Part 27: I will never figure haystacks out.

This morning I found a creeper lurking on the roof (dang creepers... you think there'd be a spray you could craft or something.  some sort of pixellated roundup.  squareup.)... I'd have to retrieve Boxter in a daring in-and-out-raid.

I managed, though expecting every moment for the creeper to drop on our heads heffalump-style.

There was a bit of open country with a couple of standoffish horses.

But the open country didn't last long.

No.  Absolutely not.

Marginally better, but still not ideal.

I decided to go up and over the mountain.

The view was terrific, but due to Boxter's largeness and opacity, I couldn't exactly see where I was stepping, and several times grew very close to falling off the mountain.

The big trees are pretty, though. From a distance.

 At one point we were scrambling up a one-block-wide slope with sheer drops on either side.  Fortunately, Boxter appears to be able to balance on a tiny one-block ledge with some sort of levitation horse magic.

We nearly fell off this cliff when it suddenly opened up below us, and then nearly fell off again when I went back to take the screenshot.

yiiiiiiii...

The mountains were quite jagged, but free of trees, and with a little dodging of cliffs and chasms, the rest of the day's journey passed in a breeze and a clatter of hooves.

I'd build a national park here.

 Finally, it seemed we'd run up against another northern shore.  Finding a way around would have to wait for morning - I began constructing a tall tunnel-cave, like I had the previous nights.  Just so long as I start early enough on the construction, and find a cliff steep enough and solid enough to dig in, and as long as my glass supply and haystack supply holds out - ok, I guess under a lot of conditions - these shelters seem to be going better lately than most of my other resoundingly inept attempts.

Some kind of natural monument.

So I dug the deep tunnel, rode Boxter inside, and readied my haystack.  I would try the whole haystack-from-horseback trick.

I gave him the haystack.

Annnnd... haystack.

Then I ran to the mouth of the tunnel and looked back at Boxter.  He stared placidly back at me.

Looks promising...

 All right, it wor -

Nope.

Boxter started bounding happily toward me through a sea of spinning cobblestone blocks.  I slapped down two blocks of glass in his path, but he was coming fast.  I leapt up on one of the glass blocks, and a shoving match ensued.  I'm lucky that in Minecraft, a horse can't outshove me (actually, a horse can't outshove a morning dove either... and many's the morning that I've run from the house only to be stopped in my tracks upon collision with a rabbit).

So, as I shouldered Boxter back into the cave (rrrrgh.... mmmmmgh... get back you blockhead....), I somehow managed to place two more blocks.

Ha.

 From there, it was a simple matter of hopping inside and finishing up the cave.

Sunset, with mourning dove.  A very loud mourning dove, by the way.

 A cave which I was now sharing with a very-active Boxter.  It had been a while since he'd been free to roam at night.

Lookit!

And lookit over here!

What's that you're saying about me being in the way of your pickaxe?

HI.

 Eventually, he seemed to take a fancy to my crafting table, and spent most of the night perched on top of it.  Or hovering just off the edge in an impressive display of horse magic.

 Maybe he was meditating.

 And the moon set over a vast and uncrossable northern sea.

Part 26: Do haystacks go rancid?

With the arrival of a new day, I went for my customary brisk morning run. Refreshed, and relieved to find the valley free of creepers, I returned to the shelter.  Boxter was there, getting his morning exercise as well, which in his case consisted of jumping up and down on my crafting table.  I climbed on his back midbounce, only to find that he continued bouncing even with me riding.  This was unusual.

We bounced our way out of the cave and into the valley (fortunately, I'd made the ceiling high enough that I didn't take any head-bonking damage), collided with the sheep a few times, and finally the bouncing wore off.  Whew.  No idea what that was about.

Looking back toward the night's shelter, with Boxter bouncing away inside.

 The steep cliff-face rose directly in our northward path, so we circled away out of the valley, swinging wide to avoid a bear.

That was a pretty neat-looking valley.

Here's a cool natural amphitheater that we came across (and nearly fell into).

Could probably construct a pretty impressive-looking line of waterfalls here.  That task will have to be left to the next adventurer, however.

Turns out this area was more extensive than it had looked from the high mountain, and we raced happily northward through savannah and desert.

Gentle slopes and open to the horizon: a wonderful sight.

This was kinda cool - some floating formations.  We were weaving back and forth across the landscape, trying to pick the most treeless valleys to pass through.  Spotting trees ahead, we swerved northward again.

 A brief flash of white made my heart stop, but when we galloped up to this horse party, we found that it was merely a pair of unicorns.  My disappointment was allayed by the fact that one of them was a mini-unicorn, and bouncing up and down in the most adorable manner possible.

So. cute.

 We came across a nasty, tree-filled peninsula, and turned back.

If you seek an unpleasant peninsula, look about you. (Michigan would not have been popular with me in Minecraft)

Somehow we found our way out into empty territory again, and by nightfall, had managed not to find any suitable caves for conversion into shelter.  This particular cave looked all right at first, but the bottom went down a long, long way.

No chasms in this version of Minecraft, but a mighty cave nonetheless.

So, I'd have to dig a cave again.  I found a convenient cliff face, and got out my shovel to clear away the dirt first.  When it came time to dig through the rock, I realized with a first twinge of panic that I didn't actually have a pickaxe in inventory.  I scraped away more dirt before I realized that the mountain was made of rock, and shaving the surface off wasn't going to cut it.  I considered building walls, but I'd left shelter construction till rather late, and that sort of thing in my (now slowly accumulating) experience took longer than digging holes.  Looks like I would have to stop to build a crafting table, then a pickaxe.

My building site, shortly before I got to work.

I got the pickaxe constructed, although it took longer than usual thanks to my fingers stiffening up with fear as sunset approached.  Boxter didn't help matters, as he bounced frantically up and down, neighing.  He could have been cheering me on with traditional horse working songs, but in my head I heard it all as "hurryhurryhurrybears hurryhurryhurrybears".

Somewhere during the whole procedure, I accidentally threw the pickaxe away onto the ground, which at least solves the mystery of how I ended up without a pickaxe tonight.

I left the crafting table as part of the wall, meaning that as I was trying to attach more wall to it, I kept trying to craft instead.  That was sort of nervewracking by the time it got dark, with my walls not yet finished.

By the time it was getting quite dark indeed, I had managed to carve an entrance and place a torch in it, but I had not managed to place Boxter in it.  I had already tried once, only to be too slow on the draw with the haystack, and Boxter bounced away and out before I could give it to him.

So I placed Boxter in the cave a second time, leapt off, and gave him the haystack just as he was bouncing for the door.

He kept bouncing forward and out the door.  Apparently haystacks preserve not only a horse's excitation state (bouncing versus not bouncing), but momentum as well?  This has never happened before.  I chased Boxter down, rode him back into the cave, accidentally gave him a haystack while attempting to dismount, and then finally leapt off.  Not waiting to see if the haystack worked, I turned to the door with my hands full of cobblestone, bodily blocking the passage, and blocked up the entrance.  I would add the windows later.

Bouncebouncebouncegangway

I turned to Boxter to find that the haystack had, in fact, worked.  He was still standing where I'd left him, with his face sulkily enclosed in solid rock.  If I can give him haystacks while riding, and have him then stay when I get off... well, that would be a much easier way of managing evenings like this.  Can't believe it took me this long to figure it out.

  

 I spent the night mining/enlarging the cave, according to my sort of claustrophobic feng shui.  Minecraft does trigger my claustrophobia sometimes, which just adds to the scariness of your average cave.  So, by the time I'm finished carving away everything scary, the ceilings end up being high and the passages wide.

Toward morning, I looked out the window to see that our flying friend was back, now even more distinctly visible.

Eeeek

 Fortunately, morning light seems to kill it, whatever it is.  And it still flies, even when on fire.  This is added, along with sharks, to my list of things I never want to try and fight.

Flaming eeek