Tap That Cache- June 24, 2006

Yep, we're back with another week of caching. I'm sure some of you have probably begun to question our sanity, coming back each week after barely surviving mountains, mudsinks, and Frodo (the bastard). But we've never really been a bright lot so on we press. Hopefully it at least gets you a couple of chuckles along the way.

This week we're back to what seems to be settling in as our usual crew. Me (Gryphon), Ashlynne, Tserof, Mad Mike, and Fish. Today we decide to hit some caches in the Marshall County area as well as show Mad Mike the location of the Zen Bassmasters cache since he wasn't with us last week when we placed it.

Our musical accompaniment for the day is Sevendust's "Southside Doublewide Acoustic Live" cd that I just downloaded off E-music. Great stuff.

The first cache we headed to was "Welcome to Bethlehem", which is on the way to Chapel Hill. It was listed as a difficulty 3, terrain 1.5 so we were expecting a bit of a challenge. The coordinates led us right to an old cemetary. Yay! The Zen Bassmasters love cemetary caches. I don't know if that means we're morbid, satanic, or just history lovers. I guess it's all the same thing to the right group of people.

We walked into the cemetary and looked around a bit. It was a pretty old cemetary with a lot of gravestones from the early 20th century. Heading back to the cache we ran across a couple of gravestones together that were tiny little stones for a couple of stillborn babies. They were dated in the 1920's. It was a tough time and that was definitely a sobering reminder of it. If you have a kid, go give him a hug and be thankful that modern medicine has advanced.

Anyway, the cache was just where we thought it should be. We've come to expect that from the originator, Scoot the Frog who, along with partner Monkeybrad, has become our favorite cacher. That said, we're now wondering about the difficulty 3 since we found it right off. Maybe we're just getting better. In the cache we found a fishing bobber, the perfect prize for a Zen Bassmaster and now destined for our cache, Wabbit Season.

The second cache of the day is called "Chapel Hill City Park." Having grown up in Unionville, which is right down the road from Chapel Hill, I wasn't aware Chapel Hill had a park. It's mostly farm land. What the hell do they need a park for?

The coordinates led us right into the middle of downtown Chapel Hill (as opposed to "uptown Chapel Hill", which is on the other side of the red light). That can't be right. The title says it's a park but the coordinates sent us right to a building with another building beside it. We re-check the coordinates. Yep. It's supposed to be right here. We drive a circle around the buildings, thinking maybe the park entrance is behind it. Nope. Just an alley. We drive back around to the front, thinking maybe this place used to be a park and we'd find something marking it. As we drove back around, Fish spotted a sign that he thought said "park" on it. Ah-ha! we thought. Must have been a park before this area grew up and the cache is near a historical marker. We parked uptown and took the 30 ft walk to downtown to investigate the sign. We walk up and find... a park. Of sorts. The Chapel Hill City Park consists of a paved area about the size of a cubicle, one tree, and two picnic tables. We found the cache in short order (easy to do when you're searching an area roughly the size of my bathroom) and discovered it had no log. Who the hell steals the log out of a cache? Weird. We added some paper for a new log and moved on, commenting on Chapel Hill's "Park". Of course, those two picnic tables could hold about half the city of Chapel Hill, so maybe it's appropriately sized. "I wonder if they book it for weddings?" Mad Mike asked. "They could.", I interjected. "With Chapel Hill weddings the whole bride's family/groom's family kind of overlap so it cuts down on the people to invite." I know. Not nice. But growing up in Unionville, it was the one place that even we could look down on...

Next stop was Henry Horton State Park for a duo of caches on one of the walking trails. The first was called Dendrology 101. Tserof read the clue, which was "Behind the Quercus Coccinea". Hilarity ensued. Jokes galore abounded about what sounded for all the world like Latin Porn. We kept having Tserof, whose sexuality we question daily for reasons I'll get into later, read the clue and giggled like a bunch of little boys who just discovered their dad's Playboy. All except Ashlynne, who has apparently matured past puberty and didn't see the true humour in "Quercus Coccinea".

Once the giggles subsided, we dispatched Tserof to go look up Quercus Coccinea on his cell phone's net access. Turns out it's a Red Oak tree. Go figure. I liked the other things we speculated it was better. Anyway, Tserof was impressed that he got to look up something on his phone (we're geeks remember) so we didn't have the heart to tell him that we'd already found a plaque that told us just that. We poked around for a bit and found the cache, a micro. I'm not huge on micros but it was cool spot so it's all good.

Next up was High Point of the Trail, which was a bit of a hike down the trail. We enjoyed the hike and saw some nice natural formations to comment on, including a HUGE flat rock that was big enough that we thought it was a parking area from a distance. We walked to the coordinates and cast about for the cache. No luck. Just then Fish noticed something that didn't look quite right. He investigated and, sure enough, there was the cache. I'm being intentionally vague with that description because it was undoubtedly the coolest hide we've seen yet and I don't want to spoil it for anyone. Congratulations JoGPS. We plan to steal your idea for a future hide. We signed the log and took a prism. We then discovered that we didn't have anything to leave. Fish took off his backpack and produced a letter H from inside. "The son gives me stuff to take to work with me sometimes" he said as we all stared.

By this time, Tserof had somehow decided that his new favorite word was Dendrology and was yammering constantly about his expertise with plants. We took to calling him Dr. Dendrology because of it (when we weren't calling him jackass). All the way back to the car, Tserof became the Bubba Gump of trees. Popcorn trees, fried trees, boiled trees, broiled trees, you can sautee it, deep fry it, etc. Finally Fish had apparently had enough because from ahead of us on the trail we hear Tserof yell "Ow! Fish, stop tapping my ass!"

Hilarity ensued. I mean hilarity. If you think the Quercus Coccinea brought out the snickering children in us, it was nothing compared to Tserof accusing Fish of "tapping his ass."

As I mentioned before, we openly question Tserof's sexuality often. This comes from his penchant for playing female characters in roleplaying games. I don't just mean playing a character who happens to be female. I mean PLAYING females. Dressing up in pretty clothes, flirting with guys, he even played a stripper in Star Wars Galaxies. Honestly, he's scary sometimes.

Anyway, much hilarity came from discussion of Fish tapping Tserof's ass, at least until we had to do an emergency intervention to keep Mad Mike from poking a hole in his brain by ramming the sharpened end of a stick into his ears. Apparently the mental images of Tserof's ample ass being tapped was just a little too much for him to handle.

At this point I should tell you that our little group has become adept at emergency mental image diversion. This is due to Tserof's habit of telling anyone who will listen, in excruciating detail, about his sexual exploits when drunk. Did I mention excruciating? You have no idea...

So after helping Mad Mike by helping him divert to "nice" mental images such as Jessica Alba, we moved on down the trail and back to the car.

The next cache was called "Forgotten One" and was another easy one. Little cache in a cemetary. Did I mention we like cemetary finds? We like cemetary finds. Nothing really to report on this one as it was a quick park and grab. Just suffice it to say that the jokes about Tserof's tapped ass continued throughout the grab.

Next up was "Cheap Cheap Cheap" which was supposed to be hidden near a business that apparently used that slogan in the past. The coordinates led us right to the courthouse square, about 100 yards from a place I used to work. While the man who runs the business is indeed "Cheap cheap cheap", the clue said nothing about "incompetent" or "ancient" so I was pretty sure that wasn't it. We poked around the courthouse for a bit, saw the war dead memorial, and found nothing. Just then Fish re-checks the coordinates and finds he's off. Way way off. Like half a mile off. I don't know what he was tracking, as there was no cache here, but he was. I think he just wanted to make me get near my old workplace and bring up bad memories. We all got back into the car and sure enough, it led us right to it. Once I saw the sign, a memory of my childhood sprung up and I knew it was right. I can remember the owner of the store on my television as a child screaming "CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP!" during his commercials. We found the cache easily and discovered a nice surprise. A travel bug! Not just a travel bug, but a fishing themed travel bug! How cool is that for the Zen Bassmasters? We took it, to move it over to our cache.

Our final cache is Berlin Spring. We drive out near Lewisburg's airport and find a neat little picnic area with a cave. Very cool spot. Even cooler still was that we found a plaque near a large flat rock that said all three of Tennessee's presidents, Jackson, Johnson, and Polk, had used this rock to make speeches. We're suckers for history and this was it. Fish stood on the rock and made a speech. We all agreed that we hated his political stance and promised to vote against him.

The cache was listed as a terrain 3 and it lived up to it. We walked up a hill, got eaten alive by thorn bushes, and became a walking buffet for the entire area's ticks, but we found the cache without anyone getting hurt, a first for our group.

We took pictures around the area and agreed that this was the coolest site today. Beautiful area.

It was getting late at this point and had been raining off and on all day so we decided if we were going to get a good picture for the travel bug (it requested pictures of cachers fishing) we needed to get back. We headed back to Fish's house to get a pole and head on over to our cache.

We'd had a complaint from one guy on geocaching.com that the cache was too hard to find and covered by poison ivy so we sent Mad Mike, who didn't know the location. He cast about for a while and eventually found the cache. It's kind of a difficult step to get to it so we sent Mike in to see if he could get to it, figuring if a 400lb guy could get it, it couldn't be too hard. He got it out but had a difficult time and suggested we move the cache to a 3. Done.

We placed the toys from today and the travel bug in our cache and went to drop Fish off, feeling quite accomplished at batting .1000 today (not to mention wet from the rain.)

All in all, a good day. I'll go back to the Berlin Spring site again just for the area so discovering that was worth the entire day. No injuries, no getting lost, no mountains. Probably a boring read but a nice day. If you like juvenile sexual innuendo or historical sites, today was your day. Otherwise, maybe next time. Stay tuned.

Cacher's Paradise- June 17, 2006

Another week, another geocaching trip. This week, Mad Mike was out of town at a family reunion so we decided to hit the Shelbyville area to pick up our friend Fish for to do some caches over there.

Fish lives near the park in Shelbyville so we decided to hit a cache we found in the area called Celebration Station. The GPS led us into the nature trail and we began to cast about for the cache. Unfortunately, Tserof's GPS unit picked that time to become possessed by Satan. We walked to where the GPS pointed... and it pointed in the other direction. We walked there... It pointed somewhere else. After half an hour or so of walking around the park in circles, following a GPS unit that was determined to point us anywhere but where the cache was, we gave up.

Geocaches 1, Geocachers 0, GPS Unit 666

On the way to our next cache, Tserof decides to try the geek equivalent of an exorcism and reboots the GPS unit. It must have worked because it performed admirably the rest of the day. Good thing it's waterproof. That holy water is murder on machinery.

Our next cache is the one I'm most looking forward to today, Horse Mountain. It's on the grounds of WHAL, the little AM radio station I worked at for three years in the early 90's. Boy has it grown up. The trailer that served as our studio has long since been pulled out and the parking lot has become a tangle of weeds. The clue to the cache mentioned the old satellite dish that I remember being outside. At first we couldn't find it. But soon we discovered that the dish was still there, it has just lost its battle with the weeds. Sure enough, right where the GPS said it would be, we found the cache. Neat cache. Lots of nice goodies. We took out a couple of things and put in our usual "Instant RPG Kit". But for this cache, I had something special. During my time at the radio station, I rose to the "meteoric" heights of News Director, which came with a giant raise (all the way to $4.55 an hour) and also a box of business cards. When I left the radio station, I took one card with me. I figured since this cache was set up to remember the station, I'd give my last card to the cache. I even signed it for the two people who might be interested in my career (unfortunately, I'm pretty sure my grandma can't get to the cache and my wife was already there so really, it's none). I shared a couple of memories of the station with the group, signed the logbook and bid my old home goodbye, probably for the last time. If you go do the cache, you'll probably see my card there (I can't imagine anyone will take it). If you do and you remember the old station, drop me a message here. I'm like Bruce Springsteen. I love to remember those Glory Days.

Geocaches 1, Geocachers 1

Next up, we headed to another cache nearby. It was a microcache but it was an easy find up near Economy Pencil factory. The cache was called, appropriately, Forget Your Pencil. I'm not a huge fan of micro caches. Too hard to find and no chance to browse the interesting collection of goodies that populate regular caches. But this one was right there so we logged it. Anything to get our averages up.

Geocaches 1, Geocachers 2

Next up, we saw a cache on the way to Tullahoma called "Big Duck." The description said it was on private property but promised the owner gave permission for geocachers to come on the property to look. We arrived at the coordinates, only to be greeted with a locked gate and a big sign promising that trespassers will be prosecuted. We had some trouble reconciling the sign with the promise of the cache owner that we had permission to scout the location. Deciding that, since in Tennessee "prosecuted" usually means "shot", that we'd avoid the law and possibly the morgue and give this one a miss. Tserof kept pointing out that the listing said we had permission but we thought it would probably be little consolation if they felt bad when they found the GPS on our corpses, we moved on.

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 2

Well, this is turning out to be a close match today. Let's see what the rest of the day brings. We moved on to the next thing down the line, a cache called Cemitree. It promised a terrain rating of 2. We knew from the description it was in a cemetary and we wondered how the hell a cemetary could have a 2 terrain. Not to worry. The cache owner, a person named Scoot the Frog, is apparently the Anti-Frodo. Instead of downplaying the hellish terrain leading to his cache, Scoot was overly conservative. We drove into the cemetary, drove down the nice gravel road, within 20 feet of the cache. A quick search (and by quick I mean 5 seconds) and we had it. I won't give away the exact location of the cache, but I will say what they did with it was pretty neat and we're planning to steal it for one of our own caches (the idea, not the cache itself).

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 3

Next up was a cache over Tullahoma way. It was called Ovoca Lake. I have lived in the Shelbyville area all my life and have been to Tullahoma countless times and I had no idea there was a lake here. Strange how that happens and it's the thing I love most about geocaching. You go to a place so many times and your routine gets so ingrained that you miss what's right in front of you. Twice now geocaching has pulled me back and made me re-examine my surroundings. First last week when I, somehow, missed an entire mountain despite being in Huntsville hundreds of times, and today with Ovoca Lake.

Anyway, we drove to Ovoca Lake and I discovered why I'd never heard of it before. Ovoca Lake is a lake like Monte Santo is a mountain. It's really more like the Barry Bonds of ponds (Barry Ponds?) than a real lake. But we weren't there for the fishing, we were there for the caching and the description promised a cache about 20 feet from the parking area. Needing a good Park and Grab to up our score, we dove in. And walked. And walked. Around. Over a creek. Around and around. Back over the creek and finally, we found the cache... About 20 feet from the car. Turns out we'd walked in at path #1 and the cache was on path #2. Silly us. Once again the cache was across the creek. Ash and Fish nimbly stepped over as Tserof and I, the modern day equivalent of The Fat Boys, looked for a way across. Ash pointed us to a spot and insisted loudly that was where we'd crossed before. Tserof and I both looked at it and agreed that it wasn't. Ash continued to insist as only a New Yorker can, that we'd both forgotten and that absolutely WAS the place we'd crossed previously. We still doubted but decided it was as good a place to cross as any so I stepped onto a spot to prepare to hop over. Problem is, the "spot" was really a huge sink of mud and I sunk to the top of my ankle. My ankle, having suffered a stress fracture last November and only recently having let me forget it, protested the ill treatment and rolled on me. Ow.

At this point, I've decided that, between the events on Monte Santo chronicled here last week and this today, that Ash was trying to bump me off for the life insurance money. As I pulled my foot free and limped to a different, more stable, spot, I made Tserof promise that if I died out here under suspicious circumstances, he'd tip off the CSI folks to my theory.

Tserof and I finally made it across the creek, Tserof no worse for the wear and me quite a bit worse for the wear. We took a little plastic cube (not sure what it was for but Fish fancied it) and added our requisite Instant RPG kit to the paintball tube and replaced it.

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 4, Ankle OWWWW

Next up was one in the middle of Tullahoma called Rolling Stock Report. This was another from our good friend and conservative terrain estimator, Scoot the Frog (as opposed to our enemy and sneaky bastard terrain estimator Frodo). We went to the coordinates and found an old Caboose that had been restored and put on display. Kind of neat and the informative sign gave a lot of information on the history of rail travel in Tullahoma and the uses of the caboose. Neat little history lesson. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the cache. It was a micro and just plain evaded us. We knew it was there as it had been found recently, but we just couldn't get our hands on it. Finally, we decided that, since micros don't contain goodies anyway, and since we were all quite happy with the caboose, that we'd just treat it as a virtual cache, log it as a success, and move on. Cheating? Maybe. But we're just rebels like that. We're being fitted for our matching leather jackets and greasing up our James Dean haircuts right now.

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 5, Ankle: Does anyone have an aspirin?

Next up was a real virtual cache called On Star. It is on the grounds of the AEDC Air Force Base and tells the story of the different camps that were housed there over the years. My grandmother used to work at the first one, Camp Forrest, during World War II and told me stories about it as a child so it was neat to see the area. Ash wrote down all the things to answer the questions for this one (Tserof, who never met a book he didn't like the movie adaptation of, was distraught that our geocaching trip had given him homework) and we moved on.

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 6

The next was also on the AEDC base, called Watchtower. A good name for it too as it was right by an old watchtower on the base (which is good since my other thought was that it was a cache placed by Jehovah's Witnesses). The clue for it was "log your visit" and Tserof complained about the useless clue. I wasn't so sure as the wording seemed too precise to not have hidden meaning. Sure enough, we soon found the cache inside an old hollow log covered by some leaves. Good big cache too. Lots of goodies including a fishing lure which, being Zen Bassmasters, we promptly took to add to our own cache we planned to plant, leaving a D20 and a samurai mini behind as payment. So far, this was my favorite cache of the day. Challenging, but not insanely so. Well-hidden, but not inside a freakin' cave on the side of a mountain, and a good big cache with fishing gear in it. Not to mention a bitchin' cool huge ass watchtower to look at as well. Bravo to the person who placed this one. Nice job.

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 7

Hey, looks like we're getting the hang of this geocaching thing. Got a hell of a lot of them done too. We decided to do one more before going home to pack up our own cache and place it. It was called Gone Fishin' and we decided that we couldn't very well be a team called the Zen Bassmasters if we hadn't done Gone Fishin'. We went to the location, Fisherman's Park in Shelbyville, made a few jokes about the giant sign for the guy running for Mayor who has the same name as Fish, tried to get Fish to stand in front of the "Fish for Mayor" sign for a picture, but he didn't seem interested in beginning his political career.

The cache was a pretty easy find, a small tupperware container among some rocks. We laughed as the notebook told of it being a replacement cache as the original had been washed away by the floods a couple of years ago. Tserof commented that it must have been a hell of a flood to get that high and Fish and I, having both seen it first hand, agreed it was quite a rise. Small cache but a nice one. Took a rubber fishing worm from the cache and, discovering we were out of treasures of our own, dropped in a quarter from my pocket. If you locate the cache, enjoy the jawbreaker my quarter bought you or call your mama. She misses you.

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 8

Woohoo! We kicked ass today. Got a lot accomplished, saw some cool spots, overcame a demonic GPS unit, and managed to almost re-break my ankle...

Ok, that last bit kind of sucked but the rest was good. We vowed to redo these caches in a couple of months both to take Mad Mike to see the good ones, and to see who all else had visited them. All in all a good day (he says as he downs a couple of Naproxen and rubs his swollen ankle) and a lot of fun.

From there, we had just one thing left to do, place our very first Zen Bassmaster cache. We placed one of our ready-made D20 kits in the ammo box provided by Fish, added some of the toys we found in the other caches, attached the fishing lure to the "official" Zen Bassmaster notebook to log the visits and we were ready to go. Almost. First I, being the originator of the Zen Bassmasters name and creed, had to write down the Code of the Bassmaster on the front page of the notebook. What's the Code of the Bassmaster, you ask? It's the secret of Zen, attained through long years of fishing trips. What does the code say? You'll have to locate the cache for that one.

Here are the coordinates. 35°30.299N 086°26.933W

The cache is called Wabbit Season and should be up on geocaching.com soon enough. If you're in the Shelbyville area for any reason, give it a try. We'll check in periodically to read your comments and logs.

Until next week, may the bass be with you...

-Gryph

June 11,2006: Take It Easy

Before I get into today's adventure, a note on the first one. Upon further investigation, we discovered that Frodo had his cache rated at a more honest 3.5 terrain. Tserof had downloaded the coordinates and difficulty to the "recommended parking area." Sorry about all the swear words, Frodo....

You're still a bastard though...

We hadn't planned to cache today because we were all still recovering from the events of the previous day. But our usual Sunday gaming session got cancelled at the last minute and we found ourselves with the usual caching team and one extra (Jalera) and nothing to do.

Now at this point, a smart group of people would have rented a movie, gone home to nap off the soreness of the previous day, or play a video game (which we eventually did, The Warriors, which is groovy beyond description). But if yesterday taught us anything, it's that we don't have two brain cells between us to rub together and Jalera is apparently similarly afflicted as she readily agreed to accompany us on yet another caching trip. "Did you read the log of yesterday?", I asked her. She replied that she had. "And you still want to go out with us?", I asked. She did. Not a bright girl...

We decided to do a bit more research and hit some caches that didn't involve mountains, falling down, climbing up, or snakes in any way (Ashlynne insisted on that last bit. Apparently that "watch out for snakes" joke yesterday has given her a phobia).

The first cache we decided to do was one of the ones that defeated us the day before, the cache near the library and dentist's office in Fayetteville. Sure enough, the wooded areas looked much less daunting in the daylight and we soon found a path in, guarded by only a few brambles easily brushed away.

We wandered into a trash-filled area. Apparently people from Alabama aren't the only ones who litter. Beer and coke bottles abounded, as well as what looked like pieces of a car. Mad Mike and I, being avid Sopranos watchers, began to speculate that we might find Big Pussy and Adrianna stashed somewhere in here.

Tserof dutifully led us to the area where the cache was supposed to be and we began to scout around. Mad Mike found a likely hiding place and began to poke around with a stick. "I think we've got one here", he said. Sure enough, he'd located our group's very first cache! Imagine that... A cache that can be accessed easily, is where the coordinates say it is, and doesn't require me to wear a hat with a little light on it to get to. Chew on that, Frodo, you bastard!

Ok, maybe I'm not as ready to forgive Frodo as I thought.

The cache was a nice one, a good big tupperware bowl with a ton of goodies in it. We signed the log book (which had seen a lot of hits from all over) and browsed the prizes. I selected a toy truck to take out (intending to place it in a different cache with a note to continue to do so. If it's a truck, it ought to travel) and we placed our "Instant Roleplaying Kit" inside.

Geocachers 1, Geocaches 0

And there was much rejoicing (yay)

Our second attempt looked to be an easy one too. It promised a "History of Fayetteville". It was a three-part cache with historical sites providing clues to the next waypoint. Since we all consider ourselves educated geeks and are always interested in a little history, we jumped at the chance to learn a little about where we live.

First stop on the agenda was the Fayetteville Museum, which was built where the old Borden's Milk plant used to be. We went to the coordinates listed and found a plaque none of us had ever paid any attention to before. We learned a little history about one of Fayetteville's historical industries and handed the clue, the date the Borden's factory opened, to Ash who is our group's Rain Man with the numbers. She soon mathed out the clue and we were off.

The next leg took us to the Stone Bridge park in Fayetteville where a cell door from the old jail stood. It was pretty neat to look at (again, we'd been here 1000 times and none of us had ever paid any attention to it) and once again we handed the clue to Ash who, with Raymond Babbit-esque efficiency, sussed out the last clue.

Off we went, anticipating another fun historical site and the location of the cache.

Tserof looks at the coordinates and says "that can't be right... That looks like the way to the old hospital."

The old hospital, for those not from the Fayetteville area, has been abandoned for several years since the new hospital was built. Its proximity to the projects (also known as "The Bottoms" to Lincoln Countians) and its large, unlit parking lot has made it the small-town equivalent of the Mall of America if the product you are looking for happens to be illegal and smokeable/injectable. It's a scary place to be at night and not a terribly pleasant place to be during the day.

"There's a cemetary near there," Mad Mike said. "I bet it's something in the cemetary."

We take off, now hopeful that our trek will take us to some ancient gravestone of a famous Fayettevillian that we probably didn't even know lived here. History is fun! Yay!

We drove to the cemetary. The GPS was not impressed. We moved past the cemetary. The GPS was not impressed. We reluctantly began to drive toward the scary abandoned hospital. The GPS begins to beep happily, alerting us that we're near our destination.

"I have a bad feeling about this..." was uttered on more than one occasion.

Fortunately for us, the cache wasn't actually IN the old hospital (as it probably would have been if Frodo had hidden it) but the GPS led us behind the hospital. "What kind of history could be back here?" we wondered.

And we wondered for good reason. Now surrounded by the old hospital on one side, a nursing home on another, and the bottoms as a backdrop, we find the area where the cache is supposed to be hidden...

We made some cursory efforts at locating the cache, but our hearts weren't really in it. We were getting some "through the window" stares from the nursing home and quickly came to the realization that poking around in the bushes with sticks, looking frantically for something, in an area known as a drug zone, might attract unwanted attention of the law enforcement variety...

We also were a bit concerned that we were probably more likely to find used needles than a cache.

Geocachers 1, Geocaches 1

Now someone please tell me who the hell hides a cache in an area full of drug dealers, drug needles, and muggles galore? Who the hell finishes off a historical quest by sending you to an ugly, non-historical, dangerous place?

On a brighter note, our friends are not any smarter than we are and the log of our previous day's exploits, enough to warn any sane person from ever travelling with us, has actually caused us to be inundated with requests to join the next expedition.

Kind of makes you wonder if there were a lot of people trying to tag along with the Donner Party.

Next week, our friend Fish joins us and, since he lives in Shelbyville, we're going to try some caches in the Bedford County area. Bedford's my old stomping grounds so I'm looking forward to it. I'm especially looking forward to one cache that's hidden on the grounds where the radio station I used to work at stood. It was placed by people who wanted to remember what used to be there and reading their comments brought back some good memories of my days in radio. I also happen to have exactly one of my old business cards from my days as news director there left and I'm intending to plant it in the cache to provide a little history.

Assuming we can find it. It stands at the foot of Horse Mountain and, given our team's luck with mountains, I'm not getting my hopes up...

More to come next weekend. Stay tuned.

June 10, 2006: How Hard Can It Be?

It seemed like a good idea at the time... I'd been reading about this thing called geocaching and it looked simple and fun. Buy GPS, look up caches online, use GPS to locate coordinates, find hidden box, take treasure, leave treasure of your own, do another. Hunting for buried treasure with electronic toys. Any geek's dream. Easy right?

Unfortunately not... You see, our little group of geocachers has a common problem. We're fat. Really fat. Not just "I need to lose 20 pounds before class reunion" fat but more like "pulling small objects into orbit around you" fat. Three of our group goes 400 lbs and up. The other is my wife, our "skinny" person at over 200 lbs. We could stand to lose a couple...

And that's part of the plan. See, our geocaching group is also our daily walking group. We try to support each other in a diet and exercise plan and go walking every Monday through Friday. So far there's been over 300 lbs lost between the four of us and plenty left to do. We saw the geocaching thing as a chance to extend our exercise plan to go outdoors (every geek's fear) and have more fun than walking circles around the gym.

This is the first in what I hope will be a running log of many weekend geocaching trips for our group. Sometimes there'll be more of us, sometimes less. Speaking of which, let's meet the group.

Our group consisted of me (Gryphon), Tserof, Mad Mike, and Ash, my wife. We set out on June 10 full of excitement. A new toy! Look, it tells us how fast we're going! Oooh, I have 13 satellites! Wow! I can see the position of the sun!

We decided to hit caches down Huntsville, Alabama way since Ash and I needed to go there for groceries anyway. We noticed several in Hazel Green, just across the line but decided to skip these for today and save them for "short trip days" since we were going all the way into Huntsville anyway.

We noticed by far the highest concentration of caches was on Monte Santo mountain (they have mountains in Alabama?) so we trekked on up to grab a few. Beautiful country and I'd never been so it was already a worthwhile trip. We carried with us three baggies full of a D20, miniatures, and pre-made characters sheets for a fantasy role-playing game (did I mention we're geeks?) to put in the caches as "prizes" when we found them and removed the "prizes" already there.

First up, was a multi-cache that looked like it was pretty easy and right off the road. It was posted by a guy named Frodo (apparently geekdom runs strong among the geocachers) and was called Lord of the Bling: Return of the Bling. It was listed as Difficulty 1, Terrain 2. Not a problem, even for out of shape fat people. Besides, we reasoned, the gps pegged it as right off the road near a bridge. We sent Ash down to investigate since the bank was a little bit steeper than the 400 pounders felt comfortable doing.

Oooh, there it is!, we said. Nope. Beer bottle. Ooooh there! Nope. Coke can. Damn people in Alabama litter a lot. We looked all over. Under rocks, under logs, under leaves. We tried to get Ash convinced to look under the bridge but her lack of a flashlight and my ill-times "Watch out for snakes!" joke convinced her that she didn't want this cache as much as we thought. Geocaches 1, Geocachers 0.

No big deal. We'll just do part 2 of Frodo's quest. It's only 450 feet away, Jason tells us, looking at his handy GPS. And it's only Terrain 1, Difficulty 2. No problem...

So down we go. And I do mean down. Down steep terrain. Over rocks, under trees, once over and under a tree at the same time. It was steep. And I MEAN steep. Four fat people perched perilously on a tiny rock, balanced by a sapling... This may not turn out well, I thought. But we pressed on. As we got farther in, we began to feel that this 450 feet was a hell of a lot more in practice than it was in theory, what with winding around brambles, tripping over stones, etc. But we pressed on still. By now, we had begun jokingly cursing Frodo and his "Terrain 1" climb. "Fucking little hobbit!" we said. "Did you guys notice Frodo was always falling down in the movies?" Tserof asked. "How the hell did he ever get here?" But still we pressed. Partially because we'd come to far to quit and partially because gravity wanted us to go that way.

Down we go until the GPS beeps, telling us we were near our goal. It dutifully pointed us in the right direction... right into a cave. "I think it's in the cave", Mad Mike, Master of the Obvious, tells us. "Surely it's not IN the cave" we reasoned. Caving without the right equipment is dangerous. It must be AROUND the cave!

Around the cave we searched, poking and prodding our sticks into crannies and crevaces (all except Jason who had broken his on the way down and was left with a nub). No cache. We begin to suspect it's in the cave. "Surely it's just in the entrance though" we thought. We peer into the darkness... Nothing. "You know, we probably should have brought a flashlight with us for this" I say, officially becoming Mad Mike's sidekick "Kid Obvious".

This would become a recurring theme in our caching trip. "We should have brought..." Water, flashlights, water, band-aids, naproxen pills, water, our brains, water. We weren't terribly well prepared (my old Boy Scout leader would be ashamed), not knowing we were going spelunking today. Finally, we give up and agree to move to another cache. By now uttering Frodo's name is equal to spitting on Baby Jesus. There are many jokes about calling ourselves Sauron just so we can have a goal of killing Frodo (are you seeing the geek theme running here?).

Back up the trail we go. All those things we had a hard time climbing down were suddenly harder, since old man gravity was pushing against us. "Gravity. Always keeping the fat man down" Mike exclaims. I am pretty sure there's a T-shirt in that, but am too tired to ponder it right now. Up and Up we go, primarily because the only other avenue is down and down hurts. 400 ft sounds like so little when you walk 3 miles a day, but 400 ft vertical sucks, let me tell you. Up and out and back to the car, to partake of the 95 degree bottles of water in my cargo area. "Ice" we said, referencing yet another thing we need on a geocaching journey.

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 0

Next we drive up to the very top of Monte Santo, where Tserof's GPS tells us more prizes await. Ash wants a chance at the new toy and Tserof agrees to let her guide us to the next cache. My heart sinks. I love my wife more than life itself but I have ridden with her navigating enough times to know she is the worst, I mean worst, navigator in history. We have been to probably 10 concerts at 3rd and Lindsley since we started dating and probably as many more as friends before and it's always the same. We get near it, Ash swears she can get me there, I turn down a road that she say will get us there, we see our destination, we see the one-way street going the wrong way. We circle around. Wash, rinse, repeat 32 times...

This can't end well...

Sure enough, Ash takes us off down the lovely paved path merrily navigating. About halfway down she tells us "I like this one better. I'm switching to it!" and bounds off down the windy, sloping path, apparently intent on earning her Junior Pathfinder badge for the day. We all look at each other apprehensively and begin to follow. Fools we are. Silly people... Did I mention I love my wife? With every fiber of my being? It was a good thing because by the end of this trek, I was beginning to wonder aloud what the spousal abuse laws were like in Alabama...

The path meandered left. The path meandered right. We walked down and down for what seemed like hours. Every time we checked with Ash however, we were always approximately .2 miles from our cache. "We're not making any progress, something is not right here" Mad Mike said. He only has the one super power, but he's damn good at it.

Down and down and Mad Mike, who had apparently discovered a new power called "Voice of Reason" points out that it will be getting dark in an hour or so and we should probably give up and start moving out. Tserof wisely takes over the GPS navigating reins and begins to plot our course back to the car. "How are you doing that" Ash asks. Tserof tells her we started tracking when we left our van so the red line should lead back to it. "But I started a new track when I switched to this new cache!" Ash tells us. We all take a moment to ponder the fact that we now have no plot to our car and to ponder the penalties for aiding in spousal abuse in Alabama.

Geocaches 3, Geocachers 0

Up and up we climb. We are doing a lot of climbing but somehow don't seem to be getting any closer to the top. Not sure how that's possible. It probably isn't. I went into a bit of a Twilight Zone there from lack of water and a heart rate that is in the "red zone". Up and up and up. Farther and farther. Tserof and I, the least in shape of the four of us, begin to ponder how a team of EMTs will get down here to us when we have our heart attack and, more critically, how they plan to get two 400 lb men back out. We begin to suspect we're going to die on this mountain. I begin to ponder the embarassment of dying not on Mt. Everest or Mt. Kilamanjaro, but Monte Santo, which only qualifies as a mountain at all because it's in Alabama, where mountains are in short supply.

Mad Mike finally sees the top of a house and some power lines. We're almost out. Tserof chooses this time to begin hyperventilating, forcing me to become "Motivational Speaker of the Day" to encourage him to get up. This mostly consisted of pleading with him that, if he planned to die on me, please do it up there on the road where it would at least be easy to direct EMTs to his corpse. Surprisingly, this speech seemed to work on him as Tserof got the breathing under control and climbed to the top... right into a campsite nowhere near our car. We all groan. Ash, feeling at least slightly guilty at nearly murdering her husband and best friend offers to go get the car and come back for us.

We sit on logs and ponder the nature of women. Are there sane ones out there? We agree there probably are not.

Ash returns and we begin our journey down the mountain. I inform Ash that I am reporting her to the Junior Pathfinders and recommending that she does not get her badge.

On the way home, full finally of cold water and only slightly worse for the wear (are the spots supposed to be in front of your eyes half an hour later?) we decide we don't want to go home without seeing one cache, any cache. So we pick one of the Hazel Green ones that is near a baseball field. "Baseball fields are flat" we tell ourselves. This one should be easy.

I'm discovering that easy isn't a word for us... The GPS dutifully leads us past the baseball field, past the trees beside the baseball field, and right into the impassable tangle of brambles beside a creek. "The GPS says it's in there" Tserof tells us. "I think it's on the other side of the creek." We decide that the two members of the team wearing shorts would not appreciate the impassable brambles and move on.

Geocaches 4, Geocachers 0

Finally, in Fayetteville proper, we decide to hit the one in the middle of town, right by the library. How much more of a Park and Grab can you get than a library? Trusty GPS leads us past the library, past the dentist, and right into another patch of brambles... This one's not impassable but it's not easy either. Tser and Ash once again reference their shorts and decide this maybe isn't a good idea. We also once again remember we have no flashlight and it's getting dark.

Final Score:
Geocaches 5, Geocachers 0

Yikes... We play like the Milwaukee Brewers there... Oh well. We make a plan to scout out some more, easier, caches next weekend and go home, tired, smelly, and aching. Mad Mike mentions we've probably had a week's worth of workout today and the sweat on all our shirts says we probably did. We all agree that we'd better do well in our weigh-in on Monday...

So that's it folks. Our first Adventure in Geocaching. Check here every week or two and I'll try to keep up with posting. Hopefully they won't all be as eventful as this one (or as non-productive) but if nothing else, there's entertainment value in four overweight people attempting an athletic hobby. Kind of like a train wreck...

Until next time...

-Gryph