GGABJX: November in Millville
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008
GPX file of our course
The title of this geogolf course says it all. Even more alarming is this isn’t from this past November, rather this is November 2006. It’s been that long since I’ve played a course.
It’s not that geogolf hasn’t been on my mind. The last two summers I have thought I would spend playing many courses. But things seem to come up. This summer I somehow stumbled back into the Neverending Scavenger Hunt. It wasn’t planned, and what suffered were the plans for geogolf. Oh well . . .
Anyhow, as I finally get some organization on my end with databases, waypoints, and the like, I decided to at least play this course I created so long ago. If there can be Christmas in July, why not golf in November or November in August, or something like that? 
Fritz and I headed for downtown, parked at the Culver Center and took off. I had sketched out the order of the holes.
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We loaded up Silver with xpunkx’s Geocaching Podcast. Unfortunately, it was over long b4 we made it to the hole as it was just a piece to inform that there was no show this week. Sigh . . . Once that was over, it was time for Sarah Vaughan’s Brazilian Romance. This hole played in the backyard of 313 Sassafras. We got to within 27m.
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We walked up Sassafras to 4th Street. Right across the railroad tracks, which angle across the road, is 203 3rd Street. The hole played at their front door. We accepted 4m as the distance.
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I continued up 4th Street to Mulberry. Not paying attention, I forgot to turn down 2nd until I had passed it. We zipped around and followed a woman to her house. Yikes! We accepted 17m at 224 2nd Street and turned around.
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A block and a half down on the corner is a yellow house at the corner of 2nd & Vine. This is across from the old Wawa and the tire store. The GPS indicated 3m at that point. It was here I saw Fritz had dozed off. Sure, I do the work and he sleeps. Fine, be that way! 
GGABJX-11
I recorded 17m for this hole; it may have been closer. But there was a strange woman fiddling with her shoes asking what time it was. I said 10 til 11 and she said, “So 10:50?” Uh huh. But she was acting odd and when I looked down I just took the 17m and kept going. This was on the side of Peter Lumber. I am pretty certain I played another geogolf hole here on another course some time ago.
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Because of that strange woman, I became stupid apparently. Instead of retreating to 2nd Street, we walked up to High and then around. I came down 2nd but wasn’t as close as I would have liked so turned the wrong way on Oak. Sigh, the strange woman began calling loudly to me. I had the iPod on so I pretended not to hear her. I took the parking lot to the diner that runs beside the railroad track to avoid her. I then looped back to Broad and down 3rd Street right in the middle of Millville’s crime district. It seems now looking at the maps I should have gone down the other side of 2nd. I think there is a laundry there that I could have gotten closer. Oh well . . . I’ll take 57m and be rid of Crazy Lady!
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Millville has a bad section of town and this is it. The corner of 3rd & Broad is the epitome of what is bad in town. This hole played right through there. Once I abandoned hole #12, I was happy to be moving on. I made a wrong turn on Broad and then returned right through this intersection. The hole played in the back of the house/backyard of 317 Broad Street. It was next door to a building that is for sale. Eighteen meters is as close as I could get from the sidewalk.
Sarah Vaughan’s Brazilian Romance ended after I bagged this. Next up on ol’ Silver was Lou Reed’s Transformer.
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We walked down 3rd Street and around the block for this one. I expected it to play on the other side, but there was a piece of public art that I drive by a lot that I wanted to take a photograph of. This seemed like an opportune time to do so. Afterwards we zoomed around and found the hole equi-distant (and unavailable) from the empty lot and antique junk dealer. The area is fenced off. Fifty meters was all we could get. We were looking forward to crossing the street and getting out of this neighborhood to dilly-dally too much.
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We crossed the railroad tracks and were once again in the better part of downtown. I carry an iPod, a digital camera, and a GPS with me all while pushing my son in a stroller. I figure I am a prime candidate for jumping in broad daylight.
Anyhow, past the Thunderbolt Racetrack headquarters we went and turned up Buck Street. We got to nine meters outside 519 Buck, a gray house.
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I only had to walk a few steps from hole #1 to bag this one. Across the street to the northwest side of the intersection of Oak & Buck. This is across the street from the Millville Fire Department. I accepted six meters. I think the hole drifted back into the street. I was comfortable with this number from the safety of the sidewalk, thankyouverymuch!
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I walked down Buck past our gym to the library. There is a book deposit box (huge mailbox-type) on a brick island that one can leave books in without getting out of the vehicle. This island extends down about 10 parking spaces. We got to 8m while standing in the middle of this thing. There were some cars moving about so we decided against trying to zero out the hole.
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On our way to this hole we saw a group of boys bicycling. They were riding up the sidewalk onto a brick slope and then coming down. In the middle of this was a lady in a wheelchair walking riding her dog. We were scurrying to catch up and take a couple photographs. Before we could make it a police car came by and bollixed up traffic. The officers spoke to the boys for a minute or two as the old lady made her escape. We couldn’t cross the road because there were too many cars screeching to a halt because of the commotion with the police and the yutes. Fritz and I then began rooting for arrests. Those photographs would make up for the missed wheelchair. Alas that didn’t happen and soon all was back to normal. Damn!
The hole played Pine Street right before High. There is a curb cut there across from the music store just down from the drain pipes. It was here that I began wondering if this Colorado would actually display zero. I could only get one meter no matter where I stood. I’ll have to look into that further.
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On the way Transformer ended and Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps began. I remember when this album first came out. I was a big Neil head back then. Later I recall reading a very kewl article in Surfer magazine that quoted from Hey Hey, My My. I think that was the first time I ever saw a song I knew quoted in an article.
This hole turned out to be a mistake. After playing hole #9 I was to play #6. I didn’t. You see, a new scavenger hunt popped up that requires me to once again photograph Joseph Buck, Millville’s founding father. While he is long dead, there is a statue at Riverfront Park that would do the trick. The thing is hole #6 plays before the statue coming from Pine Street. Yet I went right to the park. After securing my required photograph I noticed about 60m to the hole. I figured it must be the hole that plays on the other side of the river so off we went.
When we arrived on the other side of the Maurice River, we saw we were now 130m or so away. Time to look at what we did wrong. Yup, missed the damn hole. Oh well, we went and found this one instead. There was a postman killing time in his truck nearby. Try as I might, I could not get the 10m to nine. I was on the river bank. Not wanting to fall in and leave a most curious Fritz unattended, I took the 10m and scolded myself for the misplay.
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The proper play from hole #4 after messing things up would have been hole #5, which is also on the other side of the river. Did I play that next? Of course not. No, I decided to “correct” my wrong and go back and pick up hole #6. Sheesh . . .
Fritz and I were completely drench in the hot humid sun. We found this hole at the third parking space in the public lot behind Amato’s Pizza across from Oliver Twist’s. The one meter felt good, but it was short-lived.
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Once we recorded hole #6 we saw we were headed back across the river for hole #5. D’oh! Not good navigating there. But this was an opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade. Of course, that was only figuratively. We would have welcomed a glass of lemonade about now.
We crossed over and found ourselves at the Veterans Park. Recently a new statue was erected and I had wanted to take some photographs of it so after scoring the hole, we walked about 15 feet to the statue. We heard a beep f someone’s horn. It turned out to be Gert on her way of picking up our little princess. Yes, morning had given way to afternoon on this golf course. We said goodbye to the statue and moved on.
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On our way from Veterans Park we called Gert to say hello. All was well and we were nearing the end. We snapped a photograph of a benchmark we always seem to photograph when we head over the bridge. Then we cut down past the municipal building and the police station. We stopped momentarily to take in how our tax dollars funded a private parking space for the mayor complete with a big sign. It must be nice to be the big cheese.
We headed up to 2nd Street and around back of Trinity Church. We played stupid once again and crossed the street only to find out we needed to be back where we came from. Nearly seven years using a GPS and one would think I could read the thing by now. Anyhow, back across the street to the parking lot. We walked in circles before I said three meters was good enough. Ha!
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Almost done. We turned up 2nd Street and waited at the light at Main. One car was not courteous to us at all. Once he dashed off, we made it across. Yup, we were headed for another parking lot. This one was at the old people’s condo. We approached the assisted living office and seemed to boomerang back. I didn’t think Garmins were supposed to do that. We took 10m when I saw I should be the next row of cars over. I could see the finish line. Ten meters was good enough at this point.
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The last hole. Woohoo! As we crossed 2nd Street at Sassafras, Rust Never Sleeps ended. No more music for this trip. I thought I was going to have to turn onto Pine for this one, but came up a bit short at the side door of the Presbyterian Church. We took six meters for this hole. Happily (and soaked) we walked the half a block to the truck and headed home for air conditioning.
(more…)
TCCBS
Another reason why I do not attend events is because I am a social hermit. I suck at small talk and since I didn’t know a soul here, I had nothing to say to those who introduced themselves to me. I try to be polite, but I just have never been comfortable in this kind of a situation. I appreciate the folks greeting me. Perhaps next time I will have more to talk about than the weather. As I just shared with grossi, I skipped my 25th reunion in June too.
Again we were flying blind with what we needed for the confirmation code. Damn Garmin! But ON and I must think alike as I had the needed information here too. Yeah!