Last Day of 2006

Well it is the last day of 2006. It has been a good year for caching, but its time to put the year behind us and start with the next. Some highlights from this year include

• Hid 9 caches
• Reached the 900 and 1000 cache milestones
  
• Completed the Oregon DeLorme Challenge
• Found a cache in every county in Oregon
• Set a new record of most consecutive days with a find (7)

Some of my favorite caches of 2006 include:

• District 3 Firehouse Cache Dash
• Another Hole in the Wall
• One Hell (gate) Of A Cache
• The Other Clark
• Clatskanie Park Travel Bug and Game Exchange
• Cow Creek Final
• O'Brien Creek Cache
• Mr Wizard
• Alone, But Not Lonely
• Homefront
• French's Lookout
• Lava Tube
• "Under the Wide & Starry sky" R.L.S.
• THE LIVING END CACHE.
• Spectacular Toketee – MGD clips by 100

And of course the best cache of all was the Oregon DeLorme Challenge. Now I've tried to talk others into completing this cache and I've heard a range of excuses from high gas prices, having to buy a map (which you don't if you ask the right people), and that the cache has no real "connection" to them and something like CCIO where you must find a cache in each county has more meaning. To that last group I'll say that you can find a cache in each county but you'll miss a lot of great places. Exploring is the name of the game and this cache will make you explore all corners of Oregon. In my opinion it was worth every penny spent.

Thank you to all who have read this blog and hid some of the great caches we found this year. Hope to see you out on the trail in 2007. Have a Happy New Year!

Caches

Found my last caches of 2006 with SallyC today

LOVE and JOY Nearby
This One Is For Sally C
Davey Dude Done Dood It!
All keyed up and nowhere to go
Get out of Dodge

Its that time of the year...

Despite the rain today I decided to go find a couple of Christmas caches.

The Stonecutters
Steelhead Crossing

Both pretty nice caches on this rainy Christmas day.

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas

House hunting

Well I've been looking for a house to buy for a little over a month. I've seen a few in my price range... most need some work... not sure what I want. I made an offer on a small house... very small... they countered my offer and I think I'm going to turn it down. After a lot of thought I think I need a bit more space then that... even if I may never see a price that low again. Sally didn't like the neighborhood anyway.

No geocaching for me recently... should have gone out Saturday as it was really nice. Oh well, the rain might let up again one of these days.

New look

I hope most people have notice the new look of this blog. After changing the look last December I thought it should be an annual affair.

I haven't been doing much caching, but I have been looking at houses to buy. I've looked at about 6 or so different places in my price range. One thing I've learned is that in my price range you don't get much. I looked at a place today for a second time... I like the location... I like the yard (though I don't know about the yard work) but it needs new flooring... kitchen updates... bathroom updates... new windows. Not only does that sound like a lot of money but also a lot of work.

James Kim

If you've been watching the news latley you've seen the story of the Kim family who were stuck along Bear Camp road on their way to the coast. Sadly James was found dead today. Being so close to home I thought I should write a bit about it.

As geocachers I imagine many of us have found ourselves on mountain roads in areas unknown to us. Sometimes determination to get where we want to go gets in the way of common sense. I hope this tragedy can be a lesson for all of us weekend adventurers. Reversing any one of several mistakes would have led to a much happier ending. Paying attention to warning signs, turning around at the first sign of snow in the road, staying with the car, and keeping on a marked path.

The cache One Lane Rd appears to be close to where I imagine they made their wrong turn. Many of the caches near it including some of mine are probably inaccesable most winters.

4 years

Well November 30th was technically my 4th geobirthday, but I usually celebrate on March 26 because that is when I found my first cache. In the months between when I signed up and when I found my first cache I just watched the website and looked forward to the day I might work normal hours and be able to find caches. I didn't even own a GPS... in fact I didn't have one until I found my 5th cache. I think I tell this story about twice a year so look for it again on 03/26/07

Today since it was sunny and I had some time I went to look for a cache by SallyC

Red Hot!

No problem finding it as I have many caches in this park and know the trails. Sadly I had one of my cache containers in this park stolen recently, but the logbook was left behind. So I picked it up today and am waiting to archive it until it is logged by IVHS76 who was obviously out caching just before I got there today.

Caches

On Saturday SallyC and I went out and picked up a few caches. Most of them were hidden a couple of months ago by Iseek and Eyeseek2 for their pizza event. It was a nice day to get out and work off some of the weight I gained Thusday. Finds for the day included

Country Aire
Are You Ready To Rock?
What's My Line?
Caballo Blanco
Aaron's Outdoor Adventure Cache (A Rare FTF)
WARNING
Between Two
River View
Lying In Wait
Stuck Up
ODS Snoogans`5: Limpyng Along
Just A Cache
Guarding the windmill

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone had a good thanksgiving. I know I ate too much. I've had a cold all week which didn't help, but I was pretty much recovered so I could enjoy turkey. If I had felt better I would have walked off some turkey by searching for a cache... plenty of unfound caches around for me.

Last Saturday SallyC and I went out and hid a few caches. We also found the cache Peavine which is out by itself and rarely visited.

Still nothing

Not sure how many of my loyal readers are still around. It has been a very slow around here... and this has never exactly been a well writen or overly entertaining blog. But if you are still reading thank you.

One of the things I've discovered in the past few weeks is PodCacher. It is like a radio show for geocachers, but published on the internet. Its fun to listen to, but I've found the episodes a little long for my liking. I've only listened to a handful of shows, but its something to do if you can't be out caching.

Rain and lack of daylight have kept me from going out. I might decide to grab a cache at lunch time one of these days if the rain lets up a bit. Beyond my normal hours I've also put in some weekend time... so that hasn't helped.

November

Well not much geocaching has been going on. Saturday I went to the Trail Blazers home opener... they won the game in the last seconds. I didn't even attempt to find a cache anyplace along the way. I did stop just north of Beaverton and bought an older console radio I saw on Craigslist. I'm going to fix it up a bit with a new turntable and such but it doesn't need any cosmetic help as it has been well taken care of.

New Challenge

Yesterday my 50th cache hide was approved. It was several weeks in planning and took a special exception from our local approver, but here it is

blazerfan & SallyC's Revenge

The cache requires you to have 2 finds in each National Forest in Oregon. Ok, actually Klamath National Forest extends into Oregon as well... but I excluded it because there aren't many caches in that section. I hope it is a unique enough challenge to get a few people out and about toward finding it. I realize the cache is about the same as other challenges and requires you to "start over" as it were, but yet I think it will require cachers to see a bit more of the "wild" parts of Oregon. I'm still deciding on a FTF prize.

In an effort to get more Oregon cachers working on the DeLorme challenge I posted about it in the PDX and EVC forums. EVC has had no response... their forum seems pretty dead right now much like the sogeo forum. The PDX forum however... I don't even know what to say besides that I'm disapointed. Most of the responses seemed kind of negative. Maybe I'm just being overly sensitive on the issue. My hope is that in the silent majority of cachers reading these forums that I've sparked the interest of a couple of them. I think people should have as many excuses as posable to get out and see the state... not that any excuse should even be needed.

Cache 77, The Final

Well Saturday SallyC and I headed to the coast to get the final for the Oregon Delorme Challenge. After a bit of searching Sally found it and we found a few more around town and had some Fish & Chips to celebrate. It was definately a big undertaking, despite my having about a third of the map sections done before we actually decided to try completing this cache I actually revisited every section this year.

We also found a cache in every county, but our cache in Umatilla County didn't qualify for Counting Counties in Oregon. With how careful we were I'm still wondering how we missed that one. Time constraints kept us from searching out multiple caches for each county and map section... once we found one we moved on. Oh well, its just a game.

76 caches

Yesterday SallyC and I completed all the sections for the Oregon DeLorme Challenge. Now all that remains is finding the final cache and signing the logbook. We started the challenge back in February or so by picking up some of the closer sections that Sally didn't have. I had about 26 when we started. We pretty much completed it in 4 parts

Mar 31-Apr 2 we cached around Bend (8 sections)
May 19-22 completed every section west of I-5 (17 sections)
Sep 16-27 drove all over eastern Oregon (21 sections)
Oct 7 found our last sections toward Diamond Lake (4 sections)

Its been fun... sometimes we might have pushed ourselves a bit too much trying to fit everything in, but I know I saw many different parts of Oregon. Now that it is nearly over I'm not sure what we'll do next.

Recent events

Saturday was 3rd. Annual Pizza By The Riverside hosted by Iseek and Eyeseek2. Great event with a turnout of over 50 people. Many local cachers were missing so that number could have been even higher. It was by far our biggest local event ever.

Day 7... belated

Well for Day 7 (Friday) we had planned to grab sections 55 and 56 as well as the original stash and then head home. We decided since Sally was so close to completing CCIO that we'd grab a cache in Polk and Benton County while we were at it. Well after 2 DNFs in section 55 and a lot of hard searching for other caches we finally finished around 9pm and still had the drive home from Corvallis making it our longest day.

I still have 4 sections of the DeLorme challenge to complete and Sally has 5. Sally is done with CCIO and I still need a qualifying cache in Coos County. So we still have a bit of caching to do, but we should be able to do it in a weekend.


Our finds for the day:
You Can Just Hold It Till The Next Town
Castaway's "Island Park" (Help Wanted)
marion forks gets stoned
Secret pond
The Benton Extension

Day Six

Drove today from Pendleton to Troutdale. Crossed off 6 map sections and 7 counties. I'm now 6 sections from completing the DeLorme Challenge and 5 counties from Counting Counties. Todays finds include:

Don't Strike Out
Threemile Rockpile
Fourmile Canyon
Henry's Endeavor
Along The Trail
Final Exit
Polallie Creek
Creekside Retirement Cache
Women will love this!

Day Five

Today consisted of driving from Baker City to Imnaha and back to Pendleton. Lots of driving and a stop by the Oregon Trail Interperetive Center. Collected 3 more DeLorme map sections and 3 counties. Todays finds include:

Chinese Cemetery
Early La Grande
The Wayside
THE LIVING END CACHE.

Day 4

Drove many miles today but ended up like 50 miles from where we started. So we drove to from Ontario to Mitchell and back to Baker City. Picking up 3 map sections and 2 counties. Todays finds include:

Vilsmeyer Country Store
TB Trading Post
Clyde Holliday
I Hate Graveyards & Old Pawn Shops
Fossil Fields Forever

Day Three

Made the trip today from Burns south to Burns Junction... then to Jordan Valley and North to Ontario. But even with all of that ground covered caches were few and far between. But I crossed off 3 sections. Todays finds:

"Under the Wide & Starry sky" R.L.S.
NHS
TACO BUSTER
You Know You Are Coming Here Anyway!

Day Two

Made it over Hart Mountain to Frenchglen then we took a side trip to to the Steens and made it up to Burns. Only 2 caches and 2 sections down, but a lot of ground covered. Pictures will have to wait. Caches found were

French's Lookout
Lava Tube

Actually ran into a cacher from Tucson at French's Lookout... pretty odd place to run into a cacher... but then again when its the only cache for miles maybe its not so odd.

Day One

Day one of our eastern trip and we've made it to Lakeview. Crossing off sections 21, 22, 23, 31, and 72 on the DeLorme map... I only needed two of those sections myself... so I now have 53 of 76 needed. We also picked up a qualifying cache for CCIO in Lake County... giving me 16 of the 36. Found for the day was

Trivia #3
PASS-A-CACHE
Bleatty
my first micro
Homefront
Filling the Gap

Poker Night

Not so great night for me playing poker. I always post my winning, but never my loses.

Tomorrow is my last day of work before the big caching trip. Got to get a lot of stuff ready. We'll have some big gaps of nothingness to drive through... so we'll need to take food and water as there may be no place to stop along the way. Should be interesting...

gonna take a lot of money

Getting ready for the big cache trip today... I bought some new tires, got my oil changed and replaced a burned out brake light. Will need to start charging up all my batteries and getting some pocket queries downloaded. Since we only need one cache per section I've mainly looked for easier ones right off the road.

Would kindof be nice if someone would hide us a new cache in the south of Section 31... the only one there seems to be a micro up in the hills. If anyone from the k-falls area reading would like to help out please hide an easy cache just north of Bly (has to be just over N42* 30.000) we'll be there next Saturday.

We're also trying to complete the Counting Counties in Oregon cache. Wheeler county looks like the one that will give us some fits as its not really in our route, but is pretty far away for us to leave undone. I'd ask for someone to hide us a cache closer to the eastern border... but one of the rules is that the cache had to be placed before 2006.

Eastern Oregon

Well its getting very close to SallyC and my trip to Eastern Oregon in our quest to complete the Oregon DeLorme Challenge. I am 25 sections short and the trip should cover 21 of them. After our trip to the coast where we covered way too many miles a day we are trying to plan less driving per day... one problem is that there is a real lack of caches in some parts of Eastern Oregon. Just one week to go.

#1000

Well after weeks of talking about it I finally found my 1000th cache. I called SallyC up and convinced her to go with me up Taylor Creek and find

Alone, But Not Lonely

A great cache by Iseek & Eyeseek2 on the Burnt Timber trail. Lots of trails up Taylor Creek... room for all kinds of caches... In fact Sally hid 3 new caches and I hid 1. Still lots of potential up there. I also checked on my old caches up the road... they are still there and in good shape, but had not been visited for almost 2 years.

So now that I've got my 1000th cache out of the way I can get back to my normal routine... what ever that is.

999

Well I am one cache away from 1000. Its been a long time coming... I've been pretty slow lately... I should have been past this a couple months ago. I'll give some consideration to what cache should be my 1000th... and go for it tomorrow. Todays finds included

Tune In Turn On and Drop Out?
Mr Wizard
"Box Office"
Get Lucky
Not a Through Road
The Ice Box
Cave Junction History Lesson #2

New Caches???

Well on tuesday I decided to hide some caches on a new bike trail the city is building. One section near me is complete and runs along Allen Creek behind a church and some houses as well as Allen Creek Elementary. I hid two caches along this stretch, but they are still unapproved due to this guideline

• Caches near or under public structures deemed potential or possible targets for terrorist attacks. These include but are not limited to highway bridges, dams, government buildings, elementary and secondary schools, and airports.

Guess I have never tested this guideline before. Ok I agree that hiding a cache near these areas is a bad idea... especially on their property... but this is a public bike path. The path is going to be used... geocachers hiking on this path and looking around are only going to attract attention if they try.

I went ahead and archived one of these caches that was in direct site of the school, but I'm trying to save the other.

First August Cache

Well I haven't done much caching lately but did find one yesterday

No Jumping

Sally and I were up in Roseburg to see Etta James and this was a pretty close one. Only problem was that we forgot a pen... so I left pennies and hope thats enough as the area was starting to get crowded and I didn't want to risk going back one more time to sign it. As it was we had to talk to some odd guy on a bike telling us about a "water sucker" not sure what he'd been drinking.

Anyway in the last few weeks we had also been in Roseburg to see Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Alice Cooper. Great shows... I am really impressed with their free concerts Music on the Halfshell. Alice Cooper was at the fair and he still puts on the "all out" over the top rock and roll show of old... but no chickens are harmed anymore.

I also noticed that Lazyboy has quit blogging... said something about not having enough time. I've put in 28 hours of overtime since Friday myself.

I'm now 19 caches from 1000

20 to go

Well Sally and I went after a few caches yesterday and ended up with 3

Ashland Crest
Mountain Top
Siskiyou Peak

All great caches and a great day to be up there looking. Couldn't have asked for better weather. I even had to put on my sweater for a bit which is a big change from the 100 degree weather we were having.

We went up the the area because when chubby forest monkey visited the area recently she left me a gift near Siskiyou Peak. Went up to find a nice painted rock with the blazers logo on it. I'll have to take a picture of it.

With those caches I have just 20 to go before my 1000th. Seems like I've been talking about it for a long time... so I'd like to get them found and move on.

Wow!

Actually found a cache today

Oh, 1 Odie

Thought I might be FTF but DrDan had beat me to it. That puts me 23 away from 1000 finds.

Sleeping Baby

Well I got to see Kalynn today and she was sleeping the whole time... which was nice. She's a cutie...




Little does she know that in the future she may well be following her uncle on one of his crazy exploits.

Kalynn Marie

Born today around 5pm. So I guess I am an uncle now... I feel old.

She had fluid in her lungs or something so you can't see her but for a few minutes. So I didn't go today... maybe tomorrow.

Wishful Thinking

Well... still waiting to hear confirmation that I'm an uncle. I guess it can take up to 48 hours... and I think it is hour 34 now. Even after she's born its going to take a couple years before she's able to help me find those elusive playground caches that us single guys look really weird searching for.

Can it get much hotter?

Well its been a long time since an update, but its been a long time since I've been caching. Despite being so close to 1000 the heat has kept me from getting out and finding any. Yesterday the high at my house was 110.3... and I don't see an end to the triple digets coming anytime soon. I might decide to get going early and find some before it gets hot this weekend... but I kind of doubt it since I'll be house sitting for my uncle.

Tomorrow, if all goes well, I'll become an uncle myself as they plan to induce labor for my sister in law. I guess even then it can take some time, but they plan to start at like 8am or something. Might have a picture for the blog tomorrow.

24 to go... and new sig items

I didn't plan to find any caches today but I was really close to a newer cache in Medford. I didn't have my GPS with me, but I had a good idea of the location and container. Found it easy enough so now I'm just 24 from the 1k mark. Today's Find

Poplar Place

Also today my newest signature item arrived. I had some 1" buttons made by Bumble Buttons. They turned out great, I couldn't have asked for more. As a bonus they sent a handful of regular sized buttons. I'd recomend them to anyone looking for signature items. They did cost a bit more than wooden nickels, but I wanted something a little different.

Up the hill

Well today I found 3 caches putting me within 25 of 1000.

Umpqua Joe
Church Picnic
A Second Place To Hibernate

Umpqua Joe is a classic boxerlovers cache... a half a mile from the road at the end of a 2 mile trail, uphill. If I were in better shape it might not have been so bad. I guess its good for me.

1k is getting closer all the time

Big draft day

Well the Trail Blazers had a big draft day making 6 trades. To start the blazers had picks 4, 30 and 31.

Trade 1:
Sebastian Telfair and Theo Ratlif to Boston for pick #7, Raef LeFrentz, and Dan Dickau

Trade 2:
Pick #4 and Viktor Kryapa to Chicago for pick #2

Trade 3:
Traded pick #7 and cash to Minnesota for pick #6

Trade 4:
Aquired pick 27 from Phoenix for cash

Trade 5:
Traded pick 31 to Indiana for pick 45 and 2 future second round picks

Trade 6:
Traded pick 45 to Memphis for a future second round pick

Ok after that confusion they ended up with 4 first round choices
#2 LaMarcus Aldridge
#6 Brandon Roy
#27 Sergio Rodriguez
#30 Joel Freeland

Those last two are foreign players that may spend the next couple of seasons playing in Europe. Aldridge and Roy were big draft prospects and I was excited to get both of them. Many fans wanted Adam Morrison... I would have been ok with him or Roy. But to get 2 of the top choices was big for us. Of course only time will tell if all of the moves they made will pay off, but it should be fun to watch these guys for a few years. Once the season schedule comes out I'll have to see what games I can go to.

$43.89

I have been informed that one of my geocoins just sold on eBay for $43.89

Not bad... wish I was making the profit

OSU!

Oregon State just won the College World Series. It was a pretty exciting series and really nice to see OSU win something so big. Lets face it Oregon State had been the bottom of the Pac-10 for a lot of years so I think its great that they have really built up the athletic programs. As an alum it makes bragging about your school a lot easier :)

I have to be honest though... while I took in several football games... I never went to a baseball game while I was there. I heard a few games though... you can hear the slap of an aluminum bat a long ways away.

Dang its hot

Well I managed one cache over the weekend.

Dead Ends! Happy 60th Lazyboy

A nice enough cache in a neat area, but it was too hot to really look around. Plus with all the weeds I could just see my car starting a fire when I drove out there. Yesterday it was just over 103 and Saturday it probably peaked at 102... which is pretty hot in my book. Thats the kind of weather that makes uncle Duck fly to the coast each summer. So my quest for 1000 finds will have to wait for things to cool down a bit.

Website

Well... the forums of sogeo.org are back up. Everyone will have to register again as the whole thing was lost. I'm still working on the photo gallery which probably didn't have to be removed, but I did anyway. It should be easy enough to get it all restored. Probably the hardest part was to figure out the funky color scheme I had come up with... I experimented with new colors, but ended up finding a way to put it back to almost original.

yuck

Lots of problems today with the Southern Oregon Geocachers website. In fact I have no clue why I just linked to it because my web host has shut it down for excessive CPU usage. A new forum post this morning seems to be corrupted or something causing multiple open processes which have been consuming server resources... since I could not reach the post I could not delete it. I was about to delete all of the posts in that particular forum, but the site is now unreachable.

So I'll probably have to delete the forum for them to reativate my site. I did make a database backup... but it would include the problemed post. I'll see what I can come up with.

One down...

Only got one cache today

O'Brien Creek Cache

It was a nice day for hiking and this cache was about a mile up O'Brien creek. I'm in pretty sorry shape so I had to stop and rest a couple times as the trail is mostly up hill. We also tried to find Dead Ends! Its Miller Time! but a bridge about 5 miles short of the parking spot had washed out. Wading the creek and walking an extra 10 miles wasn't in the plans for the day. I looked at some airial photos and didn't see any other roads... but I saw one "might be a road" may be worth checking out.

Well...

I had grand plans today of going to Medford and not stopping till I found 43 caches to put me at 999 so I could be ready for the big 1k tomorrow. The day started out with me wanting to sleep in. Then I got up and found a new email about my 10 year class reunion... they sent a list of who hadn't been contacted at it was over half the class I bet (I don't think they searched very hard) anyway I suppose I could have responded later, but I went through the list and decided who I could contact for them. Then my dad called and asked me to bring him some clamps because he just bought a new canopy for his truck at a yard sale... anyway after all that I went caching.

4 of the first 7 caches I searched for where no finds for one reason or another... not a good start. I ended with 12 and decided to go to the bookstore and then to buy my dad a fathers day gift. Might try it again tomorrow. Finds for the day included

Fire and Water
Ben Hur Two
Old Stage Turn
Stack 'em Up
SLETSOR
Going up?
Friendly Friends
Dead End Street
Opposite a Lighthouse
Abraham Lincoln Wetlands
Squirels
Popular Place

Now just 32 caches from 1000

Pizza

Well after skipping two months there is finally a pizza event in GP July 1

Josiah Smokeater Pizza Party

Should be a fun time

Website

Well I made some big changes to the Southern Oregon Geocachers website. There is now a photo gallery so that users can upload their own pictures. The front page again has random pictures and now includes upcoming Oregon event caches. I'm not so sure that I like the new buttons and such I made for the page... but I never really liked the last ones either.

I'm still 44 caches from 1000.

A few more

Well I got a bit closer to my 1000th find by picking up 14 today. That leaves me with just 44 to find. We decided to do the Riddlers' Cow Creek run caches. We missed #7 as we searched high and low for it. We were still able to find the final cache though. Here are the finds for the day

Cow Creek Run 1
Cow Creek Run 2
Cow Creek Run 3
Cow Creek Run 4
Cow Creek Run 5
Cow Creek Run 6
Cow Creek Run 8
Cow Creek Run 9
Cow Creek Run 10
Cow Creek Run Final
Back Country Byway
Cow Creek Spawning Beds
Pioneer Graves

Weekend

I'm 59 caches from 1000 and how many do I find over this long weekend? One

Nick's Interagency Cache

So now I have just 58 to go. I didn't even take my GPS with me... I just used my geo-instincts and it was indeed the first place I looked. Might need to get out for a few next weekend if I want 1000 before the end of summer.

weekend

I am really looking forward to this holiday weekend. Don't have any geocaching planned... just looking forward to sleeping in a few days. Honestly I'm still a bit tired from last weekend.

I might go find a cache or 2 if I'm lucky. I'm just 59 from the 1k mark. Looking at Medford I think I probably have about that many caches unfound. Maybe I need to plan a trip...

I'm back

SallyC and I took a long weekend to go to the coast just to find caches for the DeLorme Challenge. Over 1000 miles of driving led us through 29 different map sections... 17 of which I needed giving me 51 of 76. All of the 25 sections I need are east of I-5... its going to be a lot of driving to complete.

We concentrated on driving and crossing off map sections so we only found 22 caches. But we took the time to stop and see uncle Duck in Lakeside, eat a lot, climb the Astoria Column, and look at the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant before it was imploded.

poker table is done

I got my poker table back today with its new padded rail. Almost ready for a game...

Down the river

Sally and I made our way down the river today to find some caches.

Where the Crow flies!
One Hell (Gate) of a Cache
Hole in the wall
Another hole in the wall
Deedy's favorite homesite

Still puts me 81 short of 1000 but next weekend we are headed for the coast for a couple days... That should add a few to my total.

poker night

Well last night was poker night again. I gained some chips early and never looked back. I came out $51 ahead... I could have done better as I stayed in a few too many hands. I tried my best to play a bit more aggresive... will have to work on that.

Rogue Community College is putting on a poker tournament this weekend, but it has a $100 buy in. The money is for charity and non-cash prizes are given for the top 3 spots. I'm probably going to go geocaching instead but would be pretty fun...

hmmm

Well I think its time for an update. Its been a slow few weeks... not much going on at all. Sally and I did hit a few caches down by Applegate lake on the weekend.

Driver! Eyes on the Road, Please!
Left 350
Southern Exposure
On the Trail of Bigfoot

We had a couple of no finds and Sally hid a couple of caches... big caches. I'm still 86 caches from 1000

Update

As I typed my last entry my other cache was reviewed... so here they are

GC102 - Geocaching Basics II
GC121 - Over Used Hiding Spots

Nice days

Well I didn't fully take advantage of these nice days but I did go and look at some of my caches and ended up archiving a couple in Fish Hatchery park. I considered hiding new ones but there is a $2 parking fee now... more on this in a later blog entry.

So to make up for lost caches I hid two new ones in another location... one has been published and the other shouldn't be far behind.

90 more

Well I found one cache yesterday after work

Gilbert Creek Park

That leaves me with 90 more for 1000 finds.

Last night was also the last blazer game of the season. It was their worst season since 1971-72. I haven't mentioned them much this year in an attempt not to be overly critical... all teams go through ups and downs and Portland has been increadibly lucky to have had such a long stretch of playoff apperiences. Even with the bad play I risked my neck in an ice storm just to see a game and watched nearly everygame on TV. Hopefully there will be positive news to blog about this summer and into next season.

Pizza

Well yesterday was another fun pizza event. It was also SallyC's birthday. So what kind of weather did we order up for this great day? Rain of course. We found several caches and were soaked by pizza time. Finds for the day included

Egg Hunt
Another Egg Hunt
Olivia's 2 Cache
Pipe it!
Moneys worth!
Is Wally Home?
The Pits
Pizza XXXVIII

It was a fun day, and as a bonus I discovered my friend Kristen Kristen works at the sub shop.

Poker

Well last night after work was another poker night. Normally I'd go home for a minute and come back, but since the game was at 6pm and with the bridge construction I decided I'd find a cache or two first. So I found

Redwood Grove in Grants Pass

I was kindof focussed on one area so it took me a while. After that I went off to the poker game. I'll admit after some early success I haven't done so great in my last couple of games. Last night I came out $47 ahead... not bad.

900

Well since uncle Duck hid a cache within feet of my office I decided to grab it for my 900th and another FTF.

New Playground Clothes Required

He includes the whole story as to why this park was expanded in 3 short days.

Seven Feathers

Well over the weekend I went to Seven Feathers Casino. I was given a free ticket to the Herman's Hermits concert and went with some friends from work. Played some blackjack and despite going down early I eventually came out $2.50 ahead... almost a gallon of gas.... not bad.

899 and counting

Got back from Bend Yesterday without a clue at how many caches I had... turned out I was just one short of 900. We had at least 4 no finds over the weekend that could have pushed the count up.

On Saturday SallyC and I drove all over Central Oregon collecting sections for the Oregon DeLorme Challenge. We went from Brothers to Prineville, to Madras, down to Redmond and back to Bend all before the event. Our finds for the day:

Sylvester's Fool -a- Palooza
Sylvester's Bar & Grill
Fairview
Through The Dale
Fair & Square
Neo's coolest weapon
Willow Creek Bison Cache
Westside Madras
Canyon Beloooooooow!

On Sunday we took off for home taking a northern route to Springfield. Stopping for just a few caches along the way. We made a brief stop in Eugene for lunch and to the museum to view a 10,000 year old sandal. Then we stopped for a couple caches in Curtin and Drain before calling it a weekend. Finds for the day include:

You've got mail
McKenzie Airstrip
Would you like to adopt me?
I'll Pass
Under Cover

I now have 34 of 76 sections needed for the challenge.

Bend

Took today off of work to drive to Bend for Sylvester's Fool-a-Palooza tomorrow. SallyC and I had a hard time finding many caches as most of them on the way were snowbound. Did manage a few finds.

Aspen Cove
Don't fence me in
Senior Moment
Run Chipmunk, Run!
A Brush -o- Fate
Joe had to go

We'll probably find a few more tomorrow before the event tomorrow. We'll be doing a bit of driving to grab different sections for the Oregon DeLorme Challenge.

3 years and counting

Yesterday was Pizza XXXVII and it was a good time. Lots of cachers in attendance from all over... Cresent City, Prineville, McMinville were all represented. Before the event SallyC and I found some caches and she hid one. We also went to a record show at the fairgrounds (I guess we won't have events like that when they tear it all down.) I bought a few LPs and one 45... probably lucky I didn't find more. While we did visit several caches only one of them was a cache I hadn't previously found.

In Joy (2000 and counting)

Not sure why I hadn't found it before but it was a good one placed in honor of Iseek & Eyeseek2's 2000th find.

Well today is the 3rd aniversary of my first Geocache. While I had signed up for an account months earlier I still had no GPS and no finds. But on this day after work I decided to go and look for BDC's State Quarter Cache. Found it without a GPS and I was hooked. So today to celebrate I went after 3 caches... which for some reason were still unfound so I got 3 FTF's.

#1 A View of Old Joe
#2 A cache to get you near the top
A View From the Rock

A walk in the park

Yesterday I decided to go have a look for a couple of caches Sally hid in Tom Pearce Park. I found the first cache

Choosy Moms Choose Caching

but I couldn't find The Pits. It may have been cleaned out or raked over with pine needles.

It was still a nice day for caching. I decided not to pay the $2 parking fee as half the park is still not open.

Caching and Poker

Went to find Sally's newest caches today as they were still unfound after a couple weeks... but Duck and Biggieet_al beat me to them this morning.

Mmm... chocolate...
Fruity River Trail

Later in the afternoon I went to play some poker. I usually play limit games, but this time we were playing all in single table tournament style (like you see on TV.) I've never played a live game like that before and I struggled at it... probably played a few too many hands and wasn't aggressive enough with good hands. Only the top 2 spots payed and the best I did was 3rd. Guess I need to improve a bit before I quit my job to become a professional poker player.

wireless

Got my new laptop today and am posting this via wireless internet. So far I like it quite a bit. Should really prove its worth when we take off to Bend at the end of the month.

As for the trip to Bend I sure hope it decides to be spring and not snow on us.

Sure enough I shouldn't have mentioned the blazers in my last post. They stunk so bad you can smell it from Chicago.

One more day

My laptop should be delivered tomorrow if the UPS website is correct. I might get the car power adapter today... that should be useful. Not sure that I want the whole setup with the map going as I drive, but it will at least be a posability now.

In another rare highlight the Blazers beat the Suns last night 111-101. Not sure that I should mention it as the last time I wrote about the blazers they decided to lose the next 4 games. This will be the third year without going to the playoffs... they had made the playoffs the previous 21 seasons so we were kind of spoiled as fans.

I'm still 129 caches from 1000

New toy

Well to help with future geocaching trips I bought myself a new laptop. I ordered it from Dell and I hope it gets here soon. At the end of the month Sally and I are planning to go to Bend so it should be helpful there. Things are pretty quiet otherwise... might have to think about some caching tomorrow.

Hill Climbing

Today SallyC and I took on the new caches at Cathedral Hills. Despite some rain early it was nice and dry for our hike. My finds for the day included

Stumpy's Toupee
Crossroads Too
Another View

There are now 10 caches in Cathedral Hills park most of which I had found before... today we found them all except for Cathedral Hills #2 which is Drdan's newest... we didn't get around to it as we were losing daylight. Have to go back another day here pretty soon and have a look for it.

stuff

Did I mention I need just 132 more caches to reach 1000?

In a rare highlight this season the Blazers beat the Lakers tonight 99-93. Some of the best Blazer games ever have been against the lakers... I've got to see a couple of them in person

More Caching

Well this weekend I am house sitting for my uncle again... so I have slow dial up internet. After sitting around most of the morning I went to lunch and to a swap meet where I found several neat old radios... the weren't bargain priced but were nice... I might do a bit of price comparison on eBay. After that I decided to make the most of the day and find a couple new caches that have popped up recently. I noticed that Iseek & Eyeseek2 had been to each earlier in the day.

Just starting up
On the trail to the top

Now I'll go find something else to occupy my time besides this dial up internet... and to imagine... I use to think this dial up thing was cool.

Pizza and a road trip

Today was Pizza XXXVI in Cave Junction. Great turnout with lots of cachers from all over. Sally and I decided to start the day with a trip to the coast so we drove to Brookings. Our day started with a DNF at Tidal Influence, but we soon got better and found a handful on a very nice day to be on the coast. No wind or rain, just clear skys and sunshine. I could have stayed and cached but we headed back for the event and were just a bit late. Most of our finds came after the event as we drove around the valley. My finds for the day include

Smiley Face Cache
Casa de Ren
BuG <\]i[/> mE
Prince Island
Don't be dumb
Little Bit
Dam It - Have a Seat
Perfect
Heat Rises

Many of our finds were accompanied by Dragon's Passion 4 Caching who was down from Springfield. I might have given her grief for one no find a few months ago but she is an amazing cache finder with 2000 in just one year.

Overall a great day for caching

caches

Well today Sally got me off my sick, lazy butt to go find some caches. Decided to head up toward Lost Creek today and do a few. I found 7 on the day and revisited one... we also had 2 no finds

Gold! Where?
Fishing Park
The Rogue River
Telephone Pole Point
Lazyboy's Lunchbreak
Lost Creek Inlet
Lonesome Hickory

Not found were
Will it ever stop raining?
The Flag Cache

Revisted was
Vertical Stream
Were I took these pictures

Well...

Sorry about the lack of updates. I have felt pretty bad the last couple of weeks. I've been pretty good about not getting sick but this one got me. I'll admit I'm a baby when I don't feel good... I even turned down some cache finding today and layed around and slept. I've felt a lot better the last couple of days, but I'm still in recovery mode.

I discovered a new miracle product while I was sick. I've had a pretty nagging cough so I bought some new Zicam Cough Mist in the Cool Cherry flavor and it works... it is litterally so disgusting that everytime I think of the stuff I stop coughing so I can gag a little.

I also learned that I'm going to be an uncle. Not but a few months after my bro's wedding they are expecting (at least they waited till after the wedding I guess.) Anyway I guess I get to play the part of Uncle blazerfan.

Well since I already said I would tomorrow Sally and I should go find a few caches. So maybe I'll update again tomorrow.

Caching

Yesterday Sally and I took advantage of some extra daylight after work to find a handful of caches.

New Grants Pass
Forest Hills
1390
Lawnridge Return

151 more to 1000.

Washed away

Well I disabled my cache Golf on the Rocks today after I came to the conclusion that it probably washed away weeks ago. It is visited so often that I just remembered it existed. I'll archive it after I search for any remains.

Cachin'

Went with SallyC yesterday and found a few caches... just 155 more for 1000. Our finds on the day included

Cathedral Hills Hunt
The Main Canal Cache
Don't Fence Me In

I'm eagerly awaiting Super Bowl XL. I've watched the Seahawks for many years (not religiously like the blazers... but still followed them) through the years they've had good years or years they should be good... but I never really dreamed that one day they'd go to the Super Bowl. It should be fun to watch... I think it will be a good game.

Excitement

Well its been an interesting few days as indicated by my lack of blog entries. I've heard that this weekend may be the weekend we get washed away... suppose to rain a lot, but I'll believe it when I see it.

The last cache I tried for Cathedral Hills Hunt was pretty well hidden and I looked all around with no luck. My GPS was leading me in circles... I'll try it again on the next not so rainy day.

Since I gave up geocoin collecting I have put some of my money into some new LP's and fixing up a couple of old turntables I had. I've always liked vinyl records and have several of them but didn't have anyway to play them for a long time. Now I have 2 turntables... one I got from my uncle which I just have hooked up to some computer speakers. My problem with it was that without an pre-amp it just didn't put out enough sound... you had to have the speakers up all the way just to hear it. After a bit of looking I found a small, cheap pre-amp and now it works great. My other turntable is a portable one... its a small suitcase style one with a red and white checker pattern... the kind most kids would have had in the 60's I bet. It had quit on me a few years back but I didn't have the heart to get rid of it... turns out it only needed a new cartridge... so it was a cheap fix. I've been thinking about buying a new one just to have in my office at work... I've also considered Sirius satellite radio for work/home/car... big technology gap there huh?

Mmmmm

Well tomorrow is GeoPizza 35: The Pizza Strikes Back. It should be a good time, and I look forward to seeing everyone.

Just to clear up the geocoin issue I have been considering cutting back on collecting for a while now. GC.com just handed me a good excuse to finally push me over the line. It has gotten very expensive and the number of coins being issued are just too many to keep up with. As proof that I'm not like Lazyboy you'll notice that I have yet to be banned from the forums (though I have considered trying for dramatic effect)... or posted anything GC.com negative there. In this thread you'll notice a few people have gone Lazyboy, one of them even to the point of archiving his caches.

Hmmm... maybe if the rain holds off I can find another cache or two this weekend... that would be nice.

No more

I'm usually not prone to being upset by gc.com politics, but today they enacted a new policy for the geocoins forum. More or less you can't post a sale or a link to a sale of anything but a gc.com trackable geocoin. Ok I guess it makes business sense... they don't want people using their site to sell coins they don't make money on. Somehow this has struck me in a very negative way that I can't explain... I guess because gc.com had little to do with the hobby until they found they can make money on it. For 3 years its been pretty much a free market, and I thought it worked just fine.

So anyway my final decision is that I am stopping my collection of geocoins. It has gotten far too expensive and there are way too many coins being made for no good reason anyway. Every gc.com trackable coin in my collection was an extra $1.50 to them that I just don't care to pay anymore. I've never been a fan of trackable geocoins anyway... just an added cost with no benefit in my opinion.

Update

Yes, I know I've been bad at updating my blog... guess I need to get back in the habit of writing about everything. Well today was MLK day so it was a holiday for SallyC and I... we decided to go caching and I chose today to do the District 3 Firehouse Cache Dash. Oh sure it was a lot of driving for one smiley, but it was fun to drive around. There was a 90% chance of rain but I never felt a drop. I'm now just 160 away from 1000. Might get there yet.

First caches of 2006

Well today SallyC and I went out to find a few caches for the first time this year. Early it didn't look too good for us as it was raining pretty hard, but it only rained a little bit on us after we got started. I had 15 finds on the day and only 1 of them was not hidden by Iseek.

Look, its the North Pole
Beware of Spiders that Glow in the Dark
Cache & Ye Shall Find
Ooops ! Forgot to do something
Just the facts, ma'am
EEK !!
The smell may kill you
Reflection
Jelly Stone Park
Relief is just a few steps away
Josephine County 3490
End of the line
Lane Residence
Mc Toys R Us
You think its where!

of course I charged up my camera batteries and packed it to every cache and took not a single picture. The camera never left its case.

End of an era

I'm surprised Lazyboy didn't notice... he must really be done with caching or too busy with diving, road building, and family matters. Three days ago all locationless caches on gc.com were archived and locked for good. I was never a big fan of locationless caches myself... but they were kinda fun to keep an eye out for. I logged my first in Eastern Oregon after I had found the only regular cache whithin 30 miles... if I had a list of locationless with me I could have logged more. I'm sure that someday virtuals, webcams, and probably even the new earth caches will meet a similar end.

R.I.P.
Locationless Caches
2001-2006

Thursday

Well 5 days into 2006 and I have done no caching. This weekend Sally and I plan to go find a few. I did notice something last night that is a good sign despite us still being in the dead of winter... what I noticed was I left work a little later than normal but it wasn't quite dark when I got home. So as the days get longer there is more time for caching.

I have a rough draft design for a new geocoin. I'm still deciding if I should take my design and run or see if I can get a designer to fix it up a bit. I took my last pay stub and bank statement and figured up my tax refund for the year... it should be plenty for a geocoin.

2006

Well it is my first post of the new year. I'm still adjusting to my blog changes... it looks funny... not sure if I need to tweek it some more or just take the time to grow use to it. I'm pretty picky when it comes to things like that... I want it to be perfect.

I've also started designing my new geocoin. I have lots of ideas and I am really afraid of the cost... this time I want to add several more features... and that costs money. This time I plan to leave the gc.com logo off so that I can sell a couple on eBay if I want.