First to Find, Last to Find

I mentioned in a previous installment putting together lists of geocaches to attempt to find while taking a trip on the road. The better half and I planned a trip to see her mother in San Antonio in the middle of August, so, I made a short list of caches I wanted to go after while out on the road.

My itinerary was not as ambitious as had been previous efforts. My first really big cache hunt came about on a trip to go see Mount Rushmore with the kids and the first wife in tow. By the time we finished that trip, we had found caches in at least half a dozen states, including “Mingo” (one of the oldest caches still active in the United States), a letterbox cache at the foot of the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, and my first “First to Find” cache, the “Nebraska Sand Hills Rest and Rattle.”

“First to Find” caches can be (and for that matter still are) special. Here locally, in the area around my little corner of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metromess, there seem to be several cachers who appear to try and locate new caches almost as soon as they pop up on the pages of Geocaching.com. For the record, no complaints from me, although I have caught little rumbles from others who resent the enterprising cachers.

“Nebraska Sand Hills…” was found by the family at least five days after being published – and no one else bothered to find the cache until several weeks after I finally logged the find a week and a half after the actual discovery. It was my proudest “FTF”, but certainly not my last. There were many caches I’ve encountered with an empty log book.

Back to the trip to San Antonio.

I decided that I would attempt only three caches. Two on the way, and one on Tuesday morning close to where the mother-in-law lives.

The first attempt was made in Abbott Texas, birthplace of Willie Nelson. I looked at the description of the cache and saw a clue as to where it might be. I didn’t load the cache into the GPSr, deciding to try to find the cache “naked” (without using the GPSr). The turn-off from the Interstate was easy enough, and the town itself was just as easily found. However, the “spoiler” (a hint given away to help cachers find what they were looking for) had me looking for a structure which wasn’t there. We drove through town, waved at the people going to church on that Sunday morning, and then got back on the road to try and make time.

No biggie. We get down to San Antonio from time to time, so, no love lost.

The second cache I attempted was at the Buccee’s just north of Temple. For my readers not living in Texas, Buccee’s has been described as the largest convenience store in the world. There’s a chain of them spread along the Interstate, offering fuel, food, and the cleanest restrooms you will ever find anywhere. To give you an idea on just how big a Buccee’s is, well, imagine something the size of a typical medium-sized grocery store. The lot is so big that cachers have been able to place 3 caches on the property in Temple and not violate Geocaching.com’s rule that caches must be placed at least 500 feet apart.

The better half and I planned on this being nothing more than a pit stop, so, I pre-selected just one of the three caches on the property and parked Willy the Jeep near where I thought the cache would be. While the other half went to use the facility, I quickly fed the coordinates for the cache into the GPSr and found that I was about 200 feet away from the target. The hint told me that the cache I was looking for was a “Lift A Skirt” (under the cover at the bottom of a light pole hiding the bolts holding the lamp in place).

A bit too easy, I thought. I might have gone ahead and tried to find the cache in the third pole in my line of sight, had it not been for the rain and wind which had just started. Well, that and the fact that I still had to use the facility myself. And the fact that I had to buy the obligatory bag of “Beaver Nuggets” (sugar coated hull-less popcorn. “Only sugar has more sugar”). Took about five minutes to do what needed to be done before heading on down the Interstate.

We arrived at the Alamo City none the worse for the wear. We headed directly to see my in-laws (mother, father and brother) before having dinner and heading back to our hotel.

There was a restless night in an underwhelming hotel, followed by breakfast with the brother-in-law and his girlfriend outdoors in a picnic area next to the swimming pool. I told Steve (my brother-in-law) a little bit about geocaching and he agreed to go with me on a hunt to find the one geocache I had loaded into the GPSr.

“Thirty-Two, Forty-Three” was listed as a micro-cache located about half a mile from the Tobin Trail head adjacent to Interstate 410 north of downtown San Antonio. Steve and I needed the walk, and we combined that walk with some pleasant conversation. When we got close to “Ground Zero”, we found numerous places where a cache might be hidden. We noted more than a few little frogs in the immediate vicinity. Steve told me a story about an incident he had with a frog when he was quite young… I eased his mind by recalling a line from Monty Python (“… if we took the bones out it wouldn’t be crunchy, now would it?) and we kept searching.

Finally, I found the cache, or what were the remains of the cache, out in the open about 20 feet from where the GPSr said it would be. I went ahead and added a portion of the card I had used to write the cache coordinates as my attempt to log it and then moved on with the remainder of the hike and the day.

My spouse and I went home on Tuesday. I went ahead and logged my fine on Wednesday morning. Shortly after logging “Thirty-Two, Forty-Three,” I got a notification that the cache had been archived, or withdrawn by the cache owner, making me the “Last to Find” the cache.

No rewards from Geocaching.com. No satisfaction of making a new discovery, although there could be some satisfaction derived from being the last person to find a cache before it was withdrawn.

For me, it was find #989. Eleven caches to go before #1,000.

Be Seeing You!

It took no time at all for me to sketch out what my final finds would be. But the best laid plans of mice and men…

I drew up my list before my premium membership in Geocaching expired. I didn’t really get around to finding any caches until after my premium membership expired. I did find one premium cache, though, before that membership expired – the cache being “Little Blue Truck,” found on the way to The Hideaway Ranch and Refuge about ten miles from Glen Rose Texas.

It was here that I started to keep track of what I was finding and in what order I was finding them. Little Blue Truck was, according to records kept by Geocaching.com was find #987.

Thirteen to go.

There was no truck here, just a picnic area. I had passed the picnic area on more than one occasion. This was one of what I call an “on the road” cache.

Back when I was active collecting geocaches, I would plot my caching ahead of time, spotting likely targets on the Geocaching.com maps and loading the ones I’d like to go for ahead of time. Aside from having passed the picnic area where the geocache was located, I targeted this cache because I met the people who had previously logged this cache while going after number 984 while on a walk with the dog Filbrix in Farmersville.

A few weeks earlier, while I was plotting out the final caches, I noted that someone had placed a few caches on or nearby the Chaparral Trail going northeast out of Farmersville. When I arrived at what would be number 984, another couple was busily looking for the cache I was after. It became a “community” effort. The cache was found, the log was signed and I was off with Carol and the dog Filbrix on a walk up the trail to find two other caches. There was very little conversation between me and the other cachers. They were content to log and be on their way to find the other two caches on my list. They were driving. I was on foot. Needless to say, I found caches #985 and #986 after they were long gone.

I chalked up the lack of interaction with that couple to what I believe is a 30+ year gap in our ages. On one hand, it’s nice to see that there is a younger generation involved in the sport. On the other hand, I’ve found that that their participation in the sport is changing some of the parameters within the sport. Geocaching had been changing when I was more active. For instance, there was/is a geocacher who loved to climb trees. His caches were always in trees. Puzzle caches have become popular with some geocachers. Fine, if you are into puzzles, but I was not quite into puzzles. The current trend is the “Nano” cache. The geocachers I met in Farmersville were all about “Nano” caches. Sometimes they are easily spotted, sometimes not. Nano caches are about the size of a pencil eraser and can be a bear to find, especially with eyesight which is sometimes spotty.

Anyhoo, the “Little Blue Truck” was a “Nano”. Fortune was with me when I found the cache. There was a broad hint which led me almost directly to the target. Found, logged and on my way within five minutes.

My next find was not really a find at all. I went to revisit “The Hideaway”, a cache placed by “9-Key” at the entrance to The Hideaway Ranch and Refuge. “9-Key” was a fellow named Will Neinke, a prolific cache finder and cache placer. His finds and hides number in the thousands. He had also helped develop a system of symbols found on most cache pages as a way to help geocachers know what to expect when finding a cache.

Will was a personal friend. He and I crossed paths quite often, sharing a love of caching as well as an appreciation of the ’60’s television series “The Prisoner.” My adoption of Patrick McGoohan’s phrase “Be Seeing You” became my geocaching “handle” (BCingU). Unfortunately, Will had an early demise which was part of the reason I decided to check up on the cache in front of The Hideaway.

The last time I went to The Hideaway, I noted that I could not find the cache in its published location. That was roughly two years ago. In the meantime, other geocachers noted that the cache was, indeed, still present. One respondent indicated that the cache had been relocated to the other side of a driveway.

My hunt for the cache took place on a Monday morning. While the dog Filbrix waited on the other side of the cattle guard, I looked for the cache using the GPSr (GPS receiver) set for the coordinates published on Geocaching.com. Still absent. I then moved to the other side of the driveway and found the cache in what was a much better place, none the worse for the wear.

When we returned home Tuesday evening, I noted the new coordinates in a note to whoever was interested in looking for the cache. The next weekend, a geocacher noted finding the cache, but not at the coordinates listed on the web site. To change coordinates, apparently I have to be the cache owner. As the owner of the cache is no longer able to answer any inquiries, there may be one or two other geocachers who will be frustrated when they were not able to find the thing.

Of note between caches #987 and The Hideaway (I’m calling it #987a) are the bonds of friendship. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s something else. I feel a strong bond with some of the geocachers I met when the first few years of playing the sport. Some of the newer people, well, let’s just put it on me.

I have occasional contact with the geocacher known as “Bobcachette” – she introduced me to Geocaching (as told in part 1 of this series) and is currently rumored to be living somewhere in the area of Glen Rose.

Mr. “9-Key” has passed on, as have “Mustang Joni”, “Geo-Dee”, and “The Padre”.

Others will take their place as the sport moves on. There are new ways to play the game, and I will likely continue once I have reached the 1,000 finds mark. It’s just that I will do so at my leisure.

Be Seeing You!

My mail today included a full-color postcard from our local Congressman. He seems a nice fellow, but the postcard was more or less a message telling me that the fellow is sticking to the “Party Line” regarding the election we had last November.

Just to be clear, I have nothing against Republicans as individuals. Here is where the line “Some of my best friends are…” sounds a bit trite. Quite a few people I know of are honorable members of the GOP and I share many of their concerns when it comes to some of the issues which face us as citizens of the U.S.A.

What irks me are the “My way or the highway” folk who insist on political orthodoxy regarding certain topics not necessarily vital to moving our country forward. Essentially, that’s what my congressman (more probably the minions working for that congressman) sent me this morning.

I would rather engage with someone like Dave Hobson, the fellow who represented the northern part of Ross County Ohio back 30 years or so ago.

I met Dave while working for WBEX at the Veteran’s Hospital in Chillicothe. He was slated to give a speech, there. The boss man asked me and another fellow to go out and meet the guy.

I expected to be met with a parade of aides and press people surrounding the man, but was shocked when he came to the radio station van, asking us if we knew where he was supposed to be. After talking with him a bit, we took him to the VA auditorium where he had a talk to tell us that his father was a small-town postmaster and that he was like his father – dedicated to the idea that he was a public servant, not some high and mighty leader with aspirations for higher office.

It was later that I came to the realization that what he was espousing was something we now call “Servant Leadership.”

Would that everyone’s Congressman be the same. We could accomplish quite a bit for the good of everyone, not just for one’s particular political party.

(Did I mention that Mr. Hobson was a Republican? Pardon the error.)

It was here that I was going to insert the letter I wrote to the Congressman “representing” me. I decided not to do so, as it would likely be tossed in the trash by him and some of my readers. It’s alright. I’ve already put the full-color postcard from my Congressman into the circular file.

Be Seeing You!

Didn’t have much advance notice, but it seems that tomorrow (Monday July 19th) is the deadline to file for city offices in the November election. I’ve thought about running for something myself, but never got around to it. Like most of the people in the city of Princeton Texas, I don’t really feel engaged enough to do go ahead and run.

My maternal grandfather ran for and won election as the mayor of a small town in West Virginia. Thing is that he was a well-known businessman and for that matter, there weren’t but a handful of people in that small town who didn’t know him. He also ran for state senator at one time. Didn’t win, in part because he wasn’t too well known outside of his little town, and in part because his party wasn’t the predominant party in that place and time. I had no idea that he ran for state senator until I found a campaign pennant in one of the closets of his home when I was a teenager. (And yes, I had permission to go there!)

I’ve found that things are a little different here in the Lone Star State in as far as local elections are concerned. For one thing, races are non-partisan. There are no Democrats, there are no Republicans. In theory, at least. Most candidates belong to one of the parties or the other, with sly little nods and winks to let people know that they belong to one of the parties without openly declaring so. One of the candidates in the last election went so far as to have a small, red white and blue elephant off on one of the corners of his campaign sign. Yeah. Non-partisan.

Another difference I’ve found is that once one is elected to office, he or she is almost guaranteed to have a lifetime appointment. The mayor of a city where I used to live was in office for at least twenty years, starting the year that I moved here. I’d heard the story of another mayor in another city here in the DFW Metromess who was in office for over thirty years… and was re-elected again! Now, there’s job security! There was a bit in the local news about the former mayor of Allen – he’s having a recreation center named for him. He attended the ground breaking last week.

The mayor here in Princeton resigned a year or so ago and we held a special election to install his replacement. We lucked out and got a woman who actually stepped up to the plate and did what needed to be done. I was especially impressed with her involvement when the big winter freeze struck back in February. She’ll likely be on the ballot in November. I’ll vote for her this time around. Next time, well, we’ll see. If she becomes complacent like some who seek (or who occupy) public office, I might support someone else.

For me, I think I’ll stick to keeping up with me, mowing my lawn, feeding the hummingbirds, tending the garden and taking the dog Filbrix out for walks a couple of times a day. I don’t usually adhere to the policies of the party in power… or for the opposition, either. Probably won’t fit in with the local politicians, regardless. Besides, there appear to be several younger people interested in running. They just might need my support at the polls.

Be Seeing You!

Some entertaining dregs and vestiges to brighten up the day…

According to my Farmer’s Almanac, the earth was the farthest away from the sun the other day. Aphelion, I believe it’s called. We will be moving closer to the sun until we reach Perihelion sometime in early January. According to the Almanac, at Aphelion, the sun appears 7% less bright than it does at Perihelion. On the same day, the freshness date on my favorite cola-flavored drink expired. I wonder if the tastiness of that drink will be 7% less tasty than it was on the day before it expired. Not going to name the drink.

Here’s an interesting tidbit – Pepsi Cola and Episcopal are anagrams. Who knew?

When I feed the cat, the cat refuses to eat until I feed a portion of her food to the dog. Maybe she thinks I am going to poison her and wants the dog to act as a guinea pig.

The city of Princeton Texas is getting a lagoon. It will be part of a development on a Farm Market road to the north of the city.

Woot!

Somehow I am skeptical about this lagoon. The city appears to be having problems maintaining the infrastructure it has to accommodate what was scheduled to be built before this lagoon popped up. There are streets in dire need of repair here. A fellow could be deep in debt to a tire shop before he knew it if he traveled some of our city streets on a regular basis.

Four Hundred. Seven. Flip. Six.

I repeated that several times coming from the front of the house back to the kitchen to prepare lunch. We were having fish filets. To prepare them in the air fryer, I set the fryer to 400 degrees, put the fish in for seven minutes, flipped the fish and then cooked for an additional six minutes.

We got the air fryer a couple of Christmases ago. One of the best additions we’ve made to our kitchen.

I wonder if the food coming out of the air fryer will be any less tasty a few years from now. Guess we’ll find out.

Be Seeing You!

Everyone is supposed to have a calling. I wonder sometimes if maybe I’ve missed mine.

Maybe I haven’t.

Let’s catch up a little, first.

It has been a busy year in my little corner of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metromess. Like so many other people, I have been confined mostly to the house because of Covid-19. Given that I am in the prime age group to wind up in the hospital and/or dead should I catch the disease, I had decided to become a hermit until those times when I needed to go to the grocery store, or to outdoor services at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, or to take the dog Filbrix to Farmersville to walk on the Chaparral Trail.

I learned to operate within the confines of the house. Thankfully there was video conferencing.

When Covid raised its ugly head, I was more than halfway through the first year of something called Education For Ministry, or, EFM. It didn’t take long for members of our Thursday morning class to adapt to using our video conferencing link to continue the class almost as if nothing had happened. We finished the first year and slid quite nicely into the second year of our study with an overall view of what do we think of as being our calling.

I was quick to come to the conclusion that our calling is something within us… something we can do to share ourselves with others. The question became how to share.

The “how to share” came from an unexpected series of events.

Just before Covid-19 became a pandemic, I went to have my yearly eye exam. Something the doctor and I were keeping an eye on was the pressure inside my eyeballs. Since my maternal grandmother had glaucoma, we decided to err on the side of caution and go for testing at an ophthalmologist. I had insurance for the first time since I started seeing my eye doctor, so, I thought it prudent to follow her suggestion.

The good news was that I was able to get set up with an ophthalmologist somewhat quickly. The not as good news was that in order to use my insurance benefit, I had to be referred by my Primary Care Physician. Since I did not have a primary care physician, I had to establish one.

It took a while, but I was finally able to connect with a PCP by way of a telehealth link. I had a referral, I went in for testing and found that while I didn’t have an inkling of glaucoma, I needed to see the ophthalmologist again in a year, just to make sure.

I was also on the hook to see my PCP in person. Which I did. One of the first things he recommended was that I see a specialist to have a colonoscopy done. Something I didn’t particularly want to do. I dragged my feet. I had a follow-up visit with the PCP and he nagged me… making sure that the specialist’s office called me to have the colonoscopy.

I wrote a piece I posted on Facebook telling people that I was a patented coward, but I was going ahead to have the procedure done anyway. I got a fair number of hits on the piece, as well as a few comments.

Two days after having gone through the procedure (which wasn’t as bad as all that), the doctor called and told me that I had cancer.

Talk about something life changing. The only thing worse would have been not to have heard the diagnosis because I was laid out on a slab in the morgue not caring about anything.

Through the next month and a half, I posted news of my condition on Facebook, including updates with the good news that the cancer was localized and my doctors believe that they got it all. Each time I posted, I got lots of hits, lots of encouragement.

Which brings me back to the question of what I am supposed to do. What is my calling? I’m beginning to think that my calling is writing essays much like the one I am writing now, peppering it with little bits of humor, and giving people a good feeling – not particularly about me, but about themselves.

So here I am. In the last third of my journey on this mortal coil and I think I may have found myself a little niche. We’ll have to see. For now, I’m going to cap off the evening with a quick bowl of Corn Pops and head off to bed.

Be Seeing You!

I’m off on another tangent… starting a new chapter. For the next few months (hopefully), I will be blogging about a new musical venture of mine… beginning at the beginning:

 

Forty-Seven Years, seven months and I’m not sure how many days after leaving high school, I re-connected with an old friend. This is the story of that re-connection and my efforts to have as good a relationship with that friend as I did when I attended public schools in the late sixties and early seventies.

That old friend was my cello.

I say old friend in a wistful way. Truth is that for a while, I hated the cello because my parents forced me to practice half an hour every day in the kitchen of the home where we lived in suburban Cleveland Ohio. It wasn’t until many years after I quit at the end of high school that I came to appreciate the instrument; eventually coming to rue my decision not to continue to play.

My decision to take up playing the cello at the tender age of 65 was rooted in a number of events; not the least of which was my quiet gentle whining about how much I missed playing the cello despite my enmity toward the instrument for a few of the years I played it. Since there is a lot of story, here, perhaps it would be wise to begin at the beginning…

 

*****

 

Whenever the subject of music came up, I told people that as a child I played on the linoleum.

I did more than that, really.

Until the school system gave us flutophones when we were in the fourth grade, I never played an instrument. There are, doubtless, parents out there who have bad memories of kids bringing flutophones or some similar apparatus into the home and wreaking havoc with whatever measure of peace and quiet they might have had.

Flutophones ended up being the gateway instruments to the bigger things like real flutes, real drums, real trombones and real violins. Close to the end of the school year, I recall being led into the school library and being told that I could choose any instrument I wanted to play starting when I was in the fifth grade.

I chose the cello for, what in my mind, was a very valid reason.

Sometime in the previous year, my eye was caught by an article in the Britannica yearbook showing young Japanese students being taught to play the violin using the Suzuki method. What struck me and led to my choosing to play the cello was that the violin students were standing up.

Cellos are played sitting down.

My fundamental laziness led me to choose what I would later find out to be the one instrument requiring more physical prowess than most other instruments.

After making my choice and telling my parents, the next step was to procure a ¾ size cello from a music shop in nearby Berea Ohio. With that came music lessons provided by the school district where I learned the fundamentals and eventually played tunes.

I don’t recall too much about the first two years of playing other than my parents being amused that one of my teachers during the summer session between the fifth and sixth grade was named Richard Tracy. They explained to me that men named Richard were usually nicknamed Dick, and my finally tying it into one of my favorite comic strips.

One thing I do recall was my loathing of having to practice.

I dreaded the half hour daily of having to sit next to the doorway between the kitchen and the main hallway and sawing away on the damn thing. In retrospect, my parents were doing the right thing in enforcing the practice sessions as it would provide me with a discipline I may not have otherwise had.

Toward the end of the sixth grade, string players from all Berea city school district elementary schools were gathered into an all-city orchestra. It wasn’t until after our performance that my father told me that the girl sitting next to me was the daughter of one of the Cleveland Browns. Dad was impressed despite not being a fan of professional sports, and Mom wondered how I got along with the girl now that puberty was starting to stare me in the face. Jill G’s parents lived in a mysterious corner of Berea, where we lived in adjacent Middleburg Heights, so there was little chance of social contact if any.

The seventh grade brought a few changes other than my impending adolescence. Most importantly, I was in junior high and lessons taught by employees of the school system came to an end.

My parents managed to latch on to a woman living near Berea High School named Mrs. Hiller to be my teacher. She taught out of her home and had the reputation of being one of the best, if not the best cello teachers in the Cleveland area. Somehow, I got to the front of the waiting line and got to have her as my teacher.

Mrs. Hiller challenged me. She wasn’t satisfied with just teaching the basics, she challenged me with music which might have been just out of my reach at the time I started but was able to master rather quickly under her guidance.

Another important change was that I had outgrown the ¾ size cello and was ready to graduate to a full-size instrument.

Part of the change had to do with the rental place going out of business. My father was reluctant to spend the money needed to put me into one of the full-size cellos that the fellow had available, so he scoured the local newspaper and found a full-size cello for sale. He called the number in the ad, grabbed me and took me to a birthday party at a house in a mysterious corner of Berea belonging to Jill G’s famous father.

He was hosting a birthday party for one of his Cleveland Browns teammates but managed to conduct the sale – even offering us a piece of birthday cake in the bargain!

A few days after we got home with the “new” cello, word slipped out about where we got it. It was only when my peers in the immediate neighborhood figured out that I didn’t get any autographs that I figured out that I should have gotten some autographs.

September is in its last few days and I’m finally at a place where I can hunker down and get busy writing in earnest. “The Secret of Possum Hollow” has been doing moderately well, but not well enough so I can quit the day job. Now that I am working “full-time”, opportunities to sit down in front of a keyboard are less common. Today, I have a few hours more than usual, due to an early start.

I am working on three projects at this time:

“Epiphany”, a story based on Pastor Dan’s life four years after the events of “The Magnolia Chronicles” is coming along quite nicely. I read an earlier draft of the story here roughly a year ago. A sermon by the rector of the church I attend has led me to change the story just a little bit to make it more interesting.

“Still Life”, a story started when I lived in Allen at the suggestion (and with input from) my wife is still in the works. I’ve done a little prodding and prying here and there on one of the aspects of the story and have tweaked the still unresolved narrative accordingly. I was hoping to have this story out at least six months ago. Maybe in another six, who knows?

The third project is one I started to read earlier this year before getting sidetracked with the publication of “Possum Hollow”. I did a minor re-write and was ready to start reading it again, but have since decided that the story needed to follow a different track. This third project actually fits in a timeline between “Chronicles” and “Possum Hollow”, with elements which are part of “Epiphany” and “Still Life”.

I will continue to soldier on.

Amazon still has “The Secret of Possum Hollow” available for the discerning reader… and for the discerning reader who would like a copy of that book with the author’s autograph and a personalized quip, see the previous blog.

Gotta go write, now… Bye!!

The Secret of Possum Hollow

 

I’ve had several people expressing an interest in getting an autographed copy of The Secret of Possum Hollow. Many of those wanting autographed copies are classmates of mine whom I would have met at our class reunion a little over two weeks from now.

The key here lies in the words, “…would have met…” in that my plans to attend the class reunion have gone to hell in a handcart due to a change in employment. (Authors such as myself need to be aware that we need to eat and have a roof over our head while waiting for our “big break”.) At first, I thought I’d be able to skate by and make a quick trip up to Ohio, but the requirements of the new job have prevented my escape.

So, to facilitate the acquisition of autographed copies of The Secret of Possum Hollow, there is now this link. If the people from Pay Pal do their job, they will forward names and shipping information to me so that I can fulfill said orders. My goal is to have orders shipped within 3-5 business days with anticipated delivery within 7 business days after shipment.