Yoda (and his blogging owner) is back in action

I need to post more often. If I wait a week, then there are so many possible topics bouncing around in my brain that I can't remember them all.

• After being disabled for a week, my puzzle cache Where's Yoda? (I like puzzles) is back in action. A couple weeks ago, after three consecutive (and compelling) DNFs I walked over to GZ from work. I saw the camouflage, but the cache container was missing. Extra disappointing because there are three TBs logged into it. I got a new container together and found a much better nearby hiding location. This cache has been doomed from the start -- allegations of malware, being banned by Blogger, container (probably) chucked into the Mississippi River -- but Yoda keeps coming back. You wouldn't expect anything less of a Jedi master.
  
• Stumbled across two Twin Cities blogs -- Sokratz and Lazy Lightning (Silent Bob's blog not just about geocaching) -- and noticed on the MnGCA forums that minnesotabrad is writing a newsletter. meralgia -- who has been keeping up with geocaching virtually but who is coming out of hibernation for hiding and finding -- told me about Sokratz's blog, and his post about cache containers caught my attention because I have a puzzle cache container (I like puzzles) that is a large polyhedral die and may have slipped through the cracks of the reviewing process. If I go out there and put it in a ziploc bag, is it OK then?
  
• Interesting discussion on the MnGCA forums about the effect of puzzle caches on the proximity guideline. I like puzzles.
  
• Shoestorm drove Bunganator and me up to Fridley Weeknight caching on Wednesday, where we met Millah for a couple pre-caching puzzles. Interesting discussion on the MnGCA forums (and here) about the integrity of puzzle solvers. I like puzzles. Also was nice to see broken_tooth, Bus&Betty, cstjohn, minnesotabrad (whom I pestered until he finally gave me his 2nd pathtag), sir_zman, MN_Cavepeople, fireman121, Red_Devil35, oneied_cooky. It was also nice to meet mall security at this cache.
  
• Finally solved Millah's fun puzzle About Time. I like puzzles.
  
• I have an important piece of the solution to Shoestorm's puzzle cache Dr. Strangecache. I like puzzles. I'll take cash offers for that piece of the solution via email.
  
• Shoestorm, Millah, and I are planning a suite of three caches about football (the beautiful game), specifically the rivalry between Manchester United (shoestorm's club) and Arsenal (mine). They'll be "unknown" caches, but not necessarily puzzles. I like puzzles. Too bad Arsenal mucked things up by almost sealing a trip to the semifinals of the Champions League with a late, late goal against Liverpool in their quarterfinal second leg, only to give it away on a B***S*** penalty about 30 seconds later.
  
• Millah and I tried to go to Cottage Grove Ravine Park last Sunday for all the Party caches, but we never got there because there were too many interesting things along the way. Maybe we'll crash that Party tomorrow.
  

What does "Cache our way to Illinois" mean to you?

To my family, it means "find one cache at a rest stop in Wisconsin". Really, I shouldn't expect my family to turn a 7 hour trip into a 12 hour trip so that they can sit in the car while I roam the 0.5 miles surrounding the interstate. And, the trip wasn't that bad -- I got my one Wisconsin cache and got out a couple times in the Chicago area. I'm here to report that Chicago caches are... not that different from Twin Cities Caches. Especially since we got 8 inches of snow a week ago Friday. It felt just like home.

• I'm in love with the Palm Centro, but I realized one bad thing about CacheMate -- right now, the cache information does not include the size of the container or the cache owner. It turns out that this is a MacCaching issue; when it converts the .gpx file into the .prc file for the Palm to read, it leaves out this info. The author of MacCaching promised in his forum that he would fix this.
  
• I'm enjoying TheDazzlerD's two puzzles about the tube down around Savage [edit: the puzzles are in Savage, not the tube. I mean the London Underground. No subway in Savage as far as I know.]. I'm thinking of honoring them with a sort of parody cache of my own about the Detroit mass transit train -- one loop with 12 stops. Pathetic for a metro area of that size.
  
• Enjoyed Weeknight caching on Wednesday in Burnsville. Pre-cached with Bus&Betty and the topgears. At the park near the Burnsville mall, we then met up with ThCollector, cstjohn, X51hz, speedysk1, casinoman, and brokentooth. After finding four caches and avoiding dog poop, we moved on to Chili's, where there was a great flurry of travel bug and geocoin trading and discovering. B&B took three TBs from me on their trip to MI, and I grabbed my own Alvin's Phone Line coin from TheCollector, because, although I'm glad I've released all the coins I have purchased (almost), I miss them sometimes.
  
• Congratulations to MN_Cavepeople on the birth of a mini-Caveman!
  
• On a less important note, congratulations to pfalstad and FSU*Noles on being FTF on GW's Crimson clupea harengus puzzle cache, which was unfound for a long time. No sour grapes here, but I'm finding that unless a puzzle catches my fancy like those tube caches, it starts to feel a lot like homework. Good thing that Millah is on my case all the time...
  
• As if you care, some Arsenal news: after a complete disaster at Chelsea in the league (two goals to Didier Drogba in the last 20 minutes after going up 0-1), we can kiss the league goodbye and start thinking about the Champions League -- the first leg of the quarterfinal is Wednesday against Liverpool. In fact, we play Liverpool three times in six days. Can't beat 'em three times in a row, but hope we can do enough to move on in Europe.
  
• How about Davidson? I hadn't really cared about any of the basketball, but I caught just a little of Stephen Curry's dismantling of Wisconsin last night, and now I'm a fan! I grew up in the early 80s, when NC State (1983) and Villanova (1985) were making March Madness what it is today. Davidson for the Final Four! Even though my wife's ex-boyfriend went there!
  

Attention: all caches are on Wheelock Pkwy.

My son minibass and I like to go out "treasure hunting" together, and it's usually on Friday evening, when the early evening batch of newly published caches comes out. The first time we went out on a Friday night, it was to try for a first to find on Grey Wolf's puzzle cache Poker Night, and we spent some of the trip there on Wheelock Parkway in Saint Paul.

minibass has a frightening ability to recall much of the Saint Paul street grid and was fascinated that he had never been on Wheelock before. Ever since, every time we go out, he asks if we're going to Wheelock and gets upset if I tell him that, no, we are not going to Wheelock. I got tired of dealing with that, so I just started saying, Yes, minibass, we are going to Wheelock. We're taking Ayd Mill Road, to 35E, to 494 west, to route 169 south, and now here we are at Wheelock.

Well, I don't want to lie to the boy and (maybe moreso) don't want to screw with his sense of direction. So on Thursday, the nicest day of the year so far, minibass and I went up to Lake Como to grab Grey Wolf's puzzle cache WMCAG. I'm following Garmin auto-routing blindly, and minibass is asking Are we going to Wheelock? Are we going to Wheelock? No, we are not going to Wheelock! Meanwhile, instead of sending me left off Como Blvd onto Como Lake Dr., Garmin sends me north on Victoria, east on Ivy, south on Avon, and wouldn't you know it, west on Wheelock Pkwy, whereupon minibass yells,

"WE ARE ON WHEELOCK! YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT!"



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Wednesday night, I went to WeekNIGHT caching in Bloomington, organized by TheCollector. I met up with seamusbleu and speedysk1 beforehand for pre-caching (one cache, as it turns out). Big crowd to grab three new two_of_hearts caches in the Moir picnic grounds, so many that I didn't cross paths with everyone there -- besides seamusbleu and speedy, I did cross paths with sir_zman, cstjohn (happy that she traded her Super Secret pathtag to me... oops), minnesotabrad, oneied_cooky, MN_Cavepeople, casinoman, and MDarkarrow. After the first two caches, seamusbleu, MN_Cavepeople, and I walked to the third, while the others drove around to it, and then we moved on to two more. We found the first and DNF'ed the second, a multi, but I did find a dead fox. Meanwhile, the others chose Bennigan's over Applebee's, and we caught up to them. We were seated next to an equally large group of spelunkers. I thought we should have challenged them to a game of darts or Red Rover or something. They looked an awful lot like geocachers.

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Saturday I took the mini-DOUBLE-bass to TheCollector's Luck of the Irish event in Burnsville. Besides many of the people I saw Wednesday, it was nice seeing knowschad again and meeting Good-Boy, Good-Girl, Sandtracker and Arcticabn for the first time. We did not run into Wheelock in Burnsville.

"My childhood was a nightmare, and that's why I love geocaching"

Part of the fun of WeekNIGHT caching on Wednesday was trying out some attention-grabbing blog post headlines like this one. That's why there are quotes around it. My childhood was not a nightmare, and I like geocaching for several reasons, but this is not one of them.

On the way to the WeekNIGHT I called the Pre-Caching Hotline. Bus of Bus&Betty answered, and he directed me to meet them and topgear at COMPANION CACHE, another top quality Mutsley&Crew cache. The three of them were kind enough to wait for me at the side of the road while I went to look for the cache on my own. On to a couple other caches before meeting the other Weeknighters at Potawatom Park in Oakdale for a couple Bobcam caches.

The highlight of the evening was free food! sir "enemy of mathematics" zman had a coupon for 50 free wings and some drinks at BW3. (I jest -- zman is no enemy of mathematics; he actually has been involved with a math camp for girls. But he does like to give me a hard time about my math-themed signature items.)

Besides headlines, I was trying out a theory that my wife, a media professor, and I have been working out. It is commonly believed that most, if not all, social networks on the internet -- Facebook, myspace, games like World of Warcraft -- in fact isolate people instead of bringing them closer.

Geocaching may be a unique counterexample to this commonly held belief. First of all, even though geocaching is an outdoor activity, it is indeed an internet social networking site. Even if you are only entering logs or reading the logs of others, you are socializing with others on the internet. But geocaching may be unique in that it encourages actual human contact, whether it's an event cache or a chance meeting at a traditional.

It makes me wonder how my childhood (oh, such a nightmare) would have been different, if the internet had been widespread in the late 70s or early 80s. The internet allows people to form groups based on interests rather than geography alone, and, perils of the internet aside, it may allow young people to find their niche sooner. I know it took me a while.

Who else was at the WeekNIGHT? Besides those I mentioned earlier, MN_Cavepeople, minnesotabrad, TheCollector, Oneied Cooky, two_of_hearts, XZQ&Dad, and broken tooth. minnesotabrad told me about the improving firmware on the Garmin Colorado, and Bus told me about his foray into programming a Whereigo game. Twin Cities cachers on the cutting edge.

Speaking of which. In other news: King Boreas' century cache Challenge of a Century: Geocoins has been archived, apparently from the central office. Don't know what I think about this. My first reaction was that all caches should be archived then, because they require the purchase of a GPSr (I know, it's not necessary, etc., etc.). I have nowhere near 100 active, purchased geocoins, and I really didn't mind that I was not able to log this cache. I would be interested to hear arguments in favor of this decision. I'm sure I could go find them on the Groundspeak forums. KB pushes the cache hiding envelope in certain ways, and it's only natural that his caches are litmus tests for Groundspeak's evolving regulations.

Headed to Cannon Falls/Northfield with Bunganator and Millah this morning to grab some puzzle caches by dgauss. Not the real Gauss, who is too busy being dead to be a geocacher, but a Carleton Gauss, whose puzzles and hides I really like. (How could I not?) Plus, he has the whole countryside at his disposal, and at least for the few that we found, he makes very good use of it.

Go away, anchors! Bad anchors!

I'm planning a puzzle cache called Anchors Aweigh! So I checked to see how many geocaches have this name. The answer is 13. For fun, I checked to see how many geocaches have the name Anchors Away! The answer is 20. I decline to draw conclusions about geocachers from this. I will say that none of the Anchors Away! caches are in Minnesota. We're a smart bunch.

By the way, the cache is about ANCHORS in the context of a mathematical algorithm. Can you guess what it's about?

An embarrassment of riches in the way of geocaching social events lately: WeekNight caching in Ham Lake on Wednesday night, and Breakfast Buddies in Richfield this morning.

The highlight of the Ham Lake outing was the spectacular lunar eclipse overhead. It was also nice to hang out with topgear, Bus&Betty, and sir_zman. I hadn't met topgear before, but I had found some of his caches, so it was cool meeting him by accident at his own awesome puzzle cache ORIGAMI FLYING BIRD before the WeekNight. We all ended up at the Green Mill for dinner, but getting there was a trick. sir_zman gave me coordinates for the restaurant, but they took us both to an industrial park across the street from the complex that Green Mill is in. zman put his geo-sense to work, but I had to stop in at a Walgreens for directions before logging the dinner smiley.

Also, along the way to dinner I stopped off for a quick one, The Puck Stops Here!, another topgear cache as it turns out.

Two FTFs in the last couple days -- a poppa99 footbridge cache in Bordertown (nice meeting him at BB today), and a Bobcam puzzle cache, his first out of 85 hides. The Bobcam cache I DNFed last night with mini-bass, but I had solved the puzzle correctly. Bobcam had a little kink to work out of the puzzle (I've been there, I understand!), so I went out there again with Millah with the correct coordinates, and we still couldn't find it. A quick phone call to Bobcam produced the hint we needed, and one ripped Millah down coat later, we had our co-FTF. On to Richfield.

The Old Country Buffet was crawling with geocachers! I think the management was a little nervous, but they got our money, so it's all good. Who did I meet or talk to? I know I'll forget someone, but I'll give it a shot:

• Millah
  
• Pippin and Merry
  
• Bus&Betty
  
• topgear
  
• Bobcam
  
• knowschad
  
• sir_zman
  
• two of hearts
  
• Oneied Cooky
  
• TheCollector
  
• minnesotabrad
  
• Moe the Sleaze
  
• poppa99
  
• speedysk1
  
• RubberToes
  
• Red_Devil35
  
• Jonas
  
• GeoPierce
  

All these people to give pathtags to, and wouldn't you know it, I got a call from my wife a half-hour after the event to say that my pathtags had arrived in the mail. (Isn't it sweet that she recognized the importance of this fact?)

Congratulations to Millah on his 500th cache find -- Picture Sudoku -- which we picked up after the Breakfast Buddies event along with several others as we bumped into multiple cachers on the Traveling After Party Event Cache. We celebrated Millah's milestone with a Flat Earth Cygnus X-1 beer afterwards (we did not play Hemispheres [edit: Cygnus X-1 is on Farewell to Kings] by Rush, however). Millah gets Pathtag #1. Now, it's time to address some envelopes. Fifty pathtag trades to make good on. I turned off the trade button, but I'll be happy to trade with local cachers!

V = (4/3)*pi*r^3

Thanks to sir_zman, host of the Twin Cities Geocaching Podcast, for his kind words about this blog in his 2/18/08 podcast. Since he mentioned the math content of this blog, here's a related rates problem for you: if the radius of my head is growing at a constant rate of 50 meters per second, then at what rate is the volume of my head growing when its volume is 100 cubic meters?

If my head grows to 100 m^3, then you, the reader, won't have to worry about the wild success of this blog leading to advertising content; I'll just sell ad space on my forehead. Hm, that'll make stealth difficult on those urban caches... I should rethink this.

Seriously, I don't think I have anything special to offer here. I am no fountain of knowledge about geocaching. In fact, almost every geocacher I know has more cache finds than me. But if someone sees something here that leads to another social connection -- of which I've enjoyed many already -- then it will have served its purpose. It's a sort of virtual event cache.

Thanks also to zman for choosing not to broadcast the story I told at WeekNIGHT in Cottage Grove about my disturbing the natural environment of Lakeville in reckless pursuit of a cache. I guess he didn't want it construed as endorsement of a particular brand of chainsaw. Kidding, kidding... still, I don't want it to get around.

In other news... rickrich had to remove the Where's Yoda calculator from his webspace; his ISP identified it as malware. I think it's because the puzzle is based on the Pythagorean Theorem. Shady Pythagoreans...

pathtags.com has changed the status of my order from "unshipped" to "in progress". Could it be?! Maybe I'll have some tags to share in time for Breakfast Buddies in Richfield on Saturday... two FTFs in two days: knowschad's Little Crow and Millah's A or A ?... 25 caches on Sunday, most of them orange... in case you haven't noticed, Bobcam -- prolific Twin Cities cache hider and finder -- is 4th (down from 2nd; come on, Bobcam!) in the USA in Find Rate, according to INATN. Started at the end of September 2007, has >1000 finds... WeekNIGHT is at Ham Lake on Wednesday. I have new tires, so I might be able to make it.

My first WeekNIGHT

I went to my first WeekNIGHT caching event last night in Cottage Grove. This one was hosted by broken tooth. It was nice socializing with everyone, including:

• Millah -- I picked Millah up, and we thought we'd have all kinds of time for pre-caching, but we pulled into Hamlet Park's parking lot just in time to start. We underestimated the time to get to Cottage Grove.
  
• broken tooth -- A couple weeks ago I grabbed an early morning puzzle cache that was placed by broken tooth's son K-3. I thought I might get FTF on that one, but when I pulled into the parking lot, Millah and DLHCacher were chatting, having just found the cache.
  
• sir_zman -- It was nice to meet him finally, after emailing back and forth about ways to use geocaching in educational programs. He spent some of the time (but not ALL of the time!) capturing audio, presumably for his podcast.
  
• Bus&Betty -- The nicest couple you'd ever want to meet. There are a lot of nice caching couples in the Twin Cities! They do a lot of traveling and so had stories about how the natural pitfalls of geocaching are different in different places.
  
• cstjohn -- We talked a good bit about pathtags and the perils of turning on the "allow trades" button. I grabbed her pathtag out of Due We Dez Maul, the awesome library cache up in White Bear Lake.
  
• TheCollector -- Millah and I grabbed his mall series in Burnsville on the way down to Lakeville last Sunday, and we also found an unpublished cache of his without realizing it. He was trying to publish in a place near the final location of a puzzle cache (that we were looking for).
  
• MN_Cavepeople -- with the understated and wry sense of humor. I mean, just look at the picture on his profile! It was great telling stories with everyone over dinner and drinks at Ruby Tuesday.
  

I took a wrong turn on the way from the caching to the restaurant, and Millah and I found ourselves within 100 feet of a nano cache in front of a grocery store, so we stopped and picked that one up on the way to dinner. I think some of the others stopped for that one after dinner.

Getting home was not pleasant. The roads were horrible. In fact, the old '99 Accord is getting new tires today. Also, I had to make an emergency Valentines stop for the kids. Can't leave any of their classmates out on Valentine's Day. When you have twins, you have to get two of everything, and when they're giving Valentines to their classmates, that adds up!

What am I giving my kids for Valentine's Day? How about the gift of me not geocaching? Maybe some other stuff too. That's not totally fair -- the mini-double-bass likes geocaching too!