Valentine's Day

Hope everyone had a pleasant Valentine's Day. Mine was nice and low-key. Trizumi! came over around noon to do a little geocaching and said he needed to get some laces for his hiking boots today. Since there was a geocache recently placed at the Tempe REI, we headed off. Once at the shop we discovered it was the REI Yard Sale day! We were amazed. The Yard Sale is when the store gets rid of all the returns customers have made. Each item has a little manilla tag attached describing why the person who made the original purchase brought the item back. We saw a pair of boots that had been on so many hikes the heels were very worn down thin, the reason for the return: scuffed too easily! Or a pair of climbing shoes worn to the edge of extinction, reason: wore out too quickly. Well, I guess the next time my mortgage is due I'll just make a pile of old clothing and shoes and trek on over to REI and turn them all in! Sheesh! Anyway, amid all the used up stuff are some really good deals. Mike got a fantastic deal on some great shoes (customer said they hurt feet, they didn't look like they had ever been worn outside) and he bought me an $120.00 shirt for $4.95! It looks like the original wearer got too close to the campfire and a little ember landed on the shoulder. Super great! (Thanks!) Oh, and Trizumi! got his shoe laces also.

Heady from our scores we walked the 150 +/- feet to the new geocache, You Were Here Anyway... . Looked and looked, but a DNF. Oh well. So we went over to Park Series #51: Nevitt which was on my bookmark list of "caches I cannot reach without assistance of some tool" and Trizumi! made the grab. tee-hee. I was ready to get on the freeway to reach an area of greater saturation but Trizumi! felt that Mac's A-la-me'dead End was right down the road. Hmmm.. ok, if you are a crow. But whatever :) let's go. True to the cache's title it is located at the dead end of a road and on our approach we could see someone was down there doing something that looked suspiciously like geocaching. We were so glad to see chrisjan! We talked for some time about this and that. I hope they will attend the M.E.G.A. SIX event tomorrow night.

After our visit the next nearest was The Sharp Stuff which had a cute decoyish slant. Then on to another just published cache, The Cryptkeepers Cache, nice to see new cachers using clear lock'n'lock containers. At When Cows Fly, the very first thing I touched was the cache but I could not get it open. After looking around a couple of minutes I asked Trizumi! to take a look at it. Sure enough, another well-crafted Roark&Dallas containter. After another Roark&Dallas cache, Stump, we took A LOT longer to find It's always cold near by! then I would have expected. Good urban hide with lots of nearby traffic, Trizumi! was the stealth master here :) On to Park Series #71: Reed where there was a nice skate park nearby that cute kitty wants to return to soon. A couple of more park series caches, Park Series #26: Silvergate, Park Series #44: Chelsea and Park Series #25: Pequeno and an easy but well done Eastern Canal Bike/ Walk Adventure Series #1 plus a DNF at Ms. Arkitek's Favorite Market #5. Picked up The Labors of Hercules: The Golden Apples on the way to the freeway and we were ready to head back to Tempe for an early dinner.

We had decided on Crazy Buffet to minimize any discontent from the nine-year-old in the party. The Crazy Buffet is aptly named as the massive selection is far from your typical Chinese buffet. Last night they had frog legs as one of the offerings - frog legs! Not that I tried them - but seriously. They also have king crab legs that customers place huge, high piles on plate after plate after plateful. They have a manned sushi area with a large selection of rolls, sashimi and nigiri. It's not the best sushi I have ever had but it is an all you can eat buffet. Along with the traditional chinese dishes and soups they had several different fish dishes, at least three crab entrees, piles of peel-and-eat and fried shrimp, a salad bar, a dim sum area and of course the fruit and dessert bar. It's not the best food I have ever eaten but for a chinese buffet the selection and price ($11-12 for dinner) is the best we have found in town.

Thanks Trizumi! for a nice Valentine's Day!