A change of vocabulary ;-)

Relayed by Stu Savory on October 29, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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DBD34 Goldies

Peter Harris asked me for a photo of a BSA Gold Star. This is one by Paul Gockel.

And here's one I took myself in Sammy Miller's motorcycle museum.

Relayed by Stu Savory on October 28, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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Clean Underwear needed !

I found this scary video on YouTube :-

Gawd, am I grateful that wasn't me! I recognize the road. It is the Zellerrain road, a 20 mile, 22% steep, mountain pass in the Ybbstaler Alps in the Steiermark (Austria).
The Honda Transalp rider has good reflexes. I'd need to take a break to stop my knees shaking. When I was touring Scotland on my big motorcycle last year, I encountered a huge stag on a narrow glen road. But he was more surprised than I was, and with one majestic bound sailed right over the 6 foot fence at the roadside. Unclench now! :-)

Comments (3) :
Schorsch simply says "Aua!" (German for Ouch!).
Doris (USA) sent photos of some very rare albino moose grazing on the roadside just north of the Wisconsin border on a highway near Marenisco, MI. "The odds of seeing an albino moose are astronomical and to see this in the upper peninsula of Michigan, near Wisconsin, is even greater than astronomical. "

Four Dinners contributes this anecdote :-

"Beautiful beast mind....you just don't want the sod 
appearing in front of your motorbike!!!

A few years back - in my 'selling windows and conservatories' life - 
I was hacking down a country road to an appointment,
when a young deer...well I didn't ask its age but I 
reckon it was on the young side...
shot out of this woodland to my right.

I slammed the anchors on and - for the only time in my life - 
left rubber on the road. The deer virtually ran straight into my car, 
bounced off the side and shot off into the woods on the other 
side of the road.

I was fine...the deer was fine. Sorted.
Except....there's always an except with me eh?
The dickhead in the car behind me got out and walked forward to me. 
I was still sitting there shaking, but happy the deer had made it.

"I am a police officer" said the dickhead. "And?" said I

"Er...you braked very hard...that could be an offence 
against the road traffic act" he burbled

"You see the deer?" I asked with a winning smile

"Yes" he acknowledged

"Then fuck off" I advised continuing the winning smile.

And you know what? He did.

Well? Come on!!!!! It could have been Bambi!!!!......;-)"

Embedded by Stu Savory on October 28, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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YMMV ;-)

Soon, we will have a new cabinet in the German newly-elected government.

In compliance with anti-discrimination laws there are five women, a gay, a cripple, an old guy, some non-catholics and an immigrant . Hey, they forgot the token black ;-)

Seriously though, I hope they have been selected for their talents and abilities . . .

Comments (4) :
Hiltrud jokes : - "I read this, then set the clocks back today . . . . . by 20 years ;-)"
Brian (UK) sez sarcastically "... here in the UK, even the Prime Minister places the blame for our recession squarely on our previous Chancellor of the Exchequer;-)"
Four Dinners (also UK) said " Cabinets are never selected for their talents and abilities. Let's face it. Only 45% of the electorate bothered to vote over here (UK) at the last general election (mainly because so many are disenfranchised). Of that 45%, 25% voted Labour. Right. A quarter of less than half of the voting population voted Labour and they then claim a mandate to govern. I freely admit my mathematics is faulty at best but even I can see there's some'at not quite right here.... Mind you, when Princess Tony hopped it not only did we have the most corrupt government in British history we even had a PM nobody wanted - even the government!!! Ahhhh......British democracy eh? Held up as an example all around the world. No wonder the world's going to hell in a basket!"
Most corrupt, 4D? Haven't they always been to some degree corrupt? In the late 16th century scottish poet Alexander Montgomerie was writing mellifluously. I remember reading in school the one about God creating the first Highlander, but I can't even remember the title nowadays, let alone the humorous content for you :-( However, he also wrote poems about the political corruption of the day, I quote :-

		My Lords, late lads, now leiders v our lauis,
		Except your gouns, some hes not worth a grote,
		Your colblak consciense all the country knawis;
		How can ye live, except ye sell yr vote?

Karl-Gustav complains : - "Shame on you! These are all experienced politicians!"
Experience is the one thing you have left when everything else is gone!
4D : "@Karl-Gustav: Experience in corruption is the only experience our politicians have". Stu : here's a lovely quotation from pTerry's new book Unseen Academicals : "Another proposition, that the city (Ankh-Morpork) be governed by a choice of respectable members of the community who would promise not to give themselves airs or betray the public trust at every turn, was instantly the subject of music-hall jokes all over the city." Great pTerry, right on the dot every single time ;-)

Sarcasm by Stu Savory on October 25, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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Personal Digital Calculator ;-)

Down at the pub, we were talking about the pocket calculator, specifically how long they had been around. Yes,I'm old enough to have used a slide rule professionally :-)

So I told the guys that they had a built-in Personal Digital Calculator, which can automatically multiply by nine. Let me show you how it works :-)

Spread out your hands in front of you, mentally numbering the fingers 1 (left thumb) through 10 (right thumb). Say you want to calculate 3 times 9. Just fold down finger three (the longest one). Now how many digits are left standing to the left of the folded one? Two! And to the right? Seven! So 3*9=27 :-) Now lets try 6*9. Digit 6 is the right little finger. So there are five digits to the left and four to the right. 6*9=54 :-) See, you have a Digital Calculator with automatic times-9 mode ;-) OK for you, 4D ?

Comments (2) :
Gunther's Grandad is still trying to work out WHY this works, Gunther tells me.
Four Dinners said "Bloody hell!!!!! I understood it!!!! Really!!!! I did (and without asking Jax)....I am impressed with myself...which is quite a novelty...;-)"

Yes, I do know the picture is blurred. It's deliberate. You think I want my fingerprints available online?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on October 23, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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Hypnotising numbers ;-)

Down at the pub, we were talking about hypnotism, so I teased the guys and gals by claiming that for the price of a beer I could even hypnotise numbers. They could give me ANY four digit number they liked (as long as it had at least 2 different digits) and I would hynotise it to change into 6174 ;-)

1) Choose a four digit number, say 3690. Use your own choice here.

2) Rearrange the digits in ascending and in descending order (keeping any leading zeroes) to get two other numbers, in this example 0369 and 9630.

3) Subtract the smaller from the larger (9630-0369=9261).

4) Using this four digit number intermediate result, loop back to step two.

Whatever original number you chose, you will eventually get stuck on 6174 ;-)

I tell ya folks, Maths know-how generates free drinks. 4D, this bar trick is for you ;-)

Comments (2) :
4D has problems with this, commenting confusedly " Howdo Stu, I'm in. So you...er...thingy....and then you....um whatsit...'ang on....lemme read it agin....;-)" OK. 4D, I'll do a much simpler one for you on friday. Count on your fingers OK 4U? ;-)
Gudrun says : "I'm with 4D on this; I need pencil and paper here. I can anagram the numbers in my head, but I need pencil and paper for the subtraction."

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on October 21, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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Is there ANY reason why you would NOT want to be a fighter jock? So tell me! ;-)

Comments (6) :
Four Dinners wet his keyboard with " I keep spilling me beer......:-)"
Klaus (USA) sent a number of photos of the Tucson Boneyard, which is the world's third largest airforce, consisting of stored old jets, all capable of being returned to service if the need ever arises. 'Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who did not.' (Thomas Jefferson). "It's difficult to comprehend the size of the 'Bone yard' and the number Of aircraft stored there. For those of you that have never seen this, it is something to see. The precision in the way they are parked is impressive. Remember - Each one of these babies had a multi-million dollar price tag!" Right, Klaus, as far as I know, the US invests more in tools to kill other people than it does in health care (or education) for its own people :-(
Corey likes standing in the Mach Loop (a hillside in Wales) looking DOWN at the RAF going through at 50 feet, even inverted (that way they can see the ground better ;-).
Mary Ellen (USA) comments on the previous comments :- "The Tucson Boneyard??!! And the Mach Loop thingy in Wales?? I've spent quite a few minutes today looking at these. And I'm thinking if I lived in that peaceful valley in Wales, I'd set up a big slingshot and heave potatoes at the daggone things! But I have always been a fan of slingshots and of peace & quiet. And it's a family thing: My dad used to borrow my slingshot to drive off the neighbor's pet retriever with wee spuds when the dog came to pay his big, stinking respects on our lawn. Not that my dad was a lawn freak (after planting it, he never had anything else to do with it. Didn't mow or rake or fertilize it--my youngest brother and i did that), but he had no respect for the retriever, who ran under the car the first time they took him out hunting and a shot was fired. He did save the dog's life, though, when our neighbor, in exasperation, was going to shoot IT. I dunno. All those PLANES parked outside of Tucson!! And they're not even brand new?"
Charles Pergiel (also USA) sent a link to Google Maps for Boneyard Tuscon Arizona - Davis Monthan Air Force Base. Go take a look, zoom in for details and zoom out to get the sheer scale of the thing. Must be quite a bit of the US national debt there!
Paul (D) sent several photos from his recent visit to the RAF Museum in Cosford (UK).

Collated by Stu Savory on October 19, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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Misleading Questions

Just recently I was in a discussion with some teachers "Are misleading questions fair in an exam?" . Opinions were divided 50:50. What do you think?

Here's a personal anecdote : about 50 years ago ( = when I was 15 or so ), we had an O-level maths training question which said - I quote this from my lousy memory - Using squared paper draw an equilateral triangle with the corners on lattice points of the squared paper. The base line does not have to be horizontal."

I remember thinking, that's far too trivial for an O-level exam question, any fool could draw that. And therefore it must be impossible, it's a trick question. Indeed I answered That is not possible!, which got me good marks (not 100% because I had omitted to prove it). Proof: bisect the top angle, dropping a vertical to the base. Let the sides be 2*N units long, then the bisected side has halves of length N. Thus by Pythagoras, the centre upright has length N*(root(3)), and since root(3) is not rational, the top of the triangle cannot be on a lattice point, because the lattice points can only represent rational numbers, QED. Now that wasn't too difficult, was it?

So the question for discussion is : Is it permissible to have questions which make hidden assumptions and expect the student to challenge them? I would argue YES. Certainly I expect law-students to catch faulty assumptions, after all we expect our lawyers to be tricky ;-) Maybe it depends on the age of the schoolchildren?

Or think about one of the questions about Atheism : Can God create a stone so heavy that even He can't lift it? An answer of either Yes or No would seem to imply that God is not omnipotent, a defining characteristic of Gods, and thus there can be no God(s). However, the word 'heavy' implies the existence of a gravitational field and the stone not being at the centre thereof. Similarly, the word 'lift' means 'move away from the centre of the gravitational field'. Now any omnipotent God could create another universe with only that one stone in it. The centre of the stone would thus be the centre of the gravitational field, and there would be nothing else relative to which the stone could be 'lifted'. So the answer is 'Yes', and unfair(?) assumptions are made in the question merely by the choice of words :-(

What age does a person have to be to understand that? Or what IQ?

Or this question (again from a Maths exam) : Given a biased coin (say 70% heads to 30% tails), how do you make a fair toss? What is subtly misleading about that?
Can you 1) answer the question and 2) identify the misleading part of the question?

So, blogreaders, are misleading questions fair in an exam? Let's get YOUR feedback.

PS: For the philosophy majors, aren't ALL questions misleading?

Comments (4) :
Sarchi commented "your post on 'misleading questions' really touched a nerve centre I tweeted it."
Charlotte asked "What does 'irrational' mean in this context?"
It means : cannot be represented as a fraction N/M, lass.
Charles Pergiel wrote "I thought the key line was that the base did NOT have to be one of the lines ruled on the paper. So that got me to thinking: maybe there are two different right triangles with the same hypotenuse, and if there are, maybe they can be arranged so you get an equilateral triangle. Turns out there are two different right triangles with integer sides with the same hypotenuse: (5 x 5 and 7 x 1). In both cases the hypotenuse is the square root of 50. Unfortunately, they don't form an equilateral triangle when plotted on quadrille paper. They either overlap or don't reach. As for the main point of your story. I am ambivalent about trick questions. I like them if I detect the trick, and despise them if I don't. As for their use in school, I think they might be considered extra credit and used to seperate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak." Always make sure you have read and thoroughly understood the question before starting to answer it, as my old physics teacher Sam always said :-)
Four Dinners is playing catch-up & comments on my last fortnight's blog all at once :- "Howdo Stu, I never needed misleading questions I was confused already....;-) I've read this post over and over and still haven't a Scooby... I've copied and pasted it and sent it to Jax in the hope she can explain it to her daft dad! Must admit I'm always washing my hands. I think it comes from all the Cats Protection stuff I did up to about 7 years back when the union took over. Now I'm dossing I'm getting back into cat stuff - latest post a case in point. Ahhh!!!! Now THAT is a train!!!! Bring back the steam engine!!!!!....must be an age thing I suppose but as a kid I wanted to be an engine driver - still would if there were any running! Envy free sharing?....As long as Dinners doesn't get involved with cake cutting it just might work!...;-) My mate JC (retired Chief Executive of The Old Pretenders FC and retired Chief Clerk of Barnet & Hendon Magistrates Court) recently mentioned this geo thingy to me. Apparently he's got involved with a crew around Watford who do it. He is hooked. Owt that JC likes is fine by me! The new Saturn ring is so far away is it really Saturns? How many rings does the bloody planet want then??? - maybe point out the cake cutting scenario to it? Checkers? I will challenge you to a game of chess if I ever make it over there. I'm good at chess - so I tell myself. "Took my Queen? Never mind, Tally-Ho! off we go!"....not exactly Grand Master material but I do enjoy a good game - even on the losing side...."

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on October 16, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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Read this blog ? Now wash your hands!

Hi, Jean!

Today is international-wash-your-hands-day (really),
So RIP, Pontious Pilate ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on October 15, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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Traintime

A bout 20 miles NE of here is the Egge range of hills with just one place where a small river meanders through. So this was the natural place (almost 200 years ago) to build a railway junction. The village of Altenbeken grew up around the junction where several lines passed through these hills. There is a famous viaduct, providing great photo opportunities, more so on the steam-revival-festival days.

They are all rail enthusiasts here, the engine drivers wave to the photographers on the viewing platform, and the locals are so proud of their tradition that they put retired steam engines in their front gardens! This is 044389-5, a big 2-10-0 passenger engine.

In the top photo on the left you can see the village graveyard. It is an interesting walk through it, as the local rail employees had their final rank engraved on their grave-stones, e.g:- Johann Schmied, Chief Engine Driver, or Gerd Braun, Track Inspector. The Spirit of Steam has not died in Altenbeken. However, I'm told (teased?) the village graveyard gets locked up at night. Are they keeping rail-fans out - or old rail staff IN ?

Meanwhile, courtesy of You-Tube, Cream^* were playing Traintime some 42 years ago. You can hear the big pistons pumping and the whistle moaning in Jack's harmonica :-)

Comments (3) :
Diane (Canada) wrote : "Really enjoyed this, Stu. I love train travel, lore & history..."
Brian wrote : "Keep in training ;-) ..... I also enjoyed your piece on how trains corner."
Paul (GB) quips "Duck! Here comes Mallard! "

^* : Cream = Jack Bruce (Bass), Ginger Baker (Drums) and Eric Clapton (Lead guitar). I've heard 'em LIVE :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on October 14, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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3 way envy-free sharing

S mall children (and politicians) often squabble about who is getting an unfairly large portion of the cake. Justice must be seen to be done, and by all :-)

And if you have but TWO children, there is a widely known solution to the problem of envy-free sharing : let child number one cut the cake into what it thinks are fair halves, then let the other child choose which slice it wants to take.

But what if there are THREE envious children? Most people don't know how to ensure fair shares in this situation, and so, because it is more complex, I'll explain it today :-)

Let us arbitrarily number the children one, two and three irrespective of their ages, weight, height, gender, race, IQ etc. Even better, let them number themselves.

1. Let child number One cut the cake into what it thinks are fair (envy-free) thirds.
2. Let child number Two trim what it thinks is the largest piece to create a 2-way tie for largest. Set the thin trimming aside.
3. Let child number Three pick their slice, then child two, then child one. However...
4. ... child two must take the trimmed piece if child three did not.
5. Call the child who took the trimmed piece 'T', and call the other (of child 2 oder 3) child 'NT' for 'non-trimmed'.
6. Let child 'NT' divide the thin trimming into what it thinks are fair thirds.
7. Finally, let the children choose their third of the trimming in the sequence first child 'T', then child One, then child 'NT'.

This envy-free solution is due to the mathematicians Conway (Mr. Tree-of-Life) and Selfridge. It terminates after these 7 steps. For 4 or more children, there is also an envy-free solution, albeit very complicated, which takes arbitrarily long to finish.

Make sure you have understood the procedure thoroughly - drawing diagrams as necessary - before trying it out on squabbling, tired and impatient hungry children ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on October 12, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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GeoCaching : Trackable Items

On previous occasions I've told you about the hobby of geocaching, a GPS-based treasure hunt. The cache often contains only cheap swag, but sometimes it contains a trackable item. These are of two kinds, GeoCoins and TravelBugs. The latter are numbered dogtags you can attach to an item of your own choice. In all these photos I've hidden the secret identifiers used to keep track of the items (to stop any cheats unfairly pretending to have seen them).

Personally, I find the GeoCoins more attractive. Here are two of them I found in the hollow oak outside the entrance to the nearby Wewelsburg castle earlier in the week.

The GeoCoins also bear unique identifiers on the reverse sides which can be used to track the items on their trips from cache to cache. Geocachers pick up the trackable item from one cache, consult the relevant online database (often www.geocaching.com) to find out the individual destination of each item, and then place the item in another cache closer to its destination.

Here are 12 trackables I've moved recently, sorted by distance travelled :-

The one at the top of the list, owned by Chiba Girl, started its journey in Hawaii and now has travelled some 58699 km as the crow flies (great circle distances). We can click on the name of the trackable item (Miss Patty Bouvier) to see its recent history :-

Alternatively we can view a map of its (57 step) itinerary :-

And, if the finders took a photo at each step, we can see where it has been, or is now (in Hellekiste, a stone-age grave site in Atteln, Germany) :-

And so , cache for cache of this surrogate travel trip, we get to see the world :-)

I wrote this on wednesday, prompted by finding my 200th cache (GC13NQX) :-)

And on thursday, I discovered that our local city (a city by virtue(?) of it having a cathedral, otherwise just your usual provincial market town) has produced a limited (250) run of its own GeoCoin, so I popped into the tourism office and bought one so I can send it "The Pilgrim" on its variegated via interruptus from cache to cache :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on October 9, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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Astronomical news ;-)

Straight astronomers have discovered a huge ring around Saturn.

Meanwhile, their gay colleagues were looking for one, one planet further out ;-)

Comments (1) :
Cowtown Pattie ROFLed "Bwahahahahaha! Bleak and bleary and humid and yucky morning with dire warnings for flash flooding this afternoon, but at Stu's place I get a big dose of sunshiny fun!"
Yup, that far out in the solar system is the place where the sun don't shine ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on October 8, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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One-dimensional Checkers

This is not so much a game as a puzzle, suitable for primary-school children (who play it) and computer-science college students (who try to program it).

Make a line of 7 places, fill the left 3 with red pieces, the right 3 with white pieces and leave the centre place empty. The aim is to interchange the red and white pieces. A piece may move into the adjacent empty place or hop over a piece of the opposing colour to land in the empty place. Hopped pieces stay on the board. Winner is whoever takes the LEAST number of moves to do this. How many do YOU need?

Primary schoolchildren can spend a whole lesson learning to think logically, but may need to be shown how to keep a tally. Programmers may choose their implementation language, I expect Charles will choose C, Chip will choose Ruby, Kriemhild will choose Lisp, Gudrun will use APL, and Knuth would use MIX (sic!) ;-) I'm a Prolog man, me.

Tag your favourite programmer to submit his code ( & result) by email here.

Comments (2) :
Charles Pergiel picked up the challenge (in C).
GeoCacher Mark Cole pointed me to a Bay Area cache which contains the puzzle :- "Stu, I see what you're up to. You must be coming out to the Bay Area and saw the Impasse puzzle and decided to turn up a few Huck Finns to get it solved for you. :)
I'm just kidding, of course. I found your blog through the Prime Divisibility page. I'd found a bunch of those rules on my own back in grammar school, but I'd never taken it to finding a general algebraic solution. Thanks for the interesting lesson. I'll probably poke around a bit more."

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on October 7, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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Those Overweight Fat Twins :-(

Milwaukee pig-iron is not my idea of a good motorcycle. Although - arguably - the twin-cylinder engine may be the best for a motorcycle, the rest should be kept trimmed down to a light weight, not a 350+ kg fat monstrosity.

I've owned a Suzuki TL1000S, light (< 200 kg) and agile, with a torquey 90° L-twin engine that revved over 10,000 rpm. Many years ago a fine NorVin too. Several of my friends own BMW flat-twin boxers. But the one I lust after most is a Triton like this :-)

Thanks to Paul Gockel for sending me the photo.......I can still drool dream :-)

Comments (2) :
Paul Gockel sent more immaculate Brit Iron photos :-
A JPS Norton hovering over a Manx,
a couple of BSA DBD34 Goldies, and
yet another Triton in Concours condition :-)
Heinz says "Here's a REALLY fat twin, the Gunbus" !

FWIW, I currently own a four, and a 3-cylinder bike. And am still waiting for my right shoulder to heal :-(

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on October 5, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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United Germany Day

We have a national holiday today, celebrating 20 years of the fall of the Iron Curtain and Germany being re-united. The nearby small town of Salzkotten has gone the whole hog and have decorated one of their numerous (and superfluous) roundabouts with a purported border scene from the fall of the Iron Curtain: Nice idea, but badly executed some artistic licence taken, as you can see :-

They've got a wire border fence topped with barbed wire, OK. They've got a Trabbi - the plastic East German 2-stroke car - even with East German plates (DDR) passing through the border, OK. But they've got the short West German border pole on the side the Trabbi is leaving and the border warning sign on the tall pole is facing the wrong way. Oh and the whole thing is set up north-south instead of east-west, artistic licence so that you can better see the whole scene when driving along the main road.

A for effort, B for execution, but worth blogging about on the two-decade celebration.

Thankyou, Mr. Gorbatschow !!! :-)

Comments (1) :
Alter Ossie wants to see the border from the other side ;-) Here you go then :-

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on September 24, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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On getting stoned ;-)

Potheads, hippies, Mary Jane Warner, Hashem, and fans of the Grateful Dead need read no further; this article is not what you think it might be ;-)

It is in fact a geocaching anecdote.

I went geocaching to visit the Dragon's Cave on a cliff in Marsberg about a fortnight ago. Near the cache is this sign which translates as 'Beware of falling rocks'. Having a childish sense of humour, I picked up one of the many fist+ sized rocks lying around and balanced it on my head for this 'instant-of-the-hit' self-portrait ;-)

At this place the path is a good 10 feet wide, so you could jump out of the way if you heard the rumble of falling rocks from the cliff above. Judging by the number of stones scattered around, this is a not infrequent event :-(

But further around the path narrows to a ledge along the side of the cliff, so my tip is to whistle loudly as you walk, so that anyone coming the other way can hear you early and divert to a passing place. But what about falling rocks when you are on the narrow ledge? You don't really want to be walking along a narrow ledge while looking up all the time for any stones! I suppose wearing a hard hat might help. Against pebbles, yes, but is a hard hat adequate against the fist+ sized stones?

So is the sign merely a cover-your-ass for the local authority? Or what am I supposed to do? Serious feedback from any climbers and hill-walkers would be appreciated.

FWIW: The pebbles that came down did so about 5 feet in front of me, close enough to inspire this post.

Comments (5) :
Nic Steenekamp sent this chinese version photo :-

Four Dinners : " Maybe German rocks drink a lot? Well? That's why I occasionally fall.."
Me? I can screw up anytime; like today. Out to the deep woods, geocaching. Park the car at a trailhead about 800 yards from the cache. Remember to set a waypoint on the GPS so I can find the car again (been there, NOT done that :-( ), but as I do so up pops the 'low battery' warning, so I click it away, after all I'm just setting a waypoint. Off down the forking trails, backtracking when I take a wrong one, the trails meander around a lot. Finally the (animal) trails peter out and it's off into the deep dark dank woods, circling around brambles, creeks, ravines etc. Finally the GPS leads me to the cache, which I duly log. Then go to call up the car waypoint to get back out of the woods and the damn battery is empty :-( No GPS, and the reserve batteries are back in the glove box. Stupid, stupid me! Since we have 100% low cloud cover, I have no idea where north is :-( So I set off keeping well right of what I think is the correct direction, so that when I DO encounter a trail I know to turn left. Finally reach civilisation (a minor road) and turn left which takes me back to the car after about 500 extra yards. MUST remember always pocket spare batteries and pack a compass....
Buzzard Billy sez :- "I think your dilemma of how to handle the falling rocks is opportunity knocking at your door. You could create a hard hat with a trampoline top (to be worn with shoulderpads like an American football player would wear to protect your shoulders). Okay, undoubtedly that would lead to drunken college students throwing rocks at each other's heads in order to perfect their techniques at using soccer head moves to deflect the rocks with creativity and style....soon to be followed by facial damage from having drunken college students do the rock throwing toward the head. Oh, how stupidity, er I mean hope, springs eternal from drunken college students worldwide. "
Jiggly Tits, which is the pseudonym of a biker-babe blogreader, writes " You could always wear your M/C crash helmet instead of a builder's hard hat. Wouldn't make you look dafter than usual . . . either ;-) BTW: how's that shoulder recovering from your M/C crash? . . . 'bout time you did some more biker-blogging again (hint)." Sadly, lass, the shoulder recovery is going far slower than I had hoped. Still can't point at the horizon after 4 months. So I won't be biking again this year; just hoping I don't remain a cripple. Still, I'll do you (hope lives ever on) a short M/C piece next week, OK?
Extreme-Cacher writes : "There are climbers' helmets and cavers' helmets, but a construction site hard hat is adequate except for extreme caching (terrain=4 or 5). I recommend dust-protective goggles too if you are looking for caches from below."

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on October 1, 2009 permalink Comments Email

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