WhaleQuest!

by Matt Musson

  In my case it went something like this:

  “Hey, Jenny. Guess who I saw vacationing in South Carolina? Give up? It was Santa Claus. That's right. Jolly old St. Nick was walking Rudolph down the beach on a leash. By the way, he said you are on his naughty list. And, you're never getting anything again unless you agree to be my chore slave for a month. So, you can start by dusting my room and throwing my dirty clothes down the laundry chute.”

  “And remember”, I added. “Santa's watching!”

  Anyway, I did not get to the primary club house until after lunch. The primary club house (PC for short) was built in a huge white oak tree behind Freddie's grandparents' house. The tree house was originally built by Freddy's grandfather and Father. We took it over a few years back. Of course, we remodeled the place a little: new paint, new shingles, replaced rotten boards, added a wireless Internet router, and stuff like that.

  When I scampered up the rope ladder and through the opening in the floor, the rest of the guys were already there.

  Toby, Charlie and Bogdon were going over a spreadsheet on Toby's laptop. Since Toby is the club's treasurer, I figured they were reviewing our finances. I knew our trip to South Carolina had cost a lot of money. Judging from the look on Toby's face – we were running short.

  This is probably a good time to clarify how we can afford things like a high tech tree houses and whale saving expeditions.

  As I explained earlier, I am Jeep Muldoon and I find things. Because of my inherited gift, along with Grandpa Gus’ training program, I am always finding rare coins and jewelry and even gold nuggets and gemstones in the ground. With help from my Ranger friends, we recover these valuables. If we know who the stuff belongs to, we give it back. We EBay enough stuff to pay the club's expenses and the rest we lock away the antique bank safe in our hidden clubhouse: the bat cave.

  I should also mention I live in the small town of Granite Falls in the mountains of North Carolina where I go to Granite Falls Middle School with my friends: Charlie Sinclair, Thor Munson, Bogdon Peabody, Toby Trundle, Freddie Dunkleberger and big Shad McReynolds. We are ‘Company A of the Granite Falls Rangers' – a science club that solves mysteries and has adventures.

  I have written down some of our other adventures. You may have read them already. Once we found the ancient ruby tipped ‘Arrow that Would Not Miss' and made friends with a Cherokee Medicine Man. One time we solved the Mystery of Merlin's Magic and saved Granite Fall's only miniature golf course. And, once, we built our own radio controlled giant ‘Thunderbird' that attracted bird watchers from all over the world - and two genuine Thunderbirds - to our little town.

  Who would have believed those adventures would turn out to be small potatoes compared to saving one measly, little forty-ton whale?

  Anyway, we had a lot of money in the bank before we mounted our mission to save Levi, (short for leviathan, the name we gave to our Zodiac smashing friend.) Of course, the inflatable was expensive and so was the week's worth of Captain Paul's time, along with the rent for his boat. And, the T-shirt cannon cost a bunch more than you would think.

  When Toby and Charlie got through adding up our spending it turned out our whale saving trip cost us about $28,000.

  Now, we were flat broke. We had less than $1500 in the club treasury.

  “Okay guys,” said Charlie. “If we want to make another stab at saving Levi, we need to sell something big. And, it has to be something we can unload fast. We can't afford to wait a month to get the cash. The question is: What should it be?”

  Toby explained, “we have several high value objects in the safe: the 7 ½ lb gold nugget, the 92 carat Red Emerald, a dozen US gold coins and the stock certificate for one share of the Tabulating Machine Company dated 1912.”

  “We also have Captain McNeely's commission papers and his Texas Ranger Badge,” Freddie suggested.

  “No!” Bogdon interrupted.”We are not selling McNeely's stuff.”

  But Shad McReynolds persisted. “Hey, some rich Texan might pay a lot of money for the personal effects of the greatest Texas Ranger of all time. After all, those papers appointed McNeely as a Ranger Captain and made him head of Company A.”

  “I don’t care,” said Bogdon. “That stuff is part of the Granite Falls Rangers now. It was the first really important thing we ever found together. It’s the reason we are ‘the Rangers’.”

  “It stays,” Bogdon proclaimed.

  That kind of assertiveness was out of character for Bogdon. Maybe that is the reason we just let the subject drop.

  So, we turned our attention to things we could sell without starting a club revolution.

  We figured there was $50,000 worth of pure gold in the giant nugget we dug up down by the river. There was a gold smelter in South Carolina that would be glad to give us that much for it. But, collectors will pay a premium price for a premium nugget specimen. Ours might sell at auction for a hundred thousand bucks, or even more!

  Of course, an auction would attract lots of attention. And, then we would probably end up on the Today Show answering a lot of stupid Matt Lauer questions.

  “Yeah Matt. We dug it out of the ground, and we were real happy.”

  After Matt Lauer, we would probably have to answer of a lot of questions from our parents as well, which is never a good thing.

  The 7 ½ lb gold nugget was a possibility. But, it was not our first choice.

  The Red Emerald is a double terminated red Beryl crystal we unearthed in a local mica mine. If it was green, it would be an Emerald. However, ours is red, so we call it a Red Emerald.

  No one anywhere has ever found a gem quality Red Emerald as big as ours, ever. Consequently, we had no idea what it was worth. Was it worth $50,000 or $5 million? Who can say? But, it might take months just to find a buyer. And, we did not have that kind of time.

  The one share of stock from the Tabulating Machine Company came from a junk shop in Hickory. It was hidden in a secret compartment in an old wooden roll top desk. Last Spring I found the hiding place because I heard a 2 carat diamond tie tac that was inside next to it.

  Shad recognized the company from a Discovery channel documentary on computers. It was signed by some fellow named Herman Hollerith that Shad told us was an old time inventor guy. Apparently, Hollerith was the Bill Gates of our Great Grandparents' Generation.

  We bought the secretary and gave it to Goodwill. We kept the stock and the tie tac.

  The Tabulating Machine Company became IBM about 1912. That one share would have converted to at least 5 shares of IBM stock at the time. Over the years, the IBM stock divided over and over as the company grew. Today, we could exchange if for thousands of shares of IBM, maybe a million dollars worth. But, once again we would attract a lot of attention.

  So, in the end, we decided to sell our gold coins for a quick hit. Coins are easy to move. Dealers like to pay cash and are very discrete. It would allow us to keep a low profile. We would probably would not get half of what they would fetch at auction – but the advantages were overwhelming: no Matt Lauer, no IRS agents and especially - no parents. Plus, it was not like they cost us anything anyway.

  After deciding how to obtain more funds, we turned our attention back to saving our whale.

  Bogdon had projected the migration pattern for the creature. He estimated the big guy would be off of North Carolina Outer Banks in two weeks. That did not leave us much time, so we divided up our tasks and got busy.

  Toby and Bogdon were charged with tracking the whale. Twice a day, every morning and every evening they called On*Star and got the whale’s location. They used this information to update a map that was displayed on the club’s secure website.

  Shad and Freddie volunteered to be in charge of selling the coins. Shad's Mom drove the pair into Charlotte where they attended this summer’s Carolina Coin Show.

  Those two horse traders outdid themselves!

  They found a guy in Ch
arlotte who absolutely had to have our 400 cent gold ($4) coin. The buyer even raided his grandfather's safety deposit box and came back with twenty-five thousand in hard, cold cash.

  It's always a pleasure doing business with a fellow who knows what he wants!

  Also, our $3 dollar gold Indian Princess sold for $6000. (It was a quality coin and a proof only year.) So, Freddie and Shad gathered up the $31,000 and our 10 unsold gold coins and called it a day.

  **************

  Thor, Charlie and I were responsible for locating a place to stay at the beach. So, we immediately began combing the Internet for different ‘educational' opportunities. We followed up with phone calls to camps and institutions all up and down coastal North Carolina.

  We almost talked ourselves into an internship with the Duke University Marine Lab in Morehead City. Unfortunately, it would have meant a full month away from home, and we did not think our parents would go for that.

  But then, we got a huge unexpected break when the Ecology Camp on the Cape Lookout National Seashore had a last minute cancellation.

  A group of students from the ritzy Country Day High School in Raleigh couldn't make it. Their chaperone / science teacher was bitten by a rabid chipmunk during an PETA sponsored Anti-Fur rally in Chapel Hill. Thanks to infected little Alvin, we were able to snag the Camp for the exact session we needed!

  Meanwhile, Toby, Bogdon and Charlie were developing a new and safer way to free the whale. The Harpoon spear method proved a little risky with the high strung creature. So, they created some new projectiles for our t-shirt cannon. The metal bug-like creatures was designed to attach to the trailing ropes and netting. Utilizing two clamping hands, they crawled their way up the tangled mess until they got to the whale's mouth. At that point, a saw arm popped out and cut the nets off short.

  After practicing at Town Lake, the guys determined the t-shirt cannon had an effective range of about 30 yards with these ‘bugs'. Plus, if they missed, the bugs would float to the surface where they could be recovered and reused.

  The final pre-mission task involved finding a suitable chauffeur for the trip. We needed someone responsible enough to pass muster with the parents, but loose enough not to cramp our style.

  We hoped that Thor's sister Hildegrund could be persuaded with a hefty cash payment. Hildegrund was a graduate zoology student at NC State. And, she headed up our trip into the mountains last summer when we came face to face with the legendary Wampus Cat.

  Unfortunately, Hildegrund had already committed to teach a summer school zoology class. It was a makeup course for the basketball team. If she backed out now, the University Booster Club would probably hang her in effigy.

  The good news is that Hildegrund recommended a fellow grad student for the opportunity.

  “He's perfect,” She explained. “All the girls love him and the guys like him too. He's top of the class and a first rate researcher. And, he's also a bit of a water rat. His name's Donnie Gee and he's looking for some beach time this summer.”

  Charlie got on the phone and offered Donnie Gee, a free week at Cape Lookout and $1000 cash. Donnie was onboard faster than you can say ‘hang ten'.

  The final step of our plan was the one that required the most skill and subtlety. We had to convince our parents to let us spend another whole week away from home. And, we had to do it fast.

  Luckily, we could make a pretty persuasive argument about the educational value of our trip. And, since it was all expenses paid – (at least as far as our parents knew) - it was a great deal. Most of us got approval right away.

  However, some club members had to resort to carping and complaining for permission. But, after a week of continuous ‘world class' whining – the holdout parents changed their minds. In fact, they actually began to look forward to a peaceful week without their irritating offspring.

  Just nine days after our first attempt to free the whale, we packed up our equipment and met Donnie in the town square. He had picked up a big white ‘Church Van' the night before at a rental place in Chapel Hill. It was easy for us to reserve and prepay for the van with our debit cards. But, it required Donnie's driver's license to get Hertz to let the van leave the parking lot.

  Donnie got up early that Friday morning and drove 200 miles to get us. The fact that he got to Granite Falls before lunch meant that he did not believe in wasting time on the road. That sounded good to us. If we were going to be successful in our quest, we could not afford to waste time on the road.

  ************

  Chapter 5 – A Trip to the Beach

  We said good bye to our families and loaded up the van with piles of gear, footlockers, duffle bags, etc. Donnie already had his surf board lashed to the top. We lifted our kayaks up there as well and bungeed them down tight.

  With the van piled up like a refugee express, we hit the road just after midday. We made it almost ten miles before we came to a Subway Sandwich Shop near Hickory. By that time, Shad was hungry and Freddie had to use the john.

  (We told him to go before we left, but he never listens.)

  After a half hour of emptying and refilling, we returned to the road once again.

  The cabin of the van was stuffed with pillows and sleeping bags. In addition, Bogdon brought his portable DVD player and loaded up Lord of the Rings. (With Bogdon in command it's a pretty safe bet he'll put in Lord of the Rings or any movie starring Amanda Bynes.) Charlie was playing with his Game Boy. Thor was napping. Toby was working Sudoku’s. And, I was rereading my old paperback copy of The Mad Scientists' Club.

  This was a road trip – Ranger Style!

  ***********

  It was late afternoon when Donnie pulled our van off the highway and into the KFC parking lot in Jacksonville, North Carolina. We slid the doors open and scampered outside to stretch our legs that had stiffened during the lengthy journey.

  Bathed in sunshine and humidity, we were assaulted by the ‘smell of the sea'!

  Although, technically speaking, it's not really the smell of the sea. It's the smell of the rotting vegetation in swamps and canals where the sea and land interact. And, we were still miles from the Ocean. Regardless, it was an exotic and wonderful smell for a group of mountain boys like us. It was the smell of adventure and in this particular case it smelled like whale freedom.

  Of course, in addition to the ‘smell of the sea', we were also treated to the smell of ‘the Colonel's 11 different herbs and spices' from the adjacent Fried Chickenary. The odor of chicken reminded us of how hungry traveling can make you. We had not eaten anything for almost 300 miles!

  Lucky for us, this KFC had an open buffet and a serve yourself soda dispenser. We descended on the restaurant like a swarm of locusts – leaving devastation and piles of chicken bones in our wake.

  Following our early dinner, we checked into a pair of rooms at a small motel not far from the entrance to the Marine Corp base at Camp Lejeune. This was especially convenient because we had a date to be at the Camp the next morning. We started our trip to the beach a day early so we could make a stop here in Jacksonville for the Annual Marine Corp Mud Run. And, on Saturday morning the Rangers were planning to show the Marine Corps how to play in the muck!

  With our temporary headquarters established, we set out in buddy groups to explore the neighborhood around the base.

  WOW!

  Jacksonville has more pawn shops, tattoo parlors and military surplus stores than you can shake a stick at! And, every few minutes, a Cobra gunship or a Harrier Jump jet comes rocketing over at treetop level.

  We were not in Kansas (or Granite Falls) anymore.

  I bought a keychain made from a real 30 caliber machine gun bullet, picked up some lense cleaner and a new strap for my night vision gear and watched a young Marine get ‘Semper Fidelis’ permanently inked onto his right shoulder.

  This place was better than Six-Flags!

  Charlie, who is always on the prowl, and Thor, ran into
a female Marine recruiter at the shopping center across from the motel. Charlie sweet talked her out of seven of those booney hats that recruiters give away to hot prospects. The only condition was that we wear them in the race tomorrow.

  Apparently, the young Lieutenant was an attractive single blond. According to Thor, ‘Don Juan' Charlie Sinclair told her we were sophomores in High School and that he was currently ‘between girlfriends'. Thor said it was painful to watch Charlie get blown off, but he was sure smiling when he told us about it later at the motel. We all agreed that when Charlie Sinclair gets shot down – the boy goes down in flames!

  Jacksonville was turning out to be a really wild place, but it was hot. And the humidity was so thick you could stuff a pillow with it. So, Toby and I wandered back to the motel, thinking we would cool off in the pool. But, before we hit the water, we ran into Bogdon, Shad and Freddie in the parking lot talking to another team preparing for the mud run.

  This other group of runners was made up of Marines who had lost legs in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan . They competed with prosthetic limbs and called themselves ‘Some Assembly Required'. They had run competitively in a number of important races like the Boston and Marine Corps Marathons. But this was their first mud run. So, like a NASCAR team before a big race, they were trying to determine the best set up for the upcoming competition.

  They had a number of high-tech bionic limbs to choose from, but the discussion was centering on what type of ‘foot' was best suited to run in the mud. Their standard running foot was a carbon fiber strip that was shaped kind of like the letter c. On the bottom they could glue different rubber tread patterns for traction in different environments. At the top, the foot was attached to a special shock absorber built into the prosthesis.

  However, this usual foot would be too narrow for the mud here at Camp Lejeune. It would sink down in the swampy earth and slow the runners down.

  Bogdon was intrigued by the technology involved. He pondered out loud about the merits of different foot options for tomorrow's race.