A momentous occasion

Sometimes you just know you'll remember something for the rest of your life. That happened to me Sunday.

No, I'm not referring to my 500th cache find, though that did happen Sunday. Not sure what that signifies, other than a celebration of the base 10 number system. Did have a great time with fellow cachers, though.

I'm talking about what happened after that. After my "play date" out geocaching, it was time for me to hang with the mini-double-bass for the rest of the day while secondbass (oh she would love that! so paternalistic) got her time. At the park, W. (mini-bass 1) and H. (mini-bass 2) asked me to take the training wheels off their bikes. It usually takes several shouted requests to get me to go to the tool box, but on Sunday I practically sprinted to grab the wrench.

I only found out afterwards why H. suggested taking off the training wheels and why she insisted on calling them "stabilizers". H. watches a cartoon called "Charlie and Lola" (link warning: extreme animated cuteness). The characters are from England, so the show fits my Anglophile Education Program. Yes, I have shamelessly told H. that Lola is an Arsenal supporter. In fact, W. and H. think that every person who wears a red shirt with white sleeves plays for Arsenal. Come to think of it, who wears such a shirt and doesn't play for Arsenal?

Anyway, in one episode Lola has the "stabilizers" removed from her bike, and in the course of 22 minutes she goes from being afraid to riding her bike happily. This also explains why H. was so frustrated when it didn't happen so quickly for her. H. is a bit of a perfectionist -- it's nice to know that I gave H. my perfectionism and W. my obsessive-compulsive tendencies, so that neither of them has to deal with both at the same time.

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Grey Wolf took two of my geocoins to the Bahamas! I thought initially that he was taking them to Key West, because he thinks "math sucks" like Jimmy Buffett. I realized that I have no idea what "The Bahamas" are, so I will repeat here what I learned on Wikipedia: it is an independent country, having earned full independence from the United Kingdom in 1973, but QEII is still the Head of State.

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Who knew? Not all blogs are about geocaching. I like to read UniWatch, a blog about athletic uniforms. [Aside: shoestorm was wearing something on Sunday that looked suspiciously like a geocaching uniform.] The obsessive attention to detail on the blog is very appealing to me, but there is so much there that I find it a hard blog-slog sometimes. Two things led to my uniform interest: (1) being in thrall of TBDBITL and the greatest uniform tradition in college sports: the Ohio State Buckeye helmets;
and (2) the fact that in 1981 the Cincinnati Bengals changed their helmets from the worst helmets in the history of American football
to the coolest helmets (in the eyes of an 11-year-old) EVER.

Then, the Bengals went to their first Super Bowl, and I was convinced that it was because of the helmets. I had to admit that the 49ers may have ultimately had superior helmets to win the Super Bowl.

My history with football helmets also foreshadows my move to the Twin Cities. I used to collect the football helmets that came out of grocery store vending machines, and at one point I had 25 of the 26 helmets, and no matter how many quarters I wasted, I could not get that last helmet. And then, in one of the most memorable moments of my young life, my dad returned from the late night milk run and placed on my desk, in its correct position in the NFC Central Division standings, the helmet of the Minnesota Vikings. A momentous occasion indeed. About a week later, I found in the drawer of my father's nightstand EIGHT Tampa Bay Buccaneers helmets.

I have been an affiliate fan of the Vikings because of this ever since. Not to mention several (infamous?) Buckeye-Vikings, such as Cris Carter and Robert Smith. Ask me to do the Ickey Shuffle, though, and you'll see where my true loyalties are.

What does "Cache our way to Illinois" mean to you?

To my family, it means "find one cache at a rest stop in Wisconsin". Really, I shouldn't expect my family to turn a 7 hour trip into a 12 hour trip so that they can sit in the car while I roam the 0.5 miles surrounding the interstate. And, the trip wasn't that bad -- I got my one Wisconsin cache and got out a couple times in the Chicago area. I'm here to report that Chicago caches are... not that different from Twin Cities Caches. Especially since we got 8 inches of snow a week ago Friday. It felt just like home.

• I'm in love with the Palm Centro, but I realized one bad thing about CacheMate -- right now, the cache information does not include the size of the container or the cache owner. It turns out that this is a MacCaching issue; when it converts the .gpx file into the .prc file for the Palm to read, it leaves out this info. The author of MacCaching promised in his forum that he would fix this.
  
• I'm enjoying TheDazzlerD's two puzzles about the tube down around Savage [edit: the puzzles are in Savage, not the tube. I mean the London Underground. No subway in Savage as far as I know.]. I'm thinking of honoring them with a sort of parody cache of my own about the Detroit mass transit train -- one loop with 12 stops. Pathetic for a metro area of that size.
  
• Enjoyed Weeknight caching on Wednesday in Burnsville. Pre-cached with Bus&Betty and the topgears. At the park near the Burnsville mall, we then met up with ThCollector, cstjohn, X51hz, speedysk1, casinoman, and brokentooth. After finding four caches and avoiding dog poop, we moved on to Chili's, where there was a great flurry of travel bug and geocoin trading and discovering. B&B took three TBs from me on their trip to MI, and I grabbed my own Alvin's Phone Line coin from TheCollector, because, although I'm glad I've released all the coins I have purchased (almost), I miss them sometimes.
  
• Congratulations to MN_Cavepeople on the birth of a mini-Caveman!
  
• On a less important note, congratulations to pfalstad and FSU*Noles on being FTF on GW's Crimson clupea harengus puzzle cache, which was unfound for a long time. No sour grapes here, but I'm finding that unless a puzzle catches my fancy like those tube caches, it starts to feel a lot like homework. Good thing that Millah is on my case all the time...
  
• As if you care, some Arsenal news: after a complete disaster at Chelsea in the league (two goals to Didier Drogba in the last 20 minutes after going up 0-1), we can kiss the league goodbye and start thinking about the Champions League -- the first leg of the quarterfinal is Wednesday against Liverpool. In fact, we play Liverpool three times in six days. Can't beat 'em three times in a row, but hope we can do enough to move on in Europe.
  
• How about Davidson? I hadn't really cared about any of the basketball, but I caught just a little of Stephen Curry's dismantling of Wisconsin last night, and now I'm a fan! I grew up in the early 80s, when NC State (1983) and Villanova (1985) were making March Madness what it is today. Davidson for the Final Four! Even though my wife's ex-boyfriend went there!