Geocaching on WT8P's Notes to Self

Geobituary (GCJQGP) Rebuild

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 17:03:24 +0000

About 12 years ago, I adopted a Geobituary (GCJQGP), a puzzle cache published in 2004. The puzzle was, unfortunately, ambiguous, and there was no checker. The container (a mini-tombstone) and its location adjacent to a city cemetery were fantastic. When I adopted it, the container was in bad shape from the weather. I sought out to build a new one from scratch.

The original container in 2009.

Not having done this before, I thought it would make sense to frame the tombstone “top” out of wood cut into roughly semicircles. I Filled in the gap with some random wood bits, then screwed it laterally, then through the steel moderate-sized ammo box lid.

Sometimes poop happens

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 21:59:31 +0000

When my daughter was in college, I’d periodically visit to check up and take her on a Target trip to ensure she had all the household comforts needed. Although there was scheduled flight service to the college town, it was generally cheaper and quicker taking the nonstop from Seattle to either Chicago O’Hare or Milwaukee Mitchell, renting a car, and driving the rest of the way to the college town. And being one who likes to wander, I’d also scout out geocaching opportunities. On a particular trip in 2018, shortly after I started a new job and had no accrued vacation time, I flew after work on Friday, arriving to my motel after midnight. I intended to get up at the ass crack Saturday morning, meet her for breakfast, spend time with her (as she was available), then drive back Sunday afternoon to Milwaukee and fly home.

Pomeroy, WA

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 03:25:02 +0000

I’ve been through the town of Pomeroy, WA, a couple of times. The first, in 2010, was during my last Cycle Oregon, which I had to DNF shortly thereafter because I’d acquired Achilles tendonosis. That was extra unfortunate because I was over 40, and it took a long time to heal. However before then I enjoying the undulating landscape of the Palouse, occasionally stopping for geocaches.

Long and climbing road

Iceland Parks on the Air Notes

Sat, 14 Sep 2024 00:08:28 +0000

Before I forget, I wanted to jot down some notes about the Parks on the Air exercises I just did in Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Final statistics: Iceland: 11 parks activated (9 the first time anyone had), 382 QSOs, 277 confirmed (as of writing) for 41 countries. For the Faroe Islands, 172 QSOs, 121 confirmed, 37 countries. I also found my 10,000th geocache.

Pre-trip preparation

Paperwork. The ARRL is a starting point for US hams operating internationally, but their site is primarily a collection of links to documents you’re supposed to pore through and understand. The material can be exceptionally boring (T/R 61-01 zzzzzzz). The Iceland club had a nice summary, only lacking a specific link to the permit needed. (The permit was free, and quickly obtained.) There was a club for Faroe Islands, but it and the Danish authority were challenging to browse with Google Translate. I was unable to find anything specific, and hoped it wouldn’t be a big deal.
Equipment optimizationthrough Trial POTA activations*.*This was also an opportunity to work out kinks with my laptop, re-familiarized myself with the KX3, tried different antenna options, and set up a flow for logging.
Identify potential POTA sites.
Logging is complicated. I had a TF/WT8P from last year, and added OY/WT8P, which was “announced” and led to conversations with DX Daily (who publishes information about DX operations) and a ham who offered to manage sending paper QSL cards.

Prague Trip – Part 2

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 01:24:50 +0000

Belatedly following up with Part 1, my remaining time Prague had a day-trip to Bohemian Switzerland National Park, Bastei Bridge, and a lot of geocaching throughout the city. (Prague geocachers bring their A-game. I went home finding 132 caches in Iceland, 71 in Czechia and 5 in Germany.) To blow through my remaining CZK, I made a trip to a grocery store and bought enough candy and beer that I needed a second suitcase.

2023 Wrapped

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 01:04:32 +0000

Geocaching just sent a nice “wrap” of my 2023 activity (which I don’t remember them doing last year) that was fun to reflect on. It also became obvious how much of my activity has changed.

Using Project-GC, this is my monthly activity over the last eight years:

Quick observations:

There’s a pretty huge shift from pre-covid (right half) to post-covid (left-half), as I have been unable to get out with friends.
From 2018 through part of 2019, I was trying to do a geocaching “streak,” whereby I’d go out every day and find a cache. It gets brutal as I’d be finding all the caches I’d otherwise ignore just to appease some arbitrary metric.
Each year has had a spike of activity around travel taken.
My activity has been declining, which I think is a sign of clearing out nearby things to find. After all, I’m in Year 16 of geocaching.

Iceland: Check! I did a geo-trail around the Reykjanes peninsula, also a lot of wandering around Reykjavik.

Prague Trip – Part 1

Sat, 04 Nov 2023 01:37:56 +0000

After my time in Iceland, I spent a few days to see Prague, which is renowned for its history and the excellent geocaching community. It did not disappoint.

Day 1

Summary:_ ****Fly from Keflavik, arriving early afternoon. Check into the apartment rental. If time permitted, exchange currency, then wander to the meeting point for the Taste of Prague food tour. Sleep._ The American version of airports.

The night before, I dropped off my rental car and walked to the airport hotel two blocks from Keflavik International. Thinking the US airport experience was the norm, specifically, a lot of time-wasted because of security theater, I planned to be up and out the door by 4:30 a.m. to do all the security hoops for my 7 a.m. flight.

Scenes from Day 10 Iceland: All good things…

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 20:45:30 +0000

… must come to an end. For my last day, I had an early reservation at the Sky Lagoon, which is an Oceanside geothermal lagoon closer into town. I just could not get myself interested in the Blue Lagoon on this visit. Although I brought my swimsuit, I ended up renting one so I wouldn’t have to deal with a wet garment in my suitcase.

Sky Lagoon’s “The Ritual” is eloquently explained on their website, but I would summarize as alternating between hotter and colder forms of water. Towards the end, you rub oily salt on your body, then walk into a steam furnace until you absolutely cannot take it anymore, grope for the exit, and take a normal shower. The transitions, especially hot to cold, are surprisingly invigorating.

Scenes from Day 9 of Iceland Trip

Sun, 15 Oct 2023 21:20:48 +0000

Today, my last night in Reykjavik, I spent the morning geocaching around Petrin, checking out the ruins of Oskjuhlid Hill, a WW2 relic. The walk from downtown was a lot longer than I had planned for, but it was basically Seattle weather, and nice to be outdoors: Stairs to ???

WW2 structure

Bunker

On the way back, I was enjoying checking out the local street murals. The cat-stronaut is one of my favorites, but there are several solid works. My favorite

Scenes from Day 8 of Iceland Trip (CW, NSFW)

Sun, 15 Oct 2023 00:22:10 +0000

There’s some definitely extremely NSFW content here involving an uncharacteristically large number of dick pics. At least twenty. Oops, sorry for the Dick pic, source: Wikipedia.

To avoid the naughty bits appearing at the top of someone’s internet feed, I’m going to complain first.

After last night’s Food and Drink Walk, I ran back to the hotel to dispose of some beer I no longer needed and change into extra warm clothes for another tour that would take us out to see the Northern Lights. It was serendipitous that I’d scheduled this specific day because we were between storms and it was going to be cold and clear, with no interference from the moon, and a Kp index of 4. Although we were successful at seeing aurora, I would not recommend doing this in a tour group.

Scenes from Days 7 of Iceland Trip

Fri, 13 Oct 2023 09:59:57 +0000

Day 7 was largely heading back to Reykjavik, picking up geocaches along the way, and doing a food and drink walk tour to become familiar with the town (and eat something different than skyr and granola).

Urriðafoss was the first stop, and barely registers a paragraph in my tourist guide, but was a nice quick stop. Its name means “waterfall of the salmon,” and it’s located in the river þjórsá. According to the local description, its flow is the highest volume of water in Iceland at 360 cubic meters per second, with a drop of 6 meters. For comparison, Dettifoss, which is supposed to be the second most powerful waterfall in Europe, has a flow of “only” 193 cubic meters per second. The waterfall can freeze in the winter, which must be a spectacle to behold. Urriðafoss

Scenes from Day 5 of Iceland Trip

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 20:20:36 +0000

What a difference two days makes. After visiting Gullfoss and Gljúfurárfoss on Monday, in the heavy rain and wind, I rolled into parking for Skógafoss, stopped maybe 10 minutes, then noped out of there for different, equally blustery options. Because of the orange weather alert and closed roads, yesterday’s highlight was … clean laundry.

Thus, this morning’s cold, clear and calm was extra alluring. I mean, what about this doesn’t just say “go outdoors, now. Okay, you can have breakfast first, but then get outdoors!”?

Scenes from a wet Day 3 of Iceland Trip

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 20:44:35 +0000

In my trip planning document weeks ago, I had a note indicating today’s itinerary was likely going to be the wettest time here. Today, with the added benefit of the weather, that lived up to its promise and then some.

The first stop of the morning was Seljalandsfoss, a waterfall located approximately 20km east of Hvolsvöllur. It is not the largest, most powerful, or voted most likely to become class president, but it is a spectacular site with a near-constant roar. As you might be able to tell from the photo, it kicks up a lot of mist.

Scenes from Day 2 of Iceland Trip

Sun, 08 Oct 2023 19:27:19 +0000

The jet lag last night was rough. I think I had a total of nine hours sleep (which is good) but spread over 13 hours attempted (not good), including some surreal dreams. But I was feeling more human again. I started off the day with a latte and an Icelandic vegetarian breakfast of chia pudding and toast with hummus and chutney. Tastes better than it looks!

Having abstained from coffee for two weeks prior to my trip, the latte had the effect of perking me up quickly. First stop of the Golden Circle was Þingvellir National Park, which became a UNESCO site for the historical significance — the AlIÞing‘s (Icelandic parliament) formation over a millennium ago. It’s as equally interesting geologically, as it’s the intersection of two continental plates. Just say no to crack?

Scenes from day 1 of Iceland trip

Sun, 08 Oct 2023 00:22:52 +0000

After clearing customs, fetching my luggage, finding some coffee and scraping ice off my rental car, I headed over to Garðskagaviti to pick up a geocache near the lighthouse.

The cold helped wake me up from the overnight flight until the coffee could kick in. Next, I drove down the Reykjanes peninsula to the point where you could walk between continental plates.

This is the intersection of the North American and Europe’s continents. Another great opportunity to walk and marvel at geology

Iceland Trip

Sun, 20 Aug 2023 22:58:36 +0000

For ham folks who stumble here, the tl;dr is I’ll try to activate four parks on the air as TF/WT8P. I will be QRP, which means CW or FT8 are preferred modes. Logging should happen pretty quickly because Iceland is well-connected.

I’ve been overthinking my trip to Iceland, but this is what I’ve settled on:

Day 1: Arrive 6:15 am and rent a car. Overnight in Reykjavik. KEF to Blue Lagoon earthcaches, some puzzles, then Reyjkavik

Geocaching in the Northeast

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 21:06:35 +0000

Like a lot of folks, I had to cancel my travel plans in 2020 – this was a March trip to New York City — which left me with a moderate chunk of air travel credit$. I used some of them to visit the oldest geocaches Kansasand Colorado last year, but about by late December of last year, I still had a sizeable amount left and they were expiring. I couldn’t get my family to agree on anything, so I booked a trip to Boston in September. I hadn’t thought too deeply about it until July, when the trip seemed more likely than not to occur.

Aspects of Geocaching I like/dislike at the same time

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 01:40:46 +0000

The cache lifecycle. I like that any cacher can log an appropriate needs maintenance/archive, but I find local cachers are often reluctant to do so. Nearly every time I travel, I find dozens of hides with super obvious issues (e.g., hasn’t been found in a few years, streak of DNFs, CO appears to have left the game). I’ve been logging a lot of NM on caches 3000km away so I don’t waste time on them when I’m there.

Doing my part to clean up Charlottetown, PEI

Bullitt Fireplace

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 21:40:30 +0000

The first official CHS hike was the Bullitt Fireplace Loop on Squak Mountain. It’s east of my prior two hikes:

The route is similar to a reverse of this loop: Cougar-Squak corridor to the Fireplace, direct to the microwave towers, then Old Griz to Eastside Traverse and back down. Although this hike was labeled “easy,” the last 0.4 miles up to the fireplace was steep enough that I needed to pause a few times.

Longview Peak and Far Country Lookout Loop

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 02:43:34 +0000

My daughter, who’s home for her last spring break ever, wanted to go on a hike before heading back to school. I’d scoped out a lot of interesting hikes, but several were in weather-affected areas, because I forget 50s here does not equate to “melted snow” east of the pass. We ultimately settled on something closer to home: Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park.

Cougar has well-maintained trails and a selection of waterfalls, marshes, and mining artifacts. It’s a really nice area that I forget because it’s so close. For today’s hike, we’d do a 6.5 mile loop from the Sky Country trailhead, covering several lookouts and the waterfalls.

Tarryall / Pike’s Peak

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 23:07:00 +0000

The second half of my geocation was in Colorado. With some potentially dicey weather en route (midwest Thunderstorms), my plan was to drive from Mt Sunflower all the way to Tarryall (GC18), the oldest cache in Colorado, then pick up caches (as weather permitted) on the way back to my motel. Departing Mt. Sunflower, KS

This part of Western Kansas/Eastern Colorado feels endless with no official rest stops. I stopped a few times to stretch my legs, grab a quick park-and-grab cache (enough to claim the county), and pee. The night before, I picked up some extra tamales at Los Jarochos food truck in Colby to munch on at an appropriate point. Cell coverage was very limited, I was really glad I had pre-downloaded music and a few (good) audio (meh) books (great). I wish the Netflix app would let one play just the soundtrack to music without having the video screen go. The scene before Lake Urine spontaneously appeared next to my car

Arikaree / Mingo

Fri, 22 Oct 2021 03:38:12 +0000

Day 1: Denver Intergalactic Airport to Arikaree (GC31) and Mingo (GC30)

I took the early flight from Seattle to Denver, not checking a bag to hasten my departure from the airport in hopes of grabbing Mingo (GC30) — the oldest active geocache — and Arikaree (GC31), nearly as old. I soon ended up on a very lonely road, headed east to Nebraska.

The first stop was the triple-point intersection of Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado, a completely arbitrary waypoint that I’d have no other chance to stop at and claim a virtual cache. Unbeknownst, I’d not only left Settlers of Catan running in the foreground, I also hadn’t plugged the charger cable in right. No battery. I plopped the alternate battery in near Texas Trail Canyon. Hey, I’m in Nebraska! (Also, we really fucked the locals over.)

Mystery Valley

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 02:32:00 +0000

Here it is in August, and it feels like the year has been a dumpster-full-of-doo-doo on fire, about to be hit by murder hornets riding an asteroid. So I started looking at my vacation photos from last October and so much awesome scenery in the Southwestern US get solace in the crazy times since. One of my favorite parts was my brief visit to the Navajo Nation.

I drove up from Farmington, NM, a convenient and inexpensive place to stop and spend the night after visiting Mesa Verde National Park. The Four Corners Monument is a small side-trip from the drive to Navajo Nations Park and an opportunity to claim the four virtual caches marking this small, geographical oddity. Minor travel achievement: unlocked!

Fun in Utah: Canyonlands and Dead Horse Point

Mon, 23 Dec 2019 03:52:00 +0000

Solo Travel Breakfast of Champions

With the Fiery Furnace trip scheduled, I juggled a few of my days there to maximize my awake time. The itinerary was not hugely different:

  **Day**

  **Overnight**

  **Original Plan**

  **Final Plan**

  Salt Lake City

  1

  Moab, UT

  Potter’s Pond, geocaching

  added hiking in Arches NP

  2

  Moab

  Arches National Park

  Canyonlands, Dead Horse Point; Arches

  3

  Moab

  Fiery Furnace, Canyonlands

  Fiery Furnace; get permit at Mesa Verde

  4

  Farmington

  Mesa Verde

  Mesa Verde, Aztec NM

  5

  Monument Valley

  Sunset tour of Mystery Valley

  added Four Corners

  6

  Torrey

  Dead Horse SP, Canyonlands NP

  Added stop at Natural Bridges

  7

  Salt Lake City

  Geocaching around SLC

  Bryce Canyon

  8

  Home!

  Geocaching around SLC

  Pocatello (Southern ID’s oldest cache)

Logistical note: To save the hassle, and for crowd-avoidance, I pre-purchased annual National Parks ($80, from REI) and Utah State Parks ($75 online) passes, keeping both in the window of the rental Jeep. This let me get in super early, usually before gate was attended. Canyonlands National Park, Island in the Sky

Fun in Utah: Arches National Park

Mon, 09 Dec 2019 05:36:04 +0000

One of the rare holidays we receive is Columbus Day. (Seriously?) I’d planned to spend a four-day weekend visiting Arches National Park, when I found some vacation “under the couch,” and extended it to a whole ten days, then added destinations onto that.

The plan was to fly to Salt Lake City Friday evening, spend the night, then drive to Moab via a rare (one of four remaining August 2000 hides) geocache, Potter’s Pond. Located in Manti-La Sal National Forest, at about 9,000′, inclement weather is always a possibility. Once the snow accumulates enough, it’s extremely difficult for a tourist like me to access it until the spring thaw, mid- to late-June. I kept my eye on the weather.

Michigan – Part 2

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 04:35:27 +0000

(Notes to self, Continued from part 1.) Whitefish Island Indian Reserve, Sault Saint Marie, Ontario

Sault Ste Marie – I’d originally planned to spend a full day in Sault Ste Marie, but that fell apart when I opted to go to Mackinac Island the second time. Since I had to claim my Ontario geocaching souvenir, I crossed the border to hike on Whitefish Island Indian Reserve and see Soo Locks. Swing Gate

Michigan – part 1

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 05:39:04 +0000

Happy Lighthouse is Happy

Finding a time that all of the family schedules line up, and is not so last-minute that activities are sold out or excessively expensive, led to an over-accumulation of vacation time at the end of the year. As I’m less a fan of “losing vacation time” than “vacationing in winter,” I’d take a few days off, but we’d invariably sit around the house as everyone equivocated about what they didn’t want to do.

Mid-Atlantic Countryside

Sat, 04 Mar 2017 07:03:25 +0000

Well that was an enjoyable week! 88 geocaches in 6 states (DC, DE, MD, NJ, PA, WV) with 375 miles of biking (and some Ubering) over 9 days. Highlights were the guided tours of Gettysburg, PA (by a professional guide) and Washington, DC monuments (local, at night).

Pre-trip: This was about as bad shape as I could be in for the ride. In June, shortly after signing up for the ride, I sprained my ankle on a hike. Then in August, I caught some sweet bronchitis for 4 weeks: I was in not-so-great shape for the ride.

Geobiking Philly to DC

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 05:32:49 +0000

The excitement of visiting colleges with my daughter, her applying to the short list, and waiting on the results has is over and I’m seriously craving a week unplugged from work. I’ll be taking an organized ride in October from Philadelphia to Washington, DC. Since these trips are as much about seeing different things as the Zen of cycling, I’ll also be stopping for geocaches (and other site seeing) along the way. And maybe butterscotch Tastycakes, Cheeseteaks and those legendary tomatoes I’ve heard about.

50k elevation challenge

Tue, 24 Feb 2015 08:17:26 +0000

After 3 3/4 years, I finally completed the 50k elevation challenge (for geocaching) in October with my friend Jes.

Spoiler alert: Victory!

I logged far more than than 50k of elevation over the period, but the challenge had so many rules that many of my hikes didn’t count. In fact, for a while I had kind of given up even tracking gain. I was tantalizingly close after a huge boost in July from Cycle Canada but resigned to completing the official challenge in 2015. In September, Jes mentioned that she wanted to go to Mailbox Peak, and let me tag along. The elevation gain (>4000′) put us both over the cutoff. On that trip, we schemed on how we might finish it off while not completely incurring the wrath of our respective spouses.

Mac FizzyCalc

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 07:20:07 +0000

During the summer of 2011, I had some mythical Spare Time to blow the centimeter-thick layer of dust off my programming skills and port FizzyCalc, a Windows-based geocoordinate conversion utility that I’ve used for solving several puzzles in my obsessive hobby, geocaching, to the Mac. Mac FizzyCalc celebrated its 2500th download in November, a year after it was released. Cupcakes were served.

FizzyCalc is used primarily to precisely project waypoints and convert among the most common geo-coordinate formats. Applied judiciously, it can help you in finding the center of a circle given points on its circumference or the intersection of three circles. (Latitude/longitude is a Cartesian grid superimposed on a spheroid earth. At my latitude, one minute west is far less than the one minute north/south. Thus, my tenth-grade algebra fails.) One of the reasons I wanted to port it is using a Windows virtual machine always takes … a … w-h-i-lllllllllll-e to start because, oh, merde, Adobe Flash has another security update – Reboot to make the changes take effect!

Tiger Mountain Blackout: Geopolitical edition

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 07:57:59 +0000

Booyah!

To add variety to geocaching, “blackouts” challenges are posted whereby one has to find a slice of geocaches in an area. The last one I did was the Bellevue Blackout, which was nicely constrained within the city limits of the town I work. It took me about two years to finish.

Other blackouts have included much wider geographical areas like the Delorme challenge, where you find a cache in every page of the Washington Delorme map book. Since they’re so far away from being attained, I’ve been content to ignore them.

John Day Fossil Beds

Thu, 03 May 2012 06:27:07 +0000

I was going through yet another hard disk of photos to find an appropriate “timeline” image for Facebook. Had a lot of fond memories of a geology-themed vacation through southern Washington and central Oregon. The first stop was at Mt. St. Helens, home of the ‘sploded volcano from 1981:

Mt. St. Helens - needs a little TLC

Very close by is Ape Caves, a really long, dark lava tube you can go in. We walked the south (easier) segment. I wanted to extend the trip to the north end with my more adventurous, younger daughter. We went about 500′ into the section before coming to a huge pile of rocks we’d need to climb over (and then back) — great stopping point.

Life to a travel bug: Porcine Aviation: 2009 – 2012

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 06:55:25 +0000

About three years ago, on the way to our summer camping trip to Mt. Rainier, I launched a travel bug:

George is young, enthusiastic, and poor as a student

George’s stated (and optimistic) goal was to visit its eccentric cousin who spends his days in Concourse A of Terminal 3 in Cincinnati’s airport doing street performance art for spare change. The Concourse has had a rough couple of years, being closed in 2010 (because Delta and Northwest merged) before being reopened in 2011 as its sibling, Terminal 2, closed.

My first iPhone hide

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 05:52:12 +0000

As GPS-enabled phones become more popular, there have been a lot of geocaches placed by people using phones. Many of these will have serious “adjustments” to their posted coordinates because the person placing it just took a single reading, using whatever their phone was reporting and called it good. Usually these adjustments are anywhere from 50-500 feet, but that’s a lot when you consider the cache may be the size of a pinky and located in an area with a lot of hiding places. Like a forest, perhaps!

Bellevue Blackout

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:28:23 +0000

Bellevue is blacked out. Behold!

The Bellevue Blackout challenge is to find all of the geocaches within the city limits. Unlike the Delorme or Thomas Guide challenges, where one finds a cache in a region defined by each page of the respective road atlas (and does a lot of driving in the process), this one kept me relatively local. Since I traverse that corridor five times a week, I reasoned I could pick up stuff here and there. How hard could it be? 🙂

Cycle Oregon 2008 – Part 2

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:19:20 +0000

Day 3: Baker City to Halfway – The big epiphany today was that skipping the (now monotonous) breakfast meant I could sleep in. By getting on the road at 7:30, versus 6:30, I didn’t freeze my … um… didn’t need a jacket for the hour it was too cold. Now I just needed a step 3 (“Profit!”).

The ride up to the Oregon Trail interpretive center was marred by the cacophony of aid cars zooming past. Rumor was a rider had been grazed by an RV. (RVs scare me. When I rode the coast a few years ago, I was far more worried about RV owners – often leased vehicles being operated by someone with age-induced sensory loss – than logging trucks. Loggers know what they’re doing.) Ahem. I don’t remember much else about the route other than there was one significant climb whose significant descent led us into the town of Halfway. I was surprised how uncomfortable some people were in going downhill, without braking. The landscape of Halfway was pretty:

Cycle Oregon 2008 – part 1

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 03:18:57 +0000

Almost time for the product launch! (image by Scott Meyer)

Last year at this time, Cacade’s Ride Around Washington was leaning towards the “Ring of Fire” volcano route. I’ve had good experiences on two of their other events, and was looking forward to riding this year’s. In every other year, the ride has open slots through June, plenty of time to figure out my plans for the summer. This year, it sold out January 3rd, two days after signups opened. Great for Cascade, sucks for Jim.

Geocaching

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:58:00 +0000

Not that I need another hobby, but… I’ve belatedly taken my friend Tracey’s suggestion to try geocaching, essentially a treasure hunt. When I started reading about it last month, I was impressed with how many of these things there are. Check out the map of geocaches within a few miles of home:

So many caches, so little time

The first one I found is known as a multi-cache – the little icon that looks like a sort of yellowish file cabinet drawer opened. With these, you have to find one or more intermediate waypoints to end up at the final, “traditional cache” (the shoebox icon) destination nearby. It’s not the best type of cache to try at first, but in this case I lucked out. What made finding it memorable was how much effort its creater put into the ingenious contraption. Externally, it looked like the ubiquitous bird house found in suburbia. When inspected closely – not that you’d ever have any reason to do so – one might notice the bottom pulled out to reveal the Cache of Geo-Joy.