It’s Friday, so it’s as good time as any to delve into the mailbag once more at Castle Sidewalker. After the flood the day before last the letters are a little damp, but still legible. This week I received a letter from Cap’n Tinkerson, for those of you not familiar with him you can find his bio by clicking this link. It is about half way down the list of miscreants!

Anyway this is what he had to say:

Lord Sidewalker,

Baltimore, the city of my residence, has introduced a new scheme for collecting charitable contributions for the homeless. They have placed a series of fake parking meters at random points on the sidewalk. (Note these parking meters are not near obvious parking spaces to avoid confusion). I assume they are recycling the old style parking meters which have been replaced by “pay and display”. I recently found a coin at the base of one of these charity collection devices. I shall not share my next action, but I am curious to know what you would do on discovering coinage in a similar location?

Regards,
Cap’n Tinkerson

LS: After recovering from my initial shock – people pay for parking in Baltimore? I settled down to consider the question at hand. The mantra we live by at Castle Sidewalker is; ‘Every coin has a home…in my pocket!’ But as you see not every situation is created equally. There is a low probability that this coin was dropped elsewhere and rolled to the base of the charity meter, therefore one would have to pick it up and proceed to deliver the coin to its intended location within said meter.

I’m not going to ask the good Cap’n to reveal his course of action, as I know he does a lot of good work for charity, and there is no way that the coin in question found it’s way into his chest full of booty.

In other news, this week I did an interview for one of my favorite blogs Red Pine Mountain. It is based on a rural outpost in Vermont, she has some lovely photographs and good posts. It is my ‘virtual’ escape from the concrete jungle that surrounds me. I’d like to thank the ‘Mountain Woman’ for the opportunity to be interviewed and the flattering lead-in she bestowed upon me. The full interview can be read by clicking here

Have a great weekend…

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $24.23

OK, so the post title is a little liberal with the truth, but our trip to Baltimore did yield 51 cents for the Sidewalker Fund. The purpose of the trip was to visit our good friend Captain Tinkerson, and his lovely wife Dr. Tinkerson. We were once again overwhelmed by the generosity of their hosting. However Cap’n Tinkerson comes from a long line of well decorated salty sea dogs, and it was hard to refuse his offer of a days sailing around the Inner Harbor on his barque, the good ship Spiller. The downside of this nautical extravaganza was the lack of coin finding opportunities on the open sea, so this took a real bite out of our predicted total for the trip. The highlight of the sail was when Sidewalker Jr. said, “Daddy there is a big boat behind us”. To which I replied, “Don’t be ridiculous son, we would…”, just as five loud blasts from it’s horn indicated we should move aside lest we get holed and sunk by the massive tugboat. I can confirm that Baltimore is still very much a working port!

The two most noticeable finds were the penny found in the demonstration of the steering mechanism on the pier next to the USS Constellation, and a quarter that Cap’n Tinkerson pointed out to us at the National Aquarium. I think he was trying to make up for the sailing debacle. Also Light Street was like a penny arcade, evidence of this can be seen in my Cash Trail Map in the side bar to the right, as I have plotted all the Baltimore finds already.

As we strolled around the inner harbor, I remarked to Cap’n Tinkerson that the local folk down here seem to dress real strange. After a raucous belly laugh befitting of his status as a “man of the sea”, the Cap’n explained that Baltimore was hosting an Anime (Japanese cartoon characters) convention, and the fans like to dress up in the spirit of the event. My bad!

The picture above is a Sidewalker original of the transom of the USS Constellation, the restoration work done on this old Man O’ War is quite exquisite. I would definitely recommend a visit if you are in the Baltimore Inner Harbor area. Likewise the Aquarium is a must see, and the dolphin show was a big hit with the kids.

So the window to claim my found Starbucks gift card has expired. Later this week we will explore the possibilities of how we are to proceed with this find.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $13.92 (plus pending Starbucks resolution)