Counting down …

Countdown Clock Codes

Some thoughts about my upcoming trip to Ireland and other random thoughts at this moment.

It’s getting closer and closer and I’m realizing how much of a pain it is to prepare for a trip like this. When I go to Montreal, I know the things I want to do and/or see. And if I don’ get to them this year, there’s always next year.

With Dublin, who knows when/if I’ll be back. I’d like to think I’ll return to Ireland again, but who knows?

We have set up several pub crawls — a traditional, a traditional music one and a literary one. Each lasts about 2-2 1/2 hours, so beyond that, we can create our own pub experiences.

We’re also going on a Ghost Tour of the city, which should be fun.

The days will be filled with a lot of different things, which should be interesting.

Reality is, however, it’s hard to plan this stuff. I don’t know how long things last, so I’m going to try and come up with “sample” days and post them over at Trip Advisor to get some feedback. The people are there are excellent and if you are traveling, check out their forums for your destination. There are usually great people willing to help.

You’ll note the countdown clock at the top.  For each post I have before I leave, I’ll likely include that. However, from here on out, it will be at the bottom of a post. It’s my way of getting through the next bunch of days without getting too anxious or forgetting I have things to do here before I leave!

We do have some cool things planned — from a day trip to Howth (the coast) to visiting the Guinness factory. I’m going on a full day of geocaching, as long as that all goes according to plan. The day I am caching, there’s been an event set up that night at the bar in my hotel, so I’m super excited about that and having the chance to meet Irish cachers!They’ll also have some trackables to pick up as I’ve collected 16 travel bugs and geocoins to bring to Ireland (not including a few I plan on bringing of my own to send out into the world there) and I plan on dropping all of them into the event so people can discover, take and move them along!

Speaking of geocaching, my goal is to be at about 1,990-1,995 finds before I leave for Dublin. The reason is so I can make Europe’s First — which was placed June 3, 2000!

I’ve also (thankfully) received my Pathtag I ordered for this trip. I’ll be dropping them some in caches and handing them to people I meet at the event in Dublin. After that, of course, I’ll be trading. Here’s what it looks like:

As most of you know, I’m also an avid photographer and I’ll be joining a Flickr Meet event, which I’m excited about as it will include night photography. I’m hoping the travel tripod I bought will work well that night.

One thing is for sure, I won’t have a shortage of items to be able to use for my Project 365, which is going well. I’ve not missed a day yet, and I’m confident I can get through the year. I’m not sure I will do this in 2011 again, but it might be an every other year sort of thing. Though it’s nice to do a challenge like this, it’s also nice to sometimes not have to worry about taking a photo. That being said, my camera phone isn’t too good, so that makes it hard if I don’t have my main gear with me. I’m upgrading soon to a new phone that has a better camera, so that might make me want to go right into 2011 doing it again. We’ll see.

The other challenges — the HooHaa 52 and the attempt to do each 12 of 12 for the year are going well. I’ve had a blast doing all three challenges and I think I’m getting my money’s worth out of the Canon 7D I purchased.

In other news…

Our softball season has been off to a solid start. Though the league is a little watered down this year (six teams because they doubled the entry fee), we’re off to a 7-0 start. We’re playing solid defense, hitting the ball well and doing everything right. Our main pitcher is gone for a few days, however, so I’ll be throwing the next few games. Hopefully I can get the knuckleball working or we could be in trouble. We’ll see what happens there.

Nothing new to report on the search for my future. One spot that seemed to be a positive turned out to be nothing more than a “finalist” sort of thing without a follow. It’s too bad as it seemed really sweet, but it is what it is. I have something else on the burner that I’ll look more into when I return from Ireland.

Before leaving for Ireland, I’m planning on taking my bike to a sports shop in Oneonta to get it tuned up and in top shape. When I get back, I want to start biking a lot more and hoping that will help my mental game of life for a while. I’ve lost a bit of weight (not a ton, but some and it’s holding) and I’d like to lose more. A friend and I have been discussing setting out many geocaches along this one scenic trail — about 12-19 miles, pending how far we go. We’re going to do them on bikes, so it should be fun.

I think I’ll be putting my “Cache Exchange” cache somewhere out there on that trail, so hopefully it will work out well. I’ll have more on the cache exchange in the future.

Now, it’s off to work. Until next time …

More later!