Surfmaster P.I. Dual-Field on Jones Beach (June 6th)

On the night of the 5th I flew into New York for the summer. The next morning I visited Kurt’s place where several packages awaited me. Here is one:

After setting up the Stealth 720i Sand Scoop and gathering my Mares Classic 5mm dive boots (for walking along the sandy beach without abrading my feet), my floating sunglass-retention strap, and Clive James Clynick’s pamphlet White’s Surfmaster P.I. Dual-Field: An Advanced Guide, I headed off to the beach with my sister and cousin Maddy and their little babies. On the way we stopped at Treasures Unlimited in Bellmore, the detecting shop of famed treasure hunter Mike McMeekin (I’ll try to get a picture with him next time I go into the shop).

I’d ordered a pulse induction detector from Mike while still in England (the White’s Dual-Field), and he helped me get it set up and ready to go, and gave me plenty of helpful advice. Then it was off to Jones Beach to try out the new machine. P.I. machines don’t discriminate, pinging on all targets, but they go much deeper and aren’t bothered by salt water.

I hunted for an hour and half and found only bottle caps, bobby pins, and a twist tie from a bread bag. This last I found maybe sixteen inches deep! Right before returning to the girls and the kids to leave, I found a drop spot with four targets, the change pictured below. Though it was only 70 cents, it changed the feeling of the hunt and left me excited to take the Surfmaster P.I. out again soon.

A future treasure hunter:

My finds:

New detector, same old TH’er:

 

Shakespeare, Marion, and Mudlarking (31st January 2014)

This update is four months late, but I wanted to include it nevertheless:

I was in London for a meeting of my philosophy reading group — established with Rob Schwartz under the direction of our undergraduate mentor, Dr Jim Faulconer. We were reading Jean-Luc Marion’s The Erotic Phenomenon after hours at Rob’s law firm in London. As we finished late, I crashed at Rob’s place in Chelmsford and then took an early train back to London with an eye towards standing in line for ticket returns at the National Theatre; Simon Russell Beale is playing Lear in a staging whose aesthetic owes something to the 20th c. experience of totalitarianism.

I was quite near the front of the line from 6 a.m. — drizzly weather — but an hour later I learned that Lear was dark that night. I rushed across the centre to another theatre hoping to score tix to Coriolanus, but as this picture makes clear, I arrived too late for any hope of returns.

I had to modify theatre plans, but it turned out to be a lovely day along the Thames.

The only ‘finds’ were a couple of interesting pipe stems and this bit of pottery, which I preferred from amongst thousands of sherds for some reason and took with me:

There were other interesting things on the foreshore, of course, including this oar and a Ganesha.