Jo Blogs: The Best Day of My Life?

Saturday April 4th - one to remember!

The first great thing that happened was that I found my first FTF geocache. FTF stands for First To Find. This particular geocache was published on Friday night so I figured that I would try and get out early Saturday morning to get this one.

Only one problem. I needed to borrow the car. That meant that I didn't set off to get the cache until 9.45am. I thought that there would be no chance of getting it first now! It was a short walk from where I parked the car to the cache site and once I was there it was really easy to find. Too easy I think.

I unscrewed the top of the cache. My heart started beating that little bit faster. Pulled out the cache's log page. Heart beating even faster now. I began to unravel it..... unravel.... unravel.... unravel..... It seemed to take the longest time! And there it was. The clean, white, crisp piece of paper. No handwriting there, just typed words. Pure joy! Signed the log, replaced the cache and jumped around a bit!! Woohoo! The Old Man of Stoer may be ahead of me on the number of caches they have found but they don't have an FTF yet!!

After that excitement, I headed home and got ready to go into the city to see the Tartan Day parade. As I wandered out of Grand Central, I could already hear the sounds of the bagpipes. Marvelous. I made my way to the parade route (6th Avenue/Avenue of the Americas or whatever it is called!) and walked passed all the pipe bands and other randoms lining up to begin their march. At that point I spotted Evie, who I had chatted to last year at Tartan Day.

This is Evie last year. A lot of my photos on this post are from last year because my camera died. But I got the important pics. You'll see.

Evie was a volunteer but she walked with me to the start of the parade. Alan Cumming (the actor) was leading off the parade so I wanted to get some photos of him. I didn't. Something much better happened.

John Michie.

For those of you who know me (I'm sure all of you do because no one really reads my blog!! haha!), you will know that I LOVE Taggart. L.O.V.E! So you can imagine my amazement when DI Robbie Ross walks right close to where I am standing.

I nearly died. I may have screamed a little. People were asking me who he was because I obviously knew. I sent a text to my Dad: Just seen Robbie from Taggart *paraphrasing*. He sent one back saying: Has he joined CSI New York? *direct quote*. Having nearly died before, this almost carried me over the edge. I laughed till I cried. Quick humour, Dad, I'm impressed!

I will say that it is probably a good job that there was a barrier holding me back. BTW I just noticed Alan Cumming in the background of the photo. He is just to the right of the lady's head wearing a greeny/browny jacket.

Well, this just made my day.... or my year really. But the parade had to go on.

Here are some of the pics:

These are from last year again. It was much warmer last year. I was in shirt sleeves. As you may have noticed, I was standing on the other side of the street.

This guy was there again. I couldn't forget this guy. The leopard print........The best bit of the parade. Without fail! Most of them were dressed up this year in little doggie dresses with girly kilts and full formal Scottish dress for the wee men, including the jacket and kilt. So adorable! Wish I could've gotten a photo of them.At the parade I got a bag with some free stuff in it, including a Scotland beanie hat and a large Scotland flag. I love free, especially when it is something that I will use!