Sunday, April 17, 2011

To love and hate logbooks

Disclaimer: As I am currently under the influence of heavy medications due to some recent significant dental work that involved drilling into my jaw bone, please note that none of the following comments reflect the opinions of either myself or anyone in the letterboxing community, but rather are the official view of the voices in my head.

The weather is killing me.  Yesterday it rained, and today it is raining and snowing. It has no business snowing on April 17th!  I have had a great letterboxing trek planned that has been thwarted two weekends in a row by weather.  I also have two boxes that are ready for planting, also thwarted by the rain.  And to make matters worse, my work has decided to replace all its photocopiers to these shiny new ones that, you guessed it, do not lend to transfers.  The Hamilton library system, also brand new non-boxy photocopiers. I've been all over town - all shiny new copiers. Aren't we just coming out of a recession??? Either the recession was a lie, or there is some huge conspiracy involving the big three photocopy machine makers, the banks, and the Harper government. It's the only logical answer.

Anyways, logbooks.  I hate 'em.  I love to carve, and the logbook always ends up as the last-minute what-the-heck-am-I-gonna-use-oh-shoot.  And if I have some little books, they are never compatible with whatever size lock and lock I'm going to use.  I'm also not that big on making them, except for those for my microboxes.

But on the other hand, I love finding boxing with logbooks containing multiple entries. There's nothing like coming to a relatively older box that has many entries that you can sit and peruse at your leisure. That's why I never understood why people want to be first finders... You end up stamping into an essentially blank log book.  I love books that are filled with stamps and fingerprints and short messages with stories of how the last few people found the box.

Unfortunately, there aren't many older boxes in my area.  Well, in fact, in my immediate area, all the boxes are mine so the issue is moot.  But thanks to the hard work of some of the original Ontario letterboxers, there are some amazing boxes around that have fantastic logbooks with lots of entries if I'm willing to travel.  However, state-side boxing is a completely different story.  I guess just from the sheer number of letterboxers in the US, when you find even a new letterbox there are already many, many entries in the log.

Grumble, grumble.

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