vituperation

December 1, 2002

A couple of months ago I wrote a bit about how I tried Starbucks coffee (the Antiguan, specifically) and hated it. Yesterday, I had a hankering for un-froufy (non-flavored, to the layperson) coffee, so I ground myself a pound of Starbucks ‘Breakfast Blend’ yesterday morning at the grocery store.

I must say, when I brew it myself it makes a mighty fine cup o’ Joe.

All I can say is "wow". Wow, and "thank you" to all the people who wrote me a few months back and told me about something wickedly fun. I hemmed and hawed, and it took some time for me to try it, but wow.

It all started many years ago, you see. The United States put twenty-seven satellites into space around the planet. Those satellites have highly accurate atomic clocks in them, and they transmit their times constantly. Devices on the Earth can pick up these signals and use triangulation to determine precisely where on the earth they are. This system is, of course, the GPS system, and it was developed to help the mighty US military in times of battle. Initially, civilian devices were intentionally less accurate - by 100 yards or so - than government devices because of "selective availability", which gave the military devices an advantage.

Then, on May 1, 2000, President Clinton did something good. He ordered selective availability to be turned off and instantly transformed civilian devices into being accurate within about three yards. Two days later, an inventive American named Dave Ulmer hid a box of "treasure" outside Portland, Oregon and posted the location in latitude and longitude coordinates on a Usenet news group.

Thus was born the hobby called Geocaching.

Caches - over 35000 now - are planted all over the world, and the web site above is like a central database, storing the coordinates for all of them. There are almost 400 caches within 100 miles of me. To Geocache, you need a GPS receiver, which can cost anywhere between $100 and $10000. Mine, shown below, was $226 (after a $50 rebate) and came with a CD of all the streets in America. I can download regions into my GPS (I’ve got about 50 miles all around me in there right now) and see where I am at any given time. I can also see what hotels, restaurants, gas stations, ATMs, and so on are near me, and see phone numbers for those places that have them.

Note to stalkers: the location shown above is NOT where I live.
Do I look that stupid? Don’t answer that.

Last Saturday, I took the spud for our first geocache hunt. The cache was located on the Indian Creek walkway in Madison. Of course I documented the journey.

Indian creek, of all things. The walkway more or less follows its path
for about 2.5 miles, give or take.

The spud, walking the walkway. In the distance you can see rollerbladers.

Hedge apples litter the ground along the walkway.
In the interests of full disclosure, I had to ask a fellow walker what they were.
Ever have a question? Ask an old person, they’re founts of knowledge.

To get to the geocache, we had to go about 100 yards off the walkway.

It was right where the site said it would be.

The congratulatory note inside the box. And part of my fine mug above it.

The view back toward the walkway and the dropping sun.

Finding the Indian Creek geocache was a blast, and I was ready for something a little tougher. For about a month now, I’ve been having the crazy urge to puchase a GPS and use it to cross a mountain without the use of trails. Cross-country, busting my hump, and all that. Turns out there’s a mountain just for that less than three miles from where I live. Seriously, I had no idea this was here until I found that there are three geocaches hidden there. Friday, I loaded up the spud and we headed for the hill.

The trailhead, and maps of the trails.

The view of Clift’s Cove from one of the trails.

Balance rock, my nemesis. There’s a geocache hidden in a crevasse
atop this rock. The picture doesn’t do the rock justice; it’s 15 or 20 feet tall
and to climb it you have to dangle vital parts of your anatomy out over a
drop. Though it’s hard to tell, the ground is sloping downward at an alarming
rate. Since my issues with heights have been previously documented I
won’t go into them here. Suffice it to say we didn’t get this one.

Upon leaving balance rock I decided to make my dream a reality. To hell with
the trails, I told the spud, let’s do this one in a straight line. Above is a picture
in the direction of that straight line, right up the side of the mountain.

We made it over the top of the mountain and down into the valley below.
As is customary between hills, there was a streambed, though the stream
was mostly dry.

We had to climb up a second mountain before getting near the geocache we were looking for. The spud almost didn’t make it; she wasn’t ready for the rigors of hiking up a mountain and spent most of the hike alternately complaining and whining. At the geocache location she proclaimed herself too tired to help me look, and we ultimately left without finding it.

I went back alone yesterday and found the geocache in about 10 minutes, but didn’t take the camera that time. I thought about leaving one of the numerous ticks I found on my pants, but ultimately left a toy. Afterwards, I went and found two more caches in Madison.

Two thumbs up for geocaching.