Rainy Day Caches #12 & 35

Woohoo! The band is back together. Tserof's back with us this week so it's our usual crew of me, Fish, Tserof, Ashlynne, and Mad Mike. Unfortunately, the clouds overhead portend a wet day of geocaching ahead. Not to worry, Mike tells us. He's looked at the weather and the storm's going to blow through in an hour or so.

Give or take a couple of days...

This week, we're moving some of our bugs from Alabama last week North via the "TB Underground Railroad" to Smyrna. We've got several new caches to try and one, Notorious, that we had to DNF previously and are giving another go. Our soundtrack for the week is Tristania "Ashes".

On the drive up, we notice Tserof nodding off. We were pretty sure we knew the cause, but didn't ask, not wanting to risk an appearance by Tserof's alter ego "Too Much Information Man." Unfortunately, as you will see soon enough, we found out anyway. And none of us will ever be the same.

After a nice big lunch at Chef Wang's in Murfreesboro, we headed on to Smyrna. Tserof, now full and sleepy, nodded right over and was out for the entire drive. As we approached our first cache, To the Boat Ramp, Ashlynne reached over to shake Tserof awake. At that point he, to our horror, started mumbling "not now Cali. not now Cali."

At this point I should probably explain why this horrified us so much. Cali is Tserof's... Well, I don't know if girlfriend is the right word. Gal pal seems a bit flippant. Having discussed it over with the group, I think we've decided "Ghetto Princess" may be the appropriate term. Suffice it to say that, when we say Tserof is "Too Much Information Man", she's the person he's sharing too much information about. So, needless to say, his mumbling "not now Cali..." had a predictable effect. Ashlynne recoiled in horror, then began beating on Tserof harder, hoping to wake him up and stop the pain. Mad Mike, who was unfortunate enough to be sitting beside Tserof as he began this, didn't even wait for the van to come completely to a stop before leaping out and running from the van in panic (well, we don't run but he waddled at a much faster pace than normal), presumably willing to risk injury leaping from the van over the chance Tserof might move on to a different part of his dream and, instead of saying "not now Cali" (a phrase, as Mike pointed out, Tserof has never actually said in real life) and move on to "go for the whip!" or "bring out the hamster" or something equally awful.

Finally, Ashlynne pounds hard enough on Tserof's head to wake him, where he promptly denies saying any of it. Fish and I are nearly doubled over with laughter, Mad Mike is rocking and mumbling like Rain Man, and Ashlynne has gone on hitting Tserof in the head well longer than was technically necessary.

The cache was a pretty easy one to find. Tserof was still shaking off the effects of sleep and the rest of us were shaking off the bad mental images but Mike (who had a pretty good lead on us due to his panicked flight from the van) found the cache. Fish took the 50 state coin since he's planning to take a trip through three states in a couple of weeks.

We loaded back into the van and took shifts keeping Tserof (heretofore known as "Dormouse") awake to avoid another "Ghetto Princess Dreamland Interlude." By now, it was starting to rain pretty good. We were pretty sure the time had passed when the storm was supposed to "move on through" according to the weather Mike read, but it seemed to have no intention of moving anywhere.

Did we go home? Did we hole up somewhere and wait it out? You don't know us very well, do you?

Pressing on, we went to do John Wesley's Cache. We went to the area the GPS pointed, and it was an alleyway. Since the description promised a church, we were a bit puzzled. Mike got his GPS zeroed in and noticed that it pointed several hundred yards away from where Fish's was pointing. Since looking for Fish's location wasn't producing anything that looked capable of supporting a cache, we went to follow Mike. As we walked, Fish fiddled with the other GPS and noticed he had missed clicking on the cache and had somehow, instead, clicked on the geographic center of Smyrna. Oops....

Fish got the other GPSr fixed and, sure enough, it pointed to the same place where Mike's did. Now, remember a couple of things here. First, that this is several hundred yards from where we parked, second, that it's raining pretty hard by now, and third, that there's a parking lot like 3 feet from the cache. Honestly, a person with long arms could almost reach out of the car and grab it. So, in true Zen Bassmaster fashion, we walked a few hundred yards, in the rain, to get a park and grab... Figures.

The rain was starting to slack up as we moved on, this time to try and get Notorious. We headed for the Percy Priest trail and, as we got onto the trail, the bottom dropped out. We were soaked to the bone. Worse, yet, it was bloody dark under all those trees and we had two keychain flashlights to compensate. We made a good attempt to find the cache but the darkness, the rain, and the fact that all of us who wear glasses (read: all of us) could barely see, we had to once again DNF the cache.

We headed for one of the pavilions to wait out the worst of the storm and try to dry off. All you folks who always want to go with us on these things, be glad you weren't with us today as all the guys took off our shirts to wring them out. Man titties abounded and pasty white flesh was on display. Not a pretty thing. Ashlynne had already gone into the bathroom to wring her shirt out (pity, since her boobs are the only ones worth seeing in the lot) but got back in time to see the Zen Bassmaster Fatboy Burlesque Show. She didn't seem amused...

Once the rain subsided a bit, we headed for our next cache, Tennis Anyone? This is an old tennis court that has gotten grown over. Kind of a cool location, although pretty darn slippery in the rain. Cache was an extremely easy find. Inside was a travel bug with a guitar attached. Its mission is to visit music related venues. And I just happen to be going to an Alice Cooper concert at the Ryman next weekend so I figured I could get a picture there and maybe even bring the thing in with me if I can attach it to my keys well enough to make it look like a keychain.

Our next cache was Crown Castle TB Hotel. We definitely wanted to do this one as Fish was looking for a few bugs to collect and take to Kansas City with him on his trip. Additionally, several of us had bugs to drop somewhere and a TB Hotel seemed like a good place to do it. Easy find, and found several bugs inside. I took one called the "viral cache" which has you attach a sticker to a trade item to make a "virtual viral bug" with it. Pretty cool.

Next up is Rock Springs Hideaway. This is in the owner's back yard. Blake&Nettie placed the cache and own the house in front of it. Nice place and an easy enough find. We signed the log and waved toward the house. By now, it's getting pretty dark so we head to do one last cache that Fish has been trying to get for a while, the aptly titled "Muggles are all around." Sure enough, he's been foiled by muggles every time he's tried to get it. This time, the muggles weren't so prevalent and we found the cache. Not sure of the wisdom of the placement since it's someplace where it can come into pretty direct contact with water and, by the look of the log book, the container isn't nearly as waterproof as they apparently thought it was.

All in all, a decent day. Aside from the whole bad mental image thing with Tserof's "Ghetto Princess" dreams and the extremely wet day, we did alright. Didn't get as many caches as we'd have liked due to the weather.

Next week, Mad Mike will be out of town with his brother and Ash and I will be in Nashville going to the Alice Cooper concert so Fish, Tserof, Chri, and our friend Doc will cache without us. Their plan is to hit Huntsville and re-do some of the more creative caches we've seen recently that everyone but Fish had to miss. Doc has offered to write up next week's blog entry and you guys are in for a treat. Doc writes better in his sleep than I could ever think of at any time. Come back next week and I promise you won't be disappointed. You may be disappointed in my blog entries from there on out, but next week should be good.

Ash and I do plan on meeting up with Fish and Tserof Sunday to go to the "Finger Lickin' Chicken" event in Nashville, hosted by the legendary JoGPS. Stay tuned for that as well.

Until next week...

-Gryph

Caching my Way Back Home- Part 2

Took me a while but I'm back. Hopefully it'll be worth the wait. If you're here looking for this week's new adventures of the Zen Bassmasters, you'll have to be patient. It'll be up sometime soon, but not tonight as I still have part 2 of last week's cache to do.

I've gotten a couple of different comments this week about the diminishing humour level of the blog recently and I would probably be offended by that if a) I didn't know at least one of the senders is a nasty, evil hobbit out to play mind games with a poor Smeagol and b) it wasn't completely and totally true despite all that. Truth is, there have been a number of reasons for this. One is the simple fact that, as most of you who saw me sniffling through last week's event probably know, I've been a bit sick and when my sinuses get upset, my funny bone tneds to go with it. Second is that Tserof has been having some personal emergencies that he can get into or not if he likes but it boils down to Tserof being the "Larry" of our group. He's not really the "Curly", aka the funny one (that's probably me a bit but more Mike when he gets on a roll) and he's not the "Moe" aka the violent one/leader (definitely Fish) but Tserof is the springboard from which most of our best jokes come from. The good news is, we got Tserof back for this week's trip so come back for that one and hopefully I'll be back on form.

That said, on to the Adios Dog Days Meet and Greet at the Guadalajara restaurant in Huntsville.

A lot of the same crowd as the previous events. Hobbits and hobbit sympathizers were out in force as Toids, Cacheburns, and Rick618 were all in attendance to laugh at the stories of how their caches had beaten the poor defenseless Bassmasters down and hurts our feetses, yes precious they did. But we have a surprise for them, precious. Yes we do. Precious... Precious...

Sorry, bit of a tangent there... Where was I? Oh, yes. The event. Evil hobbitses aside, some of our other friends were there as well as some others we hadn't met before (and if we don't mention you, it's not a slight. I suck with names).

Let me say I was surprised at how many people actually recognized the name Zen Bassmasters. I guess word of us has spread. Stupidity travels far. The part that truly surprised me is that we actually had people asking how they could become Zen Bassmasters. As I told many people, we have adopted a modified version of the famous Groucho Marx quote as a membership requirement. Groucho said "I would not join any club that would have me as a member." For the Bassmasters, it's reversed. We fear for the sanity of anyone who would actually like to join us and we don't want to be on their little list when they decide to climb to the top of a church tower and start picking people off with high powered rifles. We hurt ourselves enough on our own.

While we waited for the food to arrive, I engaged Cacheburns in a conversation about our cache Ice-T, which he had recently found. To his credit, he was pretty helpful in evaluating it for me and offering opinions on my difficulty rating. Yes, I said it. A hobbit was helpful. Does this mean the Zen Bassmasters are casting in with our mortal enemies? Not at all. I just know my enemy well and know that hobbits can't inflict any harm on poor defenseless orcs in the midst of food. It's some kind of hairy-footed honor system or something. We still look around suspiciously at the mention of Monte Sano, and we always will.

At this point, our very favorite cacher in the world, RN2B, showed up. I've mentioned it before but we like RN2B. She gets us. Nice easy, non-evil caches that mentally challenged geocachers (like us for instance) can still find. We talked with her for a while and I (unsuccessfully) attempted to work out a health insurance plan with her to be the Zen Bassmasters' personal nurse (trust me, as much as we get hurt, it's a full time job for someone). Apparently RN2B doesn't take my Cigna. Either that or she's (rightfully) offended by being done the dishonor of being made an honorary Bassmaster. Either way, we're still on the lookout for a personal nurse so if there are any other RNs (2B or otherwise), we need you. Hell, we'd settle for a newly-trained CNA at this point, or even someone who's just watched a lot of ER reruns. Let's face it, if you can say things like "20cc of glucozapofire" and yell "stat!" a lot, we're not going to be smart enough to know you haven't got any medical training.

RN2B also denied scheming with Rick to send us to do the Huntsville Mountain caches in order to kill us and get herself 5 free cadavers to do whatever medical students do with cadavers. For that matter, Rick denied ever sending us after the Jolly Green series at all, saying that he didn't recommend us doing them, but only said they were "really cool."

See, that's like throwing a bag of candy into a pit of snakes and then saying it isn't your fault when your three year old dives in. We're not very smart, as has been documented again and again in these pages. You may say things like "really hard, tough hike, probably not good to do in the summer, take lots of water", etc. but all we're going to hear is "cache shaped like a great big toothbrush!!!!!... and something about a mountain or hill or something."

As is always the case when we go to events, we had plenty of people wanting to send bugs with us that were travelling north, just as last week we had lots of Middle Tennessee folks wanting to send stuff south with us. We've kind of become an "underground railroad" for travel bugs. We try to stagger our trips now so we go north one week, grab a bunch of bugs, and do Alabama the next week to drop them off. I may even scout out an underground railroad TB motel at some point for people to drop things for us to grab and move on.

While we ate, we talked with a fellow named "Chupacabra". Now Fish and I were both avid Art Bell listeners a few years ago while working overnight security at a juvenile wilderness correction camp so we both knew that the chupacabra is also known as the "Goat Slayer" and has quite the reputation among the types of people who wear tinfoil hats and try to hitch rides to heaven on comets. Supposedly the chupacabra only comes out at night to kill livestock and occasionally a human.

So we decided to invite him along to do a night cache with us...

We leave the event and head on over to do Bump in the Night, which most of us did at the last Huntsville event but which Fish has not done. Fish has been wanting to place a night cache so we took him to the only one we knew of in the area. Good thing we brought chupacabra along too as it turned out Ash and I had a dead flashlight and Fish had only a pitiful little light that didn't shine very far (ah, preparation!). Not a terribly hard find, but it was fun watching them try to locate it as we stood back, knowing the location for a change.

The cache was found, the log was signed, and everyone had a good time. We didn't even get killed by the legendary chupacabra, although I did feel a bit woozy afterward so it's possible he nabbed some of my blood while I wasn't looking. Chupacabras are sneaky like that (they may be hobbit-descended for all I know). Of course, the dizziness could have been tequila too. One or the other...

That's it for the event. Come back in a few days and we should have up our adventures from Smyrna this week. As a preview, let me say it involves shattering Fish's dreams, lots of rain, a possible new player in the hobbit-sympathizer ranks, and the words "Tserof's ghetto princess" more than once.

Until next time...

-Gryph

Caching My Way Back Home- Part 1

No reason for that title this week, other than Rush's "Finding My Way" has been running through my skull for some reason, so there you have both the title and the soundtrack for this week.

This week, we're caching around Huntsville, culminating in the Adios Dog Days event. Tserof is out this week so it's just me, Fish, Mad Mike, and Ashlynne. No children. No newbies. Just the core.

Our first cache this week is Dragon's Breath. We parked under the bridge, noted the homeless population off to the side, and also noted that the coordinates seemed suspiciously close to the railroad tracks. It was listed as a pretty high difficulty so we figured something fishy must be up. We looked around a culvert nearby, and had no luck. We were still a bit suspicious of the proximity to the railroad tracks, so we rebooted the GPSr and it continued to point the same place. Took us another half hour or so to find it but it was worth the effort. I won't say anymore than that to keep from spoiling the cache other than to say it involved a rubber chicken and any cache that involves a rubber chicken is ok with me.

Our second cache is Huntsville Arch, by our old friend and noted hobbit sympathizer Rick618. This one's on the walkway that goes over University Drive to UAH. I've never been here before and it was pretty neat standing on top and watching the traffic zoom underneath. This is another tough difficulty cache and it earned every point of it. Only one who associates with the ultimate evil, hobbits, could ever devise such a mean and evil cache. We looked high and low, climbed up and down the walkway. Ashlynne even looked under the walkway. Finally, I read the clue again, remembered that Rick would probably want his cache to be accessible to the short, hairy-footed set, and looked downward. That did it and we found thecache. Very cool hide.

Next up is another of Rick's caches, Remember Dred Scott. This one's in an old slave cemetary that I didn't even know existed in Huntsville. I always like it when we learn something new with a cache. Good hide on this one too. It nearly eluded us.

Next up was the one I was most looking forward to as I'd heard a lot of good things about it. Thornton Research Park. As usual, we ended up having to turn around, although Fish insisted on calling it a "semi-circular course correction", a theme which would continue throughout a day filled with them.

Thornton Research Park didn't disappoint. Again, I can't really say much here other than to say that it combined my two least favorite types of caches, micros and guardrail caches, but did something so unique with them that it was much more than the usual cliche. Great cache. Took us a while to find this one but it was well worth it. We've definitely got to bring Tserof and the others back to do this one, as it's not one to be missed. If you haven't done it, go do it. Right now, I'll wait.... Done it? Good. Moving on.

Next up was Trading Pez, which appears to have been overtaken by construction. The road leading in was closed and the land around it was posted. We decided not to go beyond the posted sign and so had to DNF this one.

Next up was "Off the Beaten Path." This one took a couple of "semi-circular course corrections" to get to and then, in true Zen Bassmaster fashion, we parked and walked across a grown up vacant lot only to find the cache right next to a nice busy road. Typical. I dropped the geocoin I got at last week's MTGC event here.

Next up was P.O. which was, appropriately, near the post office. Little walk from there but an easy enough find. Not much to say here other than Ashlynne and I took the proximity of the post office to drop off some bills we forgot to mail this morning. I'm sure the electric company will appreciate the side trip, or at least hopefully Easy Reader will (bonus points for anyone who gets the reference).

Next up is Overnight in Rocket City. Yet another set of "semi-circular course corrections" to get to this one. On the way in, Ashlynne spots a little waterfall garden outside and comments on the nice water. Fish, looking the other direction at the sprinkler system, is unimpressed. Finally, on the way out, we show him what Ashlynne was talking about. Picked up a bug here to move northward next week. About the only notable thing here is that we had to make a walking semi-circular course correction on this one as we trailblazed our way down and then discovered that we'd passed the cache right up. Typical.

Our last cache before the event was Chew Chew Cache. A bit of an uphill walk on this one. Not good when Gryphon has an empty stomach. We trudged up the hill and found the cache pretty easily (actually, Fish had it out before I managed to come huffing and puffing up. Between the hunger and the headache I'd been having all day, I wasn't moving too quickly.

From there, we headed for the event, which I will write up later as it's late and I'm tired. Tune in later this week for the exciting adventures of the Zen Bassmasters mucking about with hobbity types, encountering the legendary chupacabra, and working out a health care plan with honorary Bassmaster RN2B.

See you then.

Creepy Caching

Hear that sound? Listen closely. Hear it? No, you don't. Because it's silence. Pure, blessed silence that can only come from a week of caching without rugrats for a change. Aaah...

This week, we've got yet another geocaching newbie who read our site and still wanted to come with us. P.T. Barnum was right. There's one born every minute...

In this case, it's Fish's friend Jaqks. Again I felt obligated to make sure he'd read our blog (he had) and that he still wanted to come (he does). I figure if I ever have to testify about someone dying on one of our trips, I'll have this to fall back on. "Well, your honor, he read our blog and he still wanted to come. We asked..."

I found out that Jaqks was a rap fan so I dug down into the Gryphon musical archive a bit and dusted off something for him. Our soundtrack of the week is L.L. Cool J's "All World." Old school, baby!

This week we're doing caches in the Chapel Hill/Eagleville area, culminating with two caches that we expect to test what limited abilities we have as a team. The first is It! a 4.5 difficulty cache that has given cachers with far more ability than us fits. The second is "Jog, P.S., This one's for you", which is a member only cache, so I won't post a link. Man's gotta have his principles somewhere.

Before we got started, we decided to take Jaqks over to our cache Wabbit Season to get it for him, take he, Mad Mike, and Chri over to Horse Mountain, since they weren't with us when we got it, and re-try Celebration Station, which we DNF'd a few weeks ago because our GPS units went satanic on us and wouldn't point the way.

Nothing really to note on Horse Mountain. We stood back and let Chri, Jaqks, and Mad Mike find this one and they located it with no major problems. My old business card from the radio station that used to be at this location was still there (not sure why it wouldn't be. I can't imagine anyone wanting it.)

At Wabbit Season, we all sat back and let Jaqks find the cache. The only thing of note here is that the ducks from the pond across the street evidently got pissed when they discovered that we weren't there to feed them bread and proceeded to migrate across the street and surround our van, quacking angrily. It was like an Alfred Hitchcock movie...

We then moved on to Celebration Station. Fortunately, the GPSr behaved today and led us right to the cache. We looked here when we came before, but somehow missed it. Jaqks found the cache. We're hoping this means he's got good enough luck to trump the collective bad luck of the entire group.

Next up is Hazel Cemetary. Nice little spot. The founder of Web school is buried here. Pretty easy find. The only thing of note here is that we saw three dogs in the cemetary just sitting in a row and staring at this one tombstone. It was a little bit creepy, like something out of one of those old Hammer films. Anyway, none of the dogs looked much like Hellhounds (the three tails wagging in unison kind of ruined the effect) so we went on looking. When we finished and were headed back to the car, a little chihuahua, who must have been the leader of the bunch, showed up and they all followed him elsewhere.

Next up was yet another of our revisits of previous DNFs. This one is "Tom's Miniature Donkey Church, which you may remember from our caching trip on little Vorin's birthday a few weeks ago. Then we had to skip it because of a muggle in the parking lot preparing to mow the church lawn. Today, the lot was muggle-less (and looked as if it hasn't been mowed since that day. If any of you church folken read this blog, you really should trim your lawn up a bit). The mini-donkeys in the field next to the church were nowhere to be found but we located the cache. The log was full so we pulled another out of our handy bag o tricks and added it to the old one.

Next up is "Everything you ever wanted to know about..." It's a guardrail cache so I was immediately not happy. I hate guardrail caches. Too exposed, often no good place to park and too predictable. They're just not my thing. But this is one of the cases of the cache description being cool enough to overcome its nature. The cache is GCPACE and I recommend everyone go check it out to learn more than you ever knew (or knew you wanted to know) about guardrails. We see them everyday but, if you're like me, you never think about them unless you have a wreck and smack into one. Pretty easy find.

Next up, since it was on the way, we picked up "Amber Waves of Grain" for Jaqks. I dropped off the "I Found It!" bug here and picked up another. This area still gives me the creeps. Little cemetary in the middle of a cornfield. I read a Stephen King novel with this as the plot and I didn't really want to stay and be killed by Malachi and his little band of goons.

Next up was Abode of the Sun King. It's right at the intersection of four busy roads. We got a lot of stares and one person who stopped and asked us what we were doing. Chri tried to explain geocaching to her but she wasn't getting it. I wish Chri had explained "car seats for small children" to her as she had what looked to be about a 4 year old standing up in the passenger seat... Some people are morons. Anyway, found the cache and moved on in case "mother of the year" got suspicious and called the cops.

Next up was Gitty Up, which is done by my old "pal" JoGPS. It was near the Triune Riding Club and was a pretty easy find. I know I've said things were "scary" a lot today and it's not just a blog theme. There really were a lot of spooky things going on today but this cache had the spookiest. Inside was a travel bug that someone had attached to a talking asparagus from the Veggie Tales. When you pressed a little button behind the asparagus' head he, in this sickening little sweetsie voice, would say "Jesus loves you, just like he loves me! Hehe...!" I know that doesn't sound so horrible but trust me, the combination of the voice, the phrase, the little giggle at the end, and the fact that it's a friggin' vegetable, made it one of the most demonic things I ever heard. It's not just a vegetable, but an asparagus, which ranks right behind brussel sprouts on my list of foods that traumatized me in my childhood. Blech. Ash took the bug, against my protests that it was possessed by satan and that she was opening our home to evil spirits. Ashlynne, who obviously never watched the Exorcist, pronounced the thing "harmless" and brought it along. She said something about placing it in Ice-T but I nixed that. I don't want that evil thing anywhere near any cache of mine.

Next was "College Grove Park." By this time it was starting to rain so we were trying to get as close to the cache as possible before getting out. Found it pretty easily. The only thing of note to happen here was when we were leaving. I put the van in reverse and attempt to see behind me around the wall of fat people in the back seats. Just as I hit the gas to reverse, the train nearby hit its whistle, scaring the bejeebus out of me as I thought I was about to hit something. Once I got my heart back down in my chest, I recognized it for what it was and had to endure picking for the rest of the day from the Bassmasters. They should have been happy Ash wasn't driving. She would have just backed on up until she hit the train...

By now it's raining a pretty good clip. We head to Big Tree in the Woods and discover that a model house has been built near the tree and someone's home. We sent Fish to grab the cache in the rain while I kept watch for people coming out of the house, ready to peel away and let Fish's vaunted people skills keep him out of jail. He signed the log and got back to the car just as someone came out to investigate and we left. I don't expect that cache will be around much longer since it looks like it's becoming a subdivision.

Next was It! We'd heard so much about this one that we were really looking forward to it. I wish I could tell you all about this cache but anything I say would spoil the fun. Let's just say that Angelflye, who placed the cache, is the master. Misdirections abound, decoys lure you away, and the two Stephen King fans in the group tried way too hard to overthink the non-existent connection to the book of the same name. Took six of us an hour but Ashlynne finally figured it out. Absolutely the coolest cache I've ever done. And number two isn't even close. It reminded me of when I saw the Sixth Sense the first time. Once you know where the cache is, you look back at all the clues in the description and realize they were all pointing you in the right way all along. Brilliant. Beyond brilliant. It inspired us. If we can find someplace without too many muggles around, we are already planning a Stephen King's Dark Tower themed cache using what we learned here and through all of our other caches. It should be a true work of evil if we ever get it out. I don't know if we can out-evil It! or not though. I just can't say enough good about this cache. If you're one of our North Alabama readers, it is absolutely worth your drive to come do this cache. Seriously. Tell us you're going and we'll meet you in Fayetteville to go with you. Tserof still needs to get it anyway.

Next was Sledgehammer. Ugly walk to this one, full of tall grass that hid a ton of thorny vines. Pretty much everybody donated some blood to this cache. And what a cache it is. If any of you have done this or plan to do this, please drop me a line to let me know if you've ever seen a bigger cache container because I haven't, not even close. I can't say more than that other than to say that this container's not getting muggled, ever. Not without some heavy equipment. Unfortunately, a nest of wasps had taken up residence on the giant container. I saw the wasps and, being more scared of wasps than anything in the world, invoked the "if you can see the cache, you can claim the cache" rule and sent Fish in to sign the log. While there, Fish found, in the biggest cache container ever, the biggest travel bug ever. "Pet Rock" is just that, a giant rock with a bug glued to it. Fish, none to bright sometimes, picks the thing up and intends to haul it the tenth of a mile out to claim it. After about 5 steps of carrying the 50lb rock, he decides better and puts it back, stirring up the wasps and sending me scurrying back to the van (well, people my size don't really "scurry" but I did waddle faster than normal.)

Next up was our second hard cache of the day, "Jog P.S. This one's for you." It's supposed to be one star easier than It!, but it completely evaded us. We looked everywhere for about an hour, down to individually checking leaves on the bush that our GPS told us it was inside. Mad Mike and Ashlynne somehow got it into their heads that it "jog" was code in someway for an offset cache and started going all DaVinci Code on us with the clues. After about an hour, we DNF'd it and moved on.

Just down the road from "Jog" was "See Rock City." Pretty simple P&G here. None of us but Fish even left the car.

Next is "We've got top men working on it." Nothing much to say here. Quick grab off the road.

Our final cache was "Robert Johnson was Not Here." I'm excited about this one, being a huge Robert Johnson fan. The location is just bizarre. I don't know how to describe it. I wish we'd gotten pictures. It was kind of a crossroads, but with little turnoffs and turnarounds paved all around it. It looked like the paving crew dropped acid before doing it. Anyway, fairly easy cache to find once we could take our eyes off the mess that was the road.

It even inspired me for something to do with a TB I had lying around the house waiting on a mission. Meet Travelin' Bug Blues

He should be in Wabbit Season sometime this week as I sent him home with Fish to be placed there.

But the story doesn't end there. On Sunday, we went to the Middle Tennessee Geocacher's Club event in Chapel Hill and met a lot of nice folks, including Monkeybrad and our favorite cache hider and honorary Zen Bassmaster Scoot the Frog (who is much too sweet to be saddled with that ignomy but we've given it to her anyway). Not a lot to report here other than Brad took pity on us and took a group of us (not just Zen Bassmasters) who had DNF'd "Jog" and helped us out. Evil. Pure evil. He seems like a nice enough guy to talk to but trust me. This cache proves he's evil. Not evil on the level of the talking dogmatic asparagus, but evil nonetheless. If you take our advice and come do It!, do this one too. They together represent the heart of evil among Tennessee caches.

Next week we have a Huntsville run planned. We're going to hit Thornton Research Park, which we've heard from some of our Bama folks is one of Huntsville's more evil caches. Should be fun. It all culminates in the North Alabama Meet and Greet. With my plans for the Dark Tower cache I plan to pick the little hobbity brains of the Fellowship for ideas. See you next week.

-Gryph

Drinking my Caches Goodbye

Sorry for being late with this week's post. I've had some real life stuff going on the last few days and haven't really felt like trying to be funny. This is going to be a relatively short post anyhow because, frankly, we didn't do much this week.

We wanted to run by Jack Daniels Distillery to do the tour because we have a bug that wants to be photographed with fire stations and we figured the little fire station they have at Jack Daniels is pretty unique and one they wouldn't get otherwise. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of caches in the general Lynchburg/Tullahoma/Fayetteville area that we haven't done yet. Also, we had Little Vorin with us again this week so we were doing low impact caches, shrinking our list even more.

Since my blog last week about having SO much fun riding with the kiddies, my kind loving friends (I take back none of the Judas references from last week) decided to move Little V's carseat into my van and let Tserof ride with his parents. Having ridden with Tserof many times in the past, I thought I got the best of the deal, took the hyper 4 year-old, and let Fish and Chri deal with "Too Much Information Man". My only caveat was that we would NOT be playing "The Wheels on the Bus" or "Little Bunny Foo Foo." My car, my music, meaning Little V got to listen to my MP3 mix the whole day, ranging from John Prine to Iron Maiden (more on Iron Maiden later).

First up, on the way to Jack Daniels for the tour, was Fork in the Road. Not too much to report on this one. Little micro out in the middle of nowhere. Found it pretty easily. Little V was not impressed as he is not a fan of caches that don't contain toys for him to loot. Signed the log and moved on.

Second was On Liberty Hill. Little bit of a hill on this one but a beautiful area. This one was an ammo box so Little V got his toy finally. Don't remember what he took, just that he wanted everything. I had Little V listening to Iron Maiden's "Wasted Years" on the way over and spent the whole drive to it trying to teach him to do the "forked finger" sign, scream "Iron Maiden!" and bang his head for his mother. Strangely, Little V, the child who will talk the ears of friends, family, strangers, dogs, and walls if given the chance, picked this moment to become shy, meekly squeaking "ironmaiden" before scurrying behind me. Pitiful. That boy isn't nearly metal enough. Fortunately, I've got the rest of the day to work on him.

Third was Lost Creek. Beautiful area by the lake. By now, Tserof was doing something annoying (don't remember what. With Tserof, it all kind of runs together) so we threatened to throw him in the lake. Since he was riding with Fish and Chri, I wasn't worried about getting water in my car and was all for the idea. No one else seemed to want to help me and since Tserof weighs more than me, I couldn't lift him alone. We dropped a couple of bugs in the cache, got Little V his toy, and moved on. Little V still refused to do the Iron Maiden! bit, but did seem to enjoy ZZ Top (although teaching him the lyrics to "Tush" to sing for his granny didn't work out. Pity...)

Next up was Anderton Bridge at the Bend. Found the cache pretty easily, although Ashlynne dropped it and nearly lost it in the lake. Climbing down to retrieve it was the worst part of this one. We weren't sure she was going to get back up and jokingly told her she might have to swim over to the nearby pier to be picked up. She was not amused. By this time, I was mostly insane, having listened to about 10 miles of Little V and Mad Mike play the "stop copying me" game which, oddly, sounded like a typical episode of Hannity and Colmes. I tried to distract him by getting him to sing "I Ain't Drunk, I'm Just Drinkin'" with me, but I don't think Little V's an Albert Collins fan. Pity.

At this point, Chri felt it necessary to point out to me that kids often repeat things that are said around them. "I would hope so", I thought. Otherwise, all my work here is for naught...

Next up was Tims Ford Dam Overlook which, oddly enough, overlooks Tims Ford Dam. Easy cache. Right by the cars. Nothing of too much interest here, other than Mad Mike hiding the baseball that Little V found in another cache, then giving it to him later as a gift, much to V's delight. Glad to see I'm not the only one trying to scar the child's mental health.

Next was Wayside Creek. This one gave us some fits finding it, but we finally did. Dropped in a couple of more bugs from our bug hunt last week and moved on.

Finally, was our trip to Jack Daniels. Unfortunately, we somehow forgot that it was Labor Day weekend and, on top of that, all of the people who were in Shelbyville for the Walking Horse Celebration had apparently decided to drop in too. If there was ever a definition of "too many muggles", this was it. We decided to skip the tour for this week and just hunt for the cache. I did stop by one of the gift shops to get some stuff for a couple of new bugs that I planned to release. More on that later.

Our GPS units both decided to get drunk off the whiskey fumes and give us crazy coordinates in opposite directions. We walked around for a while, made friends with a kitty cat that apparently lives in the area and joined us for the cache (until Little V dropped him on his head, at which point he decided to try his luck with the other tourists).

We tried to be as discreet as possible, making our way casually through the ten gallon cowboy hats and studded boots (did I mention I hate horse show people?). Finally, we rebooted both of our GPSr and at least got them to point the same way. Took us a few minutes to find the cache, but we finally did.

From there, we went back to Fayetteville to place our own cache, the second in the History of Lincoln County series. It's GCY3FD for anyone who wants to check it out. We're pretty proud of our hide here so we're curious to see if it poses any challenge to some of our "pro cacher" friends from the Dixie Cachers board. Bring it on, Frodo. We may or may not give you a bit of a search, but I promise it's not a key holder under a lamp skirt (it's also not a 400 ft straight down hike, for the record).

Once we got it hid, we dropped a couple of bugs in it, including one of my new ones called B-Double-E-Double-R-U-N. I'd give you the link, but gc.com is down apparently so go search it yourself if you're interested.

Again, not much to the day. Probably not one of my best posts and I apologize for that. Next week I've been promised it will be adults only and we'll be doing some harder caches, including one 4.5 difficulty cache, GCK1DT. Should make for interesting blogging.

Stay tuned.