Absocachinlutely! Rotating Header Image

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.

Cache found.

Was finally able to find GC1X53G which had me falling out of a tree at the first stage as per my previous blog post. The final stage was a lot easier.

It still hurts if you fall out a tree 1′ up.

Take it from me – I know.  At least if you were to choose a tree to fall out of, it would be better to fall out of a tree from about 1′ up as opposed to one about 30′ up, like I was in on Saturday. The main culprits are the slippery tree, work clothes (and shoes) and nasty stones on the ground. The shower tomorrow morning is not going to be fun.
Caching in work shoes is not a good idea (by absoblogginlutely)

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

Geocaching update.

A few things have happened in the past month geocaching wise. I have purchase some nano and micro containers so should start putting out some new caches soon. I’ve actually replaced my Seen Any Princes geocache in downtown Dublin this morning so that went back online again.

Unfortunately one of my travelbugs – a double blank domino went missing when the geocache that it was in also went missing. It’s a shame as the bug had put on a fairly decent 2386 miles.

I have resurrected one of my travelbugs – IT that went missing some time back. This time it has appeared as a Travelbug on the back of the car. It will be interesting to see who first spots it and where – whether it’s logged at a cache, an event or in day to day driving.

Still not got the impetus to go out and geocache – work has been very hectic recently so I just want to relax and do nothing at the weekend!

Tree climbing caches

There seem to be a spate of tree climbing caches – this Geocaching bookmark list shows the Ohio Treeclimbers.

I thought this cartoon from Being Five was rather appropriate –
Getting down from trees is the problem

Slammer47 logs.

Some interesting photos and log information from Slammer47 online – Well worth looking through the photos to get inspired…. and worried.

Extreme-caching website.

After having an aching back for about two weeks I was quite excited and depressed about stumbling across Extreme-caching.com as there is just no way I will be able to complete some of these caches as I’m getting too old. Some of drainhooks caches are just crazy. I am still thinking about getting that Three on the tree cache though….

Extreme Dominoes?

About a week ago, the Andy Capp cartoon was very appropriate for my geocaching adventures (although I don’t swear).
Andy Capp and Extreme Dominoes.
My geocaching profile has the following picture on it.
Extreme Dominoes by Domheknows
I’ve been asked about my Extreme Dominoes photo a couple of times so I thought that the publication of this cartoon would be a good way to kick off the story –
We had been doing a series of caches that involved collecting dominoes and dice as we walked around the country park. At the end of about 7 stages, one of the puzzles involved laying all the dominoes together as if you playing dominoes and then adding the numbers at either end of the sequence. As we were trying to get the solution worked out, I grabbed my box of signature item dominoes out and we laid them on the ground to ensure we were doing it correctly. (As it turned out there were two possible answers – we got the *other* one). As we were doing this, in a middle of a public footpath, so more walkers wandered past and gave us a funny look. One of the people in the team shouted out “Extreme Dominoes” to them and they nodded their heads as if that explained everything and carried on.
For those of you who have not heard of Extreme Ironing (which is where the comment was based) then visit the Extreme Ironing Website with more links and videos than you can imagine.