Third time is a charm right? This is my third attempt at writing this blog. I keep hitting some button that takes me back to the drawing board. Writing this is word now. Welcome to 2010!  I am not as excited about the new year as I normally am. 2009 was a GREAT year and I cant imagine 2010 beating it. 2009 was also my first calendar year sober, coincidence? Probably not.
     A few good things will be happening this year, so I guess its not all bad. First off I will be getting my drivers license back soon. As soon as I get $700 to pay for it that is. That is great news because it has not been fun depending on others or my own two feet for the last year to get me where I’m going. Expect a lot more new pictures on this site when that happens. Also I will be off probation in June. Helen should be starting the nursing program in the fall semester and finishing up school by next spring. That bring me to my next bit of news.
     I have gazed into the crystal ball, consulted the gods, checked my palm and compiled all of the results to come up with a preliminary move date for our move to Colorado of June 27th 2011. Just this simple step of actually setting a date makes it seem more real, and like it may actually happen. The planning process can continue now.  I have added a countdown clock to the main page ;o)
     This is the time of year that I start looking forward to the warmer months of the year, and start making plans. I plan on doing a lot more cycling this year. I got my feet wet in the sport last year and really enjoyed it. I even managed to get in a couple of 30 mile rides in. You can check out my 2010 cycling page to see details of what I have planned. As of right now there is only one ride listed but I will be adding more later tonight. I have been thinking, for the past year or so, that it would be fun to do a coast to coast ride across America. Maybe riding to raise money for some charity or something. Many hundreds of people do this every year, and I think it would be a blast. I am only in the beginning stages of planning this so it will be a while before I have details.  Well I think that’s all I have for now, enjoy the new year!
     For the past few days it has been warmer around here. Warm enough for me to get out and get some pictures taken anyway. Helen and I headed up to Huntington Reservoir this week and I managed to get a couple of pictures before I tripped and dropped the camera in the snow. The camera is fine but it needed to dry out, so I didn’t get many pictures. Below are just a couple, I didn’t think they were worth creating a new page about so I just included them here. One view of the reservoir through the woods, and a shot of what I like to call the “Deer Highway” All of the tracks in this photo are deer tracks. I followed them for about ½ a mile. Seen one deer, but he saw me first and was gone before I got a picture. That’s all I got for now, have a great 2010!

    November- Not one of my favorite months. I have never been a fan of the in-between seasons. If its summer, I want it hot! (90-100 degrees). If its fall, I want pretty leaves on the trees for me to take pictures of. Winter ~ COLD, and lots of SNOW, once again to take pictures of. In the spring I want severe weather (I like to chase it)...to take pictures of. Now we have been known to see snow in November,  even October, but I guess it was not to be this year. There is a chance of snow mixed with rain on Thanksgiving, looks as if that will be the first. So overall it has been a boring month for me. I have added a few things to my website. I am mainly practicing for when I move to Colorado and actually have something cool to stream on here. This month I decided to add a streaming scanner. For many years I have listened to other streaming scanners from around the country (and world) on Radio Reference and I had never seen a stream for Blackford County, so I have set one up here. This was my first attempt setting up a streaming scanner and it was a learning experience for sure. If you live in Blackford County and own a scanner, you may have noticed that you are not hearing the police near as much lately. Blackford County police are in the process of upgrading there radio system, along with every other agency in the country. They are going to what is called a trunked system. That's all good, a trunking scanner can be bought for around $150. HOWEVER, not only are they switching to a trunked system, they are switching to a DIGITAL trunked system. That is where the problems come in. In order to hear the police on the new system, you must have a DIGITAL trunking scanner. If you look at the Radio Shack web site you will see that the cheapest digital trunking scanner will cost you $500. You can get the Radio Shack Pro-96 on Amazon for $399 new. This is an older model but will work. Also you should be able to find the Pro-96 used on Amazon, or on Ebay cheaper. Right now I am using a non digital scanner so you will no hear all of the police traffic. You are able to hear EMS and fire traffic as well. I plan on buying the Pro-96 in the near future. So if you don't feel like spending $400 on a new scanner then just keep checking to my scanner pager for updates. I plan on having it bought, up and running before Christmas. Enough on that. I have also just added a web-cam page. Now this really is practice for Colorado. My mom felt it important to point out to me that "no one wants to look at a cam of a parking lot in Hartford." Ok, yeah... so what. When I was putting it up i was mainly thinking of it being a weather cam, for people who don't live here. I don't know about anyone on here, but I have spent a lot of my time online looking for live streaming cams from around the world. I wanted my own. When I get to Colorado I plan on having an even better cam streaming a beautiful mountain view. Now that I know how to do it, it will be a breeze. So watch it if you want, don't if you don't, but its there anyway. Both of these additions have been to kill time while waiting for something worth taking pictures of. Also I should be getting my drivers license back at the very end of December after a year long suspension. Oh how I am counting the days! That's all for now. Check out the scanner and cam, leave comments,  and give me some more ideas, I still have time to kill. As soon as we get some decent snow I will post a new pictorial.

     I plan on adding a lot more info to the geocaching page in the near future, as of right now it is just a very broad overview. Before I tell you this story I just want to give you a little more info so that you will know what the hell I am talking about. By now you should know what geocaching is. If not, please visit the geocaching page to catch up. I have found just over 200 caches as of today, however, I have never been the first person to find a cache. This is a hard thing to obtain because everyone wants to be the FTF or (first to find) a cache. Some people are very competitive when it comes to this. I know a fellow cacher in my hometown who has hundreds of FTF's. In order to get one, it helps to be a premium member at geocaching.com. When you are a premiem member you can set up e-mail notifications to alert you whenever a new cache is placed near your home. If you want to be the FTF then you better go for it within 12 hours or so.  One more thing to point out before I continue my story. When you place a cache, you rate it in two different categories. Those include the overall difficulty of a cache, and the terrain of the cache. Each of these areas gets a rating between 1 (being easy) and 5 (very hard, may require special equipment). With all of that said...I can now tell my story.

     Helen and I were sitting around tonight and I was on the laptop, as usual. I was checking my E-mail and noticed that a new geocache had popped up about 7 miles away, out in the country. Well as I said before, I have never been the FTF a cache. I talked Helen into going for it. The time is about 11:30pm, its windy, getting colder, and dark. Of the 200+ caches that I have found, I have only found 1 or 2 in the dark. Darkness makes caching a whole lot harder, as if finding these hidden things isnt hard enough in the daylight! I really wanted to get this FTF though. When we get near the spot, I start countig down to helen as we et closer to it. (300 feet to go, she slows down a little, 200 feet, slows a little more, 75 feet, she almost stops...., past it by 150 ft, damnit wayne!) So she stops the car and I jump out with GPS and flashligt in hand ready to claim my prize. The GPS is leading me into a huge empty field, I mean like a big cornield that has been plowed. I get to where my GPS says zero feet, and there is nothing around me, just plowed flat dirt everywhere I look. The closest thing to me is the road, and that is over 100 feet away. Im thinking to myself about this time "You cant be serious, I run out of the house at midnight and drive across the countryside in the cold and wind and all I get is an empty cornfield?!". The hint on the cache was (Halfway down). What kind of a clue is that when you are in he middle of some flat ass field? I spent about 30 minutes checking the whole area, holding onto my hat the entire time to keep it from flying off of my head and still came up empty handed. Maybe someday I will be able to say that I got a FTF, but that someday was not today. This cache was rated a 3-3 by the way, which is quite high for this area. Probably not the best kind of cache to go after in the dark with my little flashlight that keeps going off all by itself. Oh well, I got to visit a nice lonely field tonight anyway.

    
    

Day 3 with this new site, and I still like it! Its a miracle! Today I added videos and 1 good pic that I got of the moon tonight. Watched the NASCAR race today, shouldn't have however because Dale Jr. ended up back in... i dono...30 something place, 2 laps down and added another DNF to his record. Tony Stewart won today, I think that's just because I was in his hometown of Rushville, Indiana yesterday. I must have rubbed off some of my good luck ;) Um.. what else is going on, OH, Helen and I will be going to the sold out concert for Jason Aldean and Love and Theft in Muncie on the 24th of this month! Cant wait for that. Other than that, not a whole lot is going on around here. Hope everyone had a great weekend, and have a great week as well.

Ok, just launched this site, and I have just posted my newest pictorial from Metamora HERE . Leave me some feedback and enjoy ;)

      This is just my first little test blog to see how everything works. I am really liking this website so far, hope it don't disappoint. Anyway, this is where I will be updating everything and letting you know whats going on in my head at any given moment.. scary huh! Tomorrow me and Helen are heading to Metamora Indiana with my parents for Canal Days Festival. Should be a good time, I'm planning on getting a few more geocaches as well as adding a new county to my "geocached in" list. I will try to get some pics of the fall colors if I run across any good spots. That's all for now guys, talk at ya later!