Year in Review Part 1: The Quotes

It's been a while since I did an entry for you guys and I'm sure some of you are feeling a bit neglected. The holidays have done a mischief on our caching schedule. But we're back to it this weekend so expect an update then. Until then, hopefully this will suffice. I decided to go back through the archives and do a "year in review" post, well, more like a "seven months in review" since we just started it in June. I hope to have a "Year in Pictures" up to accompany this one soon. Ashlynne and I just have to find time to weed through the hundreds of photos we've taken while caching and find which ones to feature. For now, you get the best (and worst) things heard on the caching trail in 2006. Enjoy!

"How hard can it be? Buy a GPS, look up coordinates online, and go find them. Piece of cake!"
-Gryphon, in his now "famous last words" before encountering Monte Sano for the first time

"Damn hobbits!"
-The entire group, almost weekly

"You notice Frodo was always falling down in those movies? No wonder..."
-Tserof, attempting to explain the weird hobbit terrain rating system

"Over rocks, under trees. One time both over and under a tree at the same time"
-Gryphon, describing the climb to Bling

"Gravity. Always keeping the fat man down..."
-Mad Mike, master philosopher, on the nature of hills

"This can't end well..."
-Gryphon, spoken every time someone gives Ashlynne the GPS

"There are mountains in Alabama?"
-Gryphon, who failed geography in high school

"Tserof kept pointing out that the listing said we has permission, but we felt that would be little consolation if they felt bad when they found the GPS on our bodies."
-The Zen Bassmasters, on property rights

"The Chapel Hill Park consists of a paved area about the size of a cubicle, one tree, and two picnic tables"
-Gryphon, describing Chapel Hill's "thriving nature scene"

"With Chapel Hill weddings, the whole bride's family/groom's family thing kind of overlaps..."
-Gryphon, a Unionville native, getting a cheap dig in on the residents of Chapel Hill

"If anyone would know about Quercus Coccinea, it'd be you, Tserof..."
-Gryphon, referring to Tserof's questionable sexuality

"Of course I do! I'm Dr. Dendrology!"
-Tserof, who suffers from delusions of grandeur

"Dr. Dumbass, more like..."
-Mad Mike, bringing it back to reality

"Fish, stop tapping my ass!"
-Tserof, did I mention we question his sexuality?

"He looked like Elton John had been tapped to play James Bond. All he needed was a license to accessorize."
-Gryphon, describing Little Vorin in his sunglasses and water pistol

"Contained inside was a child of the 80's version of the Holy Grail"
-Gryphon, describing his and Mad Mike's joy at finding "Zamfir: Master of the Pan Flute" in one of our caches

"He got overtaken by Kenny G in the 90's for the "music to put you to sleep" crowd."
-Mad Mike, explaining why Zamfir was unknown to the youngsters in the group

"we soon decided it was badgers. Large, scary badgers..."
-The Zen Bassmasters, speculating on the fauna native to Percy Priest Lake

"he looked like he'd had his legs shaved by OJ Simpson..."
-Gryphon, commenting on Fish's lost battle with the briars

"A bit of a climb..."
-Rick618's hardly adequate description of the 3 miles of hell that is Green Mtn.

"I think Frodo may have felt sorry for us, leading us to an easy cache so we can go to our deaths with a feeling of accomplishment."
-Gryphon, questioning Frodo's motives before our Jolly Green Walk to Hell

"Ashlynne is from New York, a place so frigid the only reptile that can survive there is Senator Hillary Clinton."
-Gryphon, explaining Ash's non-recognition of a rattlesnake rattle

"we looked like crack addicts on free needle day."
-Gryphon, describing the Bassmasters heading for water after Jolly Green

"This shit right here is some good shit. You never know how good water tastes until something like this. I'm telling you. This is the best stuff ever right here. I can't believe I don't drink it more. I love water."
-Tserof, joining the cult of cold water

"You wouldn't think something this small would work so well."
-Tserof, repeating his girlfriend's favorite phrase, in description of a personal fan

"They're your family. That means you have to ride with them..."
-Judas, aka Fish, dooming me to kiddie music hell

"Little bunny Foo Foo is a right bastard if you're a field mouse."
-Gryphon, on the psychoses of children's music heroes

"The wheels on the bus go round and round but no matter how much you beg, the bus will not back up and run you over, ending your misery."
-Gryphon, seeking a "final exit" from kiddie music hell

"Semi-circular course correction."
-Fish's attempt to make our constant turning around sound less retarded

"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."
-Gryphon, describing the Bassmasters admittedly lax training requirements for a personal nurse

"Not now, Cali"
-Tserof, in sleepy response to Ashlynne's attempts to wake him up

"Tserof's ghetto princess"
-Gryphon, describing Tserof's, er, "relationship" to the afore mentioned

"That's certainly not something he's ever said in real life..."
-Mad Mike, making an astute observation on Tserof's sleepy quote

"Man titties abounded and pasty white flesh was on display. Not a pretty thing."
-Gryphon, on the Bassmasters taking their shirts off to wring water out of them

"Do I go right?"
"Yeah... Sort of..."
-Tserof & Fish, in a fairly typical display of our navigational skills

"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."
-Doc, proving why he's by far the better writer of the two of us

"It's right here, Tserof. Here. Here. It's back there..."
-Mad Mike, in another example of our team's navigational prowess

"It makes for good blogging..."
-Mad Mike's excuse for anything stupid the team does

"it's a wagon trail..."
-Rick618's inadequate description of the Bushwhacker Johnston Trail

"I'd hate to be riding in the wagon that is on this trail..."
-Mad Mike, more accurately describing the trail

"How do you shut a Zen Bassmaster up? Send him uphill."
-Mad Mike, making a joke

"Aside from the fact that I will never again feel joy, I don't think this hike had any effect on me at all..."
-Gryphon, after the Bushwhacker Johnston experience

"Hilarity ensues"
-Gryphon, describing what usually happens when we try to geocache

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