Streaking

I opted for Wilder/Pryor over Stevens

Geocaching is a hobby based on numbers, so it's not surprising geocachers are enamored with numbers:  number of caches found, number of caches placed, number of difficult caches found, etc.  One of the most basic number is your current streak:  how many consecutive days have you found a cache?  As of today, my streak is 319.  I started this streak in late August 2012, and hope to keep it up until at least early January 2014, when I will hit 500 straight days.

Apart from the obvious obsessive-compulsive reasons and bragging rights, having a long streak under your belt allows you to find certain Challenge caches that require to you have a long streak (for example, 100 days, 200 days, 365 days), or that indirectly become easier with a long streak -- there are many challenge caches where you must find a cache on every day of the year.  Obviously if you have a yearlong streak, you qualify (assuming they don't require February 29).

Haven't found a cache here yet

Starting up

Starting a streak is easy, and if you use geocaching.com, it keeps track of your streaks for you.  You may want to set a goal at first, say 100 days or 365, but try not to take it seriously.  My goal was nebulous at first, then 365, and I finally settled on 500 because I decided I'd likely get sick of it by then --- it's easy to keep it going in the summer when the weather is good, but you might find your interest flagging in the winter when the weather stinks and you're more likely to be sick.  I got lucky my first winter, as it was a remarkably mild one with no city-crippling ice storms or the like.  Note that even if you are prepared to go caching in the snow, the cache might not be ready for you:  it's a lot harder brushing away the ivy when it's frozen solid.

500 also seemed like a good idea because Challenge caches that require more than 500 are few and far between.  I assume there are some that require a 1000 day streak, but I'll leave that until after I'm retired or something.

One other thing to consider when you're starting is whether you have any obviously problematic vacations coming up.  There may be lots of caches near where you live, but if you're backpacking the Alaskan outback in a few weeks, you're probably going to run into trouble.  Apart from the grizzly bears and mosquitoes, I mean.

Come to think of it, you will need batteries

Keeping it going

Groundspeak covered a lot of ground on maintaining a streak in a recent blog post (I was going to write this one before I saw it, I swear), but I'll add my two cents.

Go to your personal page on geocaching.com, and click on '(filter out finds)' [under 'near your home location' in the right column.  If you plan on a streak of N days, find the Nth closest unfound cache from your home.  All the caches, from the closest one to this one, are your obvious targets over the next N days.  How far away is the Nth one?  3 miles?  5?  10?  Can you clear out all of them?  Probably not.  Better look a few more miles out to be sure.

Of course, you are not committing yourself to finding these particular caches, but assuming you have a regular job, most days you will be finding caches near your house, near your place of work, or on the route between them.  Chances are you don't have N caches in these 3 places, unless you're willing to go far away or you have an especially long commute (in which case you probably don't have a lot of time to be messing around with geocaching streaks).  In order to make your streak more fun, you want to look for opportunities to find caches that are not in these 3 places.

On the weekend, this usually is not a problem.  It's the 5 workdays where you need to work on a strategy.  Do you have a weekly night 'out'?  Do you have a place more than a few miles away you go to once or twice a week (yoga, the grocery store, etc.)?  Those are your best opportunities to find caches not in the usual spots.  During the winter, I divvied up the week as follows:  Tuesday I took the kids to swimming, so I found a cache near the pool.  Thursday was my night out alone, so I rode my bike to a different neighborhood to eat dinner and found a cache nearby.  One day a week (usually the one forecast to have the most rain) I'd drive to work (the other days I biked or took the bus), stopping a few neighborhoods away to grab a cache.  On average one night a week I'd run an errand, or take the family out to eat, or go out with my wife.  That left only 1 day a week where I had to get a cache on the way to work, usually on my bike.  I'm maintaining this schedule (roughly speaking) in the summer, but I find myself diverting a few miles off my regular commute to get the commute cache as the number of unfound caches near home and work dwindles.

It's very helpful to keep a few easy caches near your home for 'emergency use'.  I used one of these recently on a day when I returned from a trip to Europe.  I was jet lagged, so having an easy one a mile or so from my house was a good thing.  But my most dire emergency was actually last fall, when we had car trouble in the wilderness west of Yakima.  What was supposed to be a relaxing day in the mountains turned into an hours long wait for a tow, then cadging a ride back to Seattle from some people we just met.  Needless to say, there was no time to find a cache until we were safely back at Seattle late in the day, and I had no car.  Luckily, I had left a fairly easy one a mile or so away that I could find in the dark on my bike.

To increase your pool of caches to find, you should definitely sign up for a geocaching.com premium membership (which opens up a number of premium member caches you didn't know were there before).  And you should solve all the nearby puzzle caches that you can (and try to qualify for nearby challenges).  Every nearby puzzle you get the coordinates for and every challenge you qualify for is one more nearby cache you can find (plus puzzle finds are often easy, as most of the difficulty is usually in the puzzle, not the hide).

There's no rush to solve the puzzles immediately; you just want to solve them sometime before your streak ends.  Similarly, you can treat multicaches leisurely.  Find a waypoint or two when you have time on the weekends, then come back for the final during the week when you're usually more pressed for time.

Geocaching brought me to the Tower of the Winds (Athens, Greece)

Streaking on vacation

Vacations should be relaxing, and most of the time it's not hard to keep a streak going on vacation.  But sometimes you need some extra planning.  Here are a few situations that can be problematic.

• National Parks and wilderness areas - Physical caches are not allowed in National Parks or National Wilderness in the USA, and caches are pretty few and far between in most wild areas (although popular non-Wilderness trails usually have at least one cache at the most scenic part of the hike:  the lake, waterfall, or mountaintop you're hiking to).  National Parks can have virtual or earth caches, so if you're driving around somewhere like Mt. Rainier, you can usually keep that streak going.  But if you're backpacking for days on end, that may be a different story.  Probably best to either give up your streak or the trip itself (I vote for the streak, but that's just me).
• Some foreign countries - Some people have better things to do than hide and seek plastic containers, so don't expect to find a lot of caches in Mali, say.  My trip to Europe presented some problems, as the countries I was visiting, Italy and Greece, weren't geocaching hotbeds.  There were plenty of caches to find in the large cities, but smaller cities would usually have at most 2 or 3 caches.
• Guided tours - When you're on your own on vacation,  geocaching can be very enjoyable, as caches are often hidden in interesting places you might not have found on your own (see the Tower of the Winds, above).  But if you're on a tight schedule you didn't create, caching can be difficult.  Maybe your tour takes you within a few hundred feet of an easy cache, but you don't want to slip away and potentially miss your bus.  If you're trying to combine geocaching and travel, I'd skip guided tours.

The latter two combined proved particularly problematic on my European trip.  The first few days were in Florence and Rome, where it was easy to maintain my streak.  But then came a few days where we traveled first to Sorrento (near Capri), then to take an overnight ferry to Greece, then Delphi.  Sorrento had a few caches, as did Capri, and the day we were travelling to the ferry we were scheduled to tour Pompeii, which contains an easy virtual cache.  The main problem was the trip from the ferry to Delphi, a day when there was realistically only one cache to find, the only cache in Delphi.

To prepare, I printed out a number of cache listings and spoiler photos.  This was a good thing, because my GPSr decided early in the trip to forget all the caches I had preloaded, while the Italian SIM card in my smartphone ran out of minutes just before we landed in Greece.  But things got more difficult than this.  I was on a trip with a number of middle school students, and many of them got sick on the way to Rome, so we skipped the boat trip to Capri.  Luckily I had time to walk a few miles to get one of the Sorrento caches.  Then at dinner, we learned there was a possibility we might have to skip Pompeii due to a strike.  I woke up early (5 am) to walk up into the hills and get the other Sorrento cache, which turned out to be necessary as we did indeed have to skip Pompeii.  The next day, soon after we got to Delphi in the late afternoon, I took a jog out of town a half mile, consulted my spoiler photos, and found the only cache in Delphi.  It all worked out, but only due to some preplanning.

Go out on a high note

The End

Of course, I haven't hit the end of my streak yet, but the Groundspeak blog post has a great suggestion: make your last cache a memorable one.  I'll have to give some thought to this one, though, as I doubt I'll be climbing Mailbox Peak in January.

Upcoming Orienteering

Get outside and enjoy things!

The cherry blossoms are out and the sun is shining.  It's time to get out and hunt for things.  One of the best choices when the weather is good is orienteering.  Orienteering runs year-round of course, but when the days get longer you get different types of events in a wider variety of locations.  Here are some of the ones I'm looking forward to the most:

Cascade Orienteering Club puts on classic orienteering events year-round, including a very nice winter/scholastic series that takes place in parks around Puget Sound.  But they go much further afield in the summer, as their events calendar makes clear.  Their calendar includes events from all over the Pacific Northwest and beyond (many of which are not put on by Cascade), in case you want to drive to Bend for a weekend or fly to New York for the US Orienteering Championships.  But closer to home, they are putting on events in Fishtrap Lake (near Spokane) and Salmon La Sac (near Cle Elum) in June.  Both are beautiful locations, although with highly different terrain.  I particularly like Fishtrap Lake, located in what is known as the channeled scablands - think Grand Coulee minus the giant dam, and lots of sagebrush.  This terrain is much more open than a Northwest forest, so you can typically see a lot of the features from a distance and can more easily judge the best route to where you're going.  And it's very pretty.

All this, plus mussels

Much closer to home, Ft. Ebey (near Coupeville on Whidbey Island) is well-known as one of the most scenic (and easily accessible) areas on the Sound, plus they have great shellfish nearby (Penn Cove mussels and oysters).

On Wednesday nights in the summer, the Sammammish Orienteering Club puts on a series of evening events at Eastside Parks.  Depending on your tolerance for crossing floating bridges during rush hour, these are usually quite enjoyable events that also usually include a free picnic meal afterwards.  My favorite spots are Big Finn Hill Park in Kirkland, partly because there's no floating bridge involved, and Luther Burbank Park on Mercer Island:  only half a floating bridge to cross (you can take the express lanes from Seattle, because you're going to Mercer Island), plus it takes place at the height of the hot season (ha!) right next to a swimming beach.

Meridian Geographics puts on a number of races, including the Street Scramble series, the Seattle Night and Day Challenge, and at least one rogaine (this year, the  Rock Creek Ramble).  Rock Creek Ramble is also in the channeled scablands, and Night and Day is hard to pass up, but I'm going to miss both this year.  Of the Street Scrambles (urban scavenger hunts, basically), Fremont Oktoberfest should be awesome, since I always set the course.  Queen Anne is coming up tomorrow, and should be hilly fun.  Either you relish the hills and staircases, or you have to think ahead as to how to avoid them.  Gig Harbor is also hilly (and free!), but the most intriguing to me is Anderson Island, a small island in the South Sound.  I've never been there, and at roughly 2 x 3 miles in size, it seems like you should be able to cover most of the island in three hours.

Similar to Street Scrambles are the Hood Hunts, which are smaller in scale and (nearly always) free.  The season opener is in the North Creek area of Bothell (by UW Bothell, although I'm not sure if that will be part of the map).  There will also be two events in Edmonds:  May 18 (which is a fundraiser and thus has an entry fee), and August 21 (which is the usual cost:  nada).  My pick for the best of the Seattle Hood Hunts is Montlake, because it looks like you'll get to explore at least part of the Arboretum.

Photo credits

Ft. Ebey: ethicalcannibal via photopin cc

Corey's Back: Big Dig #2

Look for this apple core if you like shoveling

Cedar Grove Compost is back with another Big Dig contest.  Just like last year, you look at participating retailers for a small poster with a picture of Corey, the anthropomorphic apple core pictured above.  Input the code on the poster at the form on the Compost Days website, and get a coupon for a free bag of compost, and a chance to participate in The Big Dig, where you dig around in a big pile of compost for more interesting prizes.  Last year I won a garden consult and a gift card at Sky Nursery.

A few things have changed since last year.  First of all, there will be 3 Big Digs instead of just one, on 3 successive Saturdays, one in Lynnwood, one in Ballard, and one in Rainier Beach.  Probably as a consequence, the sites with Coreys are more spread out, reaching all the way up to Arlington, with sites on the Eastside as well.  Less dramatically, almost all the Corey sites this year are stores with Garden sections, so there's no need to go looking for bulletin boards in the back of restaurants like last year.  And the codes this year are no longer 4 digit numbers, but rather things that can be composted (which probably means you can guess some of them without actually visiting the locations).

Unfortunately, as of this writing, many of the sites that are supposed to have the Corey posters up do not.  I've visited 10 of them so far, and only 5 have had the posters available.  4 of the missing 5 didn't have any sign that the promotion was underway, even though it was supposed to start last weekend.  So either put things off for a few days, or be prepared to be disappointed.

Vital strategy point if you get to dig:  wear pants you don't mind throwing out

Strategy

Strategy-wise, it's a no-brainer to go to your nearest location and get the code, as it basically gets you a free bag of compost (coupon mailed later, so you can't do it all in one trip).  But let's assume you want to participate in the Big Dig.  You should probably read the rules, which contain a number of interesting wrinkles that might affect your strategy.

First of all, you can enter up to 30 times, and each entry increases your chance of being in a Big Dig, so you should enter as often as you can.  There are 3 distinct drawings for the 3 Big Digs, so if you can attend all 3, the logical strategy is to get your entries in as soon as possible so that you have as many chances to be drawn as possible (entries that aren't drawn stay in the pool of entries to be possibly drawn later).

But actually, it's not clear this is the best strategy because of another rule:  unclaimed prizes in the first Big Dig will be buried in the second Big Dig.  And unclaimed prizes in the second Big Dig will be buried in the third.  So maybe you want to be drawn later, since later Digs will have more good prizes.  A lot of this, I think, will depend on how they run the Big Digs.  In last year's contest, they basically let people dig until they found a prize chest.  The new rules say the diggers get 90 seconds, and, if they don't find a chest, they just get another bag of compost.  Given how difficult it was to find prizes last year, I suspect this will be relaxed; the first box wasn't found last year until about the 5th minute of digging, and I doubt they're going to let the first Digs finish without someone winning a good prize.  Still, I would rather be in the 2nd or 3rd Big Dig than the 1st, as I suspect they're going to have many details to iron out and you might not want to be in the Dig where they do their initial ironing.

Personally, I can only attend one of the Big Digs, so I'm going to time my entries accordingly.  If you can't attend them all, you should do the same.  The first drawing (for the March 30th Big Dig) only includes entries received by March 26.  The second drawing (for the April 7 Dig) includes entries received by April 2.  The deadline for the last drawing (for the April 14 Dig) is April 10.  So if you definitely want the second Dig, save up your entries and submit them March 27-April 2, and if you want the third dig, only submit them April 3-10.

Adventure Run tonight

The puzzle-hunt-contest season for the year really gets underway tonight, with the first First Thursday Adventure Run of the year.  The format is simple:  they give you a map with a dozen or so checkpoints, and at every checkpoint you get a raffle ticket (or 2 or 3 or 4).  The raffle starts an hour after the event starts, so you want to be back by then if you want to win prizes.  If the past is any guide, there will be dozens of prizes worth a collective few thousands of dollars.  Plus you can drink a good beer while you wait, and there's an after party with another, smaller raffle.  Since many of the checkpoints are within a few blocks of the start/finish (at Road Runner Sports, Green Lake), you don't even have to run.

Here are a few tips to maximize your chances of winning:

1. Buy a T-shirt.  If you buy a shirt, you get double tickets.  Last year, the shirt cost $24, which is expensive, but you got a nice technical shirt as well as a pint glass, and if you go to only a few runs, odds are it will pay for itself with a gift certificate or two.  Also, you can loan the shirt to a friend or spouse if you can't make it.
2. Go to the runs where fewer people are likely to show up.  They give out the prizes whether people are there or not, so your best odds of winning are early in the year (when fewer people know about it) and/or on a day when the weather is bad.  They have a bag check, so pack a few extra layers and change into some warm clothing while you wait to collect your loot.
3. Attend the after party.  If you buy food and/or a drink at the after party (the details here are hazy; ask if they don't make it clear), you get a raffle ticket.  Typically there are only a couple of dozen raffle tickets here, so your odds are particularly good.  On the other hand, if it's in the middle of summer and the after party location is packed, feel free to skip it.
4. Poke around the vendors before the race starts.  They have raffle tickets to give out, but you may not want to 'pay the price'.  The price is usually that you put your name on a mailing list, but it could be something as simple as trying a free sample or as complicated as checking out a pair of loaner shoes to run in.
5. Figure out how to organize your raffle tickets.  When the raffle is going on, you can't rifle through your tickets quickly enough to tell if you've won.  A popular strategy is to get a long strip of tape and tape them into one long band of ticket 'ribbons'.  I used to do this, then decided a better solution was to  just record the ticket numbers and colors (e.g., White 2743).  But writing while running is difficult, so this time I'm trying to use my new Android phone to my advantage:  I downloaded a speech to text app called ListNote, and hope to speak the numbers into the phone as I go.  This will save me some time if it works.  Whatever you do, group your tickets/numbers by the color of the ticket, as they are announced that way ("Blue 7387").
   Another way to save time with tickets is to separate them in advance.  Each ticket comes in two halves.  For the raffle, you hold on to one half, while you turn in the other.  Rather than spending time at the finish tearing up your tickets, you can do it while jogging or waiting for stoplights, but you have to be careful.  You should have 2 containers, one for the halves you want to keep (doesn't matter which half) and one for the halves to turn in.  They usually give you a ziplock bag that works for 1 of the containers; bring another one or something similar for the other.  Also, if you get multiple tickets at a checkpoint, you want to separate the ones you turn in, but keep together the ones you keep.  If this is too difficult to handle while you're jogging, best to just finish early and do it at the finish line rather than potentially spoiling all your tickets.
   Finally, be sure to protect your tickets from water (rain, sweat, Slip and Slide checkpoints [those come later in the year]).  Don't just shove them in your pocket
6. Visit the Secret Checkpoint.  One checkpoint is revealed only online before the event, and it's usually worth more than 1 ticket (and hence, worth visiting).  Often you will need to say a 'password' to get the tickets.  See the Facebook event page for the location and password.
   Cascade Orienteering Club also has an 'orienteering' checkpoint, which you can checkout on their Facebook page in advance, or by visiting their tent in the start/finish area before the event begins.
7. Have a route planned.  This requires a bit of knowledge, and it helps to have run a few of these before, but the checkpoint locations are usually at businesses only, and there are only a few possible business districts nearby.  The most popular locations have been the businesses near Ravenna Blvd/Green Lake (i.e., the start), north Green Lake (i.e., Duke's), Phinney Ridge, Stone/45th, Tangletown, 65th and Latona, and Roosevelt near 65th.  Can you run around Green Lake in an hour?  Can you run around the lake and climb Phinney Ridge in an hour?  Those are often the two best routes.  Another good basic route is the south side of Green Lake, down Stone to 45th, to Tangletown, then Roosevelt and back.  Note that the nearby checkpoints are often mobbed at the start and quiet near the end, and Roosevelt is close enough to get mobbed easily, so ending with Roosevelt and the checkpoints near the start is usually a good idea.
   Also note that they usually reveal the location of the after party in advance, and that place usually has a checkpoint.  So with that checkpoint plus the Secret Checkpoint you know at least 2 locations for sure.
8. Group locations based on the number of tickets they will give you, and evaluate your route based on that.  If Roosevelt gives you 5 tickets and Phinney Ridge 4, and you can't do both, you probably want to skip Phinney Ridge.
9. If you have a smartphone, register in advance.  They will mail a link to the map to your phone, which will save you having to write down the locations.  Supposedly it will also route you to locations, but I doubt that's very useful.

Check-in starts tonight (March 7) at 5pm.  Run is at 6pm.  Raffle at 7pm,  After party at around 7:30 at Tacos Guaymas.  Hope to see you tonight!

Bring Back Emerald City Search

Are those 2 guys twins?

The Emerald City Search is a unique Seattle treasure hunt.  Every year or two, they hide a medallion somewhere in the city, and publish progressively easier clues (one per day) to help you find it.  It's a lot of fun, and it's been particularly good to me (I've won twice).  But its future is in doubt.

Kickstart

I've always been curious about the funding model for this search.  Originally it was put on by The Seattle Times and the University of Washington, along with a rotating non-profit (The Seattle Art Museum, The Woodland Park Zoo, etc.).  But both of the original major sponsors have been having funding problems in recent years (if you hadn't noticed), so it eventually passed to One Reel, who puts on Bumbershoot and other events.  This is advantageous in two ways:  First, of course, they know how to put on events.  Second, they know a lot of people who can donate cool prizes.  But it's difficult to see how they could be making enough money on the proposition to warrant the expenses they surely incur.

After the first of two projected Emerald City Searches in 2012, they apparently came to the same realization, and scrapped the second Search (which was to take place on the 50th anniversary of the end of the 1962 World's Fair).  Thankfully, instead of just letting it die, the decided to try to raise the necessary funds using the current fundraising mechanism of today, Kickstarter.  Take a look at their project page (which features my unkempt mug not once, but twice --- while searching for the medallion I usually let minor grooming tasks like shaves and haircuts slide).  If you like the Search and want to see it go on, you should pledge something.  If they don't make their ambitious goal, you get your money back, and if you pledge more than $10, you get a perk of some sort.  I really like Bumbershoot, and I found the best part of a platinum pass was the access to the VIP lounge, so I particularly like the $200 level.  But go ahead and pledge $5000 and get your band on stage at Bumbershoot if that's your thing.

Once again, their project page is here.

It's my year!

Upcoming and ongoing

Speaking of Kickstarter, if you like puzzles, you can sign up for a year of them (this project has been funded, so it will occur and they will take your money).

Speaking of Canlis contests...wait, no one is actually speaking about Canlis contests.  But they hid a menu back on their birthday in December, and no one's found it yet.  Want more details?  There aren't any.  Maybe there's a clue on their website.  Or maybe you have to bribe Brian Canlis with some good scotch.  Very good scotch. 

• Chinatown/International District Lunar New Year Scavenger Hunt - now through February 9.  A fairly easy family-friendly stroll around the ID looking for fortune cookies that yield a final puzzle.  Solve the puzzle and you get to enter a random drawing at the Lunar New Year Festival on February 9.
• WIOL/Winter O #7 - February 2, Fire Mountain Scout Camp (up by Mt Vernon).  The course setter says if you're doing the more advanced courses in shorts, expect to bleed.  And regardless of what you wear, expect your shoes and socks to be wet when you finish.  Prove him wrong by doing it barefoot.
• Puzzled Pint - February 12, ???.  Meet at a local pub to do puzzles on teams.  Which pub?  Well, there's a puzzle you have to solve to find out, released the previous day (if you can't figure out what day that is, you probably shouldn't come).  Repeats every 2nd Tuesday of the months at different locations.
• WIOl/Winter O #8 - February 16, Lincoln Tree Farm, Spanaway.  Other than the fact that there will be trees, I have no idea what to expect here.  But neither will any of the other competitors, since this is a completely new venue for the Cascade Orienteering Club.
• Ultimate Orienteer #1 - February 23, Woodland Park.  Winter orienteering is over.  Summer orienteering is starting.  Don't be put off by the title; you're just running around in Woodland Park (the part that doesn't require an admission fee).

Starting up in March:  Street Scrambles and First Thursday Adventure Runs (Green Lake).

Photo credits

Snake: bsmith4815 via photopin cc

Ring My Bell (or: First-to-Find)

Like all hobbies, geocaching has its own unique goals (see Challenges), perhaps more so than others due to its numbers-driven quality.  And Seattle probably has more unique goals than other places, just because there are so many geocaches here.  Seattle's most prized goal is to find the Seattle FTF Bell, which I managed to do last week along with a couple of other people.

Fast like a turtle

First-to-Find

The concept of being first to find is fairly self-explanatory:  someone hides a cache, and you are the first person to find it (or one of the people in a group that finds it first).  For my first few months of caching, I wasn't particularly interested in this pursuit, but I got my first chance in late August when we were vacationing in the Methow Valley (where of course, the competition is much less than in Seattle, if only because there are fewer people around).  Someone hid a cache a few miles from where we were staying on the day we arrived, and I just happened to notice it in the afternoon.  I piled the kids in the car to go look, confident I'd find it, but other than an amusing incident with a pig that followed our car down the road, there was no joy on that hunt.  The next morning, the cache was still unfound, and the hiding spot was next to a parking lot where my wife had to be dropped off for a trail run (The Cutthroat Classic, run on one of the most scenic stretches of the Pacific Crest Trail, by the way.  We're both doing it next year), so I looked some more.  And failed again.  Later in the day I took the kids to the same spot (where we had to meet my wife after the run), and failed a 3rd time.  I still haven't found that cache, but a number of other people have.

Ironically, the next day I could have easily gotten a FTF in the even more sparsely populated town of Conconully, Washington, when I bicycled into town to stay a few days.  But I didn't check the website for new caches in Conconully, and I had no internet access there, so someone from Leavenworth drove all the way there and found the cache first.

To really play the FTF game, though, you don't want to count on hitting the website at just the right time:  you want automatic notifications when the caches are published.   This is a premium feature on geocaching.com, so you have to pay them money.  But if you have, the link to Set Up Notifications is on the right column of your Quick View page.  Conveniently, the default is to notify you of anything published within 10 miles of your home location (you did set up your home location, didn't you?).  Inconveniently, you have to set up a different notification for each type of cache.  Luckily, there are only about half a dozen of them that are at all common (Multicache:  okay.  GPS Adventures Exhibit:  uh, what?).

It started out as just a bell...

The Seattle FTF Bell

Now-retired cacher fishiam gives a good summary of the Bell's history:

...it was not initially called the Seattle FTF bell, but rather the TUS FTF bell. What does TUS stand for you might ask? Tiresome Usual Suspects, a moniker (derisively) hung on a group of us back in 2005/2006 that were a largish (8-10) group of avid FTF'ers. We were fiercely competitive, going after all forms of new postings - from 1/1 traditionals to the toughest puzzles. Team Maccabee rather brilliantly created the bell as a way of both defusing and illuminating the competitive FTF scene in Seattle at the time.

[Note:  a '1/1 traditional' is a cache with the easiest possible difficulty rating and no puzzle required to solve it whatsoever.]

Team Maccabee (the original and still-active owner of the Bell) just found an old bell, added a special tag to it so that it was a trackable item, and hid it in a not very difficult cache.  As the years went by, the Bell was found and hidden by others, sometimes in fairly standard caches, but often in ridiculous locations (Kellogg Island) or with ridiculously difficult puzzles to solve (or multiple puzzles.  Note that the FTF for this cache drove from Mt. Vernon to Seattle to claim the prize).

As the years went by, the Bell was also renamed to the Seattle FTF Bell, and acquired an increasingly large collection of other objects attached to it (see the picture below) so that it is now too large and too valuable to actually leave in a cache.  If you are the FTF of a Bell cache, you have to contact the cache owner to acquire your prize.

...and now it's come to this.

Arcade

The first time I heard about the Bell was in 2011 when a friend tried to enlist me to help find a cache in Discovery Park.  I wasn't much help, and I still haven't figured that puzzle out, even with the hints that were added later.  But when a new cache called Arcade was published on Thursday around lunchtime, I thought I'd give it a chance.  After all, it was apparently near Lake Union, so it was fairly close by if I managed to solve the puzzles.

The puzzle in Arcade was to win 3 video games online, Pac-man, Solitaire, and Minesweeper.  Each one gave you a cache clue after you beat it.  I started with Minesweeper, since I figured that would be a good gauge of how hard the games would be -- you can program the game to be just about as hard as you want by increasing the number of mines to find.  As you know if you've played Minesweeper, the game involves a lot of logic and, assuming more than a few mines, a bit of luck.  By using a few basic strategies (basically, make your 50-50 guesses at the beginning of the game) I was able to clear this one after about a dozen tries and about 5 minutes of work.  It yielded a combination.

Next I tried Solitaire, which was just the standard game of Klondike.  Like Minesweeper, there are a few strategies you can use to increase your odds of winning, but since this was just a speed game, I abandoned games early unless they appeared promising and again beat the game in about 5 minutes, which yielded the longitude coordinates.

Finally I turned to Pac-Man, a game I'm not very good at.  Fortunately for me, this was a strange version that (at least on my browser) featured no maze, just an array of dots, and only one ghost.  To make things easier, all it took was one deke and the ghost wandered off the edge of my window and never returned.  Trying the game later on other browsers, it appears no one ever gets a maze or more than one ghost, but the ghost does sometimes play a little smarter.  Still, it's easy to fool if you just draw it off-screen.  It seems that you can return from off-screen, but the ghost never does.  In any event, with no ghost, it was just a matter of gobbling up the dots to get the latitude coordinates.  Together the coordinates yielded a street corner just a couple of miles away, so I set out to see what I could find.

At Ground Zero I saw two women (the bad news).  But they were clearly still searching (the good news).  They told me they had been looking for 20 minutes without any luck.  I joined them in not finding the cache.  A few minutes later, another gentleman, markta showed up, and together we all 4 failed to find anything except one suggestive piece of wood.  I stripped the bark off the wood looking for a special way to open it, but could not.  After about 10 minutes, the women gave up and left.  A few minutes later, markta, after learning I had never had a FTF, yielded the search to me, as he had already had many of his own, including finding the Bell about 5 years ago when it was still young.

A few minutes after he left, I was getting increasingly discouraged, when who should show up but methylgrace, a cacher I'd met virtually but not in person.  She hadn't beat the games either, but was instead directed here by Atomhugger, who had, but was too busy to find it himself.  After showing her where I thought the coordinates pointed, she just reached out and grabbed it from its hiding place.  D'oh!  I could have sworn I just searched there.

Luckily, she was gracious enough to credit all of us with a 3-way FTF.  The cache was contained in a lockbox like real estate agents use (hence the combination), which was, of course, not large enough for the Bell.  We picked it up from the cache owner about 15 minutes later.

Our job now is to concoct a devilish enough puzzle and/or hide for the next cache.  Also to add something to the Bell to make it even more unwieldy.  The picture above was taken in our secret underground cache construction lair.  Okay, it was at a local coffee shop.

P.S. I've gotten 2 more FTFs since finding the Bell.

Ride bikes!  Donate food!  Dress up like Miles Standish!

Upcoming and ongoing

 

• WIOL/Winter O #2 - November 17, Magnuson Park.  Remember if it rains that Magnuson used to be a swamp.  You've been warned.
• Southcenter Mall Scavenger Hunt - November 17.  You could win an ornament!  Should I mention that the only time I went to this mall, I escaped being caught in a lockdown by about 90 minutes?  Yeah, I think I should.
• Cranksgiving 2012 - November 17, Gas Works Park.  Ride down to Columbia City, collecting food for charity along the way.  It's like your own personal food drive on wheels.  I'd do it were it not for prior commitments.  See above.  No, above the mall scavenger hunt.
• Fall BEAST Race - November 18, Maple Valley. The 'E' in BEAST stands for Evening, but thankfully, this race is during the day.  Some running, some biking, some orienteering, a surprise challenge.  And if it's on the Eastside, there's usually snow involved, somehow.  Not on purpose, but it just seems to happen.  Seems unlikely given the weather forecast, but still...
• Puzzlewright Puzzle Games - November 18, 2pm, Northgate Barnes and Noble.  'Tis the season...for contests in malls, I guess.  This one seems a little more palatable, though:  a puzzle contest put on by a puzzle book press.  Your prize if you win:  a book of puzzles.  Go if you like puzzles.
• Holiday Goose Chase - starts around Thanksgiving, I presume.  A scavenger hunt of sorts in downtown Seattle.  Requires downloading a mobile app.  Put on by geoteaming, a local company that puts on geocaching-themed events.
• WIOL/Winter O #3 - December 1, Bridle Trails State Park.  It's in a state park, so it's a little more rustic.  Oh, wait, it's in Kirkland.  
• Puzzled Pint - December 11, ???.  Meet at a local pub to do puzzles on teams.  Which pub?  Well, there's a puzzle you have to solve to find out, released the previous day (if you can't figure out what day that is, you probably shouldn't come).  Repeats every 2nd Tuesday of the months at different locations.
• WIOL/Winter O #4 - December 15, UW Campus.  There is only one time you can hold a meet on the UW campus:  between quarters.  I like this venue if only because I can occasionally beat the top orienteers (on a single checkpoint only) because I know the place pretty well.

Photo Credits

Geocaching log: eszter via photopin cc
Gracie (the dog): schulesjoe

Upcoming and Ongoing

I spent a lot of time on the American History Puzzle last week, and didn't have time to include upcoming local events in my wrap-up post.  Since there are a few good ones coming up, I figured I'd just give you a quick update:  The last First Thursday Run of the year!  Scavenger hunts at the UW and Downtown Seattle!  A colloquim on winning contests!  The start of winter orienteering!  Get out there and have some fun!

P.S., these are all in the Seattle area.

Possible Golden Ticket hiding place

(italics = new since last time)

• First Thursday Adventure Run - November 1, Green Lake.  Last one before March.  Remember:  if it's raining, they still give away the same prizes, so your chances of winning skyrocket.
• Golden Ticket Scavenger Hunt - November 2, UW campus, 10am-2pm.  Part of W Day, the UW's birthday celebration.  Clues are tweeted at the top of the hour.  First to find each ticket gets a hoodie and a box of chocolates.  I just might compete in this.
• WIOL/Winter O #1 - November 3, Lincoln Park.  Competitive orienteering for young and old.
• The Theory of Crowdsourcing Contests - November 15, UW Campus, 3:30pm.  It's not every day that there's a scholarly talk on contests.  Unfortunately, this is not about puzzle hunts, but contests where the entrants compete to complete a task, such as design a logo.  Still, there's nothing wrong about learning about strategies for winning contests.
• WIOL/Winter O #2 - November 17, Magnuson Park.  Remember if it rains that Magnuson used to be a swamp.  You've been warned.
• Fall BEAST Race - November 18. The 'E' in BEAST stands for Evening, but thankfully, this race is during the day.  Some running, some biking, some orienteering, a surprise challenge.  And if it's on the Eastside, there's usually snow involved, somehow.  Not on purpose, but it just seems to happen.
• Holiday Goose Chase - starts around Thanksgiving, I presume.  A scavenger hunt of sorts in downtown Seattle.  Requires downloading a mobile app.  Put on by geoteaming, a local company that puts on geocaching-themed events.

Photo Credits

Broken Obelisk: Elephant wearing striped pants via photopin cc