A stormy day for the 12 of 12 July ….

I guess my 12 of 12 started yesterday afternoon with a return to night shift after a number of years. It was a busy night in Adelaide station but I only had one incident to attend – a motor vehicle accident at Flinders Park.

With the lights and bells going all night, I was a weary boy this morning and after collecting the mail from the post box, I was met at the door by Molly – our maltese shitzu. It was then to bed to catch up on a few hours sleep.

The house was busy when I woke with Jenny and Rachael taking a load of bottles up to the wood yard to get the refund money. Rachael is busy raising money for her World Challenge Expedition to Vietnam next year and bottle collecting along with chocolate selling and baby sitting are some of the ways she is raising money.

After lunch I decided to go walking through the grounds of Flinders University and then O’Halloran Hill Recreation Park to find some geocaches. This was about the same time as Adelaide and surrounding areas was getting hit by thunderstorms. The Barossa area became white with some large hail stones blanketing the area.

After a quick stop at the Scouts Rally SA office to do some maps and other administration things then it was back to work for my second night shift in a number of years.

Did you miss the leap second ….

Every now and then, due largely to the action of the seas on the surface of the earth, an extra second has to be slipped into the calendar because the earth’s rotation is being hindered by the friction. The days ARE getting longer. The latest one happened at 23:59:60 UTC on 30th June (09:29:60 CST July 1). One second later it was 00:00 (09:30:00 CST July 1).

The first leap second was in 1972 and the most recent in 2008.

So to see if we could feel it or see it I organised something of a flash mob event, Probably the World’s Shortest Event – 09:29:60 for the local Geocaching community.

And it was not a bad turnout for 9:30 am on a Sunday Morning with around 75 people turning up. This event was the first of a challenge today to get 10 different cache types culminating in a CITO Event, 10/10.

My personal tally was only 7 different types:

 Traditional Cache – Life of the Beach – SLSSA Headquarters
 Multi-Cache – Frequent Flier Mach Two
Mystery Cache – Nearly Gone
 Wherigo Cache – Beware Drop Bears!!
 Event Cache – Probably the World’s Shortest Event – 09:29:60
 Cache In Trash Out Event – 10/10
 Webcam Cache – Sailing the Web

To finish up the day, we had the family around for afternoon tea to celebrate Rachael’s 15th birthday (where did those years go)