In my constantly frustrated effort to find something to blog about, I’ve come across an interesting (I hope) 81-part series that starts today, will sporadically jitter along for who-knows-how-long, and will eventually end at the 81st entry of the series. It takes some explaining to understand exactly what I’m talking about, so bear with me a bit as I go through this.
Geocaching is a fun outdoor activity that can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be. There are literally thousands upon thousands of geocaches in nearly every area of the US (There are 500 within about 10 miles from my apartment). If you like being outdoors AT ALL you should check the site out. All you need is a GPS (Check your cell phone. It may have the ability) and the desire to sometimes get muddy, wet, frozen, mosquito-bitten, and/or eyed suspiciously by “muggles” (the geocaching term for non-geocachers). The caches listed on the site are categorized with two main ratings: DIFFICULTY and TERRAIN. The first number gives you an idea of how hard the cache will be to find, while the second gives you an idea of how hard it is to reach. The numbers go from 1 to 5, in 0.5 increments. This means there are 9 values of each number.
After geocaching for a while, I stumbled upon a site named It’s Not About The Numbers that - despite its name - gives you a whole bunch of statistical information about the caches you have found. Included in that information is a nice little 9×9 grid that shows you which of the 81 combinations of difficulty/terrain you have found, and those that you have not.
So I got an idea: Why not find at least one of every combination? I’m in the 20’s right now (I found the 26th unique one last February) so I’ve got a good way to go. Maybe, I thought, if I blogged about them I’d have a reason to go for the more rare (and/or the more difficult) combinations.
Sometimes these posts will be long (Like this one) and sometimes they’ll be short. Sometimes the hunt will be difficult, and sometimes easy. But all in all I hope it’ll be an interesting journey.
So let’s get started.
(Oh, I should say: These posts are essentially spoilers for the caches. So unless you don’t think you’ll ever look for them, you may not want to actually read these)
GCQ0F3 is an easy (Difficulty 2, Terrain 1) hide in the Solon Industrial area. It was not just my first find in the 81 list, it was my first find ever. It happened to be near the building I worked in, back when I found it in 2005. I had just gotten my GPS that day, and had brought it with me to work. I checked out geocaching.com and was excited to find that there was a cache JUST DOWN THE ROAD. Within walking distance, even. I work nights, so I threw on a coat and headed out into the cold late-November-evening air to nab my first find. It was, according to my GPS, in a little grove of 3 trees in the center of a roundabout at the end of the road. Not exactly well-hidden, it would have been impossible to search stealthily during the day. I looked on the ground. I looked at the bases of the trees. I looked in the branches. I realized how much a flashlight would help.
After 20 minutes, I returned to work angry and frustrated. There was NOTHING there. I decided to cheat a little, and read other logs. “Great hide!” I read, and snorted. “Quick Cache,” another member mockingly tittered. “WAY COOL MICRO!!!” another shouted. Micro? What’s a micro?
It turns out that a Micro is the smallest type of cache. The biggest micros are those little plastic containers that hold film (You remember film, right?) and the smallest ones are smaller than thimbles.
Armed with this knowledge, plus the knowledge that someone found it *three* days ago so it was likely still there, I went back out on my next break with newfound determination. I expanded my search to a nearby plaque, the curb around the roundabout, and even considered the trees outside the roundabout. However, my GPS told me that its accuracy was under 30 feet. 30 feet meant within the roundabout.
I again returned to work cacheless. This sport, I thought, appears to be a bit more difficult than I expected it to be. Was my $120 purchase actually worth it after all?
Eventually my work shift ended. I was getting in my car, preparing to take the long (okay, short. But drives of shame have to be long) drive home, and suddenly I realized that if I did not find this cache I would have FAILED. 100% of my searches so far would have been FAILURES. This was unacceptable. I drove down the street to the little grove of trees and defiantly stormed into them, ready to spend all night there if need-be.
And suddenly I found it. With a branch poking me in the face, and another scraping my ungloved and frozen hand, I wormed my way deep into the trees to what I had thought was a bird’s nest. But this was no bird’s nest; It was a WICKER BASKET. A tiny, bowl-shaped wicker basket with a Carmex lip-balm container in it.
Like Gollum with his precious, I scurried to my car with the container and unscrewed it with frozen fingers. Within, I found a tiny rolled up piece of paper with scribbled names and dates. I fished a pen from my glove box (Incidentally, always bring a pen when you go geocaching. I ALWAYS forget to do this), happily scribbled my name and the date on the paper, and returned the container to its original location.
I had succeeded, and was done with my first step on my as-yet-undiscovered journey through 81 caches.
Wesley Stuff
