There and Back Again- Part 1

Back in my younger and skinnier days, I used to help out on my family's farm. We owned horses and my job was to get on the least tame, most fiesty, most ornery horse and basically ride the hell out of them until they learned who was the boss and could be trained. Needless to say, I got thrown a lot and donated more than one pint of blood to the cause. But I learned one thing from that experience. Horses are stubborn; But not as stubborn as I am. Getting thrown just made me mad; made me get up, get back on, and ride harder. It usually got me thrown again, but it just made me madder. Eventually, the horse would decide it was easier to just let itself be ridden than to have to fight me constantly. And it was right. I HATE to lose.

So those of you who have been here a while can imagine what one cache, Fellowship of the Bling, has done to me. The Zen Bassmasters tried to tackle it the first time we ever went geocaching and, due to some pretty serious (not to mention comical) miscalculations in planning, it kicked our butts. If you don't already know the whole story, scroll to the bottom of the blog. It's the first post and it's a doozy.

Since that day, we vowed we'd come back someday. That we'd get back up on the horse and give it another try. We promised ourselves that when we'd lost some weight and the temperature got a little more friendly, we'd go back and this time we'd beat Monte Sano.

Today, we decided to try it. The temperature is nearly 40 degrees below where it was when we first tried it and the collective Bassmasters have lost around 100 lbs since then. It seemed like as good a time as any to give it a go.

Unfortunately, the Fates didn't think the deck was stacked against us quite enough and threw some added odds into the mix. First, we moved Tserof into his new apartment yesterday, necessitating about 20 trips up and down the stairs to his apartment, most of it balancing heavy furniture on our shoulders. So we were a bit sore. Second, we moved yet another friend into his new house this morning before the trip. This one didn't involve stairs and was really just a move next door so no problem, right? Right... Lifting a dresser to move out of their bedroom, my arms lifted and my back did not. Ow...

After the move, we made a quick trip home so I could take a painkiller and maybe commune with my hotpad for a few minutes, since we had almost an hour before we had to meet Fish at "Fluff Cache", which is near Yserof's new place. As I had just settled down with my hotpad, I hear the telltale sound of Fish's Jeep/monster truck. Sure enough, Fish had forgotten to reset his clock to standard time and had therefore not "Fallen Back" or even "Sprung Forward" for that matter but had joined the stubborn residents of Indiana who refuse to go anywhere at all. He came in and we shot the bull for a few minutes while he printed off the pages for the day's caches.

Finally, we were ready to go meet Tserof and Mad Mike. Just as we were getting ready to head out, I had a horrible sense of deja vu. "Did anyone ever solve the puzzle and get the coordinates for Bling", I asked. Fish and Ashlynne look at each other with that "I thought you did it" look. I sighed. This was not beginning well... Fish sat down and worked out the coordinates while I wondered what else we'd forget and if maybe just spending the day communing with my hotpad might not be such a bad idea.

We picked up Tserof and Mad Mike and we made our way down to Huntsville. You could cut the tension in the van with a knife. Well, except for from Fish, who hadn't been down the first time and didn't know the true evil of hobbits. Mike and I tried to talk about some of the music on my mp3 player, but it was halfhearted. We were all focused on the impending deaths we were all probably about to face. Gallows humour abounded as we made jokes about forgetting to get the phone number of the lady we met at an event who was part of the dog rescue team.

Finally, after a typically Zen Bassmaster Semi-Circular Course Correction, we were at the spot. Since Ashlynne had brought the camera, we decided to take a "before" picture of Tserof, since he was voted "Most Likely to Die on Monte Sano" and we wanted something nice for his funeral.



We pointed out to Fish some of the "landmarks" of our early journey, namely the creek we made Ash root around in thinking the cache was there (since Tserof had only loaded parking coords).

Finally, we'd messed around enough and made our way in. We narrated for Fish as we went. I felt like a victim who has gone to the scene of a tragedy to recover. There's the sapling that I used for balance. There's the stairstep rocks. There's the tree that we had to go over and under at the same time. The only thing that was changed was the tree, which had fallen a bit and now was a tree you had to go over and over again. Fish and Mad Mike made it fine, with warnings to us that the fallen leaves there made it slick. Tserof then went, slung his leg over the tree, and proceeded to rack himself as he set his foot down. Hilarity ensued. Tserof, who was now ready to apply to the church choir for high soprano, was not amused. He gingerly removed his injured part from the tree and stepped over, insisting that I wouldn't find it funny when it happened to me.

Having no intentions of causing any sort of damage to Ashlynne's property, I found a rock beside the limb that Tserof had overlooked, put my foot there, and climbed over without any damage to my guys. Again, Tserof was not amused.

Let me say again that, while fall may be a preferable time to cache due to the milder temperatures and lack of snakes, wet fallen leaves are slippery little bastiches and made our jobs tough. We slipped and slid all the way down, always making sure we had a firm grounding with our walking sticks before moving on.

Finally, we made it to the cave. Again, if you read the first blog entry we did, you know this cave (which probably has a name but which has evaded me now) is the thing that got us hooked on geocaching. It's a thing of beauty and even our 50 lbs heavier, 40 degrees hotter selves were happy we walked down just to see it. Better yet, we got to see that "first to find" sense of wonder again from Fish, who was setting eyes on it for the first time.

Last time we didn't have any equipment to explore the cave and so had to just look at it from the outside. This time, we brought flashlights and had every intentions of going inside to look around. We even brought water along, something we didn't do last time, and decided to take a picture to prove it to all the doubters.



We left Tserof up top with the cell phone in case we needed a good 911 signal. Fish and Mike went down first. Fish made it ok but Mike involuntarily ended up sliding down the first bit on his butt, leaving a nice skid of mud that I'm sure made us quite popular when we went to lunch after. I didn't even try to walk it down, deciding to take Mike's path by choice rather than by force. That gravity. It's always keeping the fat man down...

After the first bit, it was no problem and we were rewarded with an absolutely beautiful cave with a little waterfall in the back. In fact, since we're on pictures, here's a picture of my wife under the waterfall.



And here's a picture from the inside of what our trip back looked like.



We headed out, being quite careful of the slippery bits and all made it out fine except for Mad Mike who slipped and busted his knee pretty hard. Fortunately, he wasn't seriously hurt, although you could definitely tell he was feeling the pain.

Once we got up, Tserof's sense of curiousity overcame his sense and he decided to go down after all. Ashlynne and I stayed up on 911 duty while the took Tserof down. He was as amazed as we were. Actually, more so as some of the rocks in the cave apparently bore a passing resemblance to one of his favorite parts of Cali who is, sadly, no longer in Tserof's life and therefore no longer the favorite subject of our humour. Ok, that's not fair. She still is, but it's just not as fun now that Tserof's in on the joke. Anyway, I hear a piercing scream from Mad Mike and think his knee has given out again. No, it's worse. Tserof was apparently groping the cave wall and it was more than poor Mike's brain could handle. After quickly dunking Tserof in the cold waterfall of the cave to get his hormones under control, they started out. As you can see from the picture, it was an interesting tag team operation getting Tserof out of there.



We made it out and rested a bit before heading for the cache, celebrating our victory over the cave with a rousing rendition of the Zen Bassmasters theme song. Let's all sing along.

Fish heads
Fish heads
Roly Poly
Fish heads
Fish heads
Fish heads
Eat 'em up
Yum!

From there we headed down to the area where we thought the cache was. We found a big pile of rocks that didn't look to fun to climb down. We sent Fish and Ashlynne, the skinniest of us, down to hunt while Mike, Tserof, and I looked above. After a bit of poking, Ashlynne poked into a hole and heard a metallic sound... and then..



We found it!

Well, it's late and The Wire's on so I'm going to cut out. More to come later in the week.

Midnight Madness

This is going to be the world's shortest edition of Adventures in Geocaching from the standpoint of geocaching because we only managed to find one cache this week. We had good intentions and a full plan of caches, but a variety of factors kept us from caching this week.

1. I had just been to the emergency room with what I thought was a broken foot (but which turned out not to be), putting Ash and I in bed about 4 am with a 10 am meet planned.

2. Our "hide one cache in this little park in Fayetteville" trip took 3 hours as we found the park had two miles of walking trails that none of us knew about so we explored (slowly, my foot was still unhappy) and are planning a couple of multis and some singles along the trail. Don't want to say too much about that yet, stay tuned.

3. I came home from the ER with a bottle of Lortabs for my foot, rendering me loopy for the entire day.

Our soundtrack for the week is "Live on St. Patrick's Day" by the Dropkick Murphys.

We did manage to get one cache done, Pico Inferno, by that evilest of hobbits, Cacheburns. And it didn't disappoint. I won't give away the hide but I will say I'm now 75% blind in both eyes. Damn hobbits!

What we did do, however, was attend a very unique event that night. It was the Royal Order of the Sleepless Knights event in Bell Buckle. The uniqueness? It began at midnight. If you didn't make the event for something stupid like sleep, shame on you. Not a lot of people showed (averaged about 15 but I think there was up to 30 at one point. The lortabs made counting difficult as there was three of everybody) but it was an absolute blast. Nothing "official", no big cache runs, no lackeys or doorprizes, just a bunch of people sitting around in the middle of the night trading war stories. Since I hate crowds, this was great for me.

I guess the first thing to tell you is that this event became the first (and likely only) FTF in ZB history. The event listing only had coordinates for parking and threatened a walk of up to 2 miles so we showed an hour early. Turns out the walk was about 100 yards so we were quite early. Poor Monkeybrad at this point had to be wondering about the wisdom of putting on an event that looked like it was going to cause him to have to spend the night with the likes of us.

Fortunately for him, others showed up and saved him from death by boredom. We got to spend some time quizzing Maxcacher (aka "the Spanish Inquisition) about the caches we had planned that day and BackBrakeBilly spent a lot of time giving us tips on making our geocoin (remember the Zen Bassmasters geocoin? Yeah, neither does Tserof, our point man on it...)

The highlight of the night was a dedicated group of cachers who headed out to one of our previous finds, Sledgehammer, to retrieve the Pet Rock TB from its longtime hiding place. I don't know who ended up taking it home but more power to them. For those who didn't read the previous blog, Pet Rock is a TB attached to a rock that has to weigh about 100 lbs. I don't know where you'd hide it or how you'd get it there without giving yourself a hernia, but hopefully someone will manage.

By about 5 am, the lortabs had finally gotten the best of me and the sight of triple Monkeybrads overcame my sense of reason (not to mention I had already drunk all of Brad's mint tea so my mission was done) so we headed out.

Not a very funny blog this week, which I'm sure I'll get shit for from someone, but that's the way they fall sometimes. All I can say is tune in next week, weather permitting, as we are finally going to attempt to throw the monkey off our backs.

Yep, we're going back where it all began... Back to Fellowship of the Bling. Assuming we don't die, it should provide interesting blogging. Stay tuned.

The Gods Must Be Caching

By Zeus!

I always wanted to say that... This week we're headed to the Murfreesboro/Smyrna area to do the Greek Gods series of puzzle caches. Ashlynne has had this series on her want list for a while so we decided to knock them out. Tserof is down with a cold this week and unable to attend, although as you see we managed to make him part of the team in any case. More on that later. The soundtrack for this week is Live on St. Patrick's Day by The Dropkick Murphys.

We headed into Murfreesboro and decided to hit one of Monkeybrad's caches on the way, called Too Cool. As is standard with us, we had to make a couple of semi-circular course corrections to get here. Nice little tourist spot that I somehow missed during the 3 years I was a student at MTSU. It's subtitled "An Evil Micro" but it was placed at about eye level for Fish, who found it easily. It might be evil for a short person. Cache hiding is a little different for us. We automatically look at eye level now because a) we've learned that people hide things there when they're trying to not be obvious and b) it doesn't require us to bend or stoop in any way. In fact, as Rick618 proved recently with Huntsville Arch, the easiest way to hide something from us is to hide it at our feet, since most of the Zen Bassmasters have DNF'd their feet for several years. Closed circuit to Brad (who sometimes reads the blog), drop us a mail and let us know where you got the cache container for this one. I found some on Ebay but didn't know if there was another place with better pricing. While we found it easily, I can see the potential for evil in the things and so it needs to become part of ZB's Super Leet Sekret New Cache, Smeagol's Revenge. Coming eventually to a wooded area near you.

Next up was the first part of the Greek Gods series, Aphrodite- Greek God of Beauty. As we started looking for the cache, Fish asked Ashlynne if she'd done the research for this one, a request he'd made to her by e-mail earlier in the week. Research?, she asked. It's gonna be a long day.

Turns out that Ashlynne was supposed to research the letters of the Greek alphabet, since we needed to know them to solve the puzzle. A quick survey of the group showed that none of us had much clue as to the letters of the Greek alphabet, none of us ever having belonged to a fraternity (as I pointed out at the time, I would never have a fraternity whose standards were lax enough to let me in. I can't be seen with people like that). We tried calling Fish's wife Chri for help but were sternly informed that she had just formed a raid group in Everquest 2 and had no time for us. That girl's serious about her gaming and I certainly wasn't going to be the one to try and stand between her and obtaining the ultra-rare drop Sword of No Life +4.

So we decided to go it alone, hoping that our limited knowledge of mythology and my knowledge of college greek culture (which mostly consists of the Lambda Lambda Lambda fraternity from Revenge of the Nerds) would help us along. We went out to where the cache was supposed to be and began to look around. After about 5 minutes of looking, I turned around and there it was... in plain sight... At about eye level. Honestly, if it had been in any more plain sight it might as well have been on the side of the road. That's the hazard of constantly trying to find caches hidden by evil hobbits, hobbit sympathizers, monkeys, and the Spanish Inquisition. You look so hard for the "evil" hides that a spot out in the open plum evaded us.

But we found it and, sure enough, encountered a symbol none of us knew. We pondered it for a moment, turned it sideways to see if it made more sense and, when it didn't, dutifully copied it down in hopes that once Chri got her Helmet of Wootness that she'd take pity on her poor unprepared clan and give an assist.

Next up was Hades- Greek God of the Dead. Not surprisingly, Hades was hanging out in a cemetary, or near a cemetary. I'm not sure it could get inside the cemetary as the poor people inside had been overtaken by what looked like several decades of overgrowth. We only knew it was a cemetary by the lone tallest marker there which was valiantly putting up a losing battle not to be overtaken by the vines. Kind of sad. Again we got the symbol from it, again unfamiliar to us, copied it down and moved on.

Next was Athena- Greek god of Wisdom. Not a lot of wisdom in our little group but, despite that, we found the cache pretty easily in a little park. This one actually had a symbol some of us recognized. And there was much rejoicing.

Next is Zeus- Greek god of the Sky. Not entirely sure why this was the Greek God of Sky since it was near a water treatment plant (pretty cool actually. By this time I had a tummy ache from too much lunch and just wanted to stop and look at the water but Fish wouldn't let me... Fecking slave driver he is...) Again, not a terribly hard find but once again we had no clue of the symbol. So far we had one number of the final coordinates. Fish tried Chri again but the raid was still on although she promised us that the ultra-super-mondo-rad rare was going to spawn any minute and she'd be ready to help out. Okay then... Pressing on.

Next was Ares- Greek God of War. This was in another park and it was here that we learned that the town of Smyrna is dead bloody serious about traffic safety. Every little intersection, no matter how small or unused, had a 4-way stop including requisite signage promising dire penalties for anyone not obeying said signage. When I say every intersection, I mean EVERY intersection. I'm pretty sure I saw a trail to an anthill that had a 4-way stop at it. The park was much more difficult than the cache, which was a pretty easy find. Another symbol none of us knew and, with only one figured out and one cache left to do, we began to worry that we wouldn't finish it.

As we drove to the next cache, Poseidon- Greek God of the Sea, which was near a marina, we passed a road where the GPS seemed to think we should go. "Nah", Fish tells us. "That's a private business drive.", pointing at the sign for a restaurant nearby. "We need to go down the next one. Trusting the guy with the GPSr (and above Mad Mike's, the other guy with the GPSr, objection) we went where Fish led. We parked in the nice big parking lot and prepared for the .15 mile walk to the cache. We went down an embankment, through a copse of trees, along a little path, and out to... the other parking lot for the marina. The other parking lot for the marina being the place where the other road led. Sure enough, we followed the GPSr which led us through the huge parking lot and to a little wooded area maybe 100 yards from the edge of that parking lot. So there's your Zen Bassmaster moment for the week as we, once again, turned a park and grab into a .25 mile hike. My upset stomach cursed Fish and Mad Mike's hurt ankle was singing along. Found the cache pretty easily and once again took down the indecipherable symbol, the last of the day.

As we went back to the car, we tried to decide what to do about our Greek alphabet soup. Fish was going to call Chri again, risking the wrath only seeable by someone who has been interrupted from killing an elite mob she's been waiting 27 hours to spawn by a bunch of retarded geocachers who can't read. Then I hit on the bright idea of calling Tserof, who was out sick but still home (we assumed. You never know with Tserof). Sure enough, Tserof was home and quickly found the information we needed. I have to say at this point that I was a little nervous about where this was going. On the one hand, we have Fish, who was working on solving the puzzle and looking far too much like a monkey doing a math problem. On the other hand, I know he had information on the Greek alphabet from Tserof, who has trouble reading the English alphabet (having given up reading early in his life when he discovered he could be perfectly happy only knowing B-E-E-and-R.)

Fish puts in the coordinates that he swears are right and we're on our way. On the way to the final location, we pass near where Hades was and are alarmed to see smoke rising from the general area. We all look at Fish, our group's only smoker. He swears he wasn't smoking at the time and denies any responsibility for the fire. We head on to the final spot, hoping not to have gotten made and arrested for Fish's alleged arson. We drive around looking for the location, which seems to point into a field. We all look accusingly at Fish, who swears his coordinates are right. He rechecks them and confirms they're right so we drive around some more looking for a way to get there. Finally we turn into a residential neighborhood and the GPS leads to a person's house. Hoping this house is owned by the cache owner and not some militia nut just waiting for someone to come along so he can try out his AK-47, we go looking. We find the cache easily enough and we don't get shot (which is always good).

This is a pretty good series if you happen to be in the area. Not too hard but it takes you to a lot of places and gives a little challenge with the puzzle. Just research better than we did.

As we're headed out, I complain about not having anything funny for the blog this week. Fish mentions that there's a difficulty 4 near here and we decide to try it for blog fodder. The cache is called "Stickery Situation" and it was certainly stickery. Good thing too as that's the only part that lived up to what was promised. I'm not sure why the person hiding this cache thought it was a difficulty 4 but they are obviously not familiar with some of the difficulty 4 caches we've tried. Either that or too many evil hobbits have skewed our idea of difficulty. But I don't think so. Even though it says "don't expect to find this one easily" in the description, Mad Mike managed to spot it while about 50 feet from the spot. "Surely it's a decoy" we thought. But it wasn't. It was actually the cache. Not sure what they were thinking there...

Well that's all for this week folks. Probably not as funny as some of you would prefer but that's how the week went. We're back in Huntsville next week as well as scouting a location for a new TB Hotel we plan to put out. If that's not enough to fulfill your blood lust, all I can say is pray for dry weather because we've already got on the docket for sometime in November....

Well, I won't give it all away other than to say we're going back where it all began to exorcise some demons. Bring it hobbits. This time we're ready for you...

Until then...

-Gryph

Abbreviated Caching

Well, I'm back again this week after leaving you in the more than capable hands of Doc last weekend. Hopefully after getting a taste of what a real writer can do, you won't be too bored with me again. Unfortunately, this week is probably not going to be my finest return to the saddle as we had an abbreviated run this week.

Fish was out but was kind enough to plan a run for us before his vacation. He can't be blamed for our sloth-like progression this week. He had a full run of caches planned for us but two of the group (Mad Mike and Ashlynne) were nursing sore ankles and I was nursing an upset belly so we knocked off after 7 caches to go watch "The Departed". More on that later...

To begin the day, we met up at Tserof's house and Ashlynne mentioned that, since Fish was out, our group was down to 4, a perfect size for Tserof to pick up the driving duties this week. So we loaded into the Titan to pick up Mad Mike. Now I know Doc spent quite a bit of time last week talking up Jason's Titan, making the obligatory references to the namesake beings from mythology. While I wouldn't want to contradict my elder or my better (Doc is both), I have a different take. The Titan certainly looks like its mythological namesake from the outside, huge and impressive. Unfortunately, when Tserof drives the Titan, it less resembles a mythological being than it does the NFL team it is also named for. Just like the Titans, it can't hit the holes, it often drifts across the line illegally, and it has a bad habit of stomping on the heads of unsuspecting curbs.

Our first indicator of problems was when we reached Mad Mike's house. Making a quick eyeball of Mike's driveway, with a comparable look at the size of the Titan, divided by Tserof's notorious parking ability.... Well, I'm not much good at math but it wasn't really adding up. To his credit, Tserof did ok and managed not to take out the reflectors on either side of the driveway, but it was close. We picked up Mike and were on our way. The soundtrack for this week is Tserof's Ipod, which had an impressive collection of female singers on it, most notably Lucinda Williams and Iris Dement.

Headed in to Huntsville, we watched as the Tennessee Titan drifted ever closer to being "offsides". Finally, Tserof drifted too far and the poor frightened VW in the next lane over almost gave himself a heart attack trying not to become one of the cars at the monster truck rally. Tserof's comment? "That guy sure is driving strange..." Honestly...

We moved on to our first cache "Where are the caches in your neighborhood." As is tradition, our journey began with a semi-circular course correction as Tserof was too into the song he was listening to and missed the "it's right here. Tserof, it's here. Here. Here.... Back there." He got us turned around (and let me tell you, watching that thing turn on a residential street is a scary, scary thing) and despite knowing the pull-off was right there, managed to miss it again. Two semi-circular course corrections and we haven't even gotten our first cache yet. Typical.

Finally, Tserof muscles Eddie George around and we get to the spot. Very easy cache to find, kind of anti-climactic after Tserof turned pulling off the road into a difficulty 5 task.

Next was "Looking down on the Joneses." This was on the Governor's drive overlook which, fortunately, wasn't busy since Tserof needed 3 parking spaces to get Bruce Matthews in. We did have to do a little bit of trekking through the wood for this one, much to the chagrin of our hurt ankle folks. The cache itself was an easy enough find. The only real barrier here was that the GPS decided to take another of its Satanic moments and try to point us over the fence and into the residential area. Of course, we'd given Ashlynne, she of the Monte Sano navigation disaster, the GPS because, as Mike pointed out for me "it makes for good blogging." Finally, we got the GPS to behave and found the cache. There was another cache in this area but there were muggles about so we didn't grab it.

Next up was One for the Little Guys, which we skipped a few weeks ago on one of our kiddie caching trips because there was a bit more of a walk than we wanted to take the kids on. This time, we had two gimpy ankles and a rumbly belly so it wasn't much better, but we parked in the movie theater lot and walked over. Easy enough find, not a fun walk when you're hurting. By the time we got back to the car, we had all had very close to enough. With the movie theater nearby, we headed over to find out the play time for The Departed. Discovering we still had some time to kill, we headed out to do a few more caches.

Next up was A Palm fer Us, by Exotic Dancer, a fictional creation of our old nemesis Frodo, the bastard. If the other one was a bad walk for the hurt folks, this one was worse. Mike was cursing Frodo to almost Monte Sano levels by the end. Good cache though. Clever hide. Picked up a TB with a Superman attached. His mission is to go to Antarctica. I don't think I'm going to be getting him to there. If we can't tackle Green Mountain, I'm pretty sure Antarctica is right out. Besides, we've had a hell of a time trying to train Fish's two dogs to the sled.

Next up was 4 mile post rocks. This was far too close to Green Mountain for me and I started to have flashbacks, rock back and forth, and curse Rick618. Fortunately, this distracted me from watching Tserof attempt to navigate Bum Phillips through that road. I'm told it was pretty scary. Easy enough find and a nice little cave across the road. I didn't explore the cave as it was on the same side of the road as the trail and the memories overwhelmed me.

Next, we headed back to Governor's Overlook to pick up the cache that we missed because of the muggles before. This time Tserof didn't even try to park, just moving over to the side of the road (which still leaves his giant Frank Wycheck ass in the middle of the road but that's not the point). It took us a while to find this one as it was a bit tricksier than it seemed, but Ashlynne thought "outside the box" and found it finally.

Our last cache was Froggy Went a Courtin' by our very favorite cacher in the world and one of only two honorary Bassmasters, RN2B. We had to do this one. RN2B has never let us down, always hiding caches where the mentally retarded (read: us) can find it. It's nice of her to make geocaching accesible for the handicapped. Cool spot, cool container, but not too terribly hard, just what we expect and what makes her our favorite cacher. Let's all have a moment of silence in her honor.

....

...

...

...

Hey, these moments of silence fill blog space nicely... I should do those more often.

At that point, we were tired of caching but still had some time to kill so we took Tserof to his very favorite place in the world, Barnes and Noble. Tserof in a bookstore is like a penguin in the Mojave. It's pretty funny to watch. Mike and I, being heartless bastiches, steered Tserof (who, having seen Curious George that week wanted to go try his hand at them) to the required school reading instead. Tserof guided us through the section, showing us which books he'd watched the movies of, which he'd had to get the Cliff Notes on, and which he'd had to pay a friend to read for him. Mike was being kind, trying to convince Tserof to read good books like Frankenstein and Alice in Wonderland. I, on the other hand, was playing "bad cop" and trying to talk him into War and Peace or Silas Marner, a book so bad that even I, who minored in English in college, never made it through the thing. Tserof wanted to stick with the Curious George books. Finally, it was time for the movie.

I'm going to move away from geocaching discussion here to encourage you as strongly as I can to go see Martin Scorcese's "The Departed." Easily the best movie of the year so far. By far. I can't say enough good things about this movie. Great performances from everyone, including Leonardo DiCaprio, who I normally hate. Go see the movie. Right now, I'll wait.

Good stuff, eh? You can thank me later. I take cash, check, and paypal. I can even take your credit cards and will even return them to you in 6-8 months when I've finished with them.

Well, that's all for this week. Again, a short trip but we should be back on task next week as Fish is back and he usually keeps us focused.

Until then...

Designated Blogger

Editor's note: Ashlynne and I spent the weekend in Nashville and weren't able to go caching with the guys, but I knew you folks would be unhappy if there was no blog for this week, so I talked our friend Doc, who was tagging along in our absence, to write up the week's adventures. Doc could out-write me in his sleep, so you guys are in for a treat. Just don't get to liking it too much. You're back stuck with me next week...

Gryphon kindly asked me to write for the Zen Bassmaster's Adventures in Geocaching blog as he and Ashlynne were attending a concert that day. Some of you know me, but to those that do not I am Doc, or Entropy or Entropius. Like all of you, I've been fascinated by the tales of my friends' adventures, and joined them when I can. This day, Tserof, Fish and Chri asked if I would come along as some of the others would be absent, and a happy circumstance of scheduling made it so. I hope you can forgive me the discontinuity of styles between Gryphon and myself--I'm unfamiliar with the language of 'caching, but will do my best to describe a wonderful day.
We began that day with a pick-up truck. Not just any pick-up truck, but a truck of such reserves of strength and fortitude that it could shoulder the great burden of the Zen Bassmasters themselves. Such an awesome vehicle deserved an awesome name, and this is had. The Titan.
The Titan's amenities were many, it's drawbacks few but fierce. The great transport had an extended cab capable of blissfully free-knee movement for four, half it's systems were heated (and perhaps the rest, too), and cargo had no hope of escaping it's gated bed. It's brakes were mighty (as we discovered many times that day), it's acceleration sedate and untroubled by hill or valley, it's lights plentiful, and the mysteries of it's various storage compartments and cubbyholes a never ending source of wonder.
However, the Titan suffered from two key weaknesses. First, and perhaps most obvious, was it's voracious liquid thirst. A vampire of ancient fern, the magnitude of it's hunger wasn't clear until Tserof, shortly before our journey, drew a deep breath while removing the gas cap to insert the nozzle.
“You know, this thing holds twenty-eight gallons,” he told me ruefully.
A mighty thirst, indeed.
Secondly, the Titan's designers seemed to have had misconceptions about the girth of those that would ride it's steel frame. Having had such good engineering in all other aspects of the vehicle's seating, one wonders why those engineers failed to figure on folks greater than ten years of age when designing the safety features. So, aside from Fish, who religiously insisted on wearing his seatbelt irregardless of the discomfort and permanent disfigurement it caused, we relied on the numerous handles and sturdy protrusions to steady ourselves during the Titan's voyage.
Fish and Chri met Tserof and me at Tserof's place. Seat assignments were made and we began our pleasant trip to Huntsville, AL., where the day's festivities would play out. Heaven has made few things more perfect than a cool, sunny day in fall. The light breeze refreshed us and stirred the city vapors, and all in all the day itself became a reason to be out within it.
After a ritual male comparison of GPS devices, Tserof and Fish began negotiating which caches we would see in what order. It seemed Fish's goals that day were twofold--first, he wanted to gather as many “bugs” as possible before his trip next week to friends in Missouri. These bugs are an interesting aspect of 'caching, and a tribute to the good faith of the community itself. I've seen a few, and been impressed by the progress of them all. They are miniature Olympic torches, handed off one to another in an unbroken chain of good will, and for a few of them Fish was going to take a small part in their journey by giving them a two state jump. The stories they could tell if only they could talk.
Secondly, Fish was rapidly approaching his 100th cache. He had, in fact, meticulously planned out WHICH cache he wanted to be number 100. But most of the caches on the list that day were caches he'd already found that he'd since discovered had bugs--his idea was to allow the rest of to find these on our own while he chuckled and cajoled from a safe distance. THAT part of his plan, however, fell short--for the day was to be the day of Chri.
The first cache, No Birds Allowed, was in the outskirts of northeast Huntsville. After traveling through a lonely industrial part of town with endless steel buildings and warehouses, we broke into a fairly new residential subdivision with typically winding streets and cul-de-sacs. A couple of twists and “semi-circular course corrections” later, Chri spotted a significant street sign and we found a likely place to approach. After discovering several things a bird would find distressing, Chri located the cache itself. The engineering and application of the thing was ingenious--Fish took time to point out the features that made it both a good hide and aptly named.
It was about this time that we realized we weren't harnessing the full potential of the Titan. As we approached some railroad tracks on our way out, Fish urged Tserof, “Gun it! Gun it! You know you want to get some air-time.” Indeed! The Titan's flight characteristics were untried and unknown, yet it would be such a time saver to hop hills and rivers and dense foliage in the Titan on the way to inaccessible caches! Tserof wisely declined, however, instead limiting the Titan to jumping curbs, small rocks and potholes.
We ate at Beauregard's after some Magic Eight Ball Navigation (Tserof: “Do I go right?” Fish: “Yeah. Sort of.”) The infamous home of glow-in-the-dark all-you-can-eat chicken wings, the selection included more varieties of tongue-burning sauces and dips than there are words in the world meaning “Too Hot.” Fortunately, the drinks served were generous--I had four tall Diet Pepsis before it was all over. Fish discovered he liked the Jamaican Jerk sauce, while I was able to (after years of fortifying myself on mild salsa) eat the “hot” chicken wings. “Hot” being just two on scale of Mild to “Nuclear,” but we all must take pride in our baby steps.
During lunch, Fish made several predictions--naming a cache and pointing to each of us in turn and saying “You'll be the one to find this one, the rest of you will NEVER get it.” These predictions were at least partially correct--whenever he predicted Chri would find one, he was right.
After lunch, Fish was looking forward to showing us Grizzly Gator, but some muggles were nearby so we waved off. Instead, we had encounters with two great beasts. One, a fearsome life-sized bear carved in wood, stood menacingly before a home along the street near the cache. I wondered if it was a result of chainsaw art, given the many planes and angles there were. Secondly was a small grey squirrel. One might think that in a contest between a squirrel crossing the road and the Titan, the outcome would be certain. Not so--the squirrel was victorious as the Titan's quite ample brakes yielded the field! Squirrels 1, Titan 0.
We traveled on to the shade side of Huntsville's progress and industry, beneath the opening ribbons of Interstate that climb up on compressed concrete and rebar over the railroad tracks downtown. Here lay Dragon's Breath 2, and it was quite a find. This was left by a man named Zaybex, who I firmly believe is a rigger or longshoreman by day. It was a very clever hide, and once again Chri, who would not bow to the obvious, scored the find. While retrieval was going on, a freight train rumbled pass--it's been a long time since I'd seen one, and that sight alone would have made the day worth it.
We approached our next, Rocky's First Cache, through downtown Huntsville. Being a Saturday, it was quiet and deserted, but I still imagined the great Titan encountering those one way streets on it's own terms and being unbowed. No onslaught of oncoming traffic could deter our Titan! Let the pedestrians yield!
The cache itself was one both Tserof and Fish had seen before, so for the first time I was handed a GPS and told, “Go forth.” I did so, peering intently at the glowing compass heading and following it faithfully--to a point almost thirty feet away from the actual cache, which Chri found in moments.
By this time, Fish was getting nervous. Chri was scoring all the finds, and doing so with apparent skill and ease. Jokes about his predictions ceased, the Bart Simpson laughter was growing less pronounced. But I know he was quietly proud of her, for never was there any complaint.
We traveled along University Drive to the landmark Huntsville Arch. A pedestrian walkway meant to keep students safe from the Atlanta-like traffic speeding along the thoroughfare below, it spanned the distance between a school and a sub sandwich shop, two places well visited by school kids. Walking the arch itself is an experience! The spectacle of all that oncoming traffic rushing at you but suddenly passing harmlessly below is invigorating. This was another that Fish had been to, and he quite enjoyed watching us climb in and around the arch searching for the thing. When Chri finally found it, Fish admitted that while we were looking he tried to spot it and it took him three tries even knowing where it was!
A few twist and turns later led us to Girls Went a Courting, a cache that both Tserof and Fish had already found. Chri and I manned the GPSs again and rummaged around until Chri called out in triumph. A well decorated and populated box was the prize, as well as another notch for Chri's belt.
We traveled to a nearby cemetery for the next cache. Remember Dred Scott was one those caches that leads to a fascinating place. The cache itself, which Tserof found, was not obvious yet in an obvious place that was both respectful and complimentary to the setting. I'd never known the place existed, and was gratified to be led there--another great feature of geocaching.
We next traveled to the campus of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, my old alma matter. It's been years since I've been on the campus proper, and how it's changed! New buildings are everywhere, but the old buildings remain--I might still be able to find the cafeteria, after all. We parked the Titan and trekked off, encountering a fellow walking a large canine along the way with a leash that could more accurately be called a tow cable as the man was certainly being towed by the dog. Soon we were upon a shady place that I must have driven by a hundred times and never thought twice about it. Within were nestled some rocks overgrown with foliage. “Rocks!” Chri said, “I like rocks!” And, indeed, her instincts were again correct, except this time there was a conspiracy of dwadaling. The others made a point of resting and taking in the view while I was handed a GPS and wandered off. Eventually I found the thing--the largest cache of the trip and rather patriotically appointed to be noticeable, and still I walked by it twice. The gang logged us in and off we went.
We'd been at it for some hours and it was time for a pit stop. We chose an old Circle-C near the Space and Rocket Center, a place where an old friend used to work. Call him Kenchlo, none of us had seen him in years, and returning to that spot made us wonder. The store itself hadn't changed much--it lacked the Slushy machine that used to be our excuse to travel down at 4:30 AM to visit Kench at work, but otherwise still had the same diagonal rows of candy and starch and beer. If only our old friend Kench had been behind the counter to kid us about our strictly non-alcoholic refreshments, the scene would have been complete.
The next cache was something special. Fish proclaimed that Thorton Research Park was his favorite hide, and said he was going to particularly enjoy sitting and watching us grow frustrated. To his alarm, however, Tserof and Chri teamed up and reasoned it out, and finally found the thing in rather less time that Fish had before. Indeed, it was awfully clever, the work of a craftsman that impressed us all. But poor Fish, bemused yet proud of his wife, couldn't help but calling Chri and Tserof choice five letter words on our walk back to the Titan.
A feat or two of navigation later, and travel over what was perhaps the bumpiest paved road in the Huntsville area, we arrived at Off the Beaten Path. It was located in a place with a fantastic name--I even loved the name of the road in front of it. Yet, as the cache describes, it was rather desolate, a failed experiment in speculative real estate. The cache was hidden well enough, found by Tserof after a few minutes of searching. As Chri said, speaking of the types of flora nearby, “They could have been much more cruel.”
The sun was beginning to get sleepy and was headed towards it's nightly rest as we pulled into a public ball park. Saturday evening games had already started up, and we parked among a crowd of family minivans and harried mothers and fathers shuffling their little leaguers off to their glory. We marched to the beat of the GPSs and the roar of crowds and balls on bats, and soon entered a wood near the fields. We found what we believed was the setup indicated by the cache's name, but never could find the cache itself. Had it not been for the fading light, I'm sure we would have spent hours more looking.
Interestingly, we'd discovered a fairway completely covered in kudzu not far from the cache site. We gave it little attention until, at some point during our exploration, we heard a loud approaching rumbling and thunder. Alarmed, we looked around and, to everyone's surprise, saw a freight train rush past right through that field of kudzu! The kudzu, being so voracious, had grown right over the railroad tracks, concealing them until the train roared past.
It was now deep twilight, and we were making plans to return home. Fish still had a couple of things he wanted to try, so try we did. On the way to the first was the Mountain of Despair, the hill along Four Mile Post that Fish and Tserof and the others had all had near-death experiences upon. It sounded dreadful, and I could tell that even just driving by it was far too close for their comfort.
Four Mile Post Rocks, View of the Cave! was a nighttime find for us. The half moon hovered in the low horizon, obscured by mist and high broken clouds. It and the small flashlights we scavenged provided enough light for Fish and Tserof to find the cache. They described an unusual container, perhaps a candy dispenser of some sort, and Tserof said he'd like to get one to hide himself someday.
Fish said we'd get a kick out of Path to Nowhere, and right he was. Chri, still on her roll, found it almost within seconds, even in the dark. It's an interesting place that deserves something more--benches for quiet reflection, perhaps. Even the Path to Nowhere leads somewhere.
Finally came Fish's chosen cache, the cache he wanted to be his one hundredth. He knew about it because he'd encountered the place once before and decided it was great spot to hide a cache, yet when he researched it he discovered someone had beaten him to it. So he decided to find THEIR cache instead, which the rest of us wondered how it would be accomplished at night with two small penlights, one with fading batteries.
As we parked, Fish told us, “You can't find it, this one's mine!”
Tserof said, “You want us to wait here?”
“Oh, okay,” Fish replied, almost grudgingly, “you can come.”
And so we did--into a place that reminded me of a football stadium. After a bit of searching, Fish did indeed find the cache, and not once did the flashlights see service.
Our adventure in geocaching was complete. We'd spent a full eight hours traveling around and having a good time--I'm deeply thankful for the chance to spend time with Tserof, Fish and Chri, and glad to have experienced again this remarkable hobby of theirs. Every cache we found had the weight of history, the lingering touch of other human hands, their works and skill made substantial before our very eyes. It's a type of history you can see and feel and know where it's been and follow where it's going. Real people came before, and real people will come after, and they will see the names and wonder who those people were...
...but they will KNOW why they were there.