I woke to the sound of
the dustmen making enough noise to wake the dead. For some reason
"Furry Face TM" didn't bat an
eyelid at that racket. I got up to find him still asleep.
I checked out the
Internet to find not a lot had happened overnight, then hopped into
the car. I wasted a few minutes trying (and failing) to find a
geocache over by the tip, then made my way to the foundry where I met
Steve for a spot of brekkie. You can't beat a fry-up.
As we scoffed my phone
beeped. I'd sent a message to Chris asking about where that elusive
geocache was. He'd found it before and he sent me a hint. And so with
brekkie scoffed I went back and still couldn't find it.
The original plan for the
day had me going for a hospital appointment this morning, but with
less than a day to go the hospital had phoned to cancel so I took
"Furry Face TM" for a little walk
round Great Chart,
Eighteen months ago I put
out a series of puzzle geocaches. Today I put them all into the
archive for dead geocaches. The series never really worked. The
puzzles were too hard, the route went through a farm with
uncontrolled dogs being loosed at random intervals, the cache hides
were too difficult, the brambles and stinging nettles were too wild,
and just recently muck spreading and building work have been the
final nails in the series's coffin.
I went out with my dog to
retrieve the eleven caches; we only managed to find five of them. The
other six have gone into the ether.
Once home I hosed the mud
from Furry Face TM" and mowed the lawn.
I've not mowed it for a few weeks and it showed. I could probably
have done a better job but a bad back and a worse elbow made me want
to give up.
I gave up, and had a bag
of crisps and a glass of Doctor Pepper for lunch. As I scoffed I
watched more Star
Trek: Hidden Frontier. I wasn't overly impressed with the episode
I watched yesterday; this one wasn't much better. But I shall
perservere.
The plan for the
afternoon had been a geo-wander around Wye. But a combination of my
geo-compadres being unavailable together with the actual geocaches in
Wye suddenly being temporaroily disabled put paid to that idea.
Instead I stayed in and put the finishing touches to my James Bond
Wherigo. It only took three hours.
Now I have to get actual
GPS co ordinates for the start and the finish (I shall do that
tomorrow morning on the way to work) and then create web pages on
geocaching dot com and Wherigo dot com. Only about another hour's
work and it will be ready to go live.
Much as I like creating
the Wherigos I must admit that (having spent the morning bringing
in a whole load of puzzle geocaches) I find myself wondering if
I'm using the right "hiding the geocache" strategy.
People who hide geocaches fall into two camps. Those that want the
things found, and those that don't. I *want* people to go and
find what I'm hiding. But it is no secret that people (generally)
*don't* go looking for mine. When I put out a geocache I
usually don't actually say exactly where it is. Instead I set a
puzzle to be solved or a GPS adventure to be played. And people
(frankly) don't seem to want to fart about like that. Six
months ago I put out a Wherigo I
was rather pleased with. The game takes about two to three hours
to play, it really makes you think, it took me about thirty hours to
program and test. It has only been found five times in those six
months.
I've since spent forty
quid on a puzzle cache that has elicited absolutely no interest
whatsoever.
In the meantime a film
pot that was stuck under a nearby rock a couple of weeks ago has now
been found fifteen times.
Perhaps I should just
hide film pots under rocks. It seems to be what the public wants...
"er indoors TM"
came home and we set off to astro club. We had a summer social in the
woods. It was quite a good evening; shame I had to come home early.
Got to be up early for work tomorrow...
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