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