Bit the Dust

Yet another windmill roams the countryside free to terrorize the villagers with its own special brand of horror.  I have to admit defeat and log the ultimate DNF once again.  Geocaching 366 is no longer for the time being.  I wasn’t able to find any caches yesterday in Boston because of our crazy running around trying to find something to do and then the crazy trying to find something to eat and coming home.  Today, we also ran around like crazy during the day to two separate parties.  I had hoped to grab a cache near the movie theater after watching the new film about young Mr. Potter, but could not.  Again, we had to make it home to get our littlest man into his bed at a semi-reasonable time.  So, there was no time for me to stumble through a local park in an attempt to make my first night find…without a flashlight.  Therefore, at the end of two cacheless days, I am calling the fight for now and going back to the drawing board.

The original idea was a crazy one.  The second attempt at the crazy idea was not very well planned.  I’m thinking that I need a much more systematic approach to this particular crazy idea.  While I am often vehemently opposed to planning anything, it might just need to  happen in order to get this done.  I will continue to cache through the rest of the year and hopefully be able to get to about 300 before January hits, but we will see.  As always, stay tuned!

Leave A Comment, Written on July 30th, 2011 , Chasing Windmills, DNF
Our First Hides (Redux)

Good morning.  You may have thought that I disappeared and abandoned my geocaching 366 endeavor  with the dearth of posts over the past few days.  No, I’m still here, and I’m still engaged in geocaching, but I just didn’t want to spam Twitter with my daily updates.  I understand that the purpose of Twitter is probably to spam everyone 140 characters at a time.  I’m just not sure that I’m ready to be that guy just yet.  Maybe in a month.  Maybe over the winter when I have nothing better to do.  Stay tuned!

Well, since I last left you, I have had quite an adventure with geocaching.com and the first two caches that we hid.  Approximately a day or two after attempting to publish the first hide, I received an email that it had been archived with the reason that the reviewer was unsure of hides in stone walls.  I have seen many caches in New England that are hidden in stone walls.  In fact, it is almost a cliche or staple of New England caches, so I thought it might be a nice tribute to all of those caches that I found.  Nevertheless, the email mentioned that “novice” cachers might get a bit crazy and end up demolishing the wall in their zeal to find the cache.  Immediately, I went into defensive mode.  I’ve been a bit on edge as it is and I just despise situations like this.  The cache listing was not the place to spout my personal beliefs on the guidelines set forth, but this most certainly is.

I hate it when people are asked to adjust based on the actions (or in this case, the supposition of actions) of a few.  True, there has been evidence of stone walls being destroyed in the past by overzealous and perhaps “novice” cachers, it irritates me that the rest of us who are responsible and law abiding cachers have to change because a few people can’t get it through their thick skulls that they’re not supposed to adhere to the “forest code” of “Take only pictures.  Leave only footprints.”  Plus, the hide and seek aspect of caching means that you are supposed to be stealthy action where you leave no trace of your visit to the particular area.

Second, and I don’t know how prominent this is anymore, but there has been past evidence of so-called “anti-geocachers” who destroy the sites of geocaches in an attempt to discredit geocachers and geocaching.  Who is to say that some of these individuals weren’t visiting the caches and tearing apart stone walls to make it look like geocachers had done the damage.  This is all my conspiracy brain working, and from what I’ve seen of the “anti-geocaching” crowd, they’re not exactly the rational bargaining types, but I wonder if there isn’t a way that the two sides can negotiate so that everyone is happy.

Heck, maybe it is just “novice” cachers tearing the places apart. I can’t say definitively one way or the other because I wasn’t there and I didn’t take the time to research.  Still, being an educator at heart who sincerely believes in the power of education, I feel that instead of demonizing an entire activity because of the actions of a few, perhaps we should try to take the time to educate the few who are “going rogue” to borrow a phrase.  I can’t say that will work but, for me, that is a more reasonable first step than banning the activity altogether.  Granted, I don’t know if that step hasn’t already been taken.  That is the other reason that I didn’t want to jump to conclusions and put the reviewer at geocaching.com on blast.  After all, the guy was just expressing his concerns and he does this voluntarily.  I held it in and out it came here.

(Finally) An update on Geocaching 366

Instead of blasting the poor geocaching.com reviewer, I genuinely thanked him for expressing his concerns, moved the geocache on Tuesday, resubmitted it for review and it was finally published in the new location yesterday.  Also, Liam and Aiden came with me to hide number 2, as you remember, and they also thought that a stone wall would be a good hide for their cache.  However, I don’t want to contribute to the senseless destruction of stone walls, so I visited that cache yesterday and grabbed it to hide it somewhere else.

Wednesday, I decided to find a multi-cache to cross off one of the 50 non-traditional caches that I promised myself I would find over the next year.  I was a little worried because the last log was a DNF and the last found log was over a year ago.  I set out to find if it was still there.  Being unfamiliar with the area and the sometimes novice at orienteering, I parked at what I thought was the trail head.  It turned out to be a horse trail that led from one street to another and I actually could have parked 1/2 a mile closer to the cache.  It was still a nice little trail to hike down (notice that I said down there) and I found the first part of the cache no problem.  I was a little worried about my caching sense because I’ve been stumbling a little bit to find some of these latest caches.  This time, though, my caching sense honed led me right to the first part and I was off to find the second part.  My caching sense left me in the 10-15 minutes that it took me to hike to the second part, because I did a fair amount of stumbling and head scratching.  I also startled a nice woman riding a horse, who “thought she heard something” as I came out from behind a tree looking like I had just taken a pee there.  See what I say, geocaching is all about stealth.  Actually, the looking like I took a pee thing was completely accidental, but it did provide a nice cover story.  When the nice lady left, I stumbled for another 5-10 minutes before stumbling on the cache.  Then, on the hike back up the horse trail that was such a nice hike down, I learned (or relearned) a valuable lesson.  It is a bad idea to go hiking in flip flops.  My hips and back still hurt from that trip.

That brings us to today and a possible trip into Boston.  I remember once that I was going to try to find my 100th cache in Boston as a little celebration of the number, but it didn’t materialize.  Instead, I found this neat little journal travel bug with stories and the like on the top of Hockanum Hill as my 100th cache.  I’m not near any milestones this time, but maybe I’ll find something else that will make for a good story.

Updated stats:

Consecutive Days:  9/366
Caches Found:  8/300
Non-traditional:  1/50
Caches Hidden:  1.5/16 (1 published)
Totals:  10.5/366
Stay tuned!
Leave A Comment, Written on July 29th, 2011 , Chasing Windmills, Geocaching Day Trips, Geocaching Hides
Our second hide

Some time ago, we traveled to the Lincoln/Woodstock area of New Hampshire for an event cache.  We got there late, so there wasn’t much left to do aside from finding a few of the caches in the area.  They also had a few trinkets and containers so that kids could make their own geocaches to hide.  Liam assembled one and when we asked him where he wanted to hide it, he had an immediate answer for us.  I scouted the location and determined that the cache was too large to hide there.

I made the cache a multi, and then we went on one of our unfortunate hiatuses from caching.  Now that we’re back and I’ve  dedicated myself to this silly Geocaching 366 idea, I thought today might be a good time to hide at least part of the cache.  Liam and Aiden were thrilled to go out with me, picked the hiding spot and came up with an idea of what to tell people so that they go out searching for it.  I’m going to go out tomorrow to hide the first part of the multi and set up the geocaching.com page.  It was great fun to go out there with them and hopefully I can get them excited about another hide in the near future.

Updated Geocaching 366 stats:

Consecutive Days:  6/366
Caches Found:  8/300
Non-traditional:  0/50
Caches Hidden:  1.5/16
Totals:  9.5/366
Stay tuned!
Leave A Comment, Written on July 25th, 2011 , Chasing Windmills, Geocaching Hides, Travel Bugs and Geocoins
Our first hide

After 200 finds, I decided to finally take the plunge and try my hand at hiding a geocache.  This once upon a time was a celebration of our 100th find, so that tells you how long I’d ruminated on how to hide it.  Initially, I had the idea to hide a series of caches under the banner of WtW:  Walking to Work.  That was also when I worked at Mahar, so the title didn’t exactly fit the ideas anymore.  So, I changed it to WtW:  Worth the Wait.  That title is partly tongue in cheek because it took me so long to get it hidden, but I’d also like to make some memorable caches for people to find.  Perhaps this one won’t be particularly memorable, but it is only the first one, so I decided to make it more traditional.  I will tell you, though, that the mosquitoes alone will make sure that people remember this in at least one way.

I also released two travel bugs into the wild with this geocache.  They are made from old trinkets that I found in a long forgotten cache and got the idea to attach them to travel bug dog tags.  I know that the success rate for travel bugs is more often not very high, but I still like the idea of one of these little things making it to these remote places in my stead.  So, I figured, why not take the chance and I’m not really out anything if it doesn’t make it there.  I will update when the cache gets officially published, so stay tuned!

Updated Geocaching 366 stats:

Consecutive Days:  5/366
Caches Found:  8/300
Non-traditional:  0/50
Caches Hidden:  1/16
Totals:  9/366
Stay tuned!
Leave A Comment, Written on July 24th, 2011 , Geocaching Hides, Travel Bugs and Geocoins
Twitter and Caching

I always derided Twitter as sort of a silly concept, unworthy of my time and attention.  However, I have started an account (two, in fact, one personal and one for the family) and I now see that there can be a wealth of information and entertainment contained in those 140 characters per message.  Lately, I have been using the family account to try to reach out to other geocachers around the country and have been adding followers to my list at a near record pace.  I’ve now recently also discovered how to make lists on Twitter and I will be trying to consolidate my followings by interest.

More recently, I connected my family Twitter account to the family Geocaching account.  When I had my Droid, I could geocache using the phone, but the battery life was terrible.  Aside from that, the Droid was dumped into a lake and no longer work.  I have at least another month or so before I can afford another smartphone, so I did some research of how to use my stupidphone for the same function.  I think that I have everything all connected correctly and should be able to test the set-up out later this afternoon when we leave for the movies and grocery shopping.

Leave A Comment, Written on July 24th, 2011 , Equipment/Software Reviews
Celebrating #200 and Geocaching 365 update

Celebrating #200

As usual, the title might be a bit of a misnomer.  Seeing as how next year actually is a leap year and our crack research team here at the page tell us that there are actually 366 days in a leap year, so I should probably shoot for 366 as my magic number.  More on that later, though.  I have been geocaching for almost 5 years.  The first year, I was addicted to it and found as many as time and circumstances would allow.  Time and circumstances became more consuming and I think I might have gone an entire year without even finding one cache.  Well, more recently, I have found a renewed interest in caching and more time to get back into the habit.  Last year, I got the crazy idea to try to find one cache a day for 365 consecutive days.  It was supposed to start on January 1st and end on the same day the next year.  However, it never materialized.  Alas, it is not the point for this first part of the post, either.

Every year, we have certain family trips that we take.  One of them, our Columbus Day camping trip to Grand Isle, Vermont is in grave danger of not happening this year.  Therefore, the trip to Cape Cod this year became one that I really wanted to make memorable.  Add to the fact that there is this weird limbo state for my job and I just wanted to get away to bike, hike, swim, eat ice cream, build fires, sleep under the stars, and maybe even find some geocaches.  Some led to more, and I ended up finding my 200th cache.  I don’t know if this will be an interesting story or not, but I will at least try to make it work for people who probably have no idea what I’m even talking about.

Here’s the setting:  Marylou’s Coffee down near the canal.  It is within spitting distance of the campground where we stay every year when we head down for our yearly trip to Cape Cod.  I don’t remember how we discovered the place.  Perhaps it was their tagline, The Best Coffee in Town, which is more than just a clever advertising slogan.  They really do make the best iced coffee drinks that I’ve ever had.  Maybe it was because the sign was huge pink and Christine is always trying to make up for the fact that there are so many boys in the house by overdosing on the girly pink stuff.  Whatever the reason, we always head out to Marylou’s at least once a day for coffee.  Well, three years ago, I noticed that a cache was hidden at this location and I started looking for it.  I figured that it would be a quick little find and no big deal.  Three years later, many visits to Marylou’s, and several searches later and I still hadn’t found the cache.  Well, this time, we went down there with almost 200 caches.  At one point in time, I thought that 200 caches would be easy to find.  Lately, though, it looked like I’d never find it because of time and circumstances mentioned earlier.  Another trip to Marylou’s, this time with 199 cache finds, and I decided to take another shot at finding the cache.  It is funny how the universe works to pull things together because even though I know that I’ve searched the hiding spot many times before, for some reason, there it was this time, and I found the cache for #200.  It was a cool moment and one of those things that makes geocaching so fun.

Geocaching 365 update

As mentioned above, we’re pretty sure that next year is a leap year.  I know that I mentioned that i got our crack research staff on it, but I don’t know how much I really trust them.  They have been known to make mistakes in the past.  However, not having any way to confirm their findings, I will just have to take them at their word.  Therefore, Geocaching 365 has become Geocaching 366.  That’s it, folks.  Thanks for waiting.

Seriously, though, during one of my caching trips during the week in Cape Cod, I came back to the Geocaching 365 thing.  I’m now sure that the original plan might have been a bit too ambitious and I altered the rules a bit.  Hey, this is my windmill that I’m chasing and I can change the rules all I want!  Who are you to judge me?!  Ahem.

So, my new rules are thus.

  • I need to do something geocaching related every day for the next 366 days or so.  This includes finding or hiding a cache or part of a multi-cache.
  • I need to find at least 300 caches over the next 366 days.  Initially I was going to make 50% of them non traditional caches, but the traditional caches seem to be taking over, so I think I’m just going to say that 50 of the caches have to be non-traditional.  I will also hide 16 caches in the same time.  300 caches + 50 of them non-traditional + 16 hides = 366.  You really didn’t think that you were going to get through this whole post without math, did you?
  • I’m back dating this to July 20th when I found 5 caches and cached for two days after that.
  • Yesterday, I put together this post, so that is four days of geocaching.  I know that seems a bit cheesy, but again, this is my windmill and I hope to not have to resort to this tactic very often.
Here’s the starting stats:
Consecutive Days:  4/366
Caches Found:  8/300
Non-traditional:  0/50
Caches Hidden:  0/16
Stay tuned!
Leave A Comment, Written on July 24th, 2011 , Chasing Windmills, Geocaching Day Trips
Just don’t get it

I noticed this sign the other day while out on my bike ride.  Pardon my French (Though I have recently learned that the word that I am about to use is not French.  That would explain the odd looks and many detentions in high school.), but “How fucked up is it that we need signs backed by the law to tell people not to throw their garbage into the forest?’

Granted, I’m a long-haired hippie environmentalist.  Still, I don’t think that you have to be one to understand that you have to respect your environment, whether it is your house or a patch of forest up the street with a nice stream running through it.  Just my quick two cents this morning.

Leave A Comment, Written on May 28th, 2011 , 1000 Words, WTF?!
Geocaching 365?

Editor’s Note:  As I was ruminating on this post, I wondered if the title might have to read “Caching 366″.  However, a quick Wikipedia search of “Leap Year” by our staff followed by my own calculator confirmation that 2011/4 gives an answer of 502.75 assures me that the title is accurate.

I geocached on 10/10/10 and received a virtual souvenir for my troubles.  I was slightly surprised by the notion of these virtual souvenirs, but not enough to keep me from my appointed rounds.  The story is this.  We (and by we I mean much of Christine’s family) stayed in Grand Isle for our annual Columbus Day camping trip to officially end the camping season.  It is a whole big thing that started many years ago and has grown some years, shrunk in others, but usually consisted of at least a dozen of us each year.  We camp, visit the Applefest in nearby South Hero, fish, go to Ben and Jerry’s, stomp around Burlington, carve pumpkins (for which we are apparently becoming famous), and have a great time in general.  However, the boss man of the whole expedition said this year that perhaps Columbus Day was too cold, so it may be the end of an era.  Most likely, next year, the annual trip will be moved up about a month to Labor Day.  Well, for every door closed, another opens.  The suggestion was made that we can have a big family Halloween get together closer to home with the pumpkins, costumes, the whole shebang.

That, though, is a story for another time.  This year, armed with my Android fueled dream of world domination, I found that there were 5 geocaches hidden in the vicinity of the park.  Hmmm, I thought, with 5 more, I could grab 10 caches on 10/10/10 and feel like I had completed some sort of numerology cycle that would unlock the mysteries of the universe.  I guess receiving the virtual souvenir discussed above inflated my sense of self-importance to the point that I no longer had to close the circle and I only ended up finding 3 of the caches in the park before calling it a day.  Plus, we got crepes for dinner, so that trumps any nerdy numerology nonsense any day of the week.

Driving home, I realized that my other number related caching dream of reaching 200 was very much within my grasp by the end of the year and my mind wandered as it is wont to do when not otherwise engaged…and sometimes even when it is otherwise engaged.  Was there a chance for me to get to 500 by the end of 2011?  I did some quick calculator work to discover that 500 is 300 more than 200.  My crack research staff did a quick Wikipedia search to find that there are 365 days in a year most of the time.  ”I wonder”, I wondered, “if I could find at least one geocache every day next year to both reach 500 by the end of the year and get a nice little streak going at the same time.”  The idea sounded entirely plausible with a little bit of planning and I have to admit that it doesn’t sound any more insane two days later now that I’m finally getting to write it down.

Stay tuned to find out if this is simply a symptom of my overactive imagination or if I’m really going to try to pull this thing off.

Leave A Comment, Written on October 13th, 2010 , Geocaching Day Trips
Be vewy quiet, I’m hunting FTFs

I need to WHAT?!

Geocaching has a language all its own, full of acronyms like TFTC/H-Thanks for the cache/hunt-TNLN(SL)-Took nothing, left nothing, (signed log)-and FTF-first to find.  The first to find is the geocaching equivalent of Indiana Jones finding the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail.  When the possibility of chasing after one of these once in a lifetime adventures happens, the cacher’s heart may begin to race, they may break out in spontaneous shakes or sweats from the anticipation, thoughts of danger to self are completely ignored, and everything else becomes secondary.

I currently sit at 3 of these unique religious artifacts and this morning I received an email from Geocaching.com saying that a new cache had popped up in the area.  One popped last week, too, but the pop wasn’t as loud for some reason and I didn’t go rushing after the adventure.  This one, though, this one spoke to me.  My heart skipped a few beats, my palms got sweaty, I threw on a pair of shorts, muttered something to Christine about going hiking, didn’t tell my children where I was going because I didn’t want them slowing me down in the hunt (a heel thing to do, but I made up for it by helping them to decorate for Halloween), and set off about my way.I ignored the fact that about halfway to the cache, it looked like like the prize was on the business end of the actual mountain above that I would have to drag my old butt up instead of just a gentle trail meandering up the side of a mountain.  Everything was in place for a successful FTF run and as I walked up the side of the mountain, I planned exactly what I was going to write in the log to celebrate my epic accomplishment.  I was positive that all of my hard work would pay off…only it didn’t.  Hell, I wasn’t even the salutatorian in this little race.  I was the third to find the cache, so none of the glory was to be mine this morning.

However, nothing could rob me of the actual treasure of the cache, which was the view displayed.  It definitely made the trip to the top worth it and I admired it for a good 20 minutes or so and I swear it wasn’t all because my old butt was already starting to protest being dragged up the mountain.  Even now, as my old butt is in complete protest mode at having been dragged up the mountain, I look at the view and think that I would most definitely do it again…just so long as there is another chance at a FTF up there.

Leave A Comment, Written on September 26th, 2010 , Geocaching Day Trips
Why?!

The title of the post should be read, aloud, old school Nancy Kerrigan style, because I am just that devastated by the turn of events this afternoon.  As mentioned in my previous post, my little extramarital relationship had hit the skids, so to speak.  I spent a day trying to repair the damage as I marveled at how something so small could cause such big problems.  Confident that I had patched up all the holes, off we went on our late morning/early afternoon stroll.  Things seemed to be going smoothly, as they always do, before the old issues started to flare up again.  I’ve again spent some time trying to patch things up, but I’m not so sure that I can keep patching at this point. I have a feeling that it’s just going to keep happening unless we both work together to make it stop.  More to come on “As the Wheel Turns”…

Leave A Comment, Written on September 25th, 2010 , Biking
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