Homer's Travels: This Week ...

Sunday, March 13, 2011

This Week ...

This past week was another week.  Not a special week.  Not a bad week.  Just a week.  For the past seven days there were two highlights.

The first was a 10.86 mile walk I did on Thursday.  The weather was perfect - cool with lots of sun.  My walk took me to a few places I'd driven past without giving a second glance.  I stopped at an old grotto next to an assisted living complex.  I was led there by my GPS ... a geocache was supposed to be hidden in the 130 - 140 year old stone structure sandwiched between the buildings of a former mental hospital.  The stone seems volcanic which begs the question, where did the stone come from?  I am not aware of any volcanic structures near here but, then, I'm not a geologist.  I went inside and looked around in the dark.  There are dirty windows in the grotto but they do very little to illuminate the nooks, crannies, and corners of the place.  I felt like I was walking over someone's grave ... and they were getting grumpy.  I was unable to locate the cache so I'll have to go back with a flashlight.

Another passed but not visited place was the Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens park.  The gardens are modeled after George Washington's Mt. Vernon.  I was led here by another geocache, "Mt Vernon Micro", which I managed to find.  The gardens were a little bleak this late in the winter but you could tell that they were taken care of.  I will have to come by once everything is green.

The only excitement during the walk was when I was walking in a residential area.  I heard a dog yelp and I saw a small Scotty-like dog rolling on the road behind an SUV.  The driver of the SUV stopped, got out of the car and ran after the dog.  I assumed he was doing the right thing and checking to see if the dog was okay.  The driver caught up with the dog which, by the way, seemed quite healthy, and pick it up.  This seemed weird to me until he got back in the SUV with the dog.  The dog was his and it had apparently jumped/fell out the window of the moving SUV.

The second highlight of the week was a repeat of the High/Low brow day on Saturday.  We were in Lincoln for the state Poetry Out Loud competition which we followed with a Roller Derby bout.  Unfortunately, unlike out first poetry/derby combination, the outcomes were not so successful.  The Wife's student did not make the top three (They only announce the top three so there is no way to know how close she was).  The student did well and I'm guessing she was in the top five.  Maybe next year.

The Roller Derby didn't end well either.  The Omaha Roller Girls (ORG), after winning their first match of the season, went up against Lincoln's No Coast Derby Girls who had won their first five bouts.  We left part way through the second half of their bout.  At that point there was a 30+ point spread between the teams.  The final score was 62 to 93.  The No Coast defense was awesome and really shut down ORG.

Saturday, despite the losses, was a good day.  We got out of the house for a full eleven hours, they had cookies at the poetry Out Loud competition (always a plus in my book), had a pretty good Italian meal, shopped at a fair trade store, and cheered on our team at an away game.  There is only one way to follow this week - Spring Break and a drive out to East Iowa.

4 comments:

  1. I always like reading about your adventures! Where DID that rock come from? I'm going to say Martians. Yup. Martians didn't put everything back the way it was supposed to be.

    Roller Derby looks like so much fun! Painful, but fun!

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  2. If you are both high-brow and low-brow, does that make you unibrow?

    Well, you've gotten outdoors more than I have, so that's impressive by any count. And you're having good times out on the town with a pretty girl. Dang, you've got me beaten on both fronts! LOL

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  3. GH : Lol

    Afraid of disturbing ghosts, aren't you?

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  4. MMC: I hope to have many more awesome adventures that you can like reading.

    You should become a derby girl!!!

    GH: Yikes! I hope not.

    Godefroy: I don't believe in ghosts but there's something in our animal brain that gives me the heebee jeebees sometimes.

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