Monday, August 20, 2007

Nothing much new.

Last week I was on vacation with no real plans of any sort. I spent most of the week visiting a few places around the area, and driving some of the backroads to get there. This lead to visiting so smaller rural towns with a few Waymarks along the way.

I've already posted a couple of Lustron Homes in Team Farkle 7's new category. I've been interested in this since it was first brought up in the forums. It was something that I never knew about, and found there were a few in some nearby towns. I also grabbed a few new Ohio Historical Markers, a lighthouse, a unique weathervane, and a few others that got me some new icons.

In addition to that Dewgrl and I spent some time up in nearby Marion, Ohio. The Marion Area Convention and Visitors Bureau up there is have a contest of sorts called Marion's Amazing Treasures. Basically they have a list of various interesting and historical sites in and around Marion. You visit them and get either a stamp or sticker on a "game card." There are locations that are manned, such as the Union Station, and those that are unmanned like the Harding Memorial. The manned stations involve speaking to someone or taking a tour to get a sticker, and the unmanned stops have a green wooden box that has a small stamper inside so you can stamp your own card. Depending on how many of the 30 squares you check off, you qualify for various prizes. Many of the locations we were already familiar with, but some we were not. Either way it was still interesting to visit the various locations. It worked out well that I was on vacation...Dewgrl works nights so we were able to get to most of the various museums and such that hold odd weekday hours. There are still a few we need to visit, so we're planning to wrap it up this weekend.

Aside from the running around I got a little caught-up on my W'marking backlog. I mostly went through and posted those that are in categories I hadn't covered yet to get some new icons. I still have plenty more Waymarks to get through, so I've got some work ahead of me still.

Monday, August 6, 2007

Racing, and jumping through hoops..

I haven't been posting on here much lately because I've been somewhat busy. There have been a few new caches to go after, Dewgrl has recently found a love of rockhounding, I've been going up to Mid-Ohio for some races, helping my folks build a shed, and catching up on my W'marking backlog. The weather has been fairly hot lately as well, so I've opted to minimize my activity outdoors. It's pretty much typical for Ohio in late July-August, but it's been a mild summer up until now so it just seems worse than it is. The other day my thermometer was reading 101.5°f. Some of that is due to radiant heat because of where the outside sensor is located, but it wasn't too far off. Plus the humidity has been way up there. I also observed that this past winter my thermometer recorded a low of -17.1°f, so we've had nearly 120° difference in temperatures.

This past weekend I was at Mid-Ohio with my brother and sister-in-law for the Honda Supercycle Weekend. I've watched a few superbike races on TV, and have always wanted to go up for this event, but just never made it. I was there on Saturday for practice, qualifying and a few races. After getting sunburned at the last 2 races I've been to up there, I thought I was doing everything right. I picked up a light, long sleeve, fishing type shirt, put on jeans instead of shorts, and had on my everyday ball cap. I forgot to put any sunscreen on the few exposed areas thought and am suffering the result. I ended up with a decent burn on my face and neck, resulting in some blistering on my chin...maybe next time I'll remember the sunscreen!

As I also mentioned I've been working through my Waymarking backlog when I've had a few free moments. For the most part everything has gone smoothly, and most of them have been posted in categories that I've posted in before, so no big deal. This evening though I posted one in the Rails to Trails category. I didn't realize it before I went to post that they require one to not only upload pics to the gallery, but to also post them in the long description as well. I know that some folks do this on most of their Waymarks anyhow, but it's not something I'm accustomed to, nor regularly practice. I guess it wasn't too much of a big deal, basic HTML is easy enough, but it just seems unnecessary. Uploading into the gallery or posting in the description, one or the other, would suffice. It just seems arbitrary to require both. I did so to meet the requirement, but I'll think twice about marking, next time I come across some rail trails.