Morton Fox's journal

Saturday's trip was south to Salisbury for another munzee raid since there were more dense areas in and around the city that I hadn't hit yet. There were also a few geocaches along the way in Camden, Bridgeville, Seaford, and Laurel.

On Sunday, I did a mascot gig at the Lawrenceville Jubilee. Solo gig this time because Damian couldn't make it due to an automotive problem. I wore the raccoon fursuit this time and it was this character's first appearance at the jubilee. It took the crowd a few minutes to warm up to the character and then it was high-fives and hugs everywhere. It was a smaller crowd than in some of the previous years because of the weather but it was still a great crowd. I did five rounds, about once per hour, and only one round was cut short a bit because of rain. Otherwise, the gig went rather well. After that, I still had time for one geocache near Trenton and a bunch of munzees in Mount Laurel.

( The caches... )

Since I had a mascot gig the next day, I decided not to venture out too far on Saturday. There were some single-park clusters of geocaches in Chester Springs and Phoenixville, which were good since I could park the rental car in one place and do a loop hike. The Binky Lee Preserve had the first set of caches. (BL series) It's a nice area with mostly grassy paths. Not all of the 14 geocaches there were easy, although with some effort, I found them all, plus a short centipede. Getting to the next set of caches proved a bit tricky because a street fair closed off half of Phoenixville and there was a closed bridge on the alternate route that I thought of taking. Eventually, I did get around to the other side of the Schuylkill River to Mont Clare for the "Abandoned Rails" cache series.

Sunday was the Hi-4 mascot gig at Lawrenceville Jubilee. This is the town that treats us well when we do the gig. We used their Main Street office as a break / changing room and it was stocked with drinks and donuts. This year, I did the gig with Zokki the hyena and Phil E. The latter was not part of Hi-4, but represented the Philly Pretzel Factory. Anyway, the event was a street fair that is two blocks long this year, a bit bigger than the year before. There was a fairly big crowd with some turnover so we didn't see the same people each time we headed out from the break room.

The gig ended at 5pm, so I still had a few hours of daylight. I noticed some good trails near Lawrenceville, so I took a walk along the Lawrence Hopewell Trail and the D&R Canal towpath for a dozen geocaches. It's funny that I never knew about the side entrance to the D&R Canal towpath all those years I lived in New Jersey. Better map data does help a lot.

( The caches... )

On Saturday, I'd planned to attend a geocaching event in Cheesequake State Park but I was late because of bad traffic delays around the Old Bridge area. So I decided to just go ahead and get to the other geocaches on my list for the area. I found most of the "BC Mania" series of geocaches. Each one is a bottle cap micro cache, hence the name. These caches themselves took hardly any time compared to the U-turns and traffic lights on the way from one to the next. However, I can recall a few of them that were placed in interesting ways. I also took a little detour to Cliffwood Beach to get away from the high traffic areas for a short while during the afternoon. Poricy Park was another place I visited on Saturday with good hiking trails. In that park, "The Most Fantabulous Person in Middletown" is an amusing cache that asks you to open a box to reveal the most fantabulous person in Middletown. It's actually a mirror. :)

On Sunday, I went to Lawrenceville to do a mascot gig with jbadger and Damian for the Lawrenceville Jubilee. It's a good event with a good crowd, although perhaps it wasn't as busy as in previous years because of drizzly/cloudy weather early in the afternoon. Unfortunately, people were a bit messy and dropped pies (among other things) on the pavement, making public fursuiting a bit hazardous. But by then, we were ready to stop and pack up anyway. I didn't take any pictures myself since I was in fursuit the whole time I was out but here are some photos and two videos from JBadger's phone.

( The caches... )

Saturday and Sunday were warm, sunny days, although it looked like rain late Sunday afternoon. On Saturday, I decided it was time to do some of the new geocaches that have been accumulating to the north. So I started geocaching near West Chester and worked my way towards Malvern, Tredyffrin, and King of Prussia. There were half a dozen caches near the King of Prussia Mall and the most interesting novelty I came across was a big vacuum cleaner. Then I returned to Exton/Uwchlan and found a few more geocaches going from there through Downingtown and back to West Chester. So it was a big triangle. Had to stop just a bit earlier to go to Home Depot near home to pick up an online order I made that very morning, but I was still in plenty of time for dinner at Ruby Tuesday in Bear.

Sunday was the day of the Hi-4 mascot gig at the CFF Great Strides event in Point Pleasant Beach. I joined mejeep and lowen_kind at the event site. freakylynx and Damian K arrived a bit later because they'd been doing another gig in Northern New Jersey that morning. I was a bit late myself so I missed the first part of the event when the walkers were leaving the event site but I got into fursuit and was ready when they returned from the walk. For a small event area, it was quite a busy event. However, it ended a bit earlier than the scheduled closing time because of the hot weather. After that, our group had a late lunch at a nearby Jersey Mike's. Then I went off on my own to do some geocaching around the area. For the short time I had, I actually did quite a number of geocaches because most of them were on the Edgar Felix Bike Path from Allenwood to Allaire State Park. It's nice to be able to park in one place and do a series of geocaches all in a row.

( The caches... )

The actual purpose of this trip to Long Island was to do a mascot gig with Hi-4 at the Jones Beach Autism Walk, but I treated it as a weekend away from home. A mini-vacation, if you will. I started driving off from home Friday evening after loading the fursuit and some overnight items into the car. It was raining that night and I hoped the rain would stop before my first geocache stop of the night, but that didn't happen. Oh well. Dinner was at Chevys in Lawrenceville to use the coupon I got on the receipt from using my birthday coupon there the previous weekend. (Would have been interesting if it was recursive but that wasn't the case.) I had a nachos grande. This is incidentally one restaurant that I think is okay, even though lots of Yelp reviewers panned it.

After that, I continued up the NJ Turnpike. I found the first cache of the night, "Kilmer Bunker", in the rain at the stroke of midnight. So it was technically my first cache of October. I stopped for more geocaches in the Perth Amboy area when I left the turnpike to switch to Route 440. I also did some easy caches in Woodbridge and Linden before deciding that it was time to cross over to New York. I got a few geocaches in Brooklyn and Queens, and arrived in Nassau County just before daybreak. Breakfast was a free Rooty Tooty at IHOP in West Hempstead. This was for the anniversary of my joining the IHOP mailing list. (Same freebie as the birthday coupon.) I suppose I can't really complain because I got free food but service wasn't that great and this restaurant has some rather foul-mouthed clientele. I didn't notice this as much back when I lived in North Jersey and visited Long Island frequently, but I guess I got spoiled when I moved out of the NYC area. I also saw a lot of bad driving behavior on the streets in that part of Nassau County. In particular, someone cornered too fast, swung around really wide and nearly knocked me over when I was just starting to cross the street.

Anyway, it was a super-productive day of geocaching. I found 48 geocaches on Saturday. The Long Island batch was mostly from Elmont to North Hempstead. I went around in a big curve, ending back at the Nassau/Queens border. I encountered one Nassau County police officer who was curious about what someone from out of state was doing in the corner of an office lot on Saturday, but he already knew about the geocache! In the evening, I went to jbadger's house to meet up for dinner. (also, I was staying at his place overnight) After checking out several restaurants on Smithtown's Main Street, we settled on Luso, a Portuguese BBQ. It's a rather expensive restaurant (then again, I seem to think anything that costs more than Old Country Buffet is expensive :) ) so you'd think there'd be something special there, but that was not the case. They don't have exotic meats, for one thing. It was just ordinary beef, chicken, or pork. Service wasn't that great either but then again, maybe I'm spoiled. For all I know, it could be normal to have to ask servers at fine restaurants multiple times for stuff before you get it. Maybe we shouldn't have expected better service than say, Denny's, even when the meal costs an order of magnitude more.

( Sunday... )

( The caches... )

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... )

Did a mascot gig for CFF Great Strides in Point Pleasant Beach today. I started from home a little early so I had time for one geocache near the bridge entering Point Pleasant Beach. Then I got to the event site early enough to snag a good parking space and start setting up in the bandshell, which is our usual changing area for this event. Also in attendance for this gig were rudofennec, jbadger, jdpuppy, jimwolf24, Damian K., rapidtrabbit, and mejeep.

It was a short gig. We started after 11am and were more or less done at around 2pm. It was a lot of fun though and there was a good crowd. After the gig, we had pizza delivered to the park. Then jbadger and I did a few geocaches in the area before we went our separate ways. I continued geocaching until night (Actually did "Geo Hotel" after dark but it was quick) and then went home.

( The caches... )

Mascot gig today. Hi-4 was on the grounds of the Secaucus Public Library this afternoon to entertain visitors to the library mini-fair and book sale. Our group this time was Damian K, mister_f, sunookitsune, antetfa, and I. I got there a little early but had to wait anyway because the changing area, which was a room adjoining the reference section, was being used for a meeting. Once they were done, we went in and changed into costume.



The fair wasn't a large event but we were kept busy interacting with kids and parents. A few kids were troublemakers but I didn't experience any tail-pulling, perhaps because mister_f's kangaroo tail was bigger. :) The gig was roughly 4.5 hours. I did two sessions in costume for 1.5 hours at the beginning and an hour at the end. In between the two sets, I assisted. (mostly tried to stop the worst of the tail-pulling :) )

After the gig, we went to Linda Thai Kitchen, a Thai restaurant in Secaucus. We had to wait about 10 minutes or so because on weekends, this restaurant is only open for dinner starting at 4pm. I'm glad we went there. The food was good and the service was excellent! I had massaman curry with pork. After the meal, Linda gave us complimentary mini blueberry muffins. (In the photo, I used a penny for size reference.) Interesting.

On my way home, I made a stop in Ridgewood for the new In A (W)Holy Place geocache. That was a pretty quick one in the parking lot of a certain upscale supermarket whose name sounds like the cache name.

I hadn't planned on going down to the Jersey Shore twice over the weekend but that's the way things happened. On Saturday, I went to CJG Visits Allaire State Park Spring Picnic. It was a small geocaching event with about a dozen attendees but it was nice. I did nearly all the geocaches in Allaire State Park and then found more in the general area before heading home.

Sunday's event was Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Great Strides in Point Pleasant. I was there for a Hi-4 mascot gig and our group this time was Damian K, jbadger, jdpuppy, jimwolf24, rukario71, and myself. There was a good-sized crowd but this event was noticeably shorter than it was last year. After the gig, we went to Jenkinson's boardwalk for lunch at Martell's. The food seemed a bit pricey but one would expect that at the beach. I had a sausage sandwich. After that, I got a peanut butter and chocolate swirl frozen custard at Kohr's.

After we split up, I headed generally northwards for a few geocaches. There wasn't very much time but I still got 10 geocaches before darkness fell.

( The caches... )

Two hot and sunny days this weekend: 80°F and over on Saturday, up to 93°F on Sunday. On Saturday, I headed out to Long Island to attend the Metro NY Geocaching "Snack-Luck" Gathering picnic event at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow. There was picnic food, of course, and then we went out in groups to find all the new geocaches in the park. After that, I went off on my own and by chance, ran into Mmacgown, Sakiman, and Dog & Bear at "WRR-4K Parkway Lawns". So we did the next few geocaches together.

At the end of the day, I went to Flushing Chinatown as I usually do on Long Island trips. Since it was a Saturday, I thought I would have to pay for parking, but I noticed that all the parking meters on 39th Avenue were out of service. So I took advantage of the free parking. There were five new geocaches, the "Flushing Freedom Mile Tour" set, in the neighborhood, so I took a walk around and found all five before going to Curry Leaves for dinner. I had E-fu Noodles with Triple Delight and Chendol. The E-fu Noodles were okay but not uniquely Malaysian. Some Chinese restaurants offer that too. Chendol is a shaved ice dessert with coconut milk, red beans, and green noodles. I'd been saving this for a warm day.

( Sunday, mascot gig... )

( The caches... )