out to be exactly what was forecast; gray, cool and misty. And wet. Dave arrived on time, and with a quick stop for gas, coffee and Gatorade, off we went to brave the elements.

What I laid out ended up being exactly what we did, with a two-car shuttle hike of about 4 miles (it turned out to be 3.8 miles) where we could grab 5 caches along the way. We left Dave's car parked along Ramsay Road (orange dot at upper left) and took my car to the far eastern end of the track, where we could park in a hotel lot within 30 feet of a trail head (orange dot at lower right).


About 50 feet down the trail is a cache that Julia and I found yesterday afternoon, but Dave was able to grab it today. Our path took us west and north through a mixed area of stream valleys, woods and fields. The five black squares are the geocaches we found along the way. For the most part what we found today were very typical of woodland caches - ammo boxes in hollow trees, stumps, fallen logs and rock piles. It seems that I have developed a pretty good eye in a short period of time for the kind of places that people are likely to hide caches (at least in the woods).

We ended up 5 for 5 in this section of our hike, with no "did not finds". We passed Dave's car on the way west to get the final two caches, and did a small loop at the end of the western section before doubling back along our path to Dave's car. The green shaded area to the south of our track is Delaware's Brandywine Creek State Park. I am working my way south to the park as I clear the geocaches in this area.

The picture below is typical of what we hiked in today - rolling hills and woodlots scattered around horse farms.

After completing the first part of our hike, we hopped in Dave's car for a 7 or 8 minute drive to a parking area on Route 100 from which we could get a couple more caches located along a short stretch of the Mason Dixon Trail. I don't know much about this trail and want to do a little research on it. It connects the Appalachian Trail out around York with something else, but I don't remember what... I tried to get a map last night on the internet, and found a web site for the trail, but maps were $19 and only available from a few places, or via mail order, so no map was available on short notice. Oh well, I will find this someday soon. The completist in me cannot allow a local trail to be unknown to me. Hmm. I wonder what that says about me (I do love maps). Anyway...

We parked at the right end of the track (east), hiked along a side road, and found the blue-blazed trail markers to head cross-country. The small section we did started out ugly, with a fence-line walk through waist high grass alongside a farmer's field.

Once we got to the woods it got better, and the more northerly of the two caches was the nicest of the day - a wet slippery scramble up onto a huge boulder pile. Fun! The picture below shows Dave standing in front of the boulder pile for scale. The cache was at the very top. This wouldn't have been quite as difficult as it was on a drier day. As it was today, footing was treacherous and we went very deliberately and safely. It was rated a 3.5 on the 1-5 scale (with 5 being the most difficult), but today it was probably a 4 or 4+.

Another great day hiking and geocaching with Dave, and another section of practically my own backyard that I have now explored. My next hike in this area needs to be in the State park itself.

For a few last observations, it was definitely a different feel in the woods today because of the weather. It was dimly lit, everything was wet, and the footing was slippery at times. More noticeable was the difference in the sounds of the woods - normally at this time of year you would be accompanied by non-stop bird sounds, but today there were very few birds to be heard. There was also less rustling of little critters in the underbrush. The most prevalent sound by far was the dripping of water from the forest canopy, and not much else. The colors were also very muted, given the lack of sunlight. Not a bad thing necessarily, but different.

An Interview with our Author

The following, with all necessary artistic license, fairly accurately encapsulates a number of different conversations I have had with a number of different people that all revolve around the basic question of "why do you write a blog?"

So, how long have you been writing your blog?
I started in September of 2009, so that would make it about 9 months now.

What made you start one in the first place?
My brother Dave has been doing one for a few years, and pretty much the whole time he was writing his and I was reading it, I was thinking to myself "I should try that someday." I have always enjoyed writing, and it seemed like an interesting creative outlet. The thing more than anything that kept me from starting one sooner was the mistaken impression that it would be harder to do than it turned out to be. The blogger interface isn't the most sophisticated thing in the world, but it is easy. Type, add pictures, and you're done.

Has the experience been what you thought it would be?
Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that it has been a lot of fun to do, and has actually turned into another hobby in itself. No, in the sense that the content has drifted. When I first created it, my plan was to blog about one of my hobbies, wargaming with historical miniatures. The original intent was fairly narrow, and many of my early posts were on that hobby. I pretty quickly ended up straying from that path and more and more frequently just posted on whatever I felt like at the time.

Why not stick to wargaming?
I don't know that it was a conscious decision, but more a vague understanding that if my postings were going to stick to wargaming stuff, the blog was more likely to start feeling like work and less like fun. Part of that is a reflection of how my different interests fit into my life as a whole. I am very cyclical in where I spend my free time, and I think that is reflected in what I post. There are times when I am actively painting figures and playing games, during which periods I post wargaming stuff. Then I'll go through a period where I don't touch a paintbrush for a few months, but go on reading binges and post a whole bunch of little book reviews instead. Right now I'm doing a little reading but am mainly focused on hiking and geocaching with my available time. Spring time; gotta be outside! So that's what's in the blog. Plus always a generous sprinkling of family stuff and the current events of my life. Odds and ends.

Do you think that the change in subject matter has scared away your wargaming readers?
Sure, although I don't know that I ever really had any. A couple of guys are listed as followers, but that was early on and I certainly do expect that they have long since stopped popping by. Not enough wargaming going on here. Unless they like literature and hiking I guess.

And you are OK with that?
Well, I do think that the blog title ended up being a bit misleading, but as I said, I strayed from the plan. It's also not really important to me that anybody reads it anyway.

What?
I said it's not that important to me if anyone reads what I write.

So...why write it at all then? Who are you writing for?
Me. I'm writing for me.

That sounds kind of narcissistic.
Nah, it might be narcissistic if I cared what people thought of what I was writing, or if I was writing for the attention, but I'm not. I'm writing because it's fun, and I enjoy the exercise, the process. I find it to be very relaxing. Some people do crossword puzzles, some people knit, some people play video games or watch a lot of TV. I do this, among other things. When I feel like blogging a lot, I do. When I don't, I don't. Sometimes I just don't have much to say. All that being said, I do know I have a small audience.

Who?
A few family members, a handful of friends. That's about it. Although it does seem that if you tag a post with something recognizable to the rest of the world like "Mark Knopfler concert", google will find you and some strangers will end up on your doorstep for a one-time read. Which is kind of fun.

So what's been the best thing about blogging?
When I look back over what I have written, it makes a pretty nice record of what has been going on in my life.

Like a diary?
No. No. No. That's a whole different thing. This public blog may have some opinions on certain subjects, but a diary is what's going on in your head. Very personal. This is absolutely not that. Nobody would want to read that. Well, actually they might, but I wouldn't ever dare write it. Think of it more like a chronicle. Even in the short period of four months I was blogging in 2009, when I got to the end of the year, I bought a hardcover book version of what I had written. It was maybe 75 pages, and had all the posts with all the pictures. I already love looking back through it. It's a great way to memorialize trips, events, and all the family stuff that is going on. With two small children, it is turning out to be a priceless record, with pictures. I plan on doing the book every year, and I know the books will have a better long term memory than me. Also, I think my kids will like to have them later on.

So you are writing for posterity after all?
Hmm. Yeah, I guess so.

The Thoughtfulness of Friends

I received a package in the mail from my friend Ellen today that contained a pair of Travel Bug tags for geocaching. Travel Bugs are basically ID numbers that can be attached to any little toy or item that can then be placed in a geocache and set on its way to start a journey. The movement of the Travel Bug can be tracked on the geocaching website, and will be fun for my girls. Travel Bugs can be turned loose with no particular goal, or they can be given a goal such as "see the Grand Canyon." Fun stuff... We will need to figure out what to do with theirs.

Thanks, Ellen, for your thoughtfulness. I think that maybe this falls into the category of "your first hit of crack is free...", but the girls love the idea.

Also in the little package, to fill up space, was a copy of a CD recording of the 2010 North Carolina all-state honors band performances. Ellen's daughter is in the 9/10 grade high school section, and I am absolutely blown away by the quality of the music these kids can create. Absolutely, completely, totally blown away... These are the kind of things that make parents so proud that the children squirm. Congratulations, this CD is terrific!

Beaver Valley Hike - May 21, 2010

I took a half day of vacation on this beautiful Friday afternoon to golf, but plans fell through and I ended up doing a solo hike/geocache instead. When I look at the geocache map around my house, there were still a bunch of unfound items in the Woodlawn Trustees wildlife refuge tract that I began exploring a couple weeks ago. With some time to burn today, I set out to clear as much of this as I could while having a nice hike.

I started on the far eastern edge of this map plot, and worked my way west, collecting caches as I went. The black squares are the geocache locations (the orange squares are my parking spots). There are also a couple of non-contiguous sections of walking on the western side of the map - these are the two times where I moved the car to get closer to a stray cache that needed finding.

This whole area seems much more remote than it actually is, and in the whole time I was out here in the woods, I think I saw three people and three dogs.

Along one of the paths in the woods, there were lots of signs of habitation in years gone by: old walls, springhouses, and this shell of a house. As an archaeology major in college I obviously have an interest in old things. So I can't help wondering about who lived in this house and when...

Look at the artisanship. They don't build 'em like that anymore. I love the arched fireplace opening, which would have also most likely served as the kitchen stove/oven.

3 hours and 9 caches later, having hiked 5.7 miles, I headed home. I am still loving the GPS's ability to plot all this for me...

May Days

I can't gush enough about how thrilled I am that my girls have liked my using geocaching as a means to get them out into the outdoors and do a little hiking. We've only been doing this for a month now but have been out a number of times, and have seen lots of good scenery and wildlife. So this post is nothing more than an excuse to post some pictures from May that I just downloaded from my camera.

Grace and Julia hiking the Darlington Trail along the banks of Chester Creek.

As an aside, my father and his dad, who died 20 years before I was born, used to fish in this creek when my father was a kid in the 1930's. I found out a while ago when talking to my dad that when I caught a fish standing on a huge flat boulder near where the Wawa station used to be, back when the train line through here was an active line, it was the same boulder that he had caught a fish while sitting on 60 years earlier. Kinda cool... I should go back and get a picture.

Chester Creek in the spring. We've had a wet spring and this rich green is not faked; it has looked like this all spring.

A mated pair of Canada Geese and three goslings in the creek. Well, presumably mated. Somebody obviously mated somebody sometime.

I can only hope that the level of interest they are showing now can be nurtured and maintained.

Book Review - Mississippi History (Stories)

Over the last few days I have plowed through an early story collection by Steve Yarbrough titled Mississippi History. This is his second collection, and was published in 1994, before any of his novels or later stories. It does read like a less polished incarnation of his more recent works, but the same things I like about his newer stuff are true here as well: good characters, interesting situations, an easy to read style, and stories that are very evocative of life in the deep South. Or at least what would seem like the deep South to a lifelong yankee. Maybe I should say very evocative of something very different than what I have known...

Solid at 3.5 stars. Maybe 4. Somewhere right in there.

Books read in 2010: 12 [totalling 2,626 pages]
New authors: still 7
Published in 2010: still 4
Classics: still 3

Up next, I am a couple stories into Burning Bright by Ron Rash, but I think I am also going to jump into a novel called Broken Glass Park by Alina Bronsky.

Flyers Make History

A funny thing happened on the way to the 7th seeded Philadelphia Flyers being ousted from the second round of the NHL playoffs by the 6th seed Boston Bruins - it didn't happen. I don't tend to blog too much on sports despite being a pretty big sports fan, but this was a rare and wonderful thing, and I do love my Flyers.

I must admit that after getting down three games to none in a best of seven series, I wrote my team off. When they won game 4, I said "well, at least we didn't get swept." When we won game 5, I said "well, at least we've made it somewhat competitive." When we won game 6, I said "maybe... just maybe... but now this is going to be heartbreaking when we lose."

My lack of faith was rewarded with a stunning game 7 win in Boston. The Flyers got down 3-0 in the first period.

And I wrote them off again.

Then they scored one goal. Then another. Then another. And we were tied. Then Simon Gagne gathered in a rebound and went top shelf over Tukka Rask's blocker side shoulder to take the lead. On a power play for "too many men on the ice", of all things. Next thing I knew we were celebrating the win and talking about our Eastern Conference Finals opponent, the 8th seeded Montreal Canadiens.

In the aftermath of the game, it turns out that this is only the third time in NHL history that a team has gone down 0-3 in a best of seven series and won 4-3. It has happened only once in baseball. Once. Ever. And it has never happened in basketball. Never.

So for the fourth time in American major pro sports history, a team has accomplished this feat. And to make it even better, not only are we going to the conference finals, but since we are the 7 seed and Montreal is the 8 seed, we have home ice advantage in the series.

Hard to believe...

Book Review - Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter

It has been a while since I have finished a fiction book, having been bogged down (or more accurately distracted) by a number of other things, but the same business trip that took me to Chicago for a week, and the Cubs game, allowed me the evening time to finish a pretty good book - Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter. This is a 2010 first novel by Michael J. White.

The novel is touted as a coming of age story, but I'm not completely convinced of that. It is an easy read, and there are moments of fine writing and keen insight, but I don't feel like the main character ever really grows at all. In that regard it is a frustrating book. High school, while a lifetime away in some ways, is still close enough in my memory that this book is able to invoke certain memories, but at the end of it, I would like to have felt like the characters grew over the course of 342 pages, but I never got that sense.

A worthwhile read, and a new writer to keep an eye on. A slightly generous 3.5 stars out of 5.

Books read in 2010: 11 [totalling 2,471 pages]
New authors: 7
Published this year: 4
Classics: still 3

Upon finishing this, I have begun Steve Yarbrough's story collection Mississippi History. I do also have some magazines and history books on the nightstand, so I'm not sure how fast this will go...

Wrigley Field - May 11, 2010

I had the opportunity this past week to do something that I have always wanted to do someday - see a baseball game at Wrigley Field. I was in Chicago all week on business at a national meeting, and it turns out that the scheduled group activity for Tuesday night was a trip to the Cubs game at Wrigley. After a full day of meetings about 30 of us boarded a bus for the ride to the park. On the way I found out that we were not actually going to be in the stadium, but would be at one of the private roof top places across the street. I have seen these on TV, and they look pretty cool, but I was a bit disappointed that we were not actually going to be in the park.

The place we were at was called Beyond the Ivy, and was located beyond the left field wall, just inside the foul pole, across Waveland Avenue from the ballpark. It was a four or five story building with bars, food and inside viewing areas (through large plate glass windows) on the lower floors, and bleacher style rows of tables and chairs on the roof for maybe 40 people or so.

It was a damp cold night, but there were still a lot of bugs, so it was typical of the no-so-great conditions you can get at an early season night game. It was a lot of fun, and it was great to be watching a game at Wrigley, but I (and several other like-minded souls) couldn't help but feeling like it would be even better if we could be IN the ballpark.

In the fourth inning, with us having put in a good amount of face time with the group, five of us walked over to the box office, bought tickets to the game and went into Wrigley. I am still amazed that for $25, we were able to walk up, buy tickets, and sit right behind home plate. Admittedly, we were a ways back, but still...in Philadelphia these days you couldn't get these kind of tickets unless you were a long time season ticket holder, and they would cost easily three times as much.

The game itself was alright - a low scoring affair that the Florida Marlins ended up winning 3-2, but the important thing was that I got to watch a game (or part of a game) in Wrigley field, looking out at the ivy covered walls, the center field scoreboard, and all the other historic baseball sights. We left in the 8th inning to rejoin our group across the street, but the opportunity to spend even four innings in Wrigley was...priceless.

Beaver Valley Hike - May 8, 2010

It was a beautiful day today, and knowing that my schedule will not allow much outdoor time over the next week or so, I was anxious to get outside for a while. Knowing that I had about two hours at most, I found a local hike that would serve two purposes - a walk in the woods and the opportunity to grab a few geocaches. There is an area less than 10 minutes from my house, on the Pennsylvania/Delaware state line, called the Woodlawn Trustees Wildlife Area (or something like that...). It is a wooded area east of the Brandywine where a number of feeder streams come down through the hills to join the Brandywine, and is another one of those nice protected sections within minutes of much more densely populated areas.

Besides just a nice wooded area, there are maybe 15 geocaches in the area; more than I could do in a couple hours, but with proper planning, I could get a few. The track of my hike is shown below.


I parked in a small lot just large enough for three or four cars, just above and to the right of the "Beaver Valley" label. I was able to find one cache within 100 feet of the car. Seeing that there were a number of caches to the north and west of my position, I figured I could follow a multi-purpose trail heading off to the northwest to see where it would take me. The trail, used by hikers, bikers and horses, climbed NW up the side of a large hill, and then curved NE to follow the spine of the hill. As it turned out, my choice was a good one, and there were three more caches to be found close to the trail. If you look closely, you can see the three places where my track leaves the main trail for a short distance and then returns to it (one shortly before turning NE, one halfway along the purple part of the trail, and one at the end of the NE spur).



Having four caches in hand at this point, I retraced my steps to a point where a smaller side trail headed west from my original track. I followed this until it took me back down to the road (which shows as the darker gray line north of the dashed gray line that is the PA/DE state border). Seeing that there was one more reachable cache at the top of the hill south of the road, I bushwhacked up the hill through the open woods. This was a difficult cache to find, but eventually I got it, and from there it was a simple enough thing to have the gps point me back to my car to complete my loop.

So, it ended up a productive morning...a nice 2.5 mile hike in yet another nearby area that I had never explored at all, and 5 caches added to my total. Plus two tiny deer ticks crawling up my arms, but that is a different story...

Mark Knopfler at the Tower Theater, May 7, 2010

Amparo, Dave, Lori and I had a chance to see one of my all-time favorites, Mark Knopfler, at the Tower Theater in Philadelphia last night. Knopfler, front man and creative force behind Dire Straits in the late 1970's and 1980's, has been operating as a solo act for about twenty years now, although since he fundamentally was Dire Straits (songwriter, singer, lead guitarist), there isn't all that much difference between the two incarnations.

We went in separate cars because of schedules, and my wife and I arrived first. One of the nice things about the Tower is that is has bars in the lobbies. So, with refreshments right outside the door to our balcony seats (left center H 102 and 104), we grabbed glasses of wine on the way in. This gave us a good laugh when we got to our seats, realizing that we were sitting at a rock concert having a glass of wine and that we appeared to be two of the younger people in the audience. Shortly after arriving, the opening act, Pieta Brown, took the stage for a 35 minute set. She sang and played acoustic guitar, and was backed by an electric guitarist. She was pretty good, but as is often the case with opening acts I have never heard of, every song kinda sounded the same, and I ended up just wanting to get to the main event. Dave and Lori arrived partway through the opening act. In fairness to Ms. Brown, and Bo Ramsey, the guitarist, I would have to say they were better than many opening acts I have seen, and I wouldn't mind taking the trouble to dig into her music a little bit.

After a very brief break, Mark and the band took the stage at 8:45 and opened with a very good track off the new album (Get Lucky) called Border Reiver. Then came What It Is and Sailing to Philadelphia, which always gets a great reaction here in Philly. What It Is is a fantastic song, and would rank as one of my favorites from the post-DS era; tonight's playing certainly did it justice. The 9 member band was very tight, as is always the case with a notorious perfectionist like Knopfler, and the approach to the music was definitely low-key, with Mark perched on a high backed stool center stage and barely moving. Somewhere at about this point, between songs, Mark apologized to the audience for staying on his stool, but explained that he had pinched something in his back and basically couldn't move at all. It didn't seem to affect his playing one bit as the show went on, but the vibe for the whole show ended up very relaxed.

The show continued with Coyote, Prairie Wedding, and Hill Farmer's Blues before moving into Dire Straits classics Romeo and Juliet and Sultans of Swing. I love Romeo and Juliet, both for the song and what it means to me, and because it causes Mark to bring out the steel acoustic, which I just love the sound of. In retrospect, I think Sultans was one of the songs that may have been affected by Mark's ailment, in the sense that it was clearly a shortened version of what he normally does, and I think the shortening came in the form of editing down the extended crescendo'ing instrumental jam that usually ends the song. The notable solo bits that everyone expects from the Alchemy days were there, but the fill was truncated, so the effect for me was like the whole song was telescoped down, if that makes sense.

The rest of the middle section was Donegan's Gone, Get Lucky, Marbletown and Speedway to Nazareth. In what I believe to be the second of three noticeable edits, Get Lucky was dropped from the set list despite being on every list posted from earlier shows on this tour. I think this shaved another 5 minutes off the show for them. Not that I am complaining, as the alternative would be "cancel the show, Mark's hurt".

The last song in the main body of the set was another Dire Straits classic, Telegraph Road. This is one of my favorites, and the version was excellent as always. The album version of this song is 14:23 in length, and when we saw Mark at the Mann Music Center in the summer of 2008, the live version was every bit as long (Alchemy had it at 13:43), with many extended periods of hauntingly beautiful instrumentals, but that isn't really what we got this time around. I think this live version was no more than 8 minutes or so, which there's nothing wrong with, but it was different. All above comments could be wrong of course, and what I am reading into them as edits to shorten the show so Mark could get through it might be nothing more than new streamlined versions of old songs he has played thousands of times. But maybe I'm right and this was the "tough it out" version...

At this point, the band normally would have left the stage for a few minutes before coming back for their three-song encore, but due to the fact that Mark apparently really couldn't move, the musicians milled around on the stage for a while, drinking water and waving at the crowd with the stage lights up. After a bit, they picked up instruments and played out the show with Brothers in Arms, So Far Away, and Piper to the End. Two DS classics and a song from the new album. Brothers in Arms has become one of my favorite DS songs, in that it is typical of everything that I love about Knopfler's better songs (which is most of them) - intelligent lyrics, tightly constructed instrumentals and hauntingly beautiful guitar work. I find there to be so much emotion wrapped up in the guitar lines in this song that it gives me the chills, perhaps more so the older I get and the more I listen. Nothing else sounds like Mark Knopfler. He has that same quality that Clapton does - you hear him and say "that's Clapton".

As always, I am amazed looking back on the show at the quality of the musicianship. Knopfler always surrounds himself with a band full of masterful players who can pick up a multitude of different instruments and create a huge range of different sounds, but his own virtuosity was hard to believe considering that after the final song had ended and the band was done waving to the crowd, Knopfler could barely stand and walk off the stage, and had to be heavily supported by a band mate. Amazing. I am always struck also by the wide range of influences that have colored Knopfler's solo work over the years - English traditional in all its forms (Celtic, Scottish, Gaelic), American country, hillbilly, rockabilly. Great stuff. He is a sponge, and I have been the beneficiary of all of it.

The Tower Theater is a nice place to see a show, with good sight lines and pretty good acoustics, but it is a bit old and rundown, and has a musty smell to it. One other thing that I did different for this show than I generally do is that I found the set list for this tour on the internet ahead of time and therefore knew exactly which songs were going to be done in which order. I don't think the lack of surprise affected my enjoyment of the show, and it gave me the opportunity to listen to a few of the songs I didn't know as well ahead of time. I think I will be doing that again; homework that's actually fun!

This is the third time I have seen Mark Knopfler live. The first time was with Dire Straits at the Mann Music Center (probably in 1985?). The second was in the summer of 2008 at the Mann with basically the same band as he had tonight. This was the third, and all three have been among the highlights of my concert going career.

I do wish he would do Tunnel of Love for me though...I would pay the ticket price for that one song...just once more in this life...

GPS Tracks and Maps

Dave and I have been having some interesting discussions about handheld GPS units. I have become addicted to geocaching, as per my last couple of posts, and a few challenges from an old friend. Side question - is it mean to issue challenges to a compulsive personality?

Anyway, I spent $160 on a Garmin eTrex Venture HC bundle that included 100k topographic maps, which while not USGS hiker quality, are pretty good, and fun to play around with. This is a good solid (but relatively speaking low-end) unit that at this point does most of what I need it to do - point me at geocaches and record my trips. Dave did some digging around and came up with gpsvisualizer.com, a free website that will take a .gpx track file from a GPS and turn it into a track on a map.

The map below is the track of the geocaching trip that the girls and I took in Darlington Park this past weekend, and is immortalized below. Our track is the faint green line starting on Darlington Road, crossing under the railroad tracks, winding through the countryside, and returning. This is the functionality that makes Dave all tingly, and is possible with the out-of-the-box GPS and a few free websites and free software downloads. The below jpeg is the track overlaid over a USGS topo map.


The next pic is the same track overlaid over a black and white USGS aerial photo.


Note that in both maps, the majority of the track is in bright green, as we were at the lowest elevation along the creek. As the elevation increases, the color of the track changes through blue to purple. About halfway through the green track, you can see the minor detour off the trail we made to get the first cache, and later you can see the wrong trail we took before doubling back and going furthest to the right to get the last cache toward the top of the hill.

Unfortunately, the coolest overlay that you can do on the website (but not save as a jpeg) is to overlay the track on a Google satellite photo.

The application of this to a real hike, however modest, makes me drool. The GPS already records the distance travelled, the route and the elevation profile of the entire trip; these other free software downloads and websites turn that data into a trip map.

Amazing stuff...

[Updated 5/23/2010]: Now that I know how to make nicer maps, the below is a revised map of our hike with the two cache locations marked as black squares.

Geocaching again

Julia really enjoyed our geocaching last weekend, and has been asking me when we could do it again. With a nice forecast for today, and a lousy one for tomorrow, we had planned to go to another local park and see if we could find two or three of the six or seven that are in that area. I knew that this was going to be all that was possible, as the different sites were scattered over a wider area than these little legs could do. As it turns out, when Julia and I began talking about it this morning, Grace insisted on going too. I was thrilled. Julia was less thrilled, but was talked into it.

Our intrepid explorers, ready to set out on their great adventure. It was great to have both of my girls outdoors with me on a beautiful spring day, anxious to find some treasure. So, at about 10:30am, we are in the lot at Darlington Park, off Darlington Road just north of route 1.


Almost immediately after leaving the lot, where there were a few fishermen getting back into their cars, the trail comes upon the Chester Creek, which it will follow for almost all of our short day. Grace was overjoyed to see a few fish in the shallows, and this mother duck and her ducklings enjoying the sun.


After maybe 20 minutes of leisurely walking, we got to the area of the first cache (Middletown Trail: Darlington Daze), and had to go cross country for a couple hundred feet. Both girls thought it was great that we were off the trail and I was telling them it was ok to get a little muddy. Getting to the area where I knew the cache had to be, I checked the rock pile thoroughly for snakes, spotted the box, and then allowed Julia and Grace to search for it. Grace found it; her very first cache! In the picture, you can see the corner of the box nestled down in the rocks to her left. We signed the logbook, exchanged a couple of pokemon roller toys for a couple of dog toys, and took a commemorative picture.


During the course of our walk, the gurgling sound of Chester Creek was our constant companion. Birds were out in force, squirrels and chipmunks were all around, and the girls were thrilled to see hundreds and hundreds of tiny tadpoles in some of the stagnant water areas. The temperature was perfect (maybe 70), with a bit of a breeze, and bright sun. From time to time we saw small fish in the shallows, and minnows in some of the little feeder streams.


Perhaps 20 minutes after our first cache, we found another one. Julia and Grace stayed below, in sight of me, while I climbed a steep hill and poked around in the rocks until I found it. After getting our two, we wandered around for a bit, exploring somewhat aimlessly, and just enjoying the day. I knew there was a third cache nearby that I wanted to get, but it was at the top of a steep climb, and the girls had already been walking for the better part of an hour, which is a lot for short legs.

Not wanting to burn them out and make geocaching and/or walking in the woods an unpleasant thing, we packed it in for the day and headed back to the car. It was another beautiful day in the outdoors in a nice local park near my house, in another one of those areas where you manage to leave civilization behind almost immediately after leaving the car. When I got back to the house and downloaded the track data from the GPS unit to my computer, I was able to see that we had done 1.8 miles of walking in about an hour and a half. Certainly not a good hiker's pace, but a fine pace for a day in the woods with a couple of little girls.

Geocaching

Having read my blog postings about hiking, a friend of mine asked if I had ever tried geocaching, which I had not. She thought I should try it to see if I liked it. Geocaching, to oversimplify, is high tech treasure hunting using a handheld GPS unit. People hide little containers with knick knacks and others things in them in places all over, and log the information including gps coordinates on the geocaching.com website. You can go to that website, search for cache locations in any given area (there are currently over a million of them worldwide), download the information to your gps unit, and off you go to find them. There are 42 such locations within 3 miles of my house!

Having some interest in trying this, and wanting to get a gps for hiking anyway, I saw a good deal on a highly recommended Garmin unit that came bundled with the topographic map set that I wanted, so I bought it. I was able, with help, to get through the most basic functionality to get some local caches loaded onto it, and with Julia along to help, we went out yesterday in search of treasure.

It was a blast, and Julia loved it. For our first one, we went to the nearby Glen Eagle Square shopping center and found one near the Outback Steakhouse, which we have driven right past countless thousands of times! Then we went to Newlin Grist Mill park and found the three that were there. Julia was very excited. She decided that she wanted to go to the dollar store to buy little things that we could leave behind in exchange so that she could take a little souvenir from the ones we found. So we did that. Then we went home to wait for Dave, who would be joining us for a leisurely walk in the woods. He didn't know about the gps or the geocaching; we wanted to surprise him.

Dave did arrive late in the afternoon, we showed him what we had planned, which he thought was pretty cool, and off we went to Martin Park. This little gem of a park is just down the road from where we lived back in the 1990's, and I had never been there. After parking in the little lot, you are almost immediately back in the woods along Chester Creek, and out of sight of everything. Beautiful. The day was cool and breezy, but we had a nice 1.5 mile walk in the woods and found three more caches.

Getting back to the house, I showed Dave the little bit I knew about how to use some of the other features of the gps and the map software on the PC, including how to show the path of our hike on the map, with times, distances and complete elevation profile. Dave seemed suitably impressed and if I were a betting man I suspect he will own one of these soon (and he does have a birthday on the horizon).

Perhaps as importantly as anything, Julia loved it, had a wonderful day, and can't wait to do it again. So it was a victory across the board.

Introduction to Geocaching

Over the past few months I have been talking to a high school friend, Ellen, and the topic of geocaching has come up. This has been a hobby of hers for some time now, and discussing our various interests, she thinks that it might be something I would enjoy. She was driving back to Pennsylvania to visit with her parents for a few days, and we have planned to meet for lunch on Monday while she does a spa trip to Hershey. While she was driving by my area today though, we arranged to meet for a little while at a local park, Newlin's Mill, where she could spare a few minutes to show me how a gps works and find one or two of the three caches that are hidden in the park.

We were able to meet as planned (on Tax Day), did find two caches near the parking lot, and it seems like I would like geocaching very much. I wish we had more time to play around with it, but she was due at her parents' house and needed to get going. I will have to look into what a lower end gps unit would cost. I suspect I will be buying one soon!

It was also very nice, and kind of surreal in a way, to see someone that I had not seen in person in almost 25 years, and had not had any contact with prior to February. I am looking forward to lunch on Monday when we have more time to talk.

Lasalle Rules - First Impressions

Having had a chance to push some figures around using these rules for the first time last Saturday evening, it makes sense to post some first impressions. So, without too much editing or structure, here are some random thoughts and comments.

First of all, it was an enjoyable evening, which to me is honestly the most important thing. It was a little bit frustrating not knowing the rules as well as I like to, but we got through it without too much trouble. And with some subsequent reviewing of the rules, we didn't mess things up too badly. Mostly minor things here and there.

Obvious point: it is a "buckets of dice" game. It was not uncommon to be rolling 10, 12 or even 15 dice at a time in combats. While I don't necessarily think this is the most elegant way to deal with probability ranges, it works well enough, and should be familiar to anyone used to Flames of War or any Games Workshop games. And at least every combat wasn't a sequential process of rolling buckets of dice several different times to get to the result.

I also want to go back and look at the time scales these rules are supposed to represent. I didn't have an issue with the way units degrade over time until you simply pick them up and remove them from the table, but given that a unit that loses a melee combat decisively breaks and is removed, we had a number of instances where a large fresh unit lost a melee and disappeared immediately. It felt odd at times. Also, in instances where the French were able to throw more than one attacking column at a British line, it was difficult for the British line to hold. Perhaps more difficult than it should have been. I would also like to take a few minutes at some point and work out the probability of this kind of attack winning decisively to see if the math matches up with our experiences.

Movement seemed reasonable. The way units recover hits, but cannot do so while close to the enemy felt right.

Once again, all in all a good first experience, and we will be coming back to these rules for more.

Lasalle Rules - First Playing

Well, as planned, Leo, Dave, Ryan and myself got together Saturday evening for our first stumbling attempts at Lasalle. I threw together a straight forward Peninsula game pitting 3 brigades of French infantry and one light cavalry brigade against a similar force of English composed of two British infantry brigades, one Portugese infantry brigade and a brigade of British light dragoons. We did fumble with the rules quite a bit, easy as they are, but had a good time. It was a promising beginning. I am still mulling over various things in my head, re-reading the rules in light of a session, and figuring out what I did and did not like.

First, a few pictures.

The action begins with a clash of light cavalry in the foreground. The British (me) push the issue early, charging the 12th light dragoons into the leading French chasseur a cheval regiment. The dice favor me (6 rolls of 5+ on 8 dice) winning decisively and vaporizing the chasseurs, killing their tactically superior brigade commander in the process. It turns out this would be the high point for the British cavalry, but we didn't know it yet.

Tide turns against the British in the cavalry clash. The remaining French hussar regiment would maul the two British light dragoon regiments in sequence, opening up the British right flank to a massed combined arms attack in later turns.

French infantry advances on a broad front. The Portugese brigade makes a wide sweeping move to the far flank, but ends up bottling itself in and not being particularly aggressive, effectively taking itself out of the fight.

French attack columns moving up the hill in the distance.

French attack columns stalling and coming back down the hill...

Observations to follow in the next post.

A Day in the Life - April 2, 2010

Pictures from today. At one point, I realized that there were a lot of different things going on over the course of the day, so I thought I would document them. The result is a glimpse into how someone with the attention span of a flea attempts to juggle family, household chores, hobbies and other interests with varying degrees of success.

What better way to start the day than with a roller skating session in the driveway with Grace.


Of course, Grace needs to play with the camera too, so here's me.


One of the things I have been working on (but not finishing) was a paint rack for my new painting table set up in the basement. It has been almost complete for a week or so, but I was one 18-inch piece of wood short of finishing. When at Home Depot the other day, I remembered to grab what I needed, so 10 minutes with a compound miter saw and a hammer completed it. Dropping it into place and organizing my paints was a simple little chore, and now I have better use of the space, ready access to all the paints, and most importantly I can see which is which.


Last year we were given a bunch of day lily and iris bulbs by a friend of Amparo's. They have been dormant in pots over the winter but every single one of them is sprouting this year, so we need to get them into the ground somewhere. We didn't really have a place in existing beds where we wanted to put them, but thought new beds at the base of the stairs down off the deck would be a good place. Carving out this little bed was more work than it looks like, being only about three feet on a side, but digging out turf, turning the dirt and all that takes a bit of effort. Day lilies are in an mulched and looking good. Irises will go into another new bed on the other side of the stairs this weekend.


Spring = deck time


Game tomorrow. Leo, Dave and Ryan are coming over to have a first run-through of the Lasalle rules for tactical Napoleonics. We expect this to be a fumble-through, as I have read the rules but don't know them very well, Leo has played once, and the others are brand new to it. I will takes some pictures and post my impressions after the game. In the meantime, sometime between now and then, I need to turn at least half of this table from a mess into a game board with troops set up. Hmm, I wonder when that will happen in advance of 7pm Saturday? (maybe 6pm Saturday...). First things first, these hundreds of Hundred Years War figs need to go away, or at least out of the way. I suspect they will line up in back and watch the new game...


Spring in southeastern Pennsylvania. The maples bloom early.


Re-basing 15mm Napoleonics. In order to try to be more flexible with my Napoleonic figs and yet not need to invest a huge amount of money in buying more, I am re-basing what I have in a format that is flexible enough to be used for Lasalle, Napoleonic Warfare, or From Valmy to Waterloo. The old stands on the right are turning into the new stands on the left. This may be an interim solution until I do have more that can be put onto denser bases for better visual appeal, but I want to be able to use them now and I need more stands.


Lastly, at the end of a busy day, this is where I can often be found in the warmer months.

Seven Years War Prussians

Well, I guess every new project must start from humble beginnings. So this is the seed from which I hope a Prussian Seven Years War army will sprout. At this point I have painted a sample of a few different things.


The mounted general is (I think) an Essex Frederick the Great figure.

His fledgling army is composed of one battalion of the 18th infantry regiment, the grenadiers from the 10th regiment, and a foot battery.


These were all painted a few years ago actually, and the faces could use touching up, but they aren't too bad. It's a start anyway - something to build around...

Convention Report - Cold Wars 2010

HMGS East's spring convention, Cold Wars 2010, was held in Lancaster Pennsylvania (USA) beginning Thursday and ending today (Sunday). The most glaring thing that struck me, having been attending these shows faithfully for well over ten years, is that attendance was way off this year. There were less people in general, the dealer area was not crowded, some of the people I always see weren't there, and from a game mastering perspective, there were many less games being run and therefore less for attendees to do. Wandering through the main ballroom gaming area, I have never seen so many empty tables with nothing going on. The same was true of all the smaller side rooms, where around half the tables were inactive at any point in time. It was sad and disturbing.

The reasons for the lack of attendance are hard to pin down, but are probably a combination of the economy, a very rainy forecast for the weekend (Saturday was an all day downpour), and possibly some dissatisfaction with HMGS over their repeatedly botched handling of the moving of the upcoming Historicon flagship summer con away from Lancaster to another location. But that's a whole different story.

What did I do? Not too much I suppose, when I think back on it. I live about an hour away from Lancaster, a little more with traffic, so I drove up and back Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I played in a couple medieval games, bought a bunch of stuff (more on that in a moment), met and caught up with a bunch of friends that I only see occasionally, and did a lot of wandering and watching. More wandering and watching than anything, really.

As for the spending, I certainly did my part to revive the economy this time around. Having had the bug to get out of the medieval period(s) for a while, my next project will be Seven Years War in 25mm, and to that end I added 10 more bags of Old Glory figs to the small pile of SYW that I already have. The short term plan is that most of the infantry will be packed off to Sri Lanka in short order, and I will begin working on some guns and cavalry, with a few other odds and ends like Prussian grenadiers mixed in.

Other purchases included 3 rules sets: LaSalle, Impetus and Saga's Lace Warfare. Eight feet of JR Miniatures one-inch streams to expand my two-inch river set. A few bags of bases of various sizes from the nice folks at Litko. A few 25mm Ottoman flags from Rick O'Brien (the Flag Dude). Three Conflix brand painted buildings good for anything from early medieval through 1800's. And last but not least, in the effort to get back into playing Napoleonics, enough painted 15mm figs from Gajo to make a small Spanish division and a Portugese brigade. Adding these figures to the French and Brits I already have gives me enough to run a modest sized game on a 6 x 8 table with some troop variability.

Wow, I bought more than I thought...

While talking to Chris Parker (Day of Battle author) I committed to running some 25mm Day of Battle games at Historicon. King of Prussia PA is even closer than Lancaster, and I have been lazy about running games over the last couple of years. So I will sign up for a few games to run. Games that require little or no work beyond what I already have completed, which is the nice thing about being virtually done a few periods. Really the only thing I need is to mail order a few specific flags from the Flag Dude, and then I am done.

As always, going to these shows gets the fire burning again, so I expect that this will trigger a burst of activity on my part. Let's hope. At the very least, I expect to be able to post pictures of the new painted figs that I bought from GAJO, as well as some of the other Napoleonics that I am re-basing.