Thursday, January 29, 2015

Supplemental Entry: Premium Cache Alpha


   I finally got around to rewarding myself with a Premium Membership, and there happened to be one in a small bit of woods right off a major highway.  Just because caches are set to Premium-Only doesn't mean they are going to be fantastic, but this one also has 33 favorite points.
   Oh shit, that's right!  I can give favorite points out now!  I totally forgot to check that out!

   Sorry.  I'm back.

   Anyway, what I would like to note is that I am probably going to be a tad more reserved with the information given out/shown in regards to Premium caches.  The road to 10K will be a long one, so I don't want to go pissing off the more hardcore players.  I'm sure I can present things in such a way so as to not have it show up in any spoiler-searches.
   I'm calling this cache Premium Alpha, and it is a Difficulty 4 and Terrain 2.5 for those of you using the chart on the sidebar to your right.

   The first half of the video is my "hat cam" that I activated when I was about 300ft from my target.  Then it switches to split-view, which I kind of botched, but you get the idea.  If you just want to bypass me larping some S.T.A.L.K.E.R., then advance to about the 4:40 mark.



   The cache owner pretty much tells you were to look in his description (although in the snow most landmarks were not visible) but this is the second time where I just put my hand on a cache while passing by it.
   I'm not transcribing the riddles here, for search reasons, and in fact if I had bothered to use my phone to search for some answers I might have opened it right there.  However, even though I now sit here with Internet-assisted answers, my answer to the Black Riddle is only four letters long, and all the locks appear to be five letters long.  I mean, it has to be fire, right?  Am I missing something?

   Looks like I won't know until I return to the cache.  I'll keep you posted.



Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Main Journal Entry #006



     I showed this picture to my friend Owen (he is from London) and he asked, "Is this what Christmas in America is like?"
     I don't talk to him anymore.  He doesn't geocache anyway.

     This is a statue called Frustration.  The sculpture represents the hostages from the Iran hostage crisis, and as such it has been used as a clue in a whimsical GPS-based game of hide-and-seek.  Nothing is hidden on it, but you needed information from it to complete a multicache at this park.  It is part of a growing mental catalog I keep of creepy-ass sculptures that seem to dot the area.

     After reading a bit on my phone, it occurred to me that in the course of geocaching, people will lead you around and have you acquire such random information for their puzzles.  That is what I thought the theme would be for Entry #006, but my thoughts and opinions on pointless stuff ended up dominating the final edit.


     The first cache in the video, Dance a Jig, makes excellent use of a virtual jigsaw puzzle, and I thoroughly hated all 52 minutes of putting it together to get the coords.  It did make me feel more accomplished when I found the cache, so maybe really, really minor adversity can build character!  That cache and half a dozen others (including Under The Boardwalk and Vets Park Never Forget) were located in Veterans Park in New Jersey.







     Where I had the most jollies was at Pioneer Day Passageway, and if you are a Mormon, please let me know as I have some questions for you.  Anyway, there is whole separate post for that cache.  A most enjoyable location.  The same goes for Delhaas A Wall.  They are the entries right before this one.

     I just looked in to the whole mule-thing from Shadowy Span.    It turns out that, for some reason, a bunch of private investors spent about $90,000 to "place 300 decorated fiberglass mules along the 165-mile canal corridor next spring, from Wilkes Barre to Bristol, which includes the Delaware Canal State Park." source.  It is called the Miles of Mules.
     Now, this was well over a decade ago, and in fact I know I have seen at least two more in my travels.  Apparently some were moved, some destroyed, some auctioned, etc...
     According to this website which has pictures of known-locations for mules, our pal by the cache is called Salvaged and not, as I had hoped, Cenobite.  Regardless, I think I have a new sub-quest.  I also think I know where one mule is that has not been listed for a decade!

     And here I was thinking geocaching was pretty weird...

PLEASE NOTE:  In an effort to not be a total Spoiler Man, I am no longer linking the cache names with their respective geocache.com listing, nor tagging by name on the YouTube videos.  If I want to find 10k caches, I best not make too many enemies!




Monday, January 5, 2015

Supplemental Entry: Delhaas A Wall

Can't find a cache?  Let out a primal scream.  No one will mind, honestly.

     I was scoping out this little park for placement of a multicache I have been working on.  Turns out the spot is already taken!  In the "Additional Waypoints" of the cache description there is a bunker listed  as a reference point.

     Although the cache had a mere single favorite point, I thought it would be a good area to test out a new camera, so that is what most of the footage is.  It does look nice when I render it in more detail, but I didn't do that here.  The actual geocache is towards the end of this four minute clip, and it is unremarkable.  Sometimes when the GPS doesn't settle down, you just have to spiral out from your best guess and check some obvious places.  If this were a micro, I would have been screwed.  It is certainly a fun area to muck about for a little bit and grab a selfie, and if this cache ever goes dormant or is archived I am coming back to put one in the center of the bunker on the inside.

     If you want to hear a very brief commentary on certain types of items found in caches, jump to 3:41.  Remember, supplemental entries are not going to have all the pizzazz of the main entries, and I haven't fully messed around with this new cam or any sort of rigging for it, but at least it handles motion better than my older one.


Cache Stats

Name: Delhaas a wall (and needs a CITO)
By: Coldgears
Hidden: August 11, 2011
Last Found: December 14, 2014
Difficulty: 1.5
Terrain: 2
Size: Regular
Type: Standard
Favorite Points: 1
Clue: "Move it"





Going to work on a Main Entry soon, then I hope to share my multicache here.  Happy 2015.