Geocaching

Geo Stats

After last night’s 3 for 3 DNFs I’ve found out how to generate some ‘negative’ stats. I use a program called GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) to do my off line organizing of caches to hunt and transfering data to the PDA for paperless caching. There is a nifty macro for creating a mind boggling array of statistics, but only of your finds. I guess not too many people really want to put a face on their misses. Me I don’t mind, it is all part of the game and fortunately someone else felt the same way. He has written a couple macros to use the GSAK stats engine to create a nice look of our Did Not Finds.

If you are a member over at geocaching dot com you can see my stats on my public profile page, but if you are not you can’t. I tried dumping them into a blog post, but the formatting got all weird. Oh, well, give me something to mess with in all my spare time.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 290

Oh Fer

Posterized EmperorWe had to make a run to get gas this evening, so while we were out we decided to attempt a cache that was just published yesterday. We would be like the third to find if we did find it. While we didn’t expect to find it, it was one of those that purposely left off the size and gave no hint to make it more difficult, but we were still slightly disappointed when we didn’t. 0 for 1.

There was another cache just up the street that we had logged a DNF on the first attempt, so we headed to it hoping for a second chance find. We didn’t. 0 for 2.

Dang. How about that cache over by the lawyer’s office that we missed the first time? OK, let’s go, it’s just one block over from our intended route home. On our first visit the GPSr was leading us to a bush that looked like it had recently been chopped in half. When we didn’t find it we just assumed that it must have gone missing during the pruning. Not long after we didn’t find it, another cacher tried and they failed too. The cache owner went and checked on it and reported it was still there. Some one else has found it since, so we figured we should find it this time. We didn’t. 0 for 3

Gonna have to go back to ammo cans…

Started up, went down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 290

Black Gum Pond

Black Gum PondWalked by this pond on our way into Hitchcock Woods yesterday.

The two caches we hid yesterday were published (listed on geocaching.com and announcing emails sent out) a little before 9:00 PM last night and in less than 12 hours both were found.

I checked the site at mid day and “Out West” was logged with a FTF at 7:50 this morning. The same cacher logged “Jump At Your Own Risk” as a second to find, some one had beat them to it, and they wondered aloud in their log how they could have possibly missed each other.

The answer came this evening when the FTF of “Jump” logged in. They went out hunting as soon as they got the email last night. Now technically you are not supposed to be in the woods after dark, but that is not what was so wrong about this person caching at 10 o’clock at night, it was the fact that at that time Aiken was in the middle of a big ol’ thunderstorm. To quote from his log: “with the lightning flashing so much it was like hiking with a strobelight on!”

Such is the lure of being the First To Find a cache for some people.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 281

Tim’s Crossing

Tim's CrossingWe went for a hike in the woods this morning real early to beat the heat and to be home before Stage 1 of Le Tour started at 8:30AM.

This objective was to retrieve the small cache, “Jump At Your Own Risk,” we placed last week and move it to a different spot in the woods. We also wanted to place cache #2. The second one is titled “Out West” because we placed them in the western part of the woods and it is filled with some of the inexpensive souvenirs we brought back from our trip out west last April.

Yesterday evening we needed something to watch on TV so I poked around on Encore & Starz that came with our Tour de France digital package and found the third Pirate movie on one of the channels. When I first attempted to watch this movie back at the end 2007 I could only stomach 19 minutes of it. In the back of my mind I have always wondered had I bailed too early on it because people said it didn’t get good until Captain Jack Sparrow made his entrance. Wonder no more. We came in somewhere near the middle of the movie and lasted about 5 minutes. What a waste.

To make up for it this afternoon we watched the one and only TDPM on our copy of the DVD.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 280

Sick & Tired of Feeling Sick & Tired

We are packing up our cough medicine, decongestants, expectorants and throat lozenges and going on a day trip. We have been threatening to go to the Concord Mills Mall for several weeks now and it is high time we did.

Donna needs a new pair of hiking boots, so a trip to the Bass Pro Shop is in order. We’ve both had a hankering for the spicy food at Razzoo’s just across the parking lot from the BPS. As an extra incentive Clunk (or is it Thunk?) is racing his Miata, AKA POS, at Lowe’s Motor Speedway at NASA Firecracker Run. We are going through geocaching withdrawal too.

So we are loading up the Miata. Film at Eleven.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 277

Jump At Your Own Risk II

Jump At Your Own Risk

Jump At Your Own Risk – Posted at the entrance to Crawford Fences where the kindly caretakers have placed stacks of large logs at intervals in a clearing for the horse riders to jump over. (03/09/08)

For a while now I have had the container, the name of the cache and I knew just where I wanted to hide it. Yesterday we walked into Hitchcock Woods and hid our first cache.

When we got home I averaged out the coordinates of the cache and then checked them against existing caches and decided that it was too close to a couple. One was about 1200 feet away and another was just 800 feet away. The legal limit is 500′ apart so technically it is alright, but I decided not to publish it. We really want to put some in a part of the woods where there are no caches at all yet, so next weekend we are going to move this one over there and probably plant a second one that we almost have ready over that way too.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 269

Bricks ‘n’ Bars

Bricks 'n' BarsBoth Donna and I are battling a cold/flu thing and for the last two days have not really been doing too much except staying indoors and resting. We have been making brief forays into the real world though, but only in the morning while it is still cool. Today we headed over to Augusta for a second attempt to buy some shirts for me from J.C. Penny.

At the end of Silver Bluff Road where it intersects SC125 there is an abandoned building that has bars on the windows and no door (or roof for that matter) and we have always wondered about it. The other month we did learn something about it, not any history mind you, but that there is a geocache hidden there – Bricks ‘n’ Bars.

Thinking it would be therapeutic we decided to stop and look for the cache on the way over. After about a minute and one brief peek under a bush, we could tell we didn’t have are hearts in it, so we gave up and got back in the car. The only way we would have found this cache today is if it was a large fluorescent orange ammo can in the middle of the building with a flashing neon arrow pointing at it.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 248