Day 1198: Spring raking

The simple act of raking can bring such joy!  Sunshine, 65 degrees, a gentle breeze.  The backyard is a swamp, but the front was perfect for raking the detritus of winter.  I scooped armloads of dried leaves, nuts, twigs, and pine needles into the wheelbarrow and Steve donned his hip boots to deliver it to the compost pile in the woods.  I was just happy to enjoy this lovely spring day.

The day was perfect for a long walk through campus.  We thought we might see a few brave sun worshippers, but instead we spotted folks trying out their skateboards.  We'd only been back a few minutes when Steve was called out for the CAST team (Chautauqua Area Search Team).  Five fishermen were lost in the Ripley Gorge.  Unbelievably, they were lost in the same spot where the drill was this past September so the team was familiar with the terrain. Then, once they were recovered, two of the searchers became disoriented and got lost.  Finally, everyone returned to base, got checked out and dismissed.  It took over three hours, but it had a good outcome.  Fortunately, the men called for help while it was still light.

The computer data continues to download.  I was so excited to get going that I forgot completely about using the external hard drive and just jumped into downloading from the time capsule.  Evan warned me it could take forever to move all the photo files and he was right.  When it first started, the projection was for 758 hours!  It quickly dropped down to twelve and then ten and then jumped back to twenty-two.  Finally, it settled in at about ten.  There are five hours left now.  I just hope I didn't screw anything up.