Zoeker Bill

Well I've finally been ticked. I've found them in the past scampering across my skin and clothes but Sunday night after a day of caching along the Linc , Mud St. and Rymal Rd. in Hamilton I found one embedded on my leg. Scrambling around the house looking for tweezers proved unsuccessful so after realizing that all the walk-in clinics were closed I headed off to Emergency feeling like a fool. After a somewhat lengthy wait a doctor came to see me. I am amazed that doctors who deal with all sorts of real emergencies can get the heeby jeebies over a tick. Even the woman at the initial check-in was panicking, telling me to make sure it didn't jump off! After the doctor removed the tick she called the lab to see if they could check it for Lyme disease. From behind the curtain I could hear the entire emergency room staff freaking over the little critter. I was informed that Lyme disease has not been detected in the Hamilton area and that the tick was probably harmless. They will let me know if they find anything. Time to get the permethrin!!

If anyone is interested Hikers Haven in Oakville has just received a shipment of Repel(permanone). It is a spray treatment for clothing that repels and kills ticks. It contains 5% permethrin. It comes in a 6 oz can (enough for two applications) and the cost is 22.99.

I was at Hikers Haven in Oakville on Saturday asking about tick repellents. It is located at the QEW and Trafalgar. You can see it from the highway, next to No Frills and Home Depot. If anyone is interested they have a shipment of Permanone on order and expect it within the next couple of weeks.

I was out with the "Challenge Caching Group" on Saturday in the Grimbsy area and had my first encounter with these little critters. My brother noticed something crawling on my neck after we got back to the car from doing a cache. He grabbed it and threw it out the window. It wasn't until I got the e-mail from ElectroQTed with a picture of his little friend that I realized it had been a tick on my neck. I found two more at home on the bathroom floor the next day. They must have come off my clothes which I threw into the dirty clothes hamper. I got one in a pill bottle and contacted Halton Health Services. They want me to bring it in for tests. I'll post the results. I never realized that these things were so prevalent in this area. This is my third summer caching and ticks have never been an issue. I hope this doesn't put me off hiking in the woods, I'd hate to just do parking lot lamppost micros all summer.

I found a TB in a cache that it had not been logged into. When I got home and used the tracking number the bug showed up in a cache in Ireland. Someone had picked it up there, dropped it into a cache here and never logged any of its movements. How do I fix this? I want to make sure the TB gets credit for the mileage. Thanks Zoeker Bill

I want to get into paperless caching. Any pda recommendations. Can you download waypoints into your GPS from your PDA? If possible, what is involved? The Beginners Guide recommends the Palm 111 because it has the serial RS232 port and my Garmin came with a cable that connects it to the computer via the serial port. Therefore I assume I can use that cable to connect the GPS and the PDA. Are the required cables available for other pda's for example a mini USB to a serial RS232.