Now, look here! You had better pay attention to the clues to this cache. That's all I have to say about that. Congrats to Turdle on the FTF! Logging Etiquette: Geocache hiders sometimes go through a great deal of planning to place their caches. As a result, they'd like to hear your feedback on whether you liked or disliked any aspect of the hide, or if you feel that some cache maintenance is required. Single word, acronym, or emoticon logs may be easier when you have a lot of caches to log, but it doesn't tell the hider or other finders anything about your adventure (or lack thereof) in finding the cache. Please keep this in mind when entering your log. |
5/1/2008 by Kabuthunk
I was poking around geocaching's website last night, and was basically just kinda hopping from page to page of previous logs I've found, seeing what other said about them, you know. Just killing time, kinda. Amidst my pagehopping, I was also clicking on 'caches nearest this one' for some of 'em, and just randomly perusing caches in Winnipeg. My perusals eventually took me to the 'newest in Manitoba'. Typically, I don't bother with that link all that much, since it seems that 9 times out of 10, the caches not yet found are about 150km's away from home. And as much of a geocacher as I am... a geocache still hasn't become incentive enough to drive 2+ hours in the dead of the night . Generally, everything that is placed within a 10km radius tends to be found within hours of being placed (damn you people with your cellphone-notifications . Then again, if I carried a cellphone, you can bet I'd be in on it too ).
But what's this? A cache that's relatively near? Unfound? A puzzle cache though... but called "The HTML Cache". Hmm... I might actually have a vague chance of solving this puzzle. After all... I'm all about coding webpages. Nuts to that frontpage or dreamweaver pagebuilding junk... give me a base text editor, and I'm happy .
It would appear my prediction about the puzzle was correct. It took me approximately 4.5 seconds to complete . However... there's a problem. It's currently 11:30 at night... and I've just finished a tall glass of Jack & Rootbeer (as opposed to Jack & Coke. Seriously... if you've never tried it with Rootbeer, you don't know what you're missing). Now a single drink is unlikely to put me over the limit... but I'm paranoid by nature, so I never take said types of chances. What ALSO convinced me to stay inside last night was google maps telling me that the actual coordinates appeared to be in a bushy looking area. Pitch black + unfamiliar bushy area + micro? Yeah... that's just ASKING for problems.
Alas... I head to sleep, quite sure that it would be found by the time I wake up tomorrow... that being today. Upon returning to the site at about 10:00am... I see that it is not logged. I however predicted that it was likely found, but not yet logged. I ended up predicting correctly . Grats TurdleEggs. I decided to go for it though, under the vague chance it was still unfound, and also to get in on the ground floor of an HTML-related cache.
So I get to the coordinates and park nearby. Treking over, I soon discover that I'm very glad of one thing. Thank GOD I wear CSA-approved shoes on a regular basis. Green-triangle for the win!
What... I like my shoes to have some weight... stop looking at me like I'm insane to actually WANT heavy shoes .
Anyhoo... after about a half-hour of searching (and expanding my search to about 15 meters on all sides from the coordinates), I realized something. Having not marked down the cache size anywhere, I for some reason had it in my head that it was a "small" size cache. Yeah... for the record... thoughts like that screw you over . Going back to a spot I had glanced at earlier (about a minute after arriving, annoyingly enough) and thought "Pfft, no point in looking there... I'm looking for SMALL, not MICRO", I moments later had the cache in-hand. Let this be a lesson... marking down cache size is a good idea. Found at 10:30am... evidently an hour after TurdleEggs had been there. Oh, if only I had woken up earlier.
But in either case, I moments after finding that cache confirmed that I was second to find. Silver medal, as it were. And you know what they say... "silver medal" is just another way of saying "the first loser" . No, but seriously... yay for being among the top few!
Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and micromail ball
Hints (Back)
I've said all I need to say...