Weather and GPS

Where was I?

Weather – The weather in Oregon was the primary reason we moved in 2008. Cold and wet almost all the time, except for a couple of months in the summer when it was dry and hot, and a couple of glorious weeks in spring and fall. The rest of the time, cold and wet. My dad once pointed out that every time they visited – every single day they spent in Oregon, even in the dry, hot summers, it rained. So in 2008 we moved to the Caribbean. On St. Croix it was always the same weather unless there was an actual hurricane going on – high in the upper 80s, overnight low in the low 70s, "chance of rain, 30 percent," as the voice on the Weather Channel said. Always.

So getting used to the weather here has been challenging. Not that it got particularly cold, but colder than we're used to. Sometimes. In the last few months we've had cold days followed by sunny warm days followed by muggy days followed by light rain or torrential rain. There have been days when we woke up shivering, and by afternoon had the air conditioning running.

The problem isn't with the kind of weather. It's that there's SO MUCH weather.

Visitors and hobbies – A few weeks ago we had a visit from some Oregon friends, Phil and Linda Brown. Ever since Phil retired a couple of years ago they've been traveling. In fact, they spent a week at St. Croix two weeks after we moved away. Bad timing. We could have made their trip a lot more enjoyable.

Anyway, it was nice to see them, catching up on news. They're daughters are doing well. When the girls got into high school Linda missed the kind of things they used to do, she was a Girl Scout leader for them and had really enjoyed it. So she borrowed Kate and Millie a lot. Took 'em on camping trips, running lemonade stands. Lots of stuff like that. They had a good time.

Linda's new hobby is geocaching, so we spent the afternoon – well part of the afternoon, we spent the longest part of it waiting for service at a really disappointing restaurant – walking around the French Quarter fixated on her GPS device. Found three of them. There's a sense of accomplishment when you find some tiny container that someone hid years ago, some as small as the end of your little finger, few larger than an old film canister (remember those?) You sign your name and the date on a little piece of paper and replace it, then go home and log it on the geocache website.

We found one in Pirate Alley, and as Linda was signing it, a group of college students from South Carolina came by, peering at their GPS devices. We told them to wait, turn their backs, and replaced it. We found another across the street from what is reported to be the New Orleans home of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Tori thought it seemed like fun, so it prompted her to learn to use the GPS feature on her new phone. Right now she and Max are out prowling Mike Miley Park, a half block south of here, tracking down several she found on the website. One we had search for last week, but couldn't find it and then it started raining. (See comment above about lots of weather.) She checked again on Google maps, and the site came up exactly where we'd been standing. I mean, when we clicked for the satellite photo I recognized the area instantly. We'd been standing right there. Either it was extremely well hidden or someone had removed it. She and Max will take apart the fence if need be to find it.

UPDATE – They're home, and they found it! Plus had several other adventures.