Micro Madness

Yeah, yeah. I know. Been a couple of weeks since I've had much to say on here. Between the holidays and hiding our own caches the last few weeks, we haven't gotten much geocaching done. Unfortunately, that trend plans to continue as everyone is booked solid through the holidays. So don't expect much action on the blog the next few weeks, although if things go as planned, I may have a funny newbie story or two before the end of the year.

Due to a rash of sickness and injury throughout the group, we asked Fish, our trip planner extraordinaire, to do us a list of low-impact caches. We have intentionally avoided most urban micros in the Huntsville area thus far because they really aren't our bag, so we decided this would be as good a week as any to do the micros.

Fish, heeding my mantra of "hard caches make good blog", added a couple of higher difficulty micros to the list, just to spice things up.

Our first cache of the day was "Just Another Cache in the Wall" which promised a little bit of history, and a decent hide. Sure enough, the coordinates took us to a rock wall beside a gas station. The sign by the wall told that this was the only remaining part of some famous person from Huntsville's history.

I saw a rock wall and cringed. I hate rock wall micros. 4 zillion nooks and crannies to stick something and it usually means me spending an hour tugging on rocks that look slightly out of place. This was no exception. We poked and pulled on rocks and tugged on sticks and scoured metal signs for any indication of a pico. We looked over the clue with great care to see if it was hiding something from us. We even went inside as the clue suggested but found no caches or no clues in the Bud Lights (although we did find Stewart's Diet Orange Cream Soda, which was awesome). Eventually, the rest of us were ready to give up but Fish, who is much more anal about these kinds of things than the rest of us wasn't finished. In fact, he wanted the cache so badly, he was willing to commit the only sin that will get you banished to Hell in Zen Bassmaster-land...

He asked a hobbit for help...

Yes, you read that right. No amount of genuflection or "Hail Zebco" will get him out of this sin. He actually got on the phone and called Bilbo for assistance. The rest of us moved a few steps away from him, afraid to catch whatever midget-loving disease he'd gotten from cavorting with the hobbits last week.

Long story short, Fish found the cache with, ech, the help of Bilbo and we moved on. I feel dirty just logging this find...

Our second cache was another run at "Dead Children's Playground." Once again, mini-muggles stood in our way and we vowed to come back a little later, hoping the impending Christmas parade would pique their interest (and not strand us).

Next up was what Fish said was our "difficult" cache, one of Rick618's called California Frustration. And it was aptly named...

The clue promised that there were "16 possible hiding places" for the cache. We immediately noticed that the pavilion had 16 posts and set to locate it there... No luck.

Then we noticed the legs and supports on the tables also numbered 16. So that's it! We looked, but no cache. Then we noticed that the legs on the swingset and the swings also equalled 16... This was like the friggin' Da Vinci Code! Unfortunately, Fish's "phone a friend" list contains only Hobbit names and not Tom Hanks so we were out of luck. Fish offered to call Bilbo again but we threatened an intervention and he thought better of it.

Honestly, we looked over every conceivable 16 thing in that entire park, and there were a bunch. Well, every one but the one that had the cache... Finally we logged it as a DNF and moved on, for fear of the approaching parade catching us.

Back to Dead Children's Playground where there were, finally, no children present, dead or otherwise. The description said the coords were written "somewhere among the playground equipment." Well, it was "somewhere", if you use the term loosely. And it was "among the playground equipment", also used loosely. After a ton of even more Da Vinci Code-esque attempts to decrypt the graffiti on the slide ("It says Joanie Loves Chachi 2005! There are 5 letters in Joanie! That might be a clue!) and one very humorous climb by Fish into one piece of playground equipment that nearly took a can of Crisco to get him out of (and you better believe we'd have "phoned a friend" to Bilbo for that particular job!), we finally located the coords and headed to the cache.

Next up was "Well now THAT'S Original" which is just what it promised, a lampskirt micro by the Space and Rocket Center. Being a huge space mark, I loved just going there. Nothing to say about the cache. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, "If you enjoy this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you'll enjoy..."

Next up was Campus Code Blue. Another easy micro on the UAH Campus. Nothing much to say here other than we nearly got mobbed by the ducks nearby.

From this point, Fish decided to "go off the book" and just find the nearest cache in the GPS. It happened to be Watching the Winds Change. Not too difficult to find, although not having a clue or logs made it slightly more difficult.

At that point, we decided to head home as my bronchitis was acting up and we were all pretty tired.

Again, not the longest or the most interesting of posts but they were urban micros so what did you expect?

Assuming our "12 Caches of Christmas" plan comes off, I should have a better story for you in a couple of weeks. If not, I'll see you again after the new year.

Until then...

-Gryph