The 'Roid of Thy' which functioning is low but reading was high

I am rather pleased by my title. It wraps up my current health woes nicely.  We're talking small potatoes, as far as what I've dealt with. But I keep wondering, what's next with the gift that keeps giving? (That is, having gone through cancer and chemo/radiation treatment.) So, it was a lack of energy, a dash of chest pains, and weight struggles that had me wondering what the pluck was wrong with me.  My regular cancer checkup's labs came back and showed that my thyroid is now not functioning very well.  The good news is that I am going to get some medication to help.  I hope, with these drugs, I turn into Superman, 'cause it would be real rad to fly wearing only red and blue underwear. A boy can dream.

SUPER GOITERMAN AWAAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!! (I don't have one of those, but I couldn't resist the pun.)

Narc

I've had fun posting about my adventures here on the blog.  My last adventure is one that I was looking forward to blogging about, but I can't. Why? Because, your stupid fearless adventurer wandered into a rather suspect camp and informed law enforcement about it.  I spent last weekend having phone interviews with city police, Sheriff's Department, and the Forest Service. My photos and such, plus not being able to talk about it sucks.  The plus side is that if they make an arrest, I get a reward.  Maybe someday I'll be allowed to talk about it openly.  I'll say this, the site had a few possibilities that had law enforcement interested enough to launch an investigation. One thing's for sure, I'm never going back that deep into that area again and I'm not giving the location until things are cleared up.  I got out of there without harm, but that's because I am lucky that no one was home at the time and because of my survival skills acquired in 'Nam, er, Order of the Arrow (Boy Scouts' Delta Force).  I kid, but I'm not joking about this.  What good is an adventure if you can't brag about it?

The Further Adventures of Sir Grunty Chicken Caesar

My thoughts tonight aren't that organized. Some family stuff has my neurons a bit tied up--nothing super serious. So I thought that doing a fun post without a lengthy narrative would be better for the both of us.

I was at this place a bit ago. My bro took the photo. It's easy when you can drive to places, so long as it is in a 4x4. My truck does alright. It's just a bit thirsty. Anyway, I'm looking at something I found in the overburden from the ore bin.

I may be a fool, but  I knows gold when I sees it! Albeit, this is a very small 

amount, trapped in rock. 

I also went on some big solo hikes and found more adventure and DEATH CARS!!! Well, this '30s era Chevy truck is dead, but I don't think anybody was killed in it.

I'm pretty sure that this one had blood on it's dash. This is why hiking below old mountain roads is always interesting, and spooky. Speaking of spooky...

This is the first mine that I visited on my hike last weekend. I really, really, didn't want to get wet. That didn't last long....

I am a fool for adventure and so went for a nice wade in this ice cold tunnel. The boys didn't appreciate it much.

I eventually made it to higher, dryer ground and found some cool rails leading the way.

Usually, the ties rot out and the rails come loose in these old mines, but these are still well intact.

This was quite a find: a cast iron, hand-crank winch. I came across this as I was exploring a second mine in the area. I was descending from one level of a mine to this level, which led to another adit (opening).  The vertical shaft that this winch was used for was back filled, fortunately.  I would love to haul this back home and display it out front, but this thing wasn't going to budge--it must have weighed a thousand or so pounds.  The top gear came up to my shoulder, so it's near five foot tall.  The crank was frozen, but that didn't stop me from trying my damnedest to break it free.

This was inside the last mine from last weekend's hike (four total). This is a partial cave in. You can see the timbers nearly giving out while trying to support the stope. Seeing as how I don't have a wife and kids, and my neighbors think I'm uncouth, I figured that if I didn't return it would give them less to talk about in the church correlation meetings. So I went ahead and crawled through my own personal death wish.

This is the view just after I passed through the partial cave in. The opening is not that large--just enough for me to crawl on all fours. You'd like to see that, wouldn't you? Sickos. Anyhooter, I had my sunglasses in my shirt's front pocket. The glasses fell out and down in a crevice. "Balls", I said, "Filthly Dog's Balls!" They were my favorite glasses; they made me feel cool like Fonzie.

These are the fruits of hiking your ass off. This was from an earlier adventure three weekends ago. I went in search of an old mill site.  I found a clearing where it was supposed to be but nothing else, with the exception of one piece of rough cut lumber sticking out of the earth.  You can see the wetlands and Great Stench Lake off in the distance.

 I love beaver. I love dams. I love them, Sam I am.

When I become Bill Gates' beneficiary, I am going to have slaves carve my likeness into this rock. A castle built on the pinnacle would be my next choice.

This is from a hike in April. What you see here is a small clearing where a cabin used to be, way up on the mountain.  The cabin burned down in the '40s after the man who lived there blew up his moonshine still. He had a mine nearby as well, but it was blown up by the forest service. Bastards!

Here are pieces of cast iron from a furnace that I found in the vicinity of the cabin site. I also found some old bed springs and loads of pipe strewn about. I wonder what in the hell possessed the guy to live all the way the hell up there in the first place? Maybe he had church people trying to "correlate" him too.