Actually, the log was really interesting too.  One has to see this page to believe it:

I just think there is so much more to letterboxing then just running from box to box.  How boring that would get, in such a hurry to find a box just so you have time to get to the next one that you don't enjoy the one you have right in your own hand.  But hey, if that makes some folks happy.

Well, anyway, I had a pretty good day.  Really, it was a pretty good weekend.

It started off with the Playing in the Band Gathering at Tyler Park.  

Much fun and merriment was had, both during and after the gathering.  I was there early and set up Davy Jones' Locker, but alas, no one found it.  I don't think anyone really even went looking.  That is OK, next time.  I think I have made it too intimidating, though this time I think most folks would not have had too much trouble with it, and the more intrepid would have gotten it in less then an hour.  I was going for clues that were more clever then difficult, but I think folks were worried it would eat up too much time.  Though, I really liked this clue:

Yes, I actually did plant a clue in the Kid's maze. Well, from the sounds of it Mambo Dog had fun with his box, I did not get a chance to give it a go myself.

Today Sheba and I headed to Valley Forge for the Orienteering event there.  It was on a new map, Valley Forge West, which was mostly the Freedom's Foundation grounds as well as the village of Valley Forge.  It was a nice new map and Sheba and I ran (well, walked, we don't do the whole running thing) the Orange course pretty well, finishing 11 out of 35.

Afterwards I headed up to Mount Misery for some boxing.  It is a nice hike, not too long, but challenging enough.  There are some great ruins along the way, including these of the old Colonial Springs Bottling  plant, a water bottling plant at the turn of the last century.

The trail was busy.  Beside the normal hikers and horseback riders, the Orienteers (is that a word?) were all over the place.  I was even seated at one log stamping into "Treason!" when one guy ran by, jumping the log not a foot from me.  He waved hello but did not miss a beat.

I found four boxes at the top including the original Mt. Misery box which I had found more then two years ago.  All were well.  I particularly liked Mizscarlet's "Another Covered Bridge Box," whose stamp was fantastic, though "Treason!" was also excellent.  I could not find "Shall We Dance."  I am told it is there, and was checked on just this day as well, so I'll have to return and take another look.

"Well, it looks as though we might just make it yet. What—you think I mean we’ll get through this global crisis where a good portion of the Middle East, North Korea, China and Russia all have it in for us, loathe our popular culture, resent the unbridled entertainment value of “Dancing With The Stars” and are hell-bent on getting some Iranian terrorist into Mexico City, have him stroll over the “border” and into the United States with a Samsonite full of dirty nukes and blow us all into teeny tiny bits and pieces and possibly even reduce our once great nation into apocalyptic steam and vapor? No, I’m talking about a crisis of even more epic proportion. Of course I mean…

Thanksgiving!

Yes, it’s here and there’s no denying—soon there’ll be a knock on the door and it’s probably an Aunt you haven’t seen in 3 1/2 years and she’s armed with really boring stories (worse than a dirty nuke?) and a Jell-O mold with unidentifiable fruit-like fragments in it (definitely worse than a dirty nuke). Don’t answer the door—hide in that “safe room” you had built after you saw that Jodi Foster movie…save yourself!

Oh, why bother? You know your wife will make you answer it anyway. I can just hear mine now, “Hey--why don’t you get up off the couch and answer the door for a change—it’s not like you don’t need the exercise. I would, only I’m busy preparing a Thanksgiving feast for a small army while you sit there in your fat pants and watch Regis host the Thanksgiving Day parade on television.” You’ll have to read the preceding in your own version of the Tania “voice” as my Website hasn’t advanced to that stage yet. Yet. And you know what? My wife is probably right (though I’ll deny having said that if you tell her). I might as well answer the door and let the holiday get started—otherwise, it’ll never be over.

Yes, I know that Thanksgiving is about family—I just didn’t know it was about all of the family. My wife and kids are lovely and I’d be happy to eat my weight in poultry and yams with them any day of the week in any month of the year, but when you toss Cousin Bessie and Uncle Lazlo into the mix, I may have to endure it but I don’t have to like it (plus, Lazlo still owes me $328.00…but this isn’t the time or place). See, everybody is always talking about the tryptophan in the turkey that makes everyone all lethargic and punchy halfway through the meal, but that’s not it at all—what saps us of our strength is our relatives telling us some new version of the old boring story they told us last Thanksgiving! And it’ll happen again next year and the whole vicious cycle will continue itself until I end up being someone’s Uncle Lazlo! It’s like a “Twilight Zone,” only Rod Serling won’t come out and end the show…!

So I eat through the anxiety and test the powers of the elastic in my fat pants…I mean, my holiday trousers. Really, you’ll have to forgive me. See, we’re getting ready to leave for the big Christmas Tour next week and it’s entirely possible that I’m getting a little anxious. Be sure to come out and see me—there’s nothing that calms my nerves like a full house!

As for a note to end my Thanksgiving diatribe? I believe someone’s bringing a casserole dish filled with sweet potatoes that they top with marshmallows. I guess any day that sanctions main-course-dinner-food being topped with deliciously fluffy marshmallows can’t be all bad. See—I found a happy ending! It’s a Thanksgiving miracle!"

That being said, one thought had been working on my mind all day.  I found myself agreeing with Springchick today, something that does not happen very often.  I felt so compelled that I actually wrote her a private email about what she had to say, and that I was in agreement with her.

So, what could this be?  Well, earlier this week Wanda had announced that she and Pete had just gotten to 12, 500 boxes.  An astonishing feat, to be sure.  So much so, that I find myself having trouble believing them.  Moreover, she said she did it one afternoon on Cape Cod while they were finding 75 boxes.  Springchick, rightfully so, asked how it was possible for them to get 75 boxes in a single afternoon.  I'd like to know that myself.  Heck, I'd like to know how you can possibly get 2500 boxes in just four months, as it was just this July that Wanda had announce they had found their 10, 000th box.  Long story short, I think Wanda is lying.

Now, to me, I really don't care how many boxes you have found, nor how many you have planted.  Look at Mapsurfer.  He is aces in my book, yet he has very few finds.  His boxes are excellent, and clues unmatched.  I don't even keep track of my finds.  For some reason, however, it is important to some people.  That is fine, but do you need to inflate your numbers to make you special or something, and then announce it to the world as if it is the most important thing?

"We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

"We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

"The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers--the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.

"Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.

"These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

"Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your "lives fought for life . . . and left the vivid air signed with your honor.''

"I think I know what you may be thinking right now--thinking, "We were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.'' Well, everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren't. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him.

"Lord Lovat was with him--Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, "Sorry I'm a few minutes late,'' as if he'd been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he'd just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.

"There was the impossible valor of the Poles who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold, and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.

"All of these men were part of a rollcall of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore: the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland's 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England's armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard's "Matchbox Fleet'' and you, the American Rangers.

"Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

"The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge--and pray God we have not lost it--that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

"You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

"The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They thought--or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

"Something else helped the men of D-Day: their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we're about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.''

"These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.

"When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together.

"There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall Plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall Plan led to the Atlantic alliance--a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.

"In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They're still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost 40 years after the war. Because of this, Allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as 40 years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose--to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.

"We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.

"But we try always to be prepared for peace; prepared to deter aggression; prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms; and, yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever.

"It's fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II: 20 million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the Earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.

"We will pray forever that some day that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.

"We are bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We're bound by reality. The strength of America's allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe's democracies. We were with you then; we are with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.

"Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.''

"Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their value [valor], and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.

"Thank you very much, and God bless you all."

Text was found here.

So, what did I do?  I went in the house and got my gun.  No, I didn't threaten them, I started cleaning it.  By the time they got to my house, it was in several pieces on my picnic table.  Needless to say, they still veered away, and I haven't seen them in the neighborhood since.

Well, now I live in a new neighborhood, new town, and have been chomping at the bit to do the same to the local group of them, but in the mean time, I have scared off the local Democratic Candidate for Congress, Pat Murphy.

Now, Pat is a nice guy, and I ran into him on the way home from breakfast yesterday as he was campaigning for today's primary election.  I knew I was in trouble when I saw someone across the street with a sticker on his chest, and sure enough, just as I got to my front door, clutching my half read newspaper, there is Pat extending his hand.  I shook it with a smile, and he went on to explain that he was running for the 8th District seat, and would love to get my vote tomorrow.

"I am sorry, I am a Republican."

I think he was a bit surprised actually.

"Well, maybe in November," he went on to say, and started in on his positions.  I stopped him when he got to rolling back the tax cuts to increase revenue.  The game is now afoot!

"Why would you roll back the tax cuts when revenue is actually up because of them.  When people have more of their money they are going to spend it.  Don't you think that people can spend their money better then the government can?"

He stammered, "Yes, but the tax cuts only effected the top 1% of earners."

"Really, then why have I had a reduction in taxes that I have paid in the last few years, even though I am earning more?  I am no where near the top 1%."

He was stumped again.  He campaign worker stepped in to the rescue, "But you local taxes have gone up because of No Child Left Behind, and it's under funding."

"Really, you mean the largest, most expensive education program in Federal government history?"  Fun, fun, fun!  "I actually am against this program because it doesn't provide school choice.  Besides, the Federal Government should not be in the business of schooling anyway, it should be locally controlled and funded.  As far as I am concerned the Education Department could be shut down tomorrow and our kids would be better off."

They were beside themselves. "Nice talking to you," he extended his hand.  I smiled and shook it again.

"You too, good luck." (Irene would be sooo proud)

Myrtle Beach Pavilion is in it's last year, closing at the end of the season, so I would like to make it to the park and photograph it, as well as get in as many rides as I can.  The park is not very big from what I can gather, but it is yet another seaside park that is leaving us.  Besides the Pavilion, there is Family Kingdom, with yet another 1960's John Allen Coaster (I seem to be riding a lot of them this year), the Swamp Fox.  I think there are a few other things down there as well.

The Rally Master, Natty Bumppo, out did himself this year, setting up nine boxes along the 35 mile trek, including one in a winery, and another in a safe that we had to crack.  As if that was not enough, there were bonus boxes galore, six from Natty, as well as several more planted by the Crayola Posse, and another six planted by myself as part of my Nattybumppo Cars series.

Our team, Team Eeeevil Dawg, with Jan and Lightnin' Bug joining me, were second out of the gate, following Crayola Posse, who has the first post time.  This gave both teams ample chance to plant many confusing and confounding boxes and hitch hikers along the way.  We were further confounded by the boxes themselves, everything from not so obvious obvious hiding places to a compass conundrum that was a little off (but still found).  And then there was this:

We got a kick out of that, but thought it was Crayola Posse's doing, when it was actually a bonus box.  There were four of these in total.  In the end we did manage to get all nine of the main boxes, but no bonus boxes which would have given us some bonus points.  Well, at least we have learned something for next year.