Geocaching In San Francisco

Here's a nice video I ran across this morning. Doug McConnell of OpenRoad.TV joins TeamAlamo in the Bay Area for some geocaching. (TeamAlamo currently has over 29,000 cache finds)

I like this video because it shows a variety of caches from a memorable urban cache at Lombard Street, to some out of the way caches with some of the finest vistas San Francisco has to offer. This video also does a pretty good job of showing what the game is about and gives a nice intro for those looking to learn about geocaching.

Enjoy!

The Boy Turns 7 Today

Today is The Boy's birthday. We went to Ruby's for breakfast and then went bowling. We are having some friends over for cake. It's been a great day.

The highlight of this birthday has to be the card from my Grandma Decker. Grandma Decker is the sweetest woman I've ever met in my life. If you met her you would love her instantly. Grandma Decker sent The Boy a birthday card and he opened it and read the cute little message inside. Her notes always end with "XOXOXOXOXOXOX." Awww, we love you grandma.

It wasn't until this morning that The Wife read the front of the card and noticed what the message said. We are still laughing about this one and the card will be saved forever. I know that Grandma Decker just saw the cute sock puppet on front and thought, "That's a cute card." She has no idea what it says and that's part of why it's so funny. If you knew her, you'd understand. God bless that woman. I snapped a picture of the card and posted it below. What a classic!

So in the spirit of this wonderful day, I'd like to say, "Happy F***ing Birthday, The Boy!" Enjoy your seventh year of life in this great country of ours.

Thanks, Grandma.

Bogus Logs On Geocaches

I have a watch on Chomolangma. It's a 5/5 geocache on Mount Everest. It is labeled as "The Highest Geocache In The World", and has yet to be found.

This morning I was surprised to see a "Found It" log in my E-mail for this cache. It was a bogus log. The people responsible for the posting have since deleted the find so I won't out them. I will, however, share their log entry. It reads as follows:

Log Date: 8/22/2008Visited via Google Earth on a windy friday afternoon with my Son Matthew, it was quite chilly but the view was amazing, ate some sandwiches and had a bottle of pop, (frozen)tried some Yaks milk ice cream too (Yuk).Was late home for tea.

I don't know if they intended on leaving the log entry there, and were met with resistance or if that's just something they like to do. I posted a note about it in the GroundSpeak forums and as of this publishing, there has been no response.

The forum topic did inspire Vinnie & Sue Team to head over to Chomolangma's listing and leave the following DNF log:

Log Date: 8/23/2008

Attempted Just a few hours hours after the fraudulent find log filed on this cache by a European cacher, and largely due to the emergence (and subsequent erasure) of the hoax find log, I attempted to visit the cache hide site today using my not-yet-completed, but still somewhat-functional time-space portal. Target landing site was a relatively flat area about 110 feet SE of GZ. Was able to partially engage target site, but then ran into very serious technical problems with the portal and was forced to make the rather painful decision to abandon the effort. Temperature was about -29F, unexpectedly low for this time of year, but then again, it was about 2 AM local time. Winds were also unexpectedly high for summertime, with blowing snow. And so, here is yet one more DNF for this cache. Thanks for having made the effort to hide this! I may try to return someday in the portal. --Vinny of Vinny & Sue Team.

I personally don't wouldn't leave either type of log entry unless it fit in with the theme of the cache or was done so with permission of the listing owner. I'm not judging, That's just me.

What do you think?

Edit: 8/24/08: This morning this geocache was was archived by the owner. The archive note is written in a lanuage I don't understand. I can tell that the last line is a message to the owners late friend, whom the cache was dedicated to. That's too bad.


Pictures were shamelessly stolen from the geocache listing.

Nice Article On Geocaching

As I've said before, I subscribe to a lot of blogs. One that I really like is call Wise Bread. They have several authors that all write about ways to be frugal. I noticed an article in my reader today about Geocaching.

I like the idea she mentions about leaving American type swag when geocaching outside the US. I think I'll look for some "California" swag to leave on my travels. It also mentions Letterboxing and Orienteering. Here is the bit about Geocaching. You can read the entire article here.



Geocaching (geocashing)

Geocaching is a little more complicated and can be much more challenging than letterboxing, but it's still an inexpensive activity. To get started, you'll need access to a GPS devise, a notebook, and a few treasures to leave at boxes that are designated treasure caches.

Geocaching is a recognized sport all over the world, and some of the caches are quite elaborate. If you plan to visit a cache in another country, try to leave something American, such as a Boston subway or San Franciso trolleycar token.

Like letterboxing, the website Geocaching.com has all the basic information and search help you'll need. Just enter your search parameters (can even be latitutde/longitude figures), then enter the given coordinates in your GPS, and you're good to go. According to the website, there are currently 635,478 active caches worldwide including one recently placed at the Beijing Olympics!

Geocaching often involves more remote locations and rugged outdoor terrain than letterboxing does, but it is an excellent teaching activity and is now part of the math curriculum in many American middle and high schools.

Thanks to Mary Webber for the article.

Who's Your Blogger!

Here are all the blogs that I commented about in my last post. I do read more than this, however I can't claim to be short on time and then go bragging about all the blogs I read! (I hope I got them all right) If you don't already read some of these, go check try them on. If I read them, they have to be good!

COMING SOON: DEATH OF A GEOCACHE

That's a bummer about your travel bug, I told you it was too cute.
NorthWoods Geocats

I see you had a bump in with the law, glad it turned out OK. I hope Brooklyn works out.
A 'lil HooHaa

I hope the Tadpole is feeling better, too bad the trip was cut short.
Electronic Breadcrumbs

You have a beautiful family, Little one's dance was great. Don't be too lonely.
Rake The Table

The Best Western Adventures have been great.
Ramblings of A Lost Mind

Glad to see some hummingbirds showed up, get that camera ready.
Gather: Articles by Marianne R.

I like the "This week in Geocaching" articles.
Geocaching Online

The road to Mt. Shasta is a long one and I'm enjoying the trip.
Geocaching with EMC of Northridge, CA

You and Lost Guy and Auld Pro always have such great hikes.
Musings about Geocaching

Blog ya later.

Remember Me?

Hi there, My name is Hick. NIce to meet you. Boy, Have I been busy. I'm really enjoying my new position at work, and it is taking up all my time. By the time I get off work, commute 60 miles, hit the gym and head home, I'm exhausted.

I haven't been geocaching in a long time. I even had to drop a geocoin off to a geocacher at work because I had it for too long. It has been way to hot here for me anyway. Today was triple digits and the humidity is over 50%. That's dang tropical for us.

I have some travel coming in a few weeks and hopefully I will find a few spare seconds to grab some geocaches in other states. I'll be near Dallas Texas for a week and then two weeks in Central Massachusetts. Then I'm home for a few weeks and back in Texas for a month. I don't know how much geocaching time I'll actually get because I'm flying home on the weekends to see the family.

I know I haven't been posting here lately, I figured since I hadn't been caching I didn't have anything on topic to talk about. I've been trying to keep up to date on all the geocaching blogs I read, however I haven't been commenting on them. Here's some comments for my regulars. You'll have to sort out who they belong to.

That's a bummer about your travel bug, I told you it was too cute.

I see you had a bump in with the law, glad it turned out OK. I hope Brooklyn works out.

I hope the Tadpole is feeling better, too bad the trip was cut short.

You have a beautiful family, Little one's dance was great. Don't be too lonely.

The Best Western Adventures have been great.

Glad to see some hummingbirds showed up, get that camera ready.

I like the "This week in Geocaching" articles.

The road to Mt. Shasta is a long one and I'm enjoying the trip.

You and Lost Guy and Auld Pro always have such great hikes.

There are more but that's all for now. See if you can guess which blogs these came from. I'll post links later and tell you who's who.

Blog at you later.