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Meetups

Long time no cache or post on here!

It’s been a long time since I geocached – according to the statistics, my longest slump of 306 days without geocaching is now over.  There have been several reasons I’ve not cached but I think I’ve started to come out of retirement. A couple of unique cache opportunities and events got me out and back with the caching bug again.

Since the  last post I was able to find Peanuts Playground – a really cool multi cache with a couple of tree climbs but nothing that difficult (compared to others that I have now done) and on the same day do several stages of the now archived Dozer’s domain. There were only 2 stages that I didn’t complete – both because I didn’t have the energy after the other 3 stages and Peanuts AND because it looked pretty scary!  Nowadays I think I would have the guts and with some borrowed equipment I would probably be able to do it if it was still in place.

Just recently at the end of August I completed a 10 hour search for my fifth 5/5 geocache, appropriately enough 5-5-5 and had an awesome time. I took the day off work, the weather was gorgeous and we had great fun yomping through forests, abseiling and kayaking on some lakes – highly recommended. We also got to do a couple of other caches on the route too for an added bonus. Some of the pictures (that don’t contain spoilers) are on my facebook album here

The beginning of this month I was able to meet up with about 60+ geocachers to do Climbing 102+, the second in hopefully a yearly event on climbing trees. Got to use an ascender and a good old gregory to come back down again. 40 people climbed the ropes and signed the log book which is a great achievement. Many people are on facebook so I was also able to make quite a few new friends on facebook too. It was neat to see people of all ages doing the climbs – some of the kids were pretty fearless. My pictures from this event are on facebook here

Not sure what I am up to next, although this month I hope to get a cache or two in Texas which will add another state to my caching stats (and probably my hottest cache trip ever) and I’ve discovered another cool tunnel cache in the local area that I hope to do at some point too.  As fall is coming out, the tree cover will change to be a beautiful color and then the leaves fall to make it easier in the woods for satellite signal so hopefully so more caching days are in the near future.

10 years of geocaching.

Well I’ve not personally done 10 years of caching, although I did hear about it some time before I started geocaching. Initially I wasn’t sure whether it would be much fun as I wasn’t sure how accurate gps’s would be. Finally I bumped into someone (Hi David!) who had done geocaching in Canada, showed me his GPS and I knew it would be something I would be interested in. I signed up Nov 28, 2003 and we came over to Dublin, OH for Christmas and I ordered a Magellan Sportrak from Amazon for an early Christmas present and my first cache was found in Dublin a few days later on Dec 3, 2003. This gave me a good start when it came to statistics of miles covered whilst caching as most of my caches were then found back in the UK!

Anyway, Sunday is Geocaching’s 10 year anniversary and lots of events are being planned for this weekend (and this year). The event is Washington (home of the first geocache and Groundspeak) is expected to have over 500 people attend. Here in Ohio, I’ll be attending the 10 Years Columbus event A bonus feature of attending this event will be another new icon for the collection as all 10 year events get a new icon for the cache page.

More information and a place to find the nearest 10 year cache event to you can be found at http://www.geocaching.com/lostandfound

Along with the CacheInTrashOut cache I did earlier this month where we pulled many bags of rubbish by the river front, it’s been a busy month. As usual April has been my most product month of geocaching – It’s a good time of year – not too hot, not too cold. I’m going to try and get every day in May filled next month.

Finds by Found Date
Date
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Jan 1 3 2 1 2 1 1 1 4 1 2 2 7 12 40
Feb 1 7 4 1 1 1 1 1 3 6 X X 26
Mar 1 3 1 11 1 1 3 1 7 2 10 6 2 4 2 10 15 2 82
Apr 21 9 4 2 5 4 6 13 14 1 8 9 10 26 3 10 1 1 7 7 2 1 X 164
May 2 2 2 22 2 2 1 3 2 1 10 4 1 1 4 2 2 2 3 4 1 4 77
Jun 11 1 3 3 4 3 22 9 2 3 2 2 2 17 3 1 8 6 X 102
Jul 1 1 16 2 1 2 16 4 9 1 2 1 1 1 1 10 1 70
Aug 2 3 3 2 1 2 2 3 2 7 2 1 30
Sep 3 8 2 1 1 6 3 7 8 15 1 1 1 X 57
Oct 1 2 14 3 2 4 5 8 12 1 1 2 55
Nov 2 2 1 8 3 11 6 4 1 1 1 6 1 7 4 2 5 1 X 66
Dec 16 1 4 1 1 9 4 2 2 1 6 1 48
24 11 45 36 52 10 28 35 11 32 26 34 32 45 17 28 38 64 9 28 25 26 11 19 25 10 14 37 22 17 6

Peanuts playground next Sunday?

It looks like there is another group of cachers going to do Peanuts Playground next Sunday – hopefully I’ll be able to join them and by then I’ll be up to 799 caches so this will be my 800th.  I got out to do several caches this morning and enjoyed the walks – I even climbed a tree for one of them this morning so that will be good practise for next weekend.

If you’re interested then drop a note on the Cache page (or let me know here) and I’ll see you Sunday

S2009CNDBDSK cache event tomorrow.

I’ll be at the GC1NMKA cache event tomorrow which looks like it’s going to be a really great day. It’s an early start but looks like we’ll have the opportunity for some new caches as part of the treasure hunt – more details tomorrow.

Cacheberry for caching with the blackberry.

Currently I use a 8 or 9 year old Dell Axim for my paperless caching which has served me really well but it’s yet another device that I need to keep charged and carry around with me whilst geocaching. I’m about to go caching for the day today starting with the Pi day Party and then hitting about another 10 or so caches with Team JNle4 – yes, I have dragged him out of retirement too!

Anyway, I wondered if there was a geocaching application for the blackberry (work phone) and discovered Cacheberry which looks like it has an offline database, the ability to export field notes via email and also integration with google and blackberry maps.  So today I’ll be using this app and I’ll let you know how I got on.

Caching again!

Tomorrow is another Dublin Cache meetup. Last year was a really poor one for me geocaching, the only time I went caching was on holiday in North Carolina and at a couple of the local events so tomorrow I hope to get my first cache of 2009 and hit some of the 184 geocaches situated within 5 miles of my home. Thankfully I was able to find my gps this morning 😉
Another good reason to get caching is my premium membership was up for renewal tomorrow so I’ve also renewed that (Happy early Birthday to me). I’m also in the process of upgrading gsak – I was on version 7.1 – it’s now on 7.5something so I’m well behind in it’s updates. I’m looking forward to seeing what else is new in this excellent piece of software.

1st Dublin Geocachers meet

The first Dublin Geocachers meet is this afternoon at midday – it looks like there will be about 30 people there or more which is really neat. What is really bad is that this will be my first geocache in Ohio this year which is really bad – not sure how I’ve managed to go a whole year without caching. If you’re going, don’t forget to say hi.

400!

 Found my 400th cache yesterday – a great day out caching – thanks for the company Team Lefor!

New cache icon!

As part of the Central Ohio Geocachers meet today, we all went to the March to the Arch webcam cache and Kristen took the photo. As this is the first webcam that I’ve had a chance to log I got another icon on my Stats
Thanks luv!