An Eventful Week

I hosted a birthday party flashmob for Marzipan once again in my driveway on her birthday, May 4.
Marzipan's 3rd Birthday Flashmob!

I had treats for the people:

… and the people had treats for Marzipan!

For those who may not have read about her before, Marzipan is the kitty I found at a geocache when she was only 4 days old! Here’s a link to the story and photos of her at that time:
Finding the Kitten, Marzipan

I got to see more of the local crowd at the next event of the week, the monthly Meet & Greet of the San Fernando Valley geocachers.

SFV Geocachers Meet & Greet #28

I took the opportunity to pass along the So Cal Geocachers Trophy travel bug that had been languishing in my kitchen for a couple of years. This was awarded semiannually at large local events, but those petered out. Now that we have the monthly gathering, though, it seemed fitting to get this award back in circulation.

SCG Trophy

The previous recipients all have a vote on who gets the trophy next, so I contacted everyone to propose my nominee: Albackore. He has been one of the newer leaders, hosting events, going on mega caching runs, and hiding lots of creative caches. I was delighted we could honor his contributions!

Albackore and a precious recipient, Shirconn:

The raffle is about to begin!

Scavenging for Local History

Mega kudos to Albackore, Team Perks, and BWidget for putting together an outstanding all-day event involving caches, puzzles, and finding classic and historical sites around the San Fernando Valley!

Yesteryear Still Here!

All of the new caches placed were homages to all of the toys from the 50s and 60s, many of which I played with:
Spirograph
Easy Bake Oven
G.I. Joe

The design of the challenge was elegant, all contained in a few pieces of paper, and it was fairly easy to strategize a route and a plan.

I was on Team Marzipan with f0t0m0m and the Ventura Kids. Here are some of the photos we got at the landmarks:

We also went for the double points for the caches in the Balboa Park Wildlife Area –

It was a wonderful day to be out there, even though we did get rained on a bit.

We ended up the day at a local Chinese restaurant, The Great Wall.

I’m looking forward to more of these (hint hint).

BONUS: Here’s another great write up of the day by the CacheKidz!
Check it out!

Conquering the Aliens!

Our original team +2 returned to The Alien Highway to finish the run, and a van with 6 people turned out to be the ideal setup. We left the side door open for easy jumping in and out, and took turns at all of the positions. Our technique of switching caches and stickering while in between was suggested by the cache owner, and many teams have chosen that method here. About 1/3 were placed at the 1/10th of a mile markers, as in the video, but the rest were 10-70′ from the road in rock piles that did require a bit of searching. Our best hour was 105!
E.T. 1021

Here’s some of the video I shot, condensing 8 hours and over 660 caches into THREE minutes. Enjoy!

music: “Journey in Time” composed by Dean Barrett & Judy Whittaker, Freeplaymusic.com
a couple of the photos were taken by deeznutz®
this is the first movie I’ve created on my Mac laptop with iMovie

For more stories on this run: E.T. 001

To Find or NOT to Find

Last week, I found cache #23,000. I think I have an average DNF rate of at least 10%, so this means I’ve NOT found over 2,300 caches. Some days are really worse than others, too. I took a road trip the other day, and DNFd three before finding one. Ouch. I even DNFd two while trying to find #23,000!

DNF 1

Fruit of the Spirit: Self-Control

DNF2

Where the Sidewalk Ends…

Find #23,000, at last!

Gateway to Beaumont

To make up for it, though, are the easy breezy days of 100+ finds! I had a lovely day of 116 finds and NO DNFs on a run from Moreno Valley to Lake Hemet with OLdweeb and Albackore.

Breakfast of Champions

Find #1
2000 – Geocaching was Born

1916 – E=MC2

Up in to mountain scenery:

Find #116
1918 – Does Anybody Really Know What Time it is?

Where’s the next cache clump? Let’s go!

Back in the Saddle

It’s been a long week.

I must admit that I did enjoy the satellite radio and the novelty of driving something different, but for someone that drives as much as I do, my car becomes an extension of myself. It has a comfortable fit. My foot knows exactly how to accelerate smoothly. The placement of everything is so familiar, I don’t have to think about where any of my stuff is.

I can also drive in the car pool lane by myself.

I missed that the most this week – this long week. I’m very happy to finally be back in my own saddle again.

As it turned out, my car did, indeed, have an actual malfunction. It wasn’t an extraterrestrial influence, just an inverter pump. The part was back ordered, and I ended up with a Dodge Carabiner until this evening. The Prius is all better now.

I’m hoping that my buddies are all better now, too – not the ones from the alien run, but the ones from the hike last weekend. We encountered some angry bees that cut our commune with nature short.

It was lovely while it lasted, though:

tozainamboku, sissopolis, Albackore, Don J, OLdweeb (invisible)

Ahhh, the sweet smell of nature!
Rust to Dust
C-Bear’s cache
CoooLToo
Emmy’s Cache!
Pack 100 Malibu Creek Cache

There’s more of the story on OLdweeb’s Blog HERE.

Seriously: click on over and keep reading! OLdweeb’s blog
He took some nice photos, too.