Rob Porter used his large 90s Cadillac to haul his Daihatsu Midget II pickup truck from Cheyenne, Wyoming to the east coast to tool around in while he’s in the area on business inspecting welds at power plants.
Scenes from the video featuring Wen-Young and his son Manny of Plymouth Meeting, PA.
“That’s what we’re looking for- the waypoints”
“It’ll say the gecoache is that way but the trail goes this way or this way.”
“We won’t send you through the woods bushwhacking”Destination- “Soggy Bottom” at the troll bridge
Garmin device accidentally restarts
Device now says ready to navigate
On the trail to the cache
“It must be around here”
“Found it!”
What’s inside the cache which is a canteen?
Is it a toy toilet or a stamp out of ink?
No, it’s a star punch to punch our paper to prove we found it.
Another group arrives at Soggy Bottom
Excitement back at campfire
“How was your first geocache experience?”
---- >
“Sweet. Marshmallow- sweet, get it?”
Found 6 caches!
Credits the gps device and the help of friends.
The dogs being served by Queenies Pets service ("Treating Your Pets Like Royalty") love romping around the Wissahickon Park (offleash) and swimming in the creek, reports Tim Abrams whom I encountered dropping off home a neighbor’s dog and ushering two others into his car after their outing. Abrams has a full schedule and just yesterday had five compatible dogs on an outing at one time. In addition to excursions in the park, Abrams manages doggie play dates in clients’ back yards.
Elmwood Park Zoo’s two giraffes use their long black tongues to draw offerings of romaine lettuce into their mouths. And they seem single-purposed enough to hardly notice getting oohed and aahed and affectionately stroked by the dozens of visitors who are feeding them.
Watch 27 second Vined video here.
Mo Speller played the trumpet growing and now, as a singer with the Nothing Wrong Band, plays the trumpet without a trumpet – just using a supple voice. The self-described “polygenre” band of 20-30-50-60 somethings performed a rocking folksy mix last Friday evening to a receptive audience as part of Walk A Crooked Mile Books’ outdoor concert series in Mount Airy. This Friday August 23rd at 7 pm will feature a new band, Skyline, a group of 15-somethings and on Saturday August 31st, Rev. Chris and the High Rollers play their fast paced New Orleans jazz- blues.
Performing, Speller channels Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald and sometimes, when bored waiting in line, makes a little trumpet noise just to confuse people.
The story goes that in 1853, a restaurant patron at a New York resort who complained of a soggy french fry gave rise to the invention of the potato chip.
Tori Messaros, a college biology major on summer break, gives five hour long tours a day of the Herr’s Snack Factory in Nottingham, Pennsylvania near the Maryland border. And she is just one of many guides- tours start every 20 minutes 9 to 4 daily except Friday. For Messaros, it’s a family affair: her mother runs the tour center.
Large glass windows in corridors above the production floor offer real time views of the different production stages. Our tour started with tortilla chips and then moved on to potato chips. Except for a handful of workers in the box packing area, the factory rooms otherwise appeared eerily empty with only one or two workers making the rounds or attending to a machine.
The machines operate around the clock with three shifts of workers a day. Leftover corn kernel and potato peels get recycled to the Herr’s farm and potato starch from the slicing process gets sold.
The time it takes a potato to enter the chute, get washed, peeled, sliced, rewashed, fried, seasoned and packaged, takes six minutes, Messaros says.
But it took only a couple of minutes for our group to devour just off-the-line hot chips and pick up two small complementary bags of chips before being dropped off in- where else -the factory gift shop!
Watch video interview and Vined tour here
Information about potato chip production
At the top of Forbidden Drive this Tuesday evening, Robin Gold and William Russell of Mount Airy were handing out fliers seeking help in locating their lost dog Truman. A small brownish-tan 3 year old terrier mix, Truman got away while being groomed at Bone Appetit in Chestnut Hill this past Saturday, August 3rd. He was last seen coming down Park Ave below Church in Road Lafayette Hill. Gold and Russell have been posted flyers, listed information on lostmydoggie.com (pet id 37452) and initiated robocalls to 6000 Chestnut Hill Area residents and, if Truman is not found by Thursday, will bring in a pet detective with search dogs that will track the terrier’s scent. Truman is likely tired, hungry and afraid. Please help find him. Email [email protected] or call 215-991-6740 with any information.
Watch video here.UPDATE
Truman has been FOUND.
According to Gold, Truman was discovered Thursday August 8th, two days after the above interview, near Chestnut Hill Avenue by non-English speaking landscapers who had seen the Lost Dog flyers. They contacted their boss who called the telephone number on the flyer. Unfortunately, Truman had been hit by a car and his tail severed at the spine. He was treated and is recovering at home. It appears the injury may permanently affect his bladder and bowel control but not his ability to walk. Gold reports his spirit is good and is just happy to have him home. In recent days, large laminated Lost Dog posters attached to telephone posts have been visible along Germantown Avenue and Pike offering a $2000 reward. Gold reports that the reward has been paid to the landscapers who also assisted in jumping a fence into a private yard to retrieve the small terrier: "They earned it"
I came across Bill Cusick in a proud moment, taking photos of his daughter’s first front page article in the Chestnut Hill Local as it appeared in the newsbox outside the Local office on Germantown Avenue. Katherine, a summer intern with the Local from Germantown Friends School, is editor-in-chief of her high school newspaper, “The Earthquake.” Earlier I had seen Cusick seriously taking photos of the newsbox outside the Chestnut Hill Bootery and when I saw him doing the same outside the Local office, I knew he was a man with a mission and asked if he might oblige with an explanation. Watch video here.
Claudia Stemler (right) and Laura Belmonte (left) are cramming bookshelves wherever they can into their“ brunettes’ bookshopbakery” – in a low swinging door and into upright support columns. They hope customers will buy cupcakes and books and talk books while the pair is baking away in their new shop in the Market on the Fareway (formerly the “Chestnut Hill Farmers Market”) Prices for the “gently used” books are $5 for hardbacks and $4 for trade paperbacks. Since people have been donating books, the brunettes are not yet accepting trade-ins. Additionally, they are cooking up plans for book-of-the-month picks and a book club. watch video here
The story, according to Ron Kravitz, goes that some years ago, Elise Rivers of Community Acupuncture of Mount Airy called him from Ashland, North Carolina 9 pm one Saturday night where she was participating in a community drum circle and said, “Ron we got 85 drummers here. We got to do this in Philadelphia.” And so she arranged for a gathering space in the shaded park-like area adjacent to the Lovett Public Library in Mount Airy. The local drum circle is now in its third year. Along with Kravitz, Bobby Tyrone and Quint Lang, a drum teacher from Collegeville, help lead the sessions, open to novices and experienced drummers alike.
But Kravitz, of Glenside, appears to be the force behind the drum circle. He is well known in the area for his association with or founding of a number of other grass roots music ventures: Music in the Moment, Underground at Ron's, African drum classes and more. He brings a selection from his 1000 plus collection of Bata and djembe drums, bells, and other percussion instruments for anyone to use.
About 25- 30 people participated at the first Sunday of the month July session on a steamy hot afternoon including some kids who just had happened to be passing by.
Among the other attendees were several first-timers like 12-year-old Jacob Slifker who had discovered the existence of the circle while searching online with his parents for somewhere to use his djimbe. During breaks, he got some tips from the experienced hands on using it.
The afternoon heat and repetitive, shifting drum rhythms induced a hypnotic effect and Kravitz drew the circled drummers into chanting along and some into dancing. The circle next meets on Sunday August 4th from 1-3 pm next to the Lovett Public Library at 6945 Germantown Avenue.