Day 3

Started off with quite some work. I woke up about 7:30 and decided it was time to stop procrastinating the peaches. At home we get an assembly line going, with Tim dipping the peaches in boiling water, dave removing the skins, and me cutting the peaches and putting them in the fruit dryer. There was no way that was going to happen here – there’s just not enough floor or counter space, and the setup would mean we’d be passing the sticky dripping peaches all over. So I set up a little peach station and did it all by myself. Fortunately there weren’t all that many peaches left, so it only took about an hour and was fun in that mind-shut-off way that things like that are. After peaches I had breakfast, and then it was time to geocache.

Yes, it was raining and no, that didn’t stop us. The tides aren’t very good this week – the very low tides are in the early hours of the morning (as in 1 am), and the low tides during the day aren’t very low. So today was our best chance at it, and we have plenty of rain gear. The first one we went to was north, towards hug point. One weird thing was that I was concerned about getting around the rock to the north of our cove but Dave wasn’t at all. Some time between when I walked to it Sunday night and he walked there Monday, the part to the west of the rock had filled with sand. I always thought the sand moved during storms, but there was no storm. So I don’t know what the deal is. We were both worried about whether we could get across the carriage road (turns out we couldn’t), but fortunately the cache was near the waterfall. I won’t say where, but there was some climbing involved. Dave took on path that wasn’t very steep but had a sheer dropoff to one side of the narrow path, while I took another that was steep but had no drop-offs. Dave found the cache! We’d forgotten to bring our swag. So we just made a note in the log and headed back down.

Much like the swim Ben and I did in Maine, when we turned around to walk to the next point we were walking head into the rain and wind. And it was a little like the swim in that you’d look up to get your bearings, then put your head down and walk a while, then look up an spot again. And again like the swim, it was a little over a mile from the first point to the second. We trudged along past our house. The cache was showing inland a bit, so I thought it might be by the stream that’s a kind of by the Arch Cape Deli (which is closed, by the way) and that’s where it turned out to be. There’s a nice path leading to a road and a little wooden bridge, and the cache is right around there. Once again dave found the cache – I’m saying it’s because he had the only GPS. We have several, but only one has a waterproof suit, and after sending my last phone for a swim I wasn’t about to take my new one out in the rain! Again like Maine, the final leg of the journey with the wind at our backs was very pleasant.

We got home and took showers and woke Tim and went into town for Pig’n. We also needed to stop at EVOO for bread (not ready yet, so we reserved a loaf to pick up later) and to Mr. Wine Know-it-All for a wine to go with tonight’s fruit salad, and to get some more buckyballs to cut down on the grabbing of buckyballs away from each other. They didn’t have any more silver ones so we got black ones, which are pretty cool looking.

We got home and had some buckyball time, and also played a little pepper. We played about 6 or 8 games. Dave won and Tim won and I did not win even one time. I hate pepper. OK, I don’t really, but it doesn’t seem right that I got completely skunked at farkle last night and then couldn’t win any pepper this afternoon. We may need to play some Trouble tonight. Also while we were home we found out from Debbie that they have started storing firewood in the garage, so we made a nice fire. At least it was nice once it stopped filling the room with smoke. The chimney has issues on windy days, and we’d judged today’s wind to be ok. We were wrong. So we had the door open most of the afternoon.

Once they’d finished beating me at pepper it was time to go back in to town to pick up the bread. On the way we stopped at the farmer’s market in the midtown parking lot – a rather soggy collection of a few stalls, but we got some nice strawberries and blackberries. Then it was on to EVOO to get the bread. But when we got there they were very apologetic because the bread wasn’t ready – in fact it was still sitting on the table doing its final rise. Bob the Baker said it would be ready at 5 – about an hour. So what to do in town for an hour? Dave had the very good idea of heading over to Bill’s, where he had a 2x4 stout and a cup of clam chowder and I had a half pint of foggy notion weissbier. It was a very nice interlude. One thing about the weather being so terrible today (cold, windy, actual rain, not drizzle) is that town is pretty much completely deserted – no problem parking, no crowds. As Dave said, “if the weather wasn’t so awful, I’d wish the weather was awful all the time”. (English majors – does that last sentence require the sunjunctive?) After Bill’s we visited some of our favorite shops, including a very successful stop at Maggie and Henry’s, where I got 2 sweaters, a vest, and a light jacket. Then we went back and got the bread, and headed home. When we got there, Tim was watching TV and flying his helicopter.

Last week Tim drove us to Carlton, where we picked up some manchego and triple cream cheese at the Horseradish. That, a piece of cheddar, and a very nice half bottle of Matello Riesling made a wonderful accompaniment to the fruit salad I made when we got home. However a note for next year is to not only bring a bread knife, but also to bring a sharp knife or two for cutting up the fruit, instead of bludgeoning it to death with the knife-shaped objects in the drawer.

After dinner Tim and Dave had several cube-building races with the buckyballs. Dave won in the head to head challenge, but Tim timed it, and then beat Dave’s time. After that it was time for some Trouble, and it was an excellent game. Dave won, and I finally did not come in last. It was a hard fought battle with no clear winner until the very end, and several thrilling reversals of fortune. After that it was once again time for reading and watching TV.

I haven’t had a nap yet. It’s supposed to rain again tomorrow, so I have big plans for one.