Saturday, December 31, 2005

Last Day of 2005

Well its the last day of 2005 so that means it is time to sumerize all that was good about the year. Some of my personal highlights include
  • Hid 9 caches and 2 events
  • Reached the 600, 700, and 800 Find marks
  • Had 34 finds on 03/20/05 with Duck & Biggieet_al
  • Had 35 finds on 12/11/05 with Riddlers
  • Introduced SallyC to geocaching
  • Completed the Coin Quest
Some of my favorite caches of 2005 include
Thanks to everyone who made 2005 a great year for caching. Looking forward to more in 2006!

Friday, December 30, 2005

Flood

Well its not at '97 level yet but the water is rising. It has probably already claimed the cache NEAR Side of the Park as the location was under water. My cache Applegate Treasure may soon be in trouble as well but I wasn't able to go check on it. Here are some pictures at Fish Hatchery Park and Applegate Golf Course.






Will it ever stop raining?

I remember New Years day 1997... it was a lot like this... then it flooded. The flood of '97 really raised the Applegate river and washed a big channel through the Applegate golf course which is still a major golf ball hazard to this day.

Since I had to work one day of my vacation I took today off just to sit around. While I may have started my blog in June 2004 I didn't really start keeping it up until December. So to celebrate one year of blogging I changed the look of the site a little. Let me know what you think of it.

Monday, December 26, 2005

Well...

I officially sat around all day and did nothing. Its a pretty nice feeling especially since I have a bad feeling I am going to be way busy at work. Friday's server problems at the bank scared me... I'm kinda lazy and not sure that I like hard work and resposability :)

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all my loyal blog readers. Its been a pretty good day and I can smell the turkey... Mmmm turkey.

Today rather than just one Christmas cache I found 2
Diamonds Are Forever II
The Eyes Have It

I'll try to be better about blog updates for the rest of the year :)

Friday, December 23, 2005

Cruddy

Well I've been on vacation all week. Took my time finding gifts... didn't find a single cache, but that's ok. Then today I got an urgent call from work...

What I found was disaster... the short story is that the RAID server had a drive failure (well 2 actually) and it was dead. Lucky for me one of those drives was just mostly dead, so I was able to get it back up. Still a bad problem... took me most of the day and I'll be dealing with it for weeks to come... what a Christmas gift. On the bright side I'll soon be getting a new server like I've been asking for.

I'll have to see what caches I have sitting around as I've made it a tradition to find a cache on Christmas day. I don't think I have a shortage of nearby caches.

Monday, December 19, 2005

Blazer game adventure

Well Sunday my friend Dave and I had planned to go to Portland to look around for Christmas gifts and watch the blazer game. Sunday morning at about 9am I ventured out into the cold and started my trip north. Usually I only worry about the montain passes as far as weather goes, and they were clean and dry... not a problem at all... after that I figured I was home free... wrong.

Now I've driven I-5 many, many times in all sorts of bad weather. I've seen mini tornados of hale in the freeway near eugene before, rain so hard you could not see, snow and wind... I've driven through them all. On Sunday however I saw something new... freezing rain. Now its really nothing new... it happens sometimes especially up in Portland... I've just never actually encountered it myself.

When I saw the first sign mentioning wrecks and freezing rain I should have probably turned around... but of course the blazer game was calling me. Soon I came up on the stopped traffic and waited... and waited. A semi truck from the south bound lane had slid into the north bound from what I could tell. The road at this point was wet but not icey... at least were I was. After a bit I got passed that wreck and was able to travel along at about 30-35 mph until coming up to the next wreck... an SUV that had rolled. Traffic was stopped there too and after several minutes I got though that one... had I-5 south not looked 10 times worse than North I would have turned around about then. I came up to stopped traffic once more, but never saw a wreck. I pulled into Sutherlin to get gas and when I stepped out of my car I almost fell down because I was walking on ice... I was second guessing myself but knew it was either continue on or wait it out where I was... I wanted to go to the Blazer game so on I went.

In between these time periods I had a chance to flip through the radio stations and listen to the Seahawks try there best to lose. In between about each play they would interupt to give weather updates... "wrecks along I-5"... "I-5 South closed"... "Freezing rain in Springfield"... by the time I was in Sutherlin Seattle had pulled it out and conditions were improving in Springfield.

Traffic was slow, but I-5 north was moving and I saw no more wrecks on my side. On the South bound side however I saw at least 6. Eventually I made it to Cottage Grove and stopped to eat. Mmmm... Arby's. By this time the freeway looked much better and I made the drive to Albany in a reasonable time. So when I got to Albany I had been driving for just over 5 hours. I met Dave there and since the freeway had been so much better, we decided to keep going.

The trip from that point went pretty well... we came past Salem and all was clear. We were just a few mile outside of Portland when things seemed to get worse. First there was some snow/ice at the side of the road, then slush between lanes... soon were were driving on packed snow/ice. At this point I was all about turning around... we weren't really in a position to get off and the roads off of I-5 looked worse than what we had... we slowly continued on at about 4mph. By this time I was sure glad I own an AWD as other cars were slipping and sliding, many pulled over and chained up, others were abandoned. As we got closer to PDX the traffic thinned and we made it to the Rose Garden... at this point we thought the west garden garage might be where we would stay the night.

Now I need to back up a few blog entries to remember winning free blazer tickets that weren't waiting for me... well this time we were picking up Dave's free tickets... if they were not there we might have gone postal. This time we were not disapointed... free tickets were waiting... regular price $131 each... sweet! Turned out not to matter... the crowd was so small after the first quarter they told everyone to come on down and sit closer... that was cool... we sat center court just a few rows back... best seats ever. Crowd was counted at 2923 and the blazers played to win for once... final score 97-92 blazers.

On the way back ODOT had come through for us... the road had some fresh sand/gravel and we made it to Corvallis without problem. I only found one picture that kind of shows the road conditions in Portland (it is from thismorning... looked worse last night)... it was quite a trip


Thursday, December 15, 2005

Neglect

Well I've been a bad boy about updating my blog again... looks like I'll be getting a lump of coal for Christmas... again.

Yesterday I got my Coin Quest prize in the mail. The prize was of course a coin, not really a special coin for the quest but its a personal type coin with the names of the cachers who created the quest and their website... and a button for participating. Pretty nice for a free game.

SallyC put up the next pizza event

GeoPizza35: The Pizza Stikes Back

That should be a fun time... and a good way to start out 2006!

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Gasquet and back

Well today I took off with Riddlers to find Two Tracks' series of Chess and Shotglass caches. The caches pretty much stretch fro Selma, OR to Gasquet, CA all together I logged 35 caches today. That was a pretty big day... but I think I have found more than that a couple of times before. One of the highlights today is that I logged my 800th cache on Chess #13.

Saturday was Pizza XXXIV which was a good time. Even Lazyboy showed up... guess the stars were aligned right. SallyC and I picked up 5 caches before the event... and we also stopped to hide one, Sally's Toy Cache. We hid the cache at Cantrall Buckley park which like many parks in Jackson County has been avoided because of a day use fee... which is sad because it is a great park and could easily support many caches. No lack of good hiding spots either. No one was around to collect the fee on Saturday so you might go get this one now while it is not as highly enforced.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

New Caches

Iseek & Eyeseek2 hid a bunch of new caches today. Noticed it didn't take uncle duck long to get out and find them all.

PIZZA XXXIV is this weekend and if the stars align just right, the water is cold enough and his students can actually swim and think at the same time then Lazboy himself might be at the event. Oh sure we make fun of him a lot online but the honest truth is... its way more fun to make fun of him in person. So maybe we'll get the chance.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

WooHoo!

I did it! Last night I completed the Coin Quest! The final puzzle had me royally confused for a while, but eventually I was able to solve it. There are several people who are one cache from completion... most of them waiting for an event... some drove hundreds of miles to attend one (yes, all for a coin) makes me really glad we have such a great group with regular events.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Weekend

Try as I might I couldn't make a blog update last night as the blogger update site seemed to be down everytime I tried... oh well you'll just have to read yesterdays news today. On Saturday Sally and I went to the EVC Coin Event and had a fun time. Before the event we found 3 caches.

Camp Howitzer
Al Quacka Sleeper Cell - Oregon
Infirmary

We looked for another that I had coords for but no hints... I guess it was up in a tree. Not really worthy of posting a DNF.

After we left the event we found 2 more caches

Passion Cache
Gary Who?

We couldn't find Fully Contained 2 which was one I needed for the coin quest as it had 3 numbers matching in the coords. I did find a letterbox which has been confused for this cache in the past. Rather than just log the letterbox I decided to do things right and yesterday I took off to Eagle Point to find Blue Star Memorial which met the same requirement.

So tonight I'll be able to log my last cache for the Coin Quest and hopfully I can solve the puzzle and get a coin. The quest has been a lot of fun and I kind of hate to see it come to an end.

Friday, December 02, 2005

3 more to go

Well I have 3 more caches to complete for the coin quest. Last night I got Roots and Wings which was also by a statue, but I needed the FTF more. I'll be able to log it for the Coin Quest today and that will leave me with 3 caches to complete

last 3 digits match
placed in 2003
virtual

Tomorrow I am going to Eugene and within a couple miles of the EVC Coin event are caches matching all the requirements I need. It is coming down to the wire for me as I will probably just squeak into the top 250... if not for the archiving of jfreaks virtuals I could have been finished as a trip to Medford could have easily netted me these last requirements. Oh well... I suppose if I really wanted to be done I would have went on a road trip last weekend.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

statue cache

Well I've been needing a statue cache for the coin quest and there has been one within .15 miles of my office all this time. Today I found DrDan's The First Brick Building in GP Town. Within 10 feet is an 8 foot tall nutcracker statue. Dan nicely sent me an email last night to remind me of that fact. I knew all those nutcrackers around town were good for something. So now I have 4 requirements left

FTF
Last 3 digits matching
Placed in 2003
Virtual

Saturday SallyC and I are going to the EVC Coin Event. While coins might have been enough to lure me there it will be easy to pick up the last 3 of those requirements. Now I just need a FTF. Only the first 250 people to complete the quest get a coin and I am sitting at 204. If anything new pops up tonight I've got my raincoat and flashlight ready.