I know that everyone longs for the weekends and all the things you can do.
Especially weekends which, for the most part, feature nice weather — in November.
Alas, sometimes weekends are so packed with fun that it’s tough to not smile when it’s over and done with. After all, the body needs a rest. For me, the start of the weeks means getting back to the job hunt, searching, writing cover letters, sending out resumes and whatever else I can do to find some employment again. For others, Monday’s return means back to the daily work grind.
This week, I welcomed the return of the job hunt.
I won’t lie — I had a great weekend. But it was filled with long days, shorter sleep cycles and a tiring body by the time Sunday night rolled around.
So I wanted to give a little glimpse, in photos, of what my weekend was. Note that most of these photos were taken with my iPhone. The ones I took with my main camera will eventually be on my Flickr stream!
It began Friday — 11-11-11 — when there were a couple of geocaching events celebrating that day. One was in Oneonta, the other in Ithaca. It was a cold day, though. So outside hiking was likely going to be short.
So starts the weekend of driving.
The first event was solid and a group of us headed up to Ithaca. We found some caches along the way and at one point, I felt my phone vibrate and then ding several times in rapid succession.
At our next stop, I checked to see what all the texts were for.
Several friends had wanted to note that the Phillies had signed Jonathan Papelbon for $50 million bucks. So, on the day when the Phillies make a splash, I’m not reading anything and relying on a few tweets I can dig up about it.
On a side note on this — I have mixed feeling about this move. Is he the best on the market? Yes. Is he an upgrade over Ryan Madson. Probably. But to bring in someone with a reputation such as he has? Who can tell. It’s my hope that the likes of people like Halladay, Lee, Hamels etc., can calm Papelbon down enough to make me actually like the guy. I’ve had a lot of fun cheering against him over the years, though most times it doesn’t end with me being happy. So maybe I can be happy soon enough with him. Who knows.
Anyway, back to the regularly scheduled blog…
We got to Ithaca and did a little caching before heading to the event, which was a good time. I saw some people I hadn’t seen in quite some time, so that was nice. After, we went and found a couple of caches.
In between said caches, however, we stopped at the Shortstop Deli, which is a must stop whenever I am in Ithaca. I love the subs there. The bread is awesome. It’s one of my favorite places to get subs.
So, with it now being dark (remember, it comes earlier now), three of us set out to find one of the new caches in Ithaca. It’s a 4-star terrain.
We had heard about this one and arrived at the park.
Turns out the cache is about, oh, 20 feet in the air in a tree. After using a phone-a-friend to make sure we had the right tree, we started scanning. With the assistance of a flashlight, the cache was spotted. Sheesh!
Brent, being the ever-crazy cacher who will be willing to do most anything to nab a find, said he was going up. After finding a way to head up the tree (which included his pockets emptying with credit cards, cell phone and other things), he slowly made his way up the tree. Once there, he nabbed the cache and helped us in logging. It was a team effort indeed as those of us left on the ground tried to make sure he knew where to go and where the footing would be best without killing himself!
After getting back to the area, the second part of the Oneonta caching event was held (at 11:11 p.m.). Surprisingly, many people were there for this part, too. It was nice to chat for a bit, before finally calling it a night.
The alarm went off early Saturday.
With a lot of plans in place, I made an early exit and headed to Schenectady to shoot some urban disc golf. This is all part of a bigger project I am working on, so it was nice to test some things out to see what I can do with the camera and such.
We spent several hours scouting some places and trying a few things.
In the end, I got some really good videos and have several other big ideas in place for future shoots.
I also got to see some different parts of Schenectady I hadn’t seen before. There are some interesting looking places for photos and videos, so I put those in the back of my head.
At this point, too, we were getting a little hungry, so we stopped at a place called Clinton’s Ditch. It’s a nice little place, not far from the General Electric plant. It was clean inside, modern looking and had some good workers. Jeff knew the place, so we sat at the bar to eat.
The bacon cheeseburger I got was incredibly good.
Following that, two of the four of us were going to play a round. One of the others was going to play a few holes, so I decided to tag along and do a little filming and photography.
There are certain ways to shoot disc golf and I need to learn how to do it so the videos can be better. One of the better shots was catching Chuck almost hit an ace on the first hold. He clanged off the basket, coming just inches away from getting the ace.
After a few holes, I had decided I was going to head back. I was going to take a shortcut trail back to the parking lot until I realized I was missing something.
My camera bag.
Crap!
Inside the bag was my 17-40 F4L lens. Nothing else, but that is enough to make me panic. I knew where I had placed it down when shooting a few things. So I walked quickly back (along with Jeff, who was calling it a day as well) and got back to the spot and I saw the bag still there. And the lens, of course, still in it.
Whew!
After my heart stopped beating so fast, it was back to the car and home so I could unload the memory cards and charge my battery as much as I could before bolting out the door to head to Binghamton with a few friends to watch 2CW, an independent pro wrestling group based in Central New York.
As normal, it was a top-notch show. Some great action and I am a big fan of photographing wrestling, because you can get some crazy shots. These guys put on a good show, too, so it was fun to watch. Most of the matches were quite solid. The championship match stole the show. A couple of local guys got some great reactions. Truthfully, there were only a couple of matches that weren’t that great and it didn’t hurt the card too bad.
The best part was that this was the first time we went to one of their shows where it started within 15 minutes of the scheduled time and it ended at a decent hour!
Still, it ended up not being an early night.
By the time I got home and did a few things, it was probably 1:30 or 2 by the time I went to bed. That alarm rang in the AM again as I headed over to take some photos and watch several friends play in a flag football championship.
The day was beautiful, too, so that made it even better being outside.
The game was even better as the team I was watching put a hurting on the team that was top seeded and came in unbeaten. I had watched these two teams play a few weeks ago and it was a beat down the other way. Alas, a 40-13 score made this one a laugher in the championship as it was quite a dominant performance on both sides of the ball.
Flag football is interesting to take photos of because it’s a pass-happy game, yet it’s still tough to see where things are unfolding. But it gives cool chances to see different things, like people pulling the flags, balls being caught, and different things that sometimes can be very hard in regular football. The biggest thing is being able to see faces better because with the lack of major contact, helmets and pads, you can see expressions and such when shooting. That makes it more fun.
Following the championship triumph and chatting for a bit, I headed to Oneonta to do some maintenance on a few caches and join some others for the same and some caching. It stayed a beautiful day, which was nice. One of my caches was missing (as expected) because of the flood and the area wasn’t as “nice” as it had been in the past, so I decided to archive that cache.
Two more of my caches at the same location got through the flood and were fine.
However, of those two, the one golden ammo can (placed by someone in honor of another cacher reaching 1,000 finds) I have in this spot had been moved by the flood. Too, part of its hiding spot was gone. I’m glad we did this walk because we got to see that everything was dry and safe (I can’t imagine what it was like during the flood!) and each of the caches were re-hidden a bit better.
I also got to hit up a new cache, which was nice to grab a find to end the day.
And with that, the weekend came to an end. I slept well, I might add. Now, back to my grind of the job hunt. Hopefully, something will come along soon. That, in turn, will likely start giving me a better appreciation of these action-packed and fun weekends, no matter how tiring they are.
I can hope, anyway!
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