Caching Whether

"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." - attributed to Mark Twain

I'll admit I'm a fair weather cacher. I'm quite happy to be out from dawn until dark on a sunny day, geocaching with a friend. If I'm caching by myself, I'm more motivated to spend a fair amount of time geocaching in nice weather than I am to even leave my house on dark, dreary, cold, damp days. Heck, I don't even want to walk outside on days like that. Today is one of those unpleasant days, and the kind of day I might devote to puzzle solving, except I'm committed to a certain level of physical activity each day which isn't achieved by staring at the latest kablooey puzzle, or diverting myself playing Treasure Madness.

So, at some point, I'll get off this chair, grab my Garmin Map60 CSx and my trusty Palm, pray the old Chevy starts, and go find a cache or two. Walking and hiking in this ugly weather is not my idea of fun, but finding a cache takes my mind off the discomfort.

Are you a fair weather cacher? Are you the gung-ho cacher who defies the weather and will go caching whether or not there is weather to be weathered? What motivates you to brave your particular weather extreme, whether it's extreme sun and heat or extreme damp and cold? Do you have any weather related adventure caching stories? I'd love to hear about it!

TFTC

Happy Trails!

DNFs at Three Bucks a Gallon

So, here's the problem with DNFs. They're expensive.

When I first started geocaching, I told myself not to spend a lot of money that I didn't have or couldn't justify on this new hobby of mine. I was pretty good about that for a couple of years. Both of my Garmin units were gifts, as was my Palm Tungsten E2. I shelled out the money to be a premium member, but other than that, the only money I spent was on gas. Even then, I usually only stopped to grab caches along a route I was taking for work, anyway. I didn't go out of my way more than a half mile or so to grab a cache, so I wasn't using up a lot of excess gas driving around. So, when I had to log a DNF, there was a good chance I'd be back to try again without making a special trip.

After four years, I've pretty much found all the caches along the routes I routinely travel for my work. I've also learned to be picky about which caches I even want to bother with. I really, really, REALLY hate looking for caches in smelly bushes, especially when combined with a large amount of trash or in a "shady" part of town. Also, I've gotten so much better at hiking, and in most parks don't mind hiking alone, that my drive by caching was starting to become limited to solved puzzles and their nearby traditionals.

As always happens after the holiday season, a whole bunch of new cachers have emerged lately, and many of them have already gotten started at hiding caches of their own. This has increased the amount of urban caches in the area, some of them good quality hides, some not so much. For me, the one thing they all have in common is that I have to go out of my way to get them, and that means making a plan to go to a specific area and find several in that area in order to justify spending the gas to get there, and I do not always know what type of cache I may find or not find when I get there. I may regret going out of my way for one cache that I find if I waste too much time on a cache that I can't find, and run out of time to look for any more. To me, that's a waste of gas and a waste of my precious little cash!

So, for all the newer cachers out there who want to hide clever caches in a tough location, do me a favor. Post a hint. Your cache is too far from my home to get to on foot.

TFTC

Happy Trails!

A Million Geocaches and Only One of Me

Geocaching.com, the World's #1 Location-Based Recreation Portal, Publishes One-Millionth Active Hidden Treasure

Uh, anyone busy this month?

Are You "Smart" Enough for FTF?

With the release of geocaching applications for the iPhone and Droid, the race for First to Find has changed since I began caching. I'm not "smart" enough, anymore. I still have to be home, near my computer, with the DSL actually working in order to receive notification of new caches.

Just a couple of years ago, there was a more level playing field. Everyone needed to be near a computer with internet access if they wanted to have a chance at an FTF. Being "FIRST!" has always carried its own special importance, and it was not unusual to find yourself in an impromptu flash mob of geocachers at the location of the newest cache. I remember sitting quietly at my computer, in my jammies, drinking my coffee, getting a notification and having to make that decision of whether or not to actually put on my jeans and shoes before flying out the door. Getting there before Winini was a big deal, although there was some status in being "First to Find After Winini."

Then came the iPhone and since a noted geocacher just happens to write applications for the thing, soon afterward came the geocaching application for the iPhone. That changed the game. Now, a cacher could be out running errands, receive a notification from the iPhone, pull it up on the website, select it and without even consulting his trusty Garmin handheld, be off to the location within a minute or two of publication. It hasn't taken long for other "smartphones" to join the rush for FTF. But I am not a member of the smartphone crowd. My $20 phone does phone calls and texting of a slow and painful type. Since I'm not "smart" enough, I've changed my email notifications to include only puzzle caches. There's another element to them that create more parity among FTF hunters. Of course, that's a different kind of "smart," and I usually fall short there, too! But once in a while, I get the answer quickly and get the FTF.

Oh, that feels good!

So, How'd You Do This Weekend?

One of my favorite threads on the GBA forum is the "How'd you do this weekend?" thread. I enjoy reading about all the hikes, wildflower sightings, off-roading adventures, out of the country trips, caching vacations, etc., that the local geocachers report about, often with many excellent photographs to document the experience.

I live vicariously through this thread, because I work every weekend, as weather allows, and when the weather doesn't allow, not a lot of people do much geocaching.

So, about a year and a half ago, I announced to the group that I would be going hiking every Monday morning and was looking for fellow hikers to accompany me. I wanted these hikes to include geocaching as much as possible. Also, I intended to make the hikes fairly short, three miles or less, not only to encourage people to come out who don't do a lot of hiking, but because I was sure I was too out of shape to do any better. I called them, "Monday Morning Wimp Hikes," as a way to differentiate them from the ever popular, hard-core hikers' "Death Marches."

The Monday morning hikes caught on rapidly and it wasn't long before the "wimp" element got left behind. I had no idea I could hike seven miles! On hills! Don't get me wrong, those hikes weren't easy. But I believe it was only the support and encouragement of the people who shared them with me that made it possible for me to do them. Because of them, I actually got some confidence to attempt a few two to four mile solo hikes. But hiking solo just isn't as much fun for me, and when the popularity of the hikes waned as people got new jobs or too busy or the weather got too extreme, I began to lose the incentive to get up early on a Monday morning after spending the weekend working.

Then, last fall, I got my Fitbit. There were two things I didn't realize until the day I got it. The first thing I realized was just how much weight I'd gained during the previous year. The second thing I realized was that a gadget could have just as much incentive as a human companion, even though it's still sadly lacking in fun conversation and help in spotting tough hides. The Fitbit got me back to walking and hiking more. Without doing anything different in my life other than making sure I fulfill my 10,000 steps per day, I've now lost nearly ten pounds since adding that gadget to my life. Now, when I think about how I did this weekend, I think about how many steps I walked, not how many other adventures I missed out on, or how many caches I did not get a chance to log. Better still, I'm beginning to look forward to getting up early on Monday mornings again.

I've Been Deleted!

Fewer things can do more harm to the psyche of a writer/geocacher than having a log deleted. After putting words to thoughts, going through wondrous detail while maintaining the mystery of the cache itself, spending untold seconds into choosing the exact right words to commemorate the experience, being told the effort is valueless, or in this case, "icky," is the kind of disappointment that elicits self-doubt, bitter resentment or even a righteously indignant expletive shouted out in the middle of a quiet evening to no one in particular.

In the past, I've had cache owners warn me they would delete my log if I didn't rewrite it, usually because they felt it gave away too much information. Normally, it has to do with exactly which smelly, trash filled bush to search, and which ones are better avoided. My usual response is to rewrite my log to say something along the lines of, "Found it," or something less verbose.

The offended teenager in this case didn't like me writing about my experience, since it was a mystery involving the need for police involvement in the park where the cache is placed. I was only a fringe player, as a concerned citizen asked if I could call the cops on a druggee that was hanging around play equipment shared by families and children, but as my phone was out of service, there was nothing I could do except go find the cache and get out of the park. The cache itself was an obvious find, easily visible to anyone who might be in the location. The fact that the cache itself is in jeopardy as a target for the local drug addicts, who might think it fun to stash their own brand of swag inside it, did not seem to concern the owner of the cache as much as the idea that people might know about it. I reposted my found log, edited to three words in total, and emailed the owner that perhaps one cacher's negative experience might be to another cacher's benefit, but I imagine such advice is wasted.

As to the disappointment of losing, forever, a thoughtfully worded and carefully constructed paragraph, well...

...there's more where that came from.

So Many Puzzles, So Few Brain Cells

I love geocaching puzzles. I've always enjoyed solving puzzles, finding answers and having people think I'm clever. In my area, we have the most creative puzzle creators I could never have imagined. This, coming from someone who once imagined what the world would be like if inanimate objects had feelings and could talk:

Left sock - "Oh, please! Haven't you dealt with that that toenail fungus, yet?"

Right sock - "You think that's bad? We don't even match! We're supposed to be seen in public together?"

But I digress.

The recent rains have forced me to stay home more than I like. I'd completed all the available maps in Treasure Madness (fb peeps know about this) and boredom was beginning to cause inertia. Once again, I looked over the puzzles on my Closest Not Found page and then rifled through the stacks of notepaper sitting in heaps around my computer. I picked the one I thought was most difficult to try solving, since I had already worked through about two thirds of it. I got my notes, opened the cache page and got a fresh cup of tea ready.

An hour later, I got a response to the email I'd sent to a previous solver begging for help while sipping my tea. So much for solving it unassisted. Luckily, most of the puzzle cachers around here are a great group of friendly folks who are happy to help and often form teams to brainstorm ideas while solving puzzles. This gives me hope that maybe someday, I won't have to click on the Closest Not Found page and see nothing but blue question marks. Not that I get picked for teams, mind you. Having two of my own puzzles labeled "impossicaches" by one of the better puzzle creators in the 'hood seems to have placed me in the same relative state I was in back in high school - too small, too slow and too obscure in my abilities to get picked. I didn't mind then, and I don't mind now. At sixteen I had it All Figured Out. At fifty I could Not Care Less. I guess that's true for most people.

So, after several hours of trying, once more, to solve a puzzle, hoping for some divine spark or other external torch of brilliant light to illuminate the ever shadowy pathways of my mind, I finally gave up and went to bed. Maybe listening to Radio Classics for an hour in the dark would help ease the frustration. But, as I lay there, listening as Superman saved Lois Lane for the very first time, the puzzle began working its way into my brain. The more relaxed I got the more the puzzle became clear. Suddenly, I sat up in bed, forgot Superman, and stumbled over to my computer. The light from my monitor was all the illumination I needed right then, as I began scribbling stuff down on paper.

Don't you just love it when a puzzle comes together and the numbers you were looking for appear in front of you as if written by some other hand?

The next day, after locating the cache and signing the log, I think I did a little happy dance. When I got home, I looked at the next puzzle on my Closest Not Found page, got out pen and paper, a hot cup of tea and keeping my mind as relaxed as possible, fired off an email to a previous solver.

I just love solving puzzles.