Morton Fox's journal

Cloudy, 75-80°F. Had a lot of work to do this morning. First was catching up with correspondence that had been temporarily set aside because of preparation for the last two days. Second was shopping for health insurance to replace COBRA when the ARRA premium reduction ends. I've been doing that for the last few days and I do see a bunch of health plans with lower monthly premiums than what I've been paying, but I need a little while longer to decide on one.

In the afternoon, I took a break and headed out to northern Wilmington for the What I need to keep my sanity geocache. It's a quick one and conveniently along the way to shopping and lunch. Lunch today was at Moe's in Brandywine Town Center because they too sent me a birthday coupon. (Gee, I'm on a lot of mailing lists. :) ) I had Buffalo Chicken Nachos. No silly name for this on their menu, thank goodness. This is classic Moe's pile-of-stuff. I asked for all the toppings that would fit on top of the chicken and tortilla chips.

The rain started right after lunch, which was fine because I was just going to go home. When I got home, I continued work on the health insurance and narrowed it down to two health plans. (both with dental option) I suspect the one with the lower premium will turn out to be better as long as it caps the out-of-pocket maximum at a reasonable level since I really only need to insure against catastrophic problems. If the past is any guide, I'll be using the health plan mostly for dental.

Friday was a rainy day. I hadn't been to Lehigh Valley in quite a while so there were many new geocaches that were close to parking and doable in the rain. Ran into BillyPilot at a cache site so I wasn't the only one out in the rain. I also tried my hand at some Fren-Z geocaches, knowing that I would fail to find most of those, but I got lucky at his Stockertown cache. I'd been there previously to take a look around but had not felt like turning the whole area over to look for the micro cache. This time, the first thing I picked up was where it was hidden! In the evening, I went to Welcome to . . . (Branchburg NJ) 2009 geocaching event at Moe's back in NJ. By the time I got there, it was near the end of the event but I still had about half an hour to trade travel bugs and eat. I had Billy Barou with pork. They used shredded cheese because they ran out of cheese sauce.

Saturday was a sunny day and warmer than Friday. I went to Western NJ along I-80, crossed over the Delaware River to Portland and Mount Bethel, and finished in Stroudsburg. I saw NJ's Longest Traffic Light, a 3-minute red light on Old Mine Road in the Delaware Water Gap. The traffic light has to be that long because of a stretch of one-lane road next to the mountain. The cache was near the traffic light so I didn't actually have to wait. I just turned the car around, parked, and got the cache. I also stumbled across the Lakota Wolf Preserve. It is behind the campground where the "Camp Sight" geocache is located. Dinner was at Chili's in Parsippany to use this month's coupon. I had the Oldtimer and chips and salsa.

On Sunday, I had planned on doing a mascot gig at Manhattanville College in Westchester. However, the event organizers hadn't supplied parking passes and with no pass and no credentials, I had problems with security at the gate. So I decided to skip the gig and switch to Plan B, which was to go geocaching in Westchester. Yes, it was a disappointment but not a major one because that was a fine day -- sunny and breezy -- to be outdoors. The difficult geocache of the day was supposedly "Little Green Men: Tron, Master of the Bull Ship". Once I found it, I realized the problem. It wasn't placed in a way that most geocachers would expect for that area. It was an area with rock formations but the cache wasn't in the rocks, where I saw most of the signs of searching activity. For a late lunch, I had chicken taco and chicken burrito at Taco Bell in New Rochelle. Wasn't planning on eating at Taco Bell but I used their restroom so I might as well get food. For dinner, I just came home and cooked because I wasn't that far from home.

9968 geocaches found, 32 to go.

( The caches... )

Sunny but cold. 35-39°F. I'd planned on going to the Welcome to . . . (Branchburg NJ) geocaching event so I did some geocaching in Western NJ throughout the day. Made good progress. Found a bunch of new geocaches. Also did two geocaches at Round Valley that I skipped over this summer because of the park fee. Also did 5 geocaches at Voorhees State Park. I didn't know it at the time but NJBearChaser was following me. He told me at the event later that he saw my log entries at a bunch of geocaches that he found. I estimate that he was at each geocache less than half an hour after me.

Sunset was a 4:30pm but the geocaching event was at 7pm, so I still had over 2 hours to kill. So I continued geocaching and found 4 caches in the dark. Had to be careful while driving around that area in the dark though. The roads are poorly marked and one road in particular had an unexpected 90-degree bend. I bumped my knee on a bridge in the dark but that was minor and no hindrance to finding the cache.

Once I was done with those, it was time to go to Moe's in Branchburg for the event. I was a bit early but charlieOU812 and PTBilly were already there. We chatted it up and then more geocachers arrived. I had the Billy Barou, which is nachos topped with a pile of stuff.

( The caches... )