Geocaching and February 2022

Good morning everyone.  How was the month of February for everybody?  January didn't start off too good for me when I tested positive for the Omicron variant.  What will February be like?  I normally keep my personal life out of my blogs, since it's supposed to be about geocaching.  I have to share something that does have a ripple effect on the entire month.  

It all started on February 2nd at work.  My boss came up to me and said he has to reassign me off of my floor as Human Resources is doing an investigation.  No information provided as to why or what.  After some adjusting of duties, I swap places with my floor support partner.  I'll be bringing supplies to Urgent Care instead of the 4th floor.  

February 3rd:  My boss comes up to me again and wants to talk to me.  Does he have more information as to what is going on?  Nope.  He did just get off the phone with H.R. and I'm being placed on a paid administration leave until further notice.  That's a fancy way of saying suspended with pay.  I'm being sent home, told to stay home, and not have any contact with anyone from work.  Still no idea why.  It wasn't until a week later, on the 11th when I had a meeting with H.R. that I found out what this is all about.  There's a health care aid with a real hate for me and is accusing me of something I didn't do.  To put it in family friendly terms, it's farm animal deposits.

The day I was sent home, I was confused, angry, and not in a mood to do anything.  I still went to the gym.  When I got up the next morning, I decided to make good use of this unscheduled time off.  I had personal projects that I was hoping to have done by the end of March.  Let's get a jump on that.  The main thing was to go through all my boxes of stuff and decide what to do with it.  Keep it, sell it, donate it, or throw it out.  Basically making my life simpler and future moves easier by hauling less stuff.

The first thing I needed to do was go grocery shopping.  I opted for a different location, one that has some Adventure Lab locations in the general area.  Those were enough to reach the peak of Mt. Aconcagua, the January Reach the Peak Challenge.

 

Six down, one to go.  Mt. Everest will be a challenge.  I haven't done a whole lot of geocaching while I've been off.  I've been more focused on pillaging my stuff and going to the gym.  It's also been really cold out, plus the crazy amount of snow we've received this winter has made some "Winter Friendly" hides not very winter friendly.  It did help me in one instance.  

Before going to an event on the edge of the Assiniboine Forest, I swung by the park portion for a couple of traditional caches.  I parked close to GZ at one and waited for a muggle who was walking his dog in the parking lot to pass by before making my way to GZ.  I had put my phone in my pocket so it would appear that I'm just some guy checking out this big pile of snow.

It's at least five feet high and the cache is marked as winter friendly.  I'm not sure about snow hill friendly, but I'll find out.  I did find it, took it back to the car to sign and replaced.  Then it was off to another traditional on foot.  My fingers were so cold trying to open the magnetic key holder and trying to open the little bag containing the log sheet.  While I was doing that, a wedding party was having pictures taken in the freezing cold.  It was off to the event, then home.

Next morning I wake up to find a message.  It appears that while I was checking out that big pile of snow, I was identified as a possible geocacher and eventually identified as me.  The muggle walking his dog turned out to be part of the local geocaching team of MWDL.  The other half of the team was by their vehicle and was the one that did the identifying.  Now I wish they had stopped to say hi.  Would have been nice to meet them.  So much for being stealthy.  LOL 

There was a couple more events in conjunction to the Tuesday two's day/Deuces Wild promotion.  It takes a special type of dedication or a special type of crazy to gather in a parking lot at night during an extreme cold warning.  With the windchill, it was between -37C and -39C for both events.

First event on the 20th...

Second event on the 22nd.

My focus to Reach the Peak for February was Adventure Labs.  What I wasn't expecting was some of the stages to be buried under snow and I wasn't able to complete that particular AL.  I have four incomplete ALs right now because of the depth of snow.  That's almost half the points needed to reach Mt. Everest.

I was constantly changing up my game plan on the fly.  Somewhere under all that snow is the answer to that stage.  As I enter the final week of the promotion, I still need over two thousand points to reach the peak.

I could have reached the peak already if that was my focus, but it wasn't.  I was more focused on purging my stuff and going to the gym.  Since I've been off work, I've been going to the gym in the afternoons.  One thing I changed was what I "ate" after my fasting period was done.  Before it was a bowl of cereal, fruit, yogurt, etc.  Now I have a fruit smoothie.  A simple smoothie consisting of pineapple juice, yogurt, frozen fruit, spinach and protein powder.  Once I'm done that, it's off to the gym.  I've finally settled in to a general daily routine.  Recumbent bike, weights, treadmill.  I'll spend upwards of two hours at the gym.  

I ended January at 235.6lbs.  By the end of February, I'm weighing in at 232.4lbs.  A drop of three pounds.  My weight has bounced up and down during this period.  I've reached that point where the weight loss will slow down as I'm starting to add muscle.  This is where measurements kick in.  

This is five pounds of fat compared to five pounds of muscle.  Both weigh the same, but the muscle takes up less space.  Here's another example of slimming down versus weight loss.

This is my belt.  The creases indicate which hole I've been buckling up at with the third from the top being the most used.  I can comfortably buckle up at the second highest hole now and I've even buckled up at the highest or the smallest hole on the belt.  It was a little snug, but I did it.

Moving forward, my goal is to lose a couple of pounds per month.  To expect the same weight loss that I had in January is unreasonable.  If I maintained a six pound loss for each and every month for a year, that's seventy two pounds lost.  That would put me in the 170lbs range.  A weight I haven't seen since I was in my twenties.  

I love going to the gym.  I feel good about myself and it's having a positive effect on my mental health.  I change up what I do each day on the bike and treadmill.  Mostly it's how I'm feeling at the moment.  Sometimes I change things on the fly.  I have fun 

The top is my version of a rolling hills program that's on the bike.  The bottom is just one big hill with the level increasing every two and a half minutes.

To wrap things up, I had a total of twenty five finds for February.  Three were traditional caches.  I attended three events and the rest was adventure labs.  I am still on paid administration leave or as I now call it, training to be retired.  I was basically dealt a big lemon at work and I'm making the best dang lemonade ever.

Until next month, be happy, stay safe, hug your pets, but most importantly, just have fun and make the best lemonade you can.  Peace out ✌️ 

There's always just one more picture, or two.  This was at one of the stages to an AL that I did at the spur of the moment.  Fortunately, I was able to get the answer I needed.

And I hid a jigsaw puzzle mystery cache.  GC9NDVD.  The picture of the puzzle is this guy that I found in a cache last fall.  He rides in my car now.