Nothing much...

Not much news from me geocaching wise the last two days. I made a trade for a new Georgia geocoin. Thats about it.

I've also noticed a lot of new cache activity in Jackson County. There have been a lot of new hides and a bunch of finds. Since I started geocaching the Medford area has been kind of dead... a few Lazyboy caches, a few from Peanuthead... throw in some misc others, but none of them really lasted. Maybe this time the area will really take off... Jackson county has tons of area... its just waiting to explode and I want to be there to enjoy it :)

Roxy revisited

I got off my lazy butt today and hiked up Roxy. I wasn't the only geocacher up there, I ran into Peanuthead on the trip. Found 7 caches on the day

Roxy View - the other side of the mountain
Roxy has a nice Backside
Riddle 7 Roxy
Get Your Butt Back Up Here Peanuthead
On the way up
Come and get it Lazyboy
Screwed Tight

Screwed Tight was the only one not on Roxy. It was an interesting hide. I also stopped to check out my adopted cache Roxy. I had considered taking the logbook out to scan it, but I decided to leave it. I took this picture at the top.



It was an especially nice day for February. Didn't need a coat, but it did get a little windy. Saw some guys at the top climbing the big pine trees with ropes... that was interesting. Over all it was a pretty fun day.

Roxy

The number of caches on Roxy has increased again. Looks like it is about time for me to take the hike up there. If I can get myself out the door tomorrow that should make for a good day. I haven't been up there for a while.

Fresh_Meat is also home from the hospital. That is pretty good news... now lets hope he survives the cache withdrawls... he might need a little extra morphine.

Events...

The newest Pizza event is up... Pizza Again!... I plan to make it but I forgot I was going to Portland the day before. I bought those blazer tickets a long time ago obviously. I plan on staying in Corvallis for the night... probably find a cache or two. Should be a fun trip.

It was proposed to make Jim's hospital stay an event cache, but the idea as written was not approved. I'm not sure how it was written... but its a shame no comprimise was made. Lazyboy remarked that if he was an approver he woulds have approved it... I almost fell out of my chair laughing... I can't imagine any cache that Al would not approve of.

Good Grief!

Friends of the drunken teen that hit and killed local geocacher defiant8 were recently arrested for burglary and evading police while up here for the funeral. Just goes to show what kind of crowd this kid hung with.

I've heard a lot of rumors of the accident being a game that some kids from Ashland play... they drive though Medford at 100 MPH and get the police to chase them while another groups follows behind video taping it. Police had seized a video of the incident. Its a real shame that a father of 3 who seemed like a generally good guy had to die because of the stupidity of these little punks. In my opinion if the video taping story is true every one of them should be held accountable and be put in jail.

On a side note I learned that if someone writes the initials DPM in their log it means that your cache sucks so bad that they don't have the heart to tell you in english. I think some GC.com forum users just need to find a new hobby... I mean seriously a French code word for lame caches? Lame!

President's Day

I spent most of president's day geocaching with 7 finds and one hide on the day. The finds included

Prey For Us
Flannigan Slough
A Fruitful Search
Shan Creek: A Royal View
Cyclops: Tunnel Vision
The Rock Of Ages
It's A Boy

My one hide was SPAM Cache #2. Its a nice little hide. Yesterday I found Dr. Dan's newest in GP

The Tax Man, Will Be Watching
Who's the Master?

Turned out not to be such a lazy weekend for me after all.

Hmmm

Well this hasn't been a good week for geocachers...These things commonly happen in groups of 3 and I'm afraid to step out of the house.

It sounds like Jim is doing ok right now... there is information in the EVC forum for contacting him. I'll post more when I know it... maybe I'll even step out of the house and find him a get well card.

Update

I just got the message that Jim (aka Fresh_Meat) is in the hospital with a broken pelvis. Here is a link to the post on gotcache.com

I sure hope he is going to be ok. My best wishes to Jim, Tara and Family.

Geesh

There are a couple of new Dr.Dan caches in town and I haven't made any effort to find them besides print the cache pages. I have a 3 day weekend so I have plenty of time to get out caching still.

I have great new geocoin ides but I will wait until later to reviel them.

New Features

Putting the recent sad event aside for a while... GC.com has added quite a few new features and a new look. One of the features is the ability to ignore certain caches... now my threats to hide a puzzle cache in Butte Falls are totally useless. Another feature is the ability to create lists of bookmarked caches... this could be used to create a list of "to do" caches or like I just did a list of favorites. The new look is not so bad, but has yet to grow on me.

Identified?

defiant8

There is a Memorial Fund set up for him and I think we should collect something for his family at the next pizza event.

Local Geocacher Killed

I saw were the man killed in a collision in Medford this week was a geocacher out to play with a new GPS. Here is the story about the accident, and here is his obituary. It is a very sad event.

Puzzle Caches

There is a new puzzle cache in Medford called Code Breaker - Oregon by ChrissySkyking + Blaze. Since Lazyboy was able to solve it I figured it must not be very hard at all. Took some carful listening but I think I've got it.

Night Duck

My newest cache was found during the night by a Duck and it didn't surprise me at all. It is a pretty good area for a cache... there are also suppose to be letterboxes somewhere in the area, but I have yet to search for them. I have a stamp for letterboxing now, but I don't have a book yet to keep stamps from the different boxes. I've found letterboxes before and I think it might be fun to find a few more. If I could carve a stamp I'd make a letterbox hybrid cache... maybe this will be a new goal of mine.

Pass the peace pipe

Yesterday I had to archive my cache "Cultural Studies" it was my most often visited cache, but the stump it was hidden by had been completly rooted up... It has now been replaced by "Advanced Cultural Studies" Which has yet to be approved, but you can be on the watch for it. I think its in a better hiding spot, hopefully nothing will root this one up.

Happy Valentines day to all my loyal and not so loyal readers.

Pixxa

Today was the latest, greatest, pizza event. Kelly (BIGGIEET_AL) really out did himself. The helium balloon talking contest was a riot. There were a lot of new cachers in attendance including Beaver Lover and The Lost Patrol pictured below. Not too many Oregon grads are geocachers because they have no clue how to operate a GPS. Glad to see OSU so well represented.

I posted several pictures of the event in my log... it was a great turnout. Uncle Duck has the next event and it will be hard to top this one.

NGA?

Should there be a National Geocaching Organization? There is a thread or two in the GC.com forums talking about a recent decission in Oregon to ban geocaching in the Badlands area near Bend. I'm not familiar with the area but anytime geocaching is banned can't be a good thing. The idea of a national organization for geocachers was brought up... such an organization would help to protect our rights to use public lands which is good for everyone who enjoys the outdoors. I don't post often... I try to stay out of the chaos especially... but I did put my 2 cents in this time

Geocaching has grown a lot since I started... it was probably better before it was so popular, but there is no going back now. I've often wondered since I started how long it would last... is it a fad or will it be a popular pastime?

WooHoo!

Tonight is my last night of dialup internet! I first got online in '96 with a 14.4 modem on my brand new super speedy Packard Bell Pentium 100Mhz. Today Packard Bell is out of business, and a 1000Mhz PC is slow. Back in 96 there was no Geocaching... most places didn't have websites... the best search engine besides Yahoo was AltaVista... and the best place for discussion was still news groups. I helped pioneer the use of forums by creating a simple one on my geocities website (a Trail Blazers forum of course)... it was a simple list of messages, but it worked... things have come a long way since. What a long strange trip its been...

Yuck

The blazers just played posably the worst game of the season... and this is a pretty bad season. I am now less of a person for having seen it.

Geocoins

I got a new Nurse Dave geocoin today. It is a very nice design, the reverse was especially well done. Coins like this one already have me thinking about Series 2 blazerfan coins... how much can I spend this time?

There are a lot of new geocoins on the way Georgia, Calgary, Idaho, Great Britan, USA 2005, Texas part 2 and Washington 2005 as well as a host of personal coins. It is really getting hard to keep track of them all. I think there should be a forum on GC.com dedicated to geocoins. I think I'll go post that in the forums and see what kind of response I get.

Another day

Its another night on dialup. There has seemed to be a lot of caching activity this weekend... I've had several of my caches found... even one of my rarely hit ones. Two of my travel bugs were moved along... Skippy the Giraffe made his way from Utah to Boston. One of my caches, Cultural Studies, looks to be missing... I'll have to go have a look for it soon. Along with all this activity the Blazers have managed to win 3 games in a row!

Super Bowl

Today I went to watch the Super Bowl with a couple of guys from work. There are around 50 employees of Home Valley Bank and only 7 are men... so us guys have to stick together. New England held on to win... but not before they let the Eagles get within 3 and therefore losing my bet (I had NE by 7) so I lost $10. Then again the bet was with my boss and losing money to your boss isn't the worst thing you can do.

Around 10am this morning I went outside to get the paper and mail I had forgotten to get the night before and it was snowing! Funny how it can be so nice on one day and snow the next. Actually it didn't turn out to be a bad day, but I didn't find the time to get my nearest cache... which is actually even closer than normal while I am staying here accross town.

Great caching weather

Well here I sit at my uncles laptop with a 56k connection typing away at my blog at a quarter till 11 at night. House sitting isn't all that bad besides the slow internet... I make up for that by sitting in the hot tub. Besides internet there is one more problem... before he left my uncle said "eat anything in the house you want" and I thought OK thats pretty nice... well it turns out that I wouldn't feed a lot of the food in this place to the dog. Its probaby one of my aunt's diet ideas... if you have nothing good to eat then you won't be tempted to eat it... and its working... so far.

Well early this morning I got a call from uncle Duck... the message was get away from that dial up internet and lets go geocaching. Sounded good to me so we went off and I ended up with 10 caches on the day which I will now, painfully, take the time to link to

So I thought Why Not??
Rocky's Cache
I-5 Watch your step
Mugger's Alley
End of Agates
Eagle Point Golf Community
Cheap Seats
Dive In 2
Espey wildlife Station
Horsin' Around

We met up with Lazyboy at Dive In 2 and went out to lunch with him. That new cache should really be a source of ammusment for everyone who works there.

It was a good day with just the right mix of good and lame caches. I really should get out and hide a couple soon so that everyone else has something to enjoy.

How do people live?

Its been 2 hours and 24 minutes now and already dial up internet is driving me nuts. It makes me appriciate that cable even more.

I see were the new Colorado geocoins will be trackable on GC.com which I don't like one bit. First GC has said no to almost every geocaching group who made coins. Second I think anyone who really thinks these coins are going to be travel bugs is in for a surprise... they may last a while but they'll disapear 5 times as fast as regular travel bugs. Now I wonder if there will be a new icon for these coins? I think seeing other groups pay money to travelertags.com made them reconsider their position... the all mightey dollar wins again.

Peanuthead's latest cache on Roxy Ann Peak has led to a new Lazyboy cache called Get Your Butt Back Up Here Peanuthead. Which now gives me 4 caches up on Roxy to find. I plan to venture up there and find them all soon.

Starting tomorrow I will be house sitting for one of my other uncles... my blog will either suffer for the next few days or I'll be really bored and sit on his laptop with a dialup connection typing all night.

New WA Geocoins

There is a thread in the GC.com forums about a new Washington geocoin. The last WA geocoin was a work of art so it will be interesting to see what they come up with this time.

I had considered making a "State of Jefferson" coin, but I was never happy with the design... and preoccupied with my own geocoin. The idea will probably resurface someday.

Last night I made this rough draft for the new WA coin... hope you like it

New Caches

I looked at the newest caches today and noticed Uncle Duck had 3 new Micros in town. At lunch I stopped and grabbed Why Not 2 and Why Not 3. I was First Finder on #2 just beating out BIGGIEET_AL who pulled in just as I was walking up. Since I had yet to turn on my GPS I parked quite a distance away... turned out that I needed my car to blocked the view of nearby muggles. So when Kelly pulled in it was a big help. Always fun to grab a cache or two at lunch. There is still one more to be found so I'll have to get up there soon. Also there are a couple of new I-5 caches by DrDan52000... and even a new one by Peanuthead. I might have to get out and hide one too...