Ron's Info-Closet Annex
The online extension of Ron's Info-Closet.
Book links are usually to my Powell's affiliate program; game links are usually to Funagain Games, and benefit the Games to the Rescue Project.
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Ron Hale-Evans
rwhe@ludism.org
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As announced at Dragonflight XXV, I am running a glass bead game design contest until 15 February 2005, with $100 of prizes from Powell's Books and Funagain Games. Full rules for the contest are on the Glass Bead Game Wiki.
This is a little different from a typical game design competition, so please email me at rwhe@ludism.org if you have any questions.
Entered 22:34 [/games/gbg] permalink
Letterboxing: my first hitchhiker and first first-find
Now sit right back and you'll hear a tale, the tale of my recent letterboxing activities.
On 23 September (a Thursday night), I found my second virtual letterbox, Chippy. It didn't have quite the same feel of an actual walk as the Emerald City virtual letterbox did, but I did learn a lot about wildlife. Recommended for a rainy afternoon.
I'm keeping the "stamps" from virtual letterboxes in the pocket of the Moleskine I'm using for my logbook.
On Sunday, 26 September, Marty and I and Kisa Griffin made a quick stop on the way to Tacoma for the Glenn Hanson Park [sic] letterbox in Kent, Washington, the town where Marty and I live. Kisa and I figured out the landmarks and found the box without too much trouble. The stamp was cute, but the logbook and most of the rest of the box were severely waterlogged. I did all my stamping stuff, dried the box out as best I could, and replaced it. Interestingly, the last group to visit the box didn't stamp the log, but signed themselves "The Dog Pound", with trail names such as Snoopy, Big Dog, and Hoochie Poochie. Another dog synchronicity -- or do letterboxers just tend to be dog people?
The round trip from the starting place to the box and back to the car only took about half an hour. I asked Marty cheerfully when we returned, "You don't mind that we picked up a hitchhiker, do you?" I had found my first hitchhiker letterbox (what they call a "parasite" in Dartmoor letterboxing). It was called the Mini Bob's Wife Hitchhiker, and had made its way up to Kent from Gresham, Oregon, about 170 miles south. I would have liked to hide it in the next letterbox I found, as is customary, but there was just room in the logbook for me to stamp and sign it. I'll be mailing it back to Twinkletoes in Gresham shortly.
Personal letterboxing peeve: Big families with little kids who letterbox together and then give each of the kiddies their own page in the logbook to stamp. With a nice fat logbook it probably doesn't matter, but with a tiny logbook in a hitchhiker, it wastes a lot of space. Mini Bob's Wife might have made it up to Canada or somewhere out east if so many of the pages hadn't been wasted with this kind of thoughtlessness. Plus, the kiddies' stamps are usually store-bought, so there's less room for original stamp art.
Yesterday, 3 October, Karl Erickson and I found the letterbox "Great Moments in History: June 8, 1959", placed by Green Tortuga on 16 September 2004 in Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park. The letterbox had been there about three weeks, but we were the first finders. Woot! Too bad there wasn't a first-finder certificate!
As you can see if you follow the link, this is a box with a puzzle clue. I didn't find the puzzle difficult, but I had the right tool for the job. (No, I shan't tell you what that tool was.) However, if Green Tortuga is who I think he is, his letterboxes are reputed to be fiendishly difficult, so I guess it's no surprise it took so long to be found.
Karl picked me up around 10, but we didn't get to the park until 12 pm. Truly, we had a harder time finding the trail itself than finding the box once we were on the trail. The hike was lovely. This small field of flowers at the starting point was lovely in the noon sun:
The starting point: nothing but flowers
Not too far up the trail, we came across this gnarled, mutant, hollow tree, surrounded by huge mushrooms, where I would have hidden a letterbox if I had one to hide. But it wasn't our destination.
Where the letterbox should have been hidden
Eventually, I located the landmark and Karl found the letterbox when we got there. (I was poking around with my walking stick, wary of snakes. I might have found it if I had rooted around with my hands, but Karl was braver.) Karl snapped this photo of me:
A great moment in history: Ron, flushed with triumph
The stamp was really nice! You might say it was a commemorative stamp. Thanks, Green Tortuga! It really would have benefited from my using multiple colours instead of my standard black. I may start carrying around markers now.
On the way back to the car, I discovered that I had lost my compass. Since my camera had dropped out of my pocket when I sat down to stamp the letterbox, I figured my compass might have too. Light-footed Karl offered to zip back to the landmark to see if he could find it. He couldn't. So much for "take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints".
Hi, I'm Karl, and I don't have your compass.
The whole hike took about an hour, and when we returned, Karl and I made a slight detour to a scenic vista. The day was foggy and everything looked soft and perfect.
After we got back to my house, Karl and I hung out with Marty for a while, looking over a new game system I am reviewing called Trillõn and its rulebook. Karl eventually went home, and Marty and I went out in search of Sid Sackson's posthumously-published game BuyWord. No luck with that, but I did pick up another compass like the one I lost. This time I bought a lanyard for it.
Entered 14:18 [/games/letterboxing] permalink
THE ETERNAL TWINS
Taking fun
as simply fun
and earnestness
in earnest
shows how thoroughly
thou none
of the two
discernest.
--Piet Hein
Entered 02:10 [/games/ludism] permalink
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