Sunday, September 21, 2008

A geocaching milestone

Hello and I want to place some really evil and clever hides. There's a masterful hider here we are going to visit next month to learn some cammo tricks, and there's a trailhead micro we've tried to spot three or four times already and we just can't see it. So this day's hunt was all about micros. We found a whole pile of them and learned about some new containers and placements. We have a big tackle box full of fun swag and, even though we were going for micros today, we filled our packs up with trade goodies. Mine was completely empty and that just doesn't feel right, so I crammed in as much as I could. It was as full as it could be and it turned out to be very naughty swag.

Neither of us are morning people, so we only catch a couple before we are ready for lunch. We hunted for one in a huge empty parking lot, empty except for a cop sitting in his car smack in the middle of the lot. We print out the hides we are looking for, and I had it in hand while Hello worked the GPS, so we were prepared to explain ourselves. Despite lurking in and out of the bushes (and getting poked in the eye) he paid us no mind and Hello found it as I rubbed at my eyeball. I forgot my sunglasses and haven't found the safety glasses I want for my pack yet. It was a funny hide, under a cammo'ed container and set in a rat trap! We went for another and didn't look long before I had to pee. So I went to use the bathroom and Hello found the cache. Oh good, says I upon returning, where is it? She made me look for it. Mean thing. So I found it for myself and we chatted with a cute little black squirrel and then we went to find one placed in memory of a fellow who passed away this year. I read the hide description as Hello drove, and we park and (of course) hunt in entirely the wrong area. A young family walks by. "Mommy, what are they doing in the bushes?" asks the little girl. "Looking for their ball", answers mom without missing a beat. I bet that little one asks LOTS of questions. We got covered in ants and spent several minutes ewwwwwing and brushing them off each other. Hello tried to get a butterfly to sit on her finger, but they all had attitudes and wouldn't cooperate. There were about a hundred of them, and one fully grown muggle hopping up and down like a kangaroo. What the hell? Dork. We eventually find the cache. Rest in peace, Fred. Then we head off for lunch. We have japanese food and lavendar tea, use the tree filled bathroom and off we go again.

We found many clever hides, new styles, and as we hunt I am thinking up evil hides with my newfound knowledge. I haven't come up with anything really horrible yet, but I will. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Hello has two evil ideas already, but it's a secret. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! We want to stump one of our longtime local cachers, who hasn't been impressed at all with the few hides we've placed and leaves us teasing logs. In fact, we were going for our 100th find today and we wanted to make it one of his so we could tell him how boring it is in the log to commemorate it. We're a bit snarky. LOL.

A cute green snail was sitting on a cloaked cache stuffed into the bark of a redwood tree. There were many cute snails in there, so I carefully removed and replaced the tiny cache. We also visited another local cacher's house. We're not crazy about residential hides. Whispering, quiet voices, eyes darting around, peering into the yard of the wrong house, quick grab and replace and then getting the hell out of there. I act and feel like a creep. I can see why the burly men who cache alone make some folks nervous. We're not even a little bit scary looking, crazy maybe with leaves and twigs in our hair, but we laughed about what the neighbors must be thinking. Peeking through their curtains, dialing 9 1 and waiting for us to do something before pressing 1 again. We finally find the clever hide, admire a yard full of birdhouses, and get the hell out of there. As we're driving along to the next, I pull my cell phone out. Mostly to make sure I still have it. I forgot to move it out of the meshy front pocket to an inside zipper pocket and as I have it in hand to move it, I realize it's making a call. In fact, it's calling Hello!

"I'm calling you."

"You are?" She pulls out her phone. Ring ring. "You are! Hello?", she answers. Ha ha.

I hang up the phone and it immediately calls her again. Ring ring. I hang it up and it calls her again. Ring ring. WTF? My phone is haunted. Then I realize what's happening. My ear piece is somewhere in the swag stuffed pack, and something has pressed the on button long enough to connect it, and now it is repeatedly dialing the last number I called with it. Ring ring. I hang it up. Ring ring. We're cracking up as we make our way to the next hide. Ring ring. I'm poking at my pack to try and move the naughty bit of swag that's pressing on the autodial button. Ring ring. Holding the phone so I can hang it up. Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring. We get to the next spot and I dump out my pack, find and disconnect the ear piece and place it in it's own little pocket, and off we march to catch our next find. Woo hoo! A creek trail. Do you know you just called me twelve times? Ha! Oh shit, it's directly on the other side of the creek. Wait. We've been over there. We climbed on that brown grate thing, didn't we? We already got that one! Crap. How did that happen? Oh well. The next cache we try is near the same creek, and Hello is triumphantly waving it over her head almost before I've unassed the car. I did the same thing at a large parking lot for commuters. I grabbed something funny and there it was and got a look as I held it up for her to see. Of course a bus came in right then and 40 people got off. Another sent us to "where the old people live". I thought the "old" was a trifle unnecessary....until we got there. Now we think it should be changed to "where the grumpy old people live". I don't think we've ever been scowled at so much.

It's getting late in the day and some clouds have moved in to filter out much of our sunlight, so it's time to get that 100th and we're composing the teasing log we are going to post and giggling on the way there. As soon as we reach the trail entrance, we suspect that we've found this one already, too. Hoping it's only familiar as part of a series in this large hilly park, we head in, but nope. We hunt it down and we did already find it. Crap. Well, we saw two black tail deer and got a mini hike and we've got just enough light to hunt the nearby trailhead micro we've had trouble with. It's rated a four difficulty, so not finding it doesn't make me feel stupid, but I sure would like to get it. All we learned this day about micros did not help, so we gave it up and debated whether to ask for a hint, or try again when we've got more experience. I vote for a hint. Damn thing. I wonder what it is?

101 FINDS! WOO HOO!!

Monday, September 15, 2008

Pictures Pictures Pictures

















A hunt and a Hide

Saz and I decided to go geocaching Saturday. We also decided to hide another cache. So while I was waiting for her I loaded up the ammo can and got everything ready for our trip.
Sazy came over and we hopped in the car with the ammo can and drove off to where we did the death hike the last time we went out. I had printed out all of the other caches around it so we would have an idea of where they were so we wouldn't have the you are to close to another cache problem again.
We hiked up the side of a mountain in between two caches, climbed up below a huge tree and climbed a steep incline to put the cache up on a ledge. As we walked back down all covered in dirt and leaves we looked at each other and decided that we were going to be told to move it again. But we kept on going and found a tiny little cache at the front gate.
This time we took lots and lots of pictures.
We were off then to find one right by it in a park that we thought was called Miracle Mountain. Up we climbed thinking we were going the right way only to find out we weren't. So down the hill we went seeing what has become a staple of our caching days. A kitty. This time the kitty wanted nothing to do with us. To bad because I love a good kitty lol.
We finally arrived at the spot and started looking. And Looking. And looking. We decided we needed to look at the clue. Not a live oak. What? Saz and I looked at each other and thought we have no idea what a live oak is. We poked around a bit more in the multitude of different oak trees and got pretty frustrated. At one point I got a long stick and started pointing at trees. Is this a live oak? Saz say I have no idea maybe it is a scrub oak. Is this a live oak? While pointing at another tree. I have no idea. Is THIS a live oak? While pointing the stick up in the air at yet another kind of oak tree. Then Saz goes HEY there it is! Take a look a the picture. We were darn lucky to find that guy. We opened it up and had to remove some crud. Like a splenda packet and a golf ball with a gouge out of it. Who puts stuff like that in a cache?
We hopped back in the car and headed back over towards the cache we had tried to find when I lost my cell phone the last caching trip or so. It had been almost dark when we started searching and our minds weren't on the hunt so we had to take a do not find. This time however we found it! Along with tons of cute squirrels playing "OH my god I hope I don't die when I make this jump" at the very tip tops of these giant redwood trees.
We felt much better after finding it!
The next stop was Vasona park. Of course the stupid lady in my GPS thought that we should be searching on the freeway but we drove around and around until we figured out that it was in the park. We paid our six bucks to get in, parked and set off on foot. There were two in the park so we carried our little packs.
Did I mention we look cute with our little backpacks?
On the way to the first one we heard an ice cream man. There is something about Ice Cream Man music that brings out the little kid in people. Before I knew what had happened I was happily walking along with a missle pop lol.
Pretty soon after getting the ice cream we found the first cache tucked away behind a tree. By now we are pretty happy with ourselves since we have found all of the caches we have searched for. We then headed off towards the next one in the park.
We had to cross over this pretty bridge and then hike around the lake a bit. We found the spot and started searching. This should be easy after all it is a ammo can. Well we searched and searched and searched. Finally we found it under a pile of pine needles. Sneaky caches today YAHOO!
Inside that cache I found the best gargoyle statue. I was freaking excited since I collect them. LOVED IT!!! We filled the cache back up and put it back.
We tend to do that. Take a empty cache and fill it back up with goodies. We figure we would want to find a full cache why not let the next person be happy. We are happy cache fillers lol.
After heading back to the car we came across a whole bunch of geese. Of course I wanted to pet them and Saz wanted to take pictures. She even snapped a picture right before one bit me lol.
We hopped in the car and drove up up up up this windy road to find the next cache. We parked the car in a very expensive area and started down a lovely paved walking path. Nothing at all like we are used to. We are use to gravel or dirt. I guess having money has it's perks. We ended up at this beautiful little bridge with a tiny bit of water running under it. A nice surprise since it is high summer. It took just a few minutes to find the cache. We had a good laugh reading the log book since it said things like.. "there was five of us and it took us over 30 minutes to find it". We wandered back up the pretty trail to the car and headed out for the next one.
We had to sneak through a fence and wander around under power lines to make the next find. We have decided we hate power lines with their crackle and snapping and buzzing. At one point on the trail two huge dogs come out of no where towards us. We had that moment of OMG run before we saw the owner. Like Saz and I could out run dogs LMAO!! We found it inside a fence pole. We have found a few of these but we were kind of shocked when we pulled it out and it was HUGE. Filled with aliens.
By now it was getting to that stage where it is almost dark. Where you are not sure if another hide will put you in full dark or if you can make it. We decided to go for it.
Again we ended up in a fairly affluant neighborhood with a pretty little paved trail. Of course off of the paved trail was a not paved trail where we found the cache. We then decided to go to the next one which was only .1 miles up the road. After getting that one we hopped back in the car to go home but instead ended up at a party store buying more swag to fill our cache bags and cache tackle box up. Yes we have a tackle box filled with swag.
When we got home I entered in the new cache and logged our day's finds. We waited for a little while and then BAM DENIED!!
ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
You are 37 feet to close to another cache.
Funny thing though this time we were ok with it. The next day we made a quick run back and climbed our butts up a rock cliff thing and up a mountain and moved that sucker.
Got home and put it back in with the new coordinates. It was accepted and posted!!! We have our first finder who seemed to like it a lot too.
I am going to post pictures from our outing in the next post since I can't figure out how to put them in where I want them.
I am looking forward to our next cache hunt and hide!!!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Went for a Cache ended up at a Willie Nelson Concert

Hellolost's version:
After spending all day in a seminar I arrived home early. It was 103 so I changed into a tank top and a pair of capri style pants for the concert. I was getting pretty darn excited even though it was only 3:45 and the concert didn't start until 7:30.
At around 4:15ish Sazy calls me and tells me she is only 15 minutes away
She comes in and we leave pretty much right after. We even printed a cache to go visit. Of course on the way to the concert we notice that the terrain is a 3 which would include climbing up a hill in a 103 degree heat so we think forget it.
Saz drove since we would be going home in the dark on a windy road and I don't see very well in the dark. As we drove up the hill I was turning into fan girl. You know those screaming crazy girls.. I have that potential when it comes to Willie Nelson.

The first thing we decide to do is eat. We walk up a tall set of stairs and decide on what we want. I send Saz to go get us a seat in the shade while I order. Two sandwiches, 2 bottles of diet coke and a piece of cheesecake cost $41 In line though there was a semi friendly man in a giant cowboy hat to chit chat with.
After sitting down who should come sit at our table? Our new little buddy Mr. Cowboy hat. We struck up a conversation for a while and then Sazy looks right at him and asks......."Couldn't you find anyone to talk into coming with you?"

He looks at her and points at her.

The rest of dinner goes pretty well and then his phone rings at which point I (miss PMS) say "hey that must be the girlfriend calling bummed out and wanting you to come get her right?
My turn to get pointed at.
We leave the restuarant and head down to the smoking section where we proceed to laugh ourselves silly over people. People in santa hats. People in bright green socks. A woman carrying a 5 year old in a baby carrier on her back. Hats. boobs. shoes. Anything and everything including security guards. I had tears in my eyes from being such a world class bitch.
Then who should we see walking down from the restuarant? Our new little buddy Mr. Cowboy hat.
He points at both of us and says. "hey! there are the troublemakers."
We decide we should go potty at this point and walk through the crowd of people. All kinds of people. All walks of life. We spent a lot of time showing each other our types.
<---likes vampires
Saz----> likes wrestlers
After we found the bathrooms we decided to look at our seats. At which point I was going into excitement overload. We were sitting so close!!!!! CLOSE!!!!!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
The opening act was a little girl ok ok she was about 20 or so in a little yellow dress and a man on a two necked guitar. She had a pretty voice but please shut the hell up. At one point I turned to Saz and told her I had a mental image of her accidently swallowing a fuzzy. A little while later she accidently swallowed a bug LMAO!!!
After she sang there was a brief intermission where we ran up the mountain of stairs and bought a cup of wine for me. $8 Then we went and had another smoke and bashed more people. The bell rang and we went back down the stairs and to our seats to see Willie.
When he came on stage I was so freaking thrilled. He looked good. He sounded good. I wanted to dance. The woman in front of me wanted to dance. We did dance a few times. I made Saz dance too lol.
At one point in the concert the guy in front of us lit the biggest joint I have ever seen in my life. He would blow the smoke straight up but it would come straight back down and go down his aisle of people. The lady three seats down ended up with her head on her honey's shoulder after a while lol.
There was a point in the concert where a disabled man walked down to the stage and put his hat down in front of Willie. Willie took off his bandana and gave it to him and put his hat on and sang two songs wearing this guys hat. They then returned it to him a few songs later. me----> boooooo hoooooo
Also at one point they had people going up to get autographs. Sazy is like "let's go you know you want one."
Me----> :O I will pass out.
Sazy grabs me and we start going down at which point of course the autograph session was over
After the show we waited for the mad rush to be over and I bought a willie shirt Whiskey River with his autograph.. well not a real one but still
We hopped in the car and I didn't get home until about 11:20. I couldn't sleep at all!!!
It was the best good time

Sazy's version
It was great. We got everything we went for.

Found it easy, parked easy, and were in line to enter just before the doors opened. Then we walked around the arena and looked at the food carts and t-shirt shack and then headed up to the grill to have dinner. We had italian panini sandwiches and onion rings and cokes at a large table. A dude joined us, sitting all alone. He heard us talking and joined in. He was nice. I asked him, "Couldn't you talk someone into coming with you?" He said nope. The woman wouldn't come. About the time we finished eating his cell phone rang. Hello says, that's her! Tell her she should have come. I said, tell her you just had dinner with two hot women. We left the grill and when we ran into him later, he said "There are the troublemakers!" We laughed at ourselves quite a bit over that guy. I don't know why, a tad giddy maybe. We were at the Willie Nelson concert! We watched people for a bit too. There was one guy in the shiniest flashiest clothes I'd ever seen on a man, with his goatee dyed to match his shiny flashy yellowy orange shirt. Then I think we went to go pee.

We went to our seats, which were awesome. The warm up chick was a slip of a 20 year old girl named Pricilla on acoustic guitar with a very bored looking Gus on the double neck. He really only chirked up when they played a song they wrote together. She also played a harmonica or kazoo, both of which I would have gladly stuffed up her ass if we were just a tad bit closer. She was a bit annoying with banter that everyone laughed at, I think, because it was just silly. I don't know. We abused her a bit to ourselves because it was fun LOL. After she finished her little set of love songs from a 20 year old's point of view (something about how her boobs are poems - I don't know) they asked her to play two more. Oh no! Willie's dead! SHUT UP! LOL Hello was afraid he'd die before he got on stage. I liked both of these last songs better than her actual set. The first was funny (elephants don't associate with fish, just in case you didn't know) and the second was a simple ballad that really showed off her pretty voice and didn't have any squaking in it.

Hello usually has to be the driver to things like this, so she doesn't get to have a drink. Since I was driving, part of the plan was for her to have a glass of nice wine for Willie (hell, we were at a winery). She sampled the offerings and chose one. I'm one of those, not having a drink is easy. No problemo. Not having a second one is hard. So I stuck to coke so I didn't have to tell myself "no" all night long. Then we hung out until the bell rang, which I think was a 10 minute warning but I'm not sure about that. Then it was Willie time.

He was fantastic. He looks great, he sounds great. We were close enough to see exactly what each musician was doing. I spent time watching their hands, watching the bass player shake his ass, the flashing lights, the lights and shadows zinging on the cut stone and vine covered building they played against and the craziness of the crowd and being surrounded by the good honest music. Willie on his guitar, a bass guitar, a piano, and a snare drum. And of course the obligatory guy who shakes a tambourine and whacks sticks together. He went from one song to another without hardly a breath in between. I was in complete sensory overload. It was surreal. I thought concerts affected me that way because I was always stoned before. Guess not. Huh. There again, a guy in the row in front of us sparked the biggest doob I've ever seen and sent billowing clouds of it over the section. Hello and I sniff at it hopefully, and laughed at the older lady who ducked her head.

He really, really was good. His sister played piano, his daughter joined in on an encore and she really, really sucks.

We spent what we brought to spend and still had a few bucks left. It took hours for me to key down to sleep.
Leaving the venue, we got lucky I think. Our line was the only one moving. There was a bus a few cars back and it might have been Willie's. Anyway, getting out was no trouble and it's usually a lot of angry people just sitting around.

We get to the bottom of the winery and I can't remember whether to go left or right. I decide to follow the guy ahead who goes left. Two other idiots follow me. Everyone else goes right.

So, we are in the mountains, right? No street lights, cannibals and coyotes and shit out there in the total darkness. There's woods out there, but I can't see them. It's dark. Darker than dark, but we are driving downhill, not up and over, so I think we'll come down into one of the funny little towns squished up against the foothills. The GPS won't talk to me. I think she lost me. We know very well by now we made a mistake, nothing is familiar. The guy ahead of me knows he blew it too and keeps putting on his left turn signal. Um, there's a canyon there. He does it again. Um, there's woods there. Braking, signaling, I suspect a small amount of panic up there, but I'm not worried yet. We are still going down. We arrive in the same teeny town we entered to go up, but in a different section. Now I am feeling smart about not getting stuck in the middle of hundreds of cars trying to inch through the tiny downtown. Don't feel too smart, Saz. You followed an idiot and got lucky.