Morton Fox's journal

Cloudy, 60-65°F. I woke up early Saturday morning for a trip to Long Island. I'd already packed two days before so it was just a matter of loading the stuff (otter fursuit, overnight bag, two boxes with extra clothes and sleeping bag, and that's just for a two-day trip! :) ) onto the car. It sure was cold in the morning! I got two quick geocaches on the way to NY state. Once I got to Elmont though, the serious geocaching began. I'd not been to Long Island in about a year and Nassau County was chock-full of new geocaches. In the short stretch from Elmont to East Meadow, I found 30 geocaches and most of them were rather quick roadside or street corner park-and-grabs.

In the evening, I headed over to jbadger's place, where I would spend the night. We went out for a hibachi dinner at Hotoke in Smithtown. Sometimes I think that living on my own for so long has made my tastes rather out of sync with everyone else's. Hibachi is a good example of that. I do not regret going to Hotoke because that's the only way I could find out that the hibachi experience isn't for me. It's just a bit disappointing when I'm the only one at the table not having a good time. Anyway, here's what I thought. The place is noisy and the locals are loud. A hibachi table seats about two dozen people so unless your group is that big, you'll have to share it with other groups and some people, well many people, don't watch their language and don't use their indoor voices. Also, I wasn't terribly amused by the chef's antics. He dropped a utensil while trying to juggle and some of the food he flung ended up on the floor. I didn't like the prices either. $20 for portions that aren't filling? $2.75 extra charge for fried rice? I didn't order the fried rice but I noticed that charge on other receipts. The only difference between steamed rice (no extra chargee) and fried rice ($2.75) is the chef stirred the latter around on the hibachi for a minute or two. Maybe it picked up $2.75 worth of magic hibachi dust. :) As I mentioned above, I don't regret going the first time but I'm not going again.

The next day, JBadger and I got up early and went to the Wantagh LIRR station to pick up freakylynx and rapidtrabbit for the mascot gig at Walk Now for Autism Speaks in Jones Beach. This was a big event with a crowd of 27,000. We entertained the crowd in the field area and also took a short walk out on the boardwalk and back. Got stopped for hugs and photo-ops probably hundreds of times and I never saw the same family twice. I thought the (still unnamed!) otter fursuit would be appropriate for a beach event. Most people guessed he was some kind of big cat or cougar. A few people did know he's an otter right away. Other guesses I heard were chipmunk, squirrel, and muskrat. I got lots of compliments on the fursuit sandals that I made because those looked like beach flip-flops. One nice thing about this fursuit is the head is large enough for me to wear glasses inside. I had some homemade anti-fog solution. (1% dish detergent solution) There was still some fogging but I only had to wait a bit for the temperature to equalize and then I had crystal-clear vision.

After the mascot gig, we went to East Bay Diner in Seaford. Rather confusingly, there's another East Bay Diner on the same road, two miles to the west in Bellmore. I had bison burger deluxe. Before ordering, I wanted to know whether the bison burger was good. I didn't realize until I checked my online photos later that I'd already tried it myself a year ago! Yes, it's really that unmemorable. :) After lunch, JBadger and I did a little geocaching. Then we went back to his place to hang out a bit and pick up my stuff. And finally, I took the long drive home, bagging one last geocache on the way at a NJ Turnpike rest area.

( The caches... )

Today, I did a mascot gig with jbadger, rukario71, foxwell, rapidtrabbit, and skyfirefox for Walk Now for Autism at Jones Beach on Long Island. It was a rainy morning but the rain cleared up by 10am so the event wasn't delayed by too much and we were able to put in a decent amount of costumed appearance time.

I must say that the charity event organizers really gave us a lot. Last year, there were tents for us but this year, the tents were in the parking lot right in the volunteer parking section. The upshot is we were able to park mere steps away from our tents and that made unloading/loading our fursuit stuff easy. Also this year, they assigned charity volunteers to be our spotters/assistants, which was a great help and something that no other event has done for us yet. Aside from that, we had the usual volunteer perks. I got a t-shirt and a bagel.

What I did was roughly as follows: I was the last one in the group to get suited up because I needed the chairs and table space. First, I headed out to the field area behind registration to interact with the crowd. Took a break. Headed out to the starting line near the stage area to wave the walkers on. Took another break. Then went to the boardwalk to interact with the returning walkers and after that, the gig ended. Post-gig lunch was at East Bay Diner in Seaford. I had the big platter with 3 kinds of fish.

Did a bit of geocaching afterwards with jbadger and foxwell. Then I went off on my own, grabbed another geocache in Long Beach at sunset and went home.

( The caches... )