Current at 11/6/2011 (Online waypoint URL) You have already found this cache! Master Index    Nearest Caches PB #2 by Pa_Bottle (2/1.5) N49° 49.654  W97° 06.794 (WGS84) UTM  14U   E 635698  N 5521167 Use waypoint: GC26Y0R Size: Micro    Hidden on 4/16/2010 In Manitoba, Canada Difficulty:     Terrain:   *No attributes specified*     Cache is a larger tube cammoed to its enviroment. This series takes you to the St Vital malls and shop[ping areas. Enjoy. Cache only contains a log sheet and FTF cert. You will need to bring your own pencil.

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3/4/2011 by Kabuthunk
Aaahahahaha! At long, long, long last, after multiple DNF's, I'm finally able to stroke a line through this cache on my to-do list. It happened quite by chance more than anything else. I wasn't offhand planning on going after this cache today, but well... here I am logging it. And due to my wife, the non-geocacher of all people! After work today, my wife and I decided to head to Earls for dinner. When we got nearby, I jokingly said to make a detour to the cache, not actually expecting anything (she was driving). Naturally... we didn't stop . However, when we got to Earls, they said there would be a 30 minute wait. My wife then suggested I go after the cache. Well hell... I wasn't planning on tackling this one again when it's a) dark, or b) busy at the mall... but what the heck, let's see what I can pull off.

Wandering over, I was surprised to see no cars parked in that entire row by the trees, or even the next row after that! Everyone was crammed into any rows after that. Strange, but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Seeing nobody immediately in the area (and by blind coincidence, being good friends with the head of security at the mall... just in case), I went in after it. Placing myself pretty much right where the other prints were (MuStash’s and tango-and-cache’s maybe? Or possibly a non-posted DNF... can't remember when it snowed last), I looked around, but spotted nothing.

Naturally, while trying to be discreet, in the span of 5 minutes of me being amongst the trees, I received two text messages and one phone call (none of which I went after until I was out of there). I mean… COME ON! What kind of timing is that? However, I spotted nothing whatsoever. At one point, I THOUGHT I spotted it, and was SO sure I had it… until I touched it and found it was a dead leaf . Discouraged, I headed out, but decided on a whim to try looking from another direction where there were no prints. Not 10 seconds later, I spotted the cache container (ironically, it must have been about 2 inches from where that dead leaf was)! It took me a few seconds to find a way to grab it, but I successfully had it in hand .

At about this exact moment, some driver decided to park diagonally in the middle of that aforementioned empty section of the parking lot close to me. They didn’t get out or drive off or anything, but being nervous as hell, I just walked away towards the mall with the cache in hand (hope nobody tried finding it for those 5 minutes). I kept looking back, but they never got out or followed me or went to the tree. I walked to the entrance of the mall by London Drugs and found a bench inside. Parking myself there, I quickly extracted the log and dropped in a chainmail ball and signed the logbook.

Ahh… thank god for my permanently having a mini-bison tube attached to my keys with about 5 mini and nano titanium chainmail balls, and a teensy tiny pencil in there.

To add to my frustrations, as I was signing the logbook, some guy decided to just… stand behind me holding his baby. Not even sit down… just stand there, facing towards me in general (my back was to him), not three feet away from me. Personal space people! Learn about it! Thankfully with my back to him, I could close everything up and slip it into my jacket pocket again.

Heading back to the parking lot… that guy in the diagonal-parked car was STILL there. I was about to just go to Earls and drop this cache off afterwards, but as I started to walk away, the car suddenly just… drove off and left. Nobody got in to indicate they were waiting for someone, it just… arbitrarily left. Well whatever, works for me! Back goes the cache, and off to dinner goes me (the phone calls were apparently us getting a table after 5 minutes instead of the quoted 30… I was about 10 minutes late ).

But still… totally worth it. Cache finally found and logged

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and titanium micromail ball.

10/11/2010 by Kabuthunk
Oh, this cache is going to fight me kicking and screaming all the way, isn't it . Since I was out geocaching in general today, I figured I'd take a second swing at two of my previous DNF's... see if I can't resolve some of them. As it turns out, I managed to not be able to resolve either of them today.

Much like the last time, I took two swipes at this cache throughout the day... once at the start of today's adventure, and one at the very end on the way home. I didn't particularly have any new information to work with from my first attempt, but given the cache size, I figured it had just eluded me last time. And much like last time, I was still going with the theory of only spending 5-10 minutes at ground zero per visit. THIS time however, I parked almost exactly where I had last time, but a little bit further East in a vague attempt to block the sight of me from the mall to an extent.

I had kinda hoped that the mall would be closed today, making for a relative lack of people in the area. Unfortunately, it looks like some poor people still have to work today. Actually... probably a LOT of people, since the mall seemed almost as busy in the middle of today as it would on a Saturday! Oh well, time and a half at least . So with my attempt at blocking the view of me with my car, I set out to hunt for the cache. A somewhat recent conversation with Pa_Bottle at least confirmed what plant I should be looking at here, so I put my concentration into that. Diving right into the heart of things as it were, I still couldn't spot the elusive cache. Taking a bit more time, I ended up circling the entire area, trying to spot something from the outside. Nothing. And despite the coordinates pointing me a bit closer to the mall, I also went and searched the third tree away from the others, just in case it happened to be hiding in there. But no... that potential hiding spot turned up empty as well.

Gotta say... this cache is definitely putting up a fight... probably quite a bit moreso than the 'Kaboom!' cache that had stumped me for some time. But after spending my first 10 or so minutes there, I hopped back in my car and hightailed it off to the other caches I was going to attempt today. Several hours later, I returned to the parking lot, hoping that THIS would be the time I'd locate the cache! I decided to park a bit further away in the middle of the parking lot to avoid the situation being identical as last time, and walked over. I hunted and hunted yet again, this time spending most of my searching on the outer reaches of the trees instead of near the trunk. Not to be outdone, I think the cache somehow hid itself further still. I tried everything I could that took the hint into account, but nothing was working at this point.

After a short while, that security camera perched at the top corner of the mall was starting to feel like it was boring into my back, so I decided once again to cut and run. I get the feeling that I might eventually have to be looking for more of a hint on this one, although I don't know what more information I could be given that I don't already have .

But... when you're only spending 10 minutes at a time at a cache site, it's not that hard to come up empty. Couple this with the fact that whenever I faced West, the sun was of course shining directly into my eyes, making for quite a difficult time hunting in that general direction.

Fear not... I shall return yet another time, hopefully with a bit more success. I think my record for DNF's is three on a single cache way back when I first started caching. Let's hope that I don't have to break that record .

10/3/2010 by Kabuthunk
Oh, you elusive little bugger, this cache is going to be one of THOSE, isn't it? One of the ones where you have to fight kicking and screaming to find, involving repeated attempts, and probably a lot of muttered obscenities . Although, I can't say that I wasn't forewarned about this one. In my chat with Pa_Bottle yesterday, he gave me the gist of how this was a particularly difficult cache to find.

Now generally, I'm quite perceptive, and believe myself to be fairly good at the whole 'stealth' aspect of geocaching. Today would definitely be testing my abilities in this arena. I actually wasn't entirely sure where the cache was when I drove up into the St. Vital mall parking lot, but after I parked, I discovered that I was a scant 30 meters from the posted coordinates! What a nice coincidence... makes things easy (hah!) Of course, I didn't notice this until I had walked away from the car a bit and the GPS finally grabbed a signal, so I had ended up walking in the wrong direction for a little bit. I decided to loop my way around by way of the end of the parking lot, and then coming around towards the St. Vital entrance sign.

I'll say one thing about this sign though... the overlapping ridge on it makes for quite a convenient seat when waiting for the coast to be as clear as possible. I figured I'd give the sign itself a quick look-over, despite not actually being at the posted ground zero. It turned up nothing for me, and so I slowly began to work my way towards ground zero itself. Thankfully, very few cars were parked in the immediate vicinity (looks like the windy weather at least kept SOME people at home today). I spent about five minutes, searching the vicinity as a whole. Firstly by doing a quick semi-circle around the area, trying to spot anything by just sight alone. Alas... no luck. The next few minutes were spent diving into the belly of the beast, so to speak. A quick look around, and I decided to temporarily call off the hunt. I had spent about 6 or so minutes at ground zero itself, and for particularly conspicuous locations such as this one, I try to avoid spending more time at it during a single sitting.

At this point, I wandered off in search of another cache nearby... coincidentally another of the PB series, and of which I was thankfully able to find. After finishing up there, I circled my way back towards this location, in hopes of getting a bit luckier.

As an added bit of luck however, the car that had parked the closest to the coordinates had left! At this point, I got the interesting idea to move MY car to... well... pretty much exactly at ground zero. To add to the legitimacy of my being there, I popped the trunk and took the opportunity to fill my windshield washer fluid. The hood blocked the wind, and I was able to take several good, long looks and quick huntings for the cache throughout this. After topping up the fluid, I closed everything back up, and once again sunk myself into the belly of the beast. After a good few minutes, I still came up empty, but had topped out the time I wanted to spend here with this many people around. As well, I think it might be due to the changing seasons, but things at ground zero were very... stabby. My hands definitely took quite the lacerating, anyway. I was wearing a jacket at least, so the rest of my arms remained mostly unscathed. Come to think of it... I should probably check my jacket. It's probably picked up a new scratch or two .

In either case, I shall return for this one sometime soon. Like I said at the top... methinks this one will require several visits of a few minutes apiece before I can finally claim a find on it.

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