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Tuesday, October 28, 2014

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Finally!  After a morning meeting with our Ranger Dave, we headed out for a full day of our favorite job here at J. Strom Thurmond COE…Pin Hunting.

We have a special bag we carry with all the tools we need to find the elusive boundary line pins, a hand rake, a garden trowel, rags, rolls of pink marking tape, a wire brush and tissues.  Tissues, you ask?  Use your imagination, sometimes when you’re deep in the woods and nature calls…

It was a gorgeous day, warm and sunny.  We set off to tackle the boundary lines around a couple of yacht clubs on Thurmond Lake.  We took with us fellow volunteer Laura, who wanted to learn how to pin hunt.  It was great to have her along, she picked up the technique very quickly and was a great help to us.  We wish we had someone to teach us when we headed out on our first pin hunt.

On that first pin hunt, we were sent out to an area and spent several frustrating hours looking for pins along the side of the road, never finding any.  When we returned, very frustrated and reported our lack of results, we were told that they don’t worry too much about roadside pins, because the are usually destroyed by the large tractors that cut the grass.  Besides, no one in their right mind would build from the road onto Corps property.

But we stuck to it, learned by doing and got addicted to the hunt.

With Laura along yesterday, we were able to cover more ground and find and mark the pins faster.  We were glad that she was along because she was quite the “Eagle Eye” and spotted tree markings and even some pins before we did.  :c)

Part of one area took us into some very deep woods.  Because it was such a warm day, I shed my long sleeve shirt and worked in a t-shirt.  Big mistake.

We completed one entire area around one yacht club, finding several encroachments onto Corps property.  We moved on to the next area, which was much larger and competed half of the area which we’ll complete later in the week.

We were quite pleased with the work we got done when we called it a day.  The shower in the Journey never felt better.

This morning, I got the reward for our hard work.  I woke up with a poison ivy  rash on both of my forearms.  I haven’t had any since I was a little boy and am not too pleased to have a new bout of it.  I’m being careful, trying not to scratch.  I have some anti-itch cream handy in case it gets too bad.  I know, I know, Leaves of three-let them be.  But I didn’t see any of that sneaky foliage.

Just goes to prove one of two things:  No good deed goes unpunished, or I’m not as smart as I thought I was by ditching my long sleeve shirt!  ;c)

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.

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17 comments:

  1. I've never had a run in with poison ivy, and I hope I never do. Right now I'm battling sand fleas or no-see-ums or something that chewing up my legs. Itches like crazy for days on end. :(

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  2. I've been so lucky - I've never had poison ivy. Might be because I don't spend much time outside. Thank goodness. Hope it's better soon and doesn't last too long.

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  3. Ohhh, I feel for you! I've never had it either, but I've seen the results in my household from you know who :) My sympathies :)

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  4. When I was growing up, in CA, we had to watch out for poison oak. Never got it thank goodness! Hope it clears up quickly!

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  5. Poison ivy I had many bouts of that as a child at our cottage, so bad a couple times I was in the hospital, brutal it was. Now I just stay out of the bushes, not worth it for me.
    Not a fun thing to catch.

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  6. SOOOOO Sorry;o(( Sure hope it clears up quickly and you feel better soon!!!

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  7. Yikes, that would drive me nuts! I am terrible at NOT scratching itchy areas. Hope it clears up quickly.

    www.travelwithkevinandruth.com

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  8. I wonder if you bushed into the hairy vines? I have had many encounters with poison ivy and THE VERY BEST thing to do is whenever you are out in the woods, come in and shower with Octagon soap. I'm serious. It will get the oil off of your skin and no rash. I've even been pulling out thick weeks and found that I'd wrapped my fingers around the dang stuff without knowing it. But Octagon took care of it. I can't remember the last time either of us had a poison ivy rash and we are in the woods a whole lot. It's a big bar of sort of brown soap in a white wrapper with big black letters and in most grocery stores. I just looked it up on Amazon and about dropped my teeth at the price. Forget that, we bought about 10 bars of it for either $.89 or $1.29 a bar a couple of years ago in the grocery.

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    1. Thanks for the tip. I did shower right after we got home so I think that might have helped, even if I didn't use Octagon soap. Hope I can sleep tonight.

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  9. I have not had a case of PI since I was 12. Sure hope yours proves to be a mild case:)

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  10. Poison Ivy has not touched my skin either. Now you need to go back and tangle with that bush to get it out of there. This time I'd wear long sleeves and gloves.

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  11. Poison ivy is no fun from personal experience.

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  12. Consider yourself lucky to only have a poison ivy rash on both of your forearms. Just imagine what could have happened if you'd had to use one of those 'tissues' you pack along with you!

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  13. What an awful way to be rewarded for your hard work.

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  14. Oh gosh, that's no fun. Ron is so sensitive to poison ivy that he could never do that job. I hope you don't have a bad case. You'll have to soak in tomato juice. Oh wait, that's for skunk smell.

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  15. Hope it doesn't get bad enough to lose sleep over.

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  16. Do be careful on windy days. John and I were playing golf on a windy/breezy day and the next morning, I had it on my face and neck showing the outline of the V-neck shirt I was wearing. A cortizone shot shot took care if it immediately.

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