Last Friday our friends Cindy & Schmed arranged a late afternoon surprise for us, since we’d just celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. No, it wasn’t the solar powered heart rainbow maker with the genuine heart-shaped Swarovski crystal, even though I thought I’d dropped plenty of hints.
Instead, Jenna came home from school with a sealed envelope they’d left with her teacher. This directed us to a sundial Schmed had secretly constructed on our property.
At 4pm the shadow gave us the digit to use to construct a phone number, which we called for our next clue. Hmm, where can you find the most wheels in Nevada City that aren’t attached to cars? They’d cleaned up that illegal tire dump near Old Downieville Highway. Of course – the Tour of Nevada City bicycle store! After a fun hour of digging up buried hints, figuring out what a Pikachu evolves into (good thing Jenna was there) and reading “Go Dog Go” for clues…
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…we found ourselves at the final destination:
Banner Mountain is the highest point around Nevada City & Grass Valley, at 3899ft. During fire season the tower at the top is manned by volunteers.
Jenna & Schmed on the tower stairs
It turns out Cindy & Schmed had been practicing “pair fire-spotting” for the past few months…
Cindy demonstrates good technique
and they’d set up a lovely anniversary party for us at the top. At the end of their 6pm shift, Jenna got to sign off, which pretty much made her day.
Talk about raising the bar – I’ll have to start planning their next anniversary event soon, since it’s only 8 months away.
Ken's Techno Tidbits 