Geocaching for Dummies

This just in.. I made a bonehead move.

2009-08-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

Today is my blunder post. We’ve nabbed a few caches in the past few days—which has been nice—but in the pursuit of another park and grab, I made a mistake. Fence post caches are pretty neat spots but there’s only a few ways you can hide a cache on a fencepost. Yesterday I approached a cache location, saw a fencepost and knew immediately it was one of these three ways: hanging inside, attached to the lid or magnetically affixed.

This cache was one of the “inside the pipe” hung-by-a-hook type, and I spotted it immediately. I set down my PDA, reached for the cache.. and promptly dropped it. It fell all the way down the pipe to the bottom. Great. I logged the find but gingerly left the cache and posted a note as to my mistake. I came back later that evening to try and extricate it with a hanging magnet but I hadn’t thought that through either as the magnet would (duh) cling to the side of the pipe instead of gently being lowered to the metal hook. I had another idea to remove it, but It occurred to me that I was going through far too much trouble for a hanging micro.

So I’m going to open my cache box at home and see if I can fashion a suitable replacement. If not, I will offer to upgrade the owner’s cache with an Army decon container.

Hardware: Geocaching with a PDA

2009-08-14T15:08:00.000-07:00

The hardware! It’s about time I got to this article. I’ve received a number of inquiries about how I make the PDA work as a geocaching device, and it’s actually pretty simple. I have a knack for over-complicating things, but I have to admit—this one is pretty straightforward.

The gear:

n Dell Axim X30 PDA with Bluetooth

1 car charger
1 desktop cradle sync/charger
3 cases (2 aluminum hard, 1 black leather soft)

n Holux GR-230 Bluetooth GPSr “puck”

1 charger A/C + usb cigarette lighter charger port

n 1 Apple iPod Touch 2^nd Generation (optional)

The Axim:

PROs:

n It’s cheap! When I first bought mine in 2004, it cost me thereabouts of $200 +/-. Now a solid used unit will run $50-90 depending on condition and accessories on eBay.

n Replaceable battery! There’s essentially 2 types of Li-ion batteries for the Axim—900mAh, which sits flush with the PDA’s back and 1400mAh (the extended battery) which sits about ¼ inch out from the back of the PDA. Ironically enough, each cost roughly the same on eBay at $10 each and they typically last 3-5 years depending on use and care.

n SD card, wi-fi, bluetooth, internal microphone, external speaker, runs all Windows Mobile 2003 software—syncs with Outlook or a server for contacts, calendar, email and files—infared port for sharing data, printing or working as a remote control.. etc. You get the idea. This little guy does quite a bit.

n It’s light! With the 900mAh battery installed, it weighs less than my cellphone (handy if dropped—less inertia = less chance of damage)

CONS:

n It’s not ruggedized. It is a PDA, after all. To get around this, I’ve procured two aluminum cases (one for the 900mAh battery size and another for the extended battery) with neoprene cushioning.

n Battery life. With the 1400mAh battery, battery life is approximately 4 hours without any form of recharge. The 900mAh will yield about 2 hours and change depending on usage and battery care. To mitigate battery drain as an issue, I travel with the 900mAh as a backup battery and charge the device between caches when driving.

n It’s a 2-part unit. To work as a geocaching platform, the Dell Axim must connect with a GPS receiver. This can be done through a physical cable but that’s just not very conducive to good caching. Instead I connect to a Holux-manufactured GPSr “puck”. And yes, as the name suggests.. it looks like a hockey puck.

The Holux GR-230 GPSr:

There's really not much to say about this device, and certainly not enough to do a pro/con writeup. It's operation is mind-numbingly simple. Get this—you turn it on. Oh, yeah that's really all there is to it. Once you turn it on, you connect to it via bluetooth on the PDA and viola, you've got a GPS feed. It's durable, it comes with a non-slip pad on the bottom to keep it anchored to whatever you set it down on (no adhesive) and the battery life is extremely long. I got 8 hours out of it once, and it was still going strong without a recharge.

It does come with a port for an antenna if you'd like to plug it into a vehicle without a clear view of the sky above, and it's chargeable both through DC (USB cable to a cigarette lighter charger) or A/C (USB cable to a regular A/C socket plug adapter).

The iPod Touch:

I've got to say, this is one cool app for iPhone users but it's less than helpful for iPod Touch users--especially those who already have an all-in-one caching platform on the PDA. That said, it's user and fat-finger friendly so I've caught myself using it from time to time. If I could use the iPod Touch the same way I use the PDA, I'd retire the PDA as the iPod Touch has far more features and capabilities than the PDA and a much longer battery life.

In the field I've caught myself shutting down the PDA when I get to the cache location, and whipping out the iPod from time to time to get the cache hint and/or clues to the cache itself. I do this because it preserves battery on the PDA and its easy to "fat finger" your way through the cache details. The PDA has the exact same data, but it takes me just a little bit longer to get to it.

That’s about it! As I’ve said before, it’s pretty straightforward. If you have any questions regarding your setup, don’t hesitate to ask.

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Updated paperless software setup for PDA geocaching

2009-08-13T22:03:00.000-07:00

Since I’ve been successful at getting the PDA brought back from the dead like Lazarus from the grave, I thought I’d share how my PDA setup looks and feels as a total geocaching platform. This is going to be a longer post with more pictures than usual, so go grab a cup of coffee and a warm blanket.. or perhaps a nice frosty lager (just one!)—whatever your preference.

First things first, the biggest and most prevalent problem with PDA geocachers is battery life. With the Dell Axim (and many other good quality PDAs) there’s one great, cheap and easy fix—a higher capacity battery. I bought a 1400mAh extended life battery and a replacement 900mAh battery (sits flush with the device), and so far the 1400mAh is more than enough by itself. The battery monitoring software I’ve installed has shown a 4 hour lifetime with strong PDA use (Bluetooth, gps applications, TomTom, etc.) and that’s not even factoring the spare 900mAh I keep.

I’ll focus on the hardware in another post. Today I want to focus on the software. Under most circumstances, I stick with only three bits of software on my Dell Axim (Windows Mobile 2003) PDA—TomTom navigator, BeeLineGPS, and Cachemate. Sometimes I’ll use GPXview, but it’s similar in function to Cachemate and much slower to use. All of these geocaching-related software packages are listed in the right of this blog’s page under “notable links.” The design of this setup is entirely a paperless caching device born on outside functionality as a business (or personal) tool as well. Until recently, it served as my everything box—a contacts, email and calendar platform with internet functionality (with the added benefit of serving as a Skype-phone too).

The PDA connects via Bluetooth to a Holux GR-230 “puck” that weights a few ounces and has a separate and very slow draining battery. Once I establish a connection between the PDA and the Holux (a 5 second procedure of clicking 2 buttons) I’ll get to the business of locating a cache and navigating to it.

TomTom is the program I use primarily to identify local caches in relation to the roads available—I import my Geocaching.com .gpx files in to TomTom by loading them in GSAK and converting them to .ov2 files and copying them to the TomTom maps directory on my PDA. I’ll usually use the GC.com website to get a rough idea of the locale I want to visit and make a brief list of caches I want to hit before I go. It’s not required by any stretch, but I prefer having a small checklist of my own. If I don’t make the list, I’ll just load TomTom and look for a cache (identified by the beige asterisk in the left screenshot), and then tell TomTom to navigate me there with turn-by-turn directions. Before TomTom, I used Mapopolis—but they’ve since folded and are offering no support for purchasers of their original product (TomTom is still the better product in my opinion anyway, so despite the additional cash out that wasn’t so bad after all). The latest version of TomTom fetched about $150 USD at the time this article was written.

Once I get within the vicinity of the cache, I’ll close TomTom and open up a program called BeeLineGPS. This is my core geocaching program as it allows me to simply import my .gpx files and display them in the same way that most modern GPS geocaching devices do, with plenty of added features (more on those in another post). BeeLineGPS will take me within 2-4 feet of a cache, and will provide a track line so I can trace my way back out of a location the exact way I came. It’s a super-easy program to use, and runs automatically once loaded. I’ll usually highlight the cache I’m targeting in BeeLineGPS and ask it to draw a line between me and the cache (one tap) so I can keep an eye on the general location of the cache without being zoomed too far out. The latest version of BeeLineGPS fetched $29.95 at the time this article was written, and all future updates are provided free.

Once I’m satisfied with my location, I’ll close BeeLineGPS and load up Cachemate to learn more about the specific details of the cache and perhaps pry into the hint and the latest finds if I’m having trouble. Cachemate is essentially a portable database that allows geocachers to go into the field entirely paperless on the same PDA, with full access to the data contained within the .gpx files. The latest version of Cachemate fetched $10 USD at the time this article was penned. However, as an alternative to Cachemate users are more than welcome to try GPXview available at Geocaching.com’s website under the download section for free. It serves a similar purpose (with slightly fewer functions) as Cachemate, but it’s definitely a slower program to load—something that can be very tedious when you are out caching and switching quickly between programs. Cachemate is clearly the superior program despite the price tag.

Altogether, these programs are the totality of our geocaching toolkit, and they all operate on our Dell Axim X30 with a Holux bluetooth GPS puck (all circa 2004). I've recently acquired an iPod Touch, so I also carry along the Geocaching app (which serves mostly as an alternative to Cachemate for iPod Touch users).

Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

The Return of TetrAmigos! Hooah!

2009-08-12T16:47:00.000-07:00

The battery came in—the big extended 1700 mAh battery that doesn’t sit flush with the device—and I got the software loaded, so today when I finally had some time to grab a lunch break I decided to get out and geocache a little bit in the nearby area to clear my head. It was amazingly effective.

The first cache I set out to find was ingeniously hidden. The clue told me that it was on a fence and magnetic—pretty easy, right? Wrong. The cache owner had somehow located one of the bolts that was loose and pulled it out. He sanded off the end of it, and affixed a very small micro with a metal head and a small magnet. I almost didn’t believe I’d found it when I had, because I’d been looking for 15 minutes and just happened to stumle on the right one. GPS coordinates were off by about 7-10 feet (I know, I’m picky) but I eventually had her logged and was on my way smiling from ear to ear.

I nabbed a total of 5 caches today: Fencing 101, Wildwood Trail Troll (great view), Set Your Sites Low (smelled of urine and feces—everyone’s dream cache location), and Montclef Blvd P&G 1 & 2. The cache with the less-than-favorable odors wasn’t the safest spot to hide a cache, either. Sometimes you have to wonder why you’re the only one to A) notice it and B) actually say something about it. A few years ago I found a cache that was hidden behind a car safety rail—the kind they put up to deflect a car from going off a hill—at the end of a blind hill. Genius. To top it off, there was no safety margin of a sidewalk or obstacle to hide behind if one of the 50mph cars strayed. I wasn’t too quiet about that one.

All in all, it looks like team TetrAmigos is back in action, using an upgraded setup to boot! I’ll post more on the status of the geocaching tools later, but for now I’m going to bask in the glory of getting our cache count up a little higher and enjoying some spectacular and not-so-spectacular views along the way.

The Noid Retoins! ..and 100 reasons why I'm wearing the "dunce cap"

2009-08-12T12:31:00.001-07:00

I’m fired. In the process of digging up my old geocaching gear and getting everything back up to snuff, I found something.. and now I feel about 2” tall.

I found the Noid Retoins. A few years ago I visited my first event cache—Farewell Blig—a fellow who was known in the local area for placing some of the most challenging caches known. He was moving off to Texas, so the local geocachers and I got together and celebrated over pizza and a couple of beers.

To celebrate the event, we all brought our favorite trackables to trade and log . I dropped off a bunch of the wooden nickels that I’d helped manufacture and picked up a travel bug. Well, between then and now the travel bug had disappeared and I was feeling sheepish as the responsible cacher who irresponsibly lost it.

Good news! I still feel 2” tall, but the Noid Retoins and will be placed in a cache as quickly as possible to get going again. To the owner “chaosmanor” I sincerely apologize. The next time we meet, the round is on me. Count on it.

Lesson to myself and others? If you loose a travel bug it’s generally considered good etiquette to replace the bug and apologize to the owner personally. I did non of these things, and for that I deserve the dunce cap of the month and the shame that comes with it. Chaosmanor had a ton of patience—more than I would have exhibited under the circumstances.

Geocaching Revival: Teaching an old dog (Axim X30) new tricks

2009-08-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

Wow, another big gap. And my cache count has dropped. Wait, what? Dropped?! Yep. So much time away, and the slow decomposition of old finds has seen our find count drop to the 60s. Definitely not cool, and definitely time to get out there and get back to it. We’re done having kids and both kids are walking and always looking for excuses to get out. What better reason than treasure hunting?

So for the third time, we’re reinventing our little family team with a new name and improved technology. Always a stickler for making old dogs learn new tricks, I’ve decided to blow the dust off of the old Axim X30 and turn it back on again. In digging out the old trusty Axim and blowing the dust off of it’s various components (literally), I began the BDA (battle damage assessment for you non-military types).

As I suspected, the battery and the backup battery were near useless after 5 years of use and 2 years of inactivity. The internal emergency battery was drained and the portable USB cable was MIA. Oh and I’d cannibalized the SD card it once depended on, so that’s going to need replacement too. Here’s the good news. As far as hardware is concerned, larger higher-capacity batteries are now available for the Dell Axim series at a very low price. SD cards are also cheaper and much higher capacity. So I dropped about $20 at eBay and picked up a replacement oversize battery and a flush 900mAh battery. I put in a bid on an OEM replacement USB cable, and will likely head down to a local store for a cheap 2GB replacement SD card.

On the software front, there’s been a number of changes as well. After a quick trip to Dell and Microsoft’s websites for the latest ROM updates to my Axim X30, I began poking around at the software companies where I’d purchased my custom GPS and geocaching software packages previously.

Certainly they would have released more advanced versions of these programs, and with any luck these upgrades would be free! I can’t test them out yet until I get the SD card (all software will be installed on the SD card to keep plenty of operating memory available and free on the device) but a few tests proved that BeeLineGPS has been updated to fix bugs and provide new features. I still have my TomTom software package, so I’ll be using that as well.

Lastly, the Mrs. bought me an iPod Touch for my birthday so I’ll be looking to download the Geocaching app for that as well to enhance my multitasking paperless capabilities on the trails.

More to follow as our GPS geocaching hardware is updated and upgraded.

2 Caches Nabbed Today

2008-10-24T21:55:00.001-07:00

I work in a pretty stressful sales environment for an aerospace company--things with the kind of numbers attached that we only read about in the Wall Street Journal--so it's no surprise that I found diving back into caching a highly relaxing activity today. After getting the PDA (see picture) set up again with the proper software, and firing up the GPX files, I grabbed two nearby caches that had spring up within a mile or two of my house. I half-expected to see them all over the place, but I suppose it's nice that many of the geocaches in my town are hidden in areas that are notable spots to stop and appreciate.

The first cache was somewhat irritating due to the haphazard placement (and likely shotgun GPS reading of the placer) and unhelpful clue. I was seeking an eclipse gum tin that was hidden behind a piece of old wood. Sounds fairly easy enough save that the area was littered with old wood. Having turned over almost every piece of wood and bark in the area, I was actually retreating back to my car when I spotted the cache.. at the bottom of a fencepost. After signing the log and replacing the cache, I snagged a small piece of wood and placed it somewhat over the little box. At least now the clue would be helpful to the next cacher.

On the way back to the house for dinner I dropped by a cache placed in the parking lot of a local pub.. and discovered one of the most remarkable camouflages yet. Someone had purchase an entire electrical conduit box, painted it, affixed magnets and placed it at the electrical box outside. Wow. So I only found two on this trip.. so what? :) No DNF's, and that second cache was worth 10 in my book.

Paperless Caching in 2008

2008-10-24T16:30:00.001-07:00

What's it been.. 2 hours? I think I just set a record for reinstalling my geocaching tools on the PDA using the few upgrades that have taken place in the past few years in hardware and software. First, I am no longer using the 512mb SG cards that used to be the norm. With 2,4,6 and 8gb cards now on the market my problems with available space have virtually disappeared. I have swapped in a 2gb Mini-SD card (using a full-size sleeve) allowing me to be more flexible in what can read it (many devices now accept only Mini-SD cards).

Software-wise, I fell back on the same old setup, albeit with the newer versions which are now available. CacheMate for paperless .gpx data, BeeLineGPS for on-site cache locating, TomTom Navigator software for global view of nearby caches and driving to them, and GSAK for the PC data compilation required to edit my .gpx files and convert them into .ov2 files for TomTom. Lastly, of Google Earth is the at-home viewer for the at-a-glance pre-planning of caches I want to hit. I'm entirely paperless, though I admit this really is a somewhat complicated setup. Once it's installed, it's very simple. I guess I've never been one to shy away from complicated procedures.

Getting the TomTom to display the caches was super-simple.. I just copied the .ov2 file (and .bmp file) to the maps folder on my TomTom installation (I hear this works in the same way on OEM TomTom devices in addition to TomTom PDA installs) and then just selected POIs from my settings. Viola! I'm GeoCaching again in just a few hours, using the same software with the updated versions and new SD hard hardware.. frankly I think it all runs much faster now on my PDA.

Rejoining the World of Geocaching

2008-10-24T15:18:00.000-07:00

What is this, my third time rejoining this wonderful hobby? Two things to say about Geocaching: 1) It's highly addictive 2) Its something that often comes with peaks and valleys.

When I joined geocaching.com, I was shocked when I discovered that my PDA+GPSr combo was an ideal geocaching tool. 5 years later and I still have the same PDA and GPSr combo, but I've replaced Mapopolis. Mapopolis has sadly folded along with many companies in this economic turmoil, so I switched to TomTom. Having also taken a new career path, I'm travelling all over the USA meeting customers and my 1GB SD card fits all streets and highways for the entire continental United States without having to move maps from the PC > card and visa versa. Additionally, I find TomTom to be much more user friendly when it comes to finding what I need and getting where I need to go.

So goal: Now that we've brought our 2nd kid into the picture and he's old enough to get out and about, we plan to rename our Geocaching team (TraceAmigos doesn't work now, as Trace was a play on words for "tres = three," and we are now four) and get back out there. Having Mapopolis to help me visually identify nearby caches was a MUST.. I'm praying that a similar capabilty exists for TomTom as well.

Our First Owned Geocaching.com Trackable Item

2007-01-13T23:39:00.001-08:00

Three months ago one of our cousins in Alabama sent me a geocoin as a Christmas gift, so we sent him a handful of trackable California Wooden Nickels in return. The coin was so nice, we stashed it in a keepsake drawer for safe keeping. Today I opened that drawer, saw the coin and realized that geocoins don't belong in drawers – they belong in the wild traveling from cache to cache!

So we sat down this afternoon, thought long and hard about a mission for the coin, and logged it into the geocaching.com website. The name we chose was Remembering Decatur Alabama Geocoin in remembrance of Mark and Mary Harris – my grandparents on my mother's side – who both passed away in the past 4 years. We spent many a holiday in Decatur, AL visiting the other half of our family over the past 30 years and it's hard to think that they won't be around anymore to spend time with. Our goal is for this coin to visit all fifty (50) states in the USA before being “retired.” If we have any luck, it might happen sometime in the next 10 years!

We've handled a few travel bugs and wooden nickels, but this is our first official geocaching.com trackable item, so we are rather proud! Here's a picture of what the coin looked like before it went to mint:

First Event Geocache - Farewell BLIG

2007-01-13T23:19:00.000-08:00

Wow, what a night. All week we were planning to visit the Farewell BLIG event in Newbury Park to say farewell to one of the most meticulous puzzle-placing cachers in the Conejo Valley. When Friday came, the wifey was feeling ill so I spent the day home looking after her and the little one. Unfortunately, she was still feeling too ill to go but insisted that I visit and say goodbye to BLIG. I begrudgingly yielded and drove off to Magoo's in Newbury Park to visit and drink a few beers.

I arrived at 6:30pm PST sharp (just as the event cache said it would start) only to find the entire rear of the restaurant JAMMED to the hilt. Surely it had to be the event, but I was shocked to see everyone already settled and enjoying the evening at the moment the event was set to kickoff! We slid into a booth, introduced ourselves to a few nearby cachers and ordered a beer.

An hour later I'd found myself completely immersed in the local group (known locally as the Conejo Cachers) telling tall tales and giving me tips on defeating some of the harder puzzle caches in the area. Mom and the little cacher were stuck home, so come 8:45pm I finally decided it was time to leave and said my goodbyes. We dropped a travel bug (our first ever) into the collective trading bin with 7 California trackable wooden nickels. All in all, it was a terrific event that introduced us to some of the most active local cachers. If there's an event cache in our area again, we'll certainly be doing our best to be there again! Farewell BLIG. See you in Texas!

Geocaching Blog Gets a New Look!

2007-01-11T14:03:00.000-08:00

Frustrated with the outdated feel and function of our blog, we ventured into the newsgroups looking for answers as to how to essentially upgrade this blog. We didn't have to look very far..

Apparently Google has made some very important and worthy upgrades to the Blogger service, chief amongst them being the point-click intuitive style of re-designing the blog's layout. We decided to take the plunge, and a mere 30 minutes later our blog is back and alive with much more function than before. We think it looks cooler too. :-)

You can now view our old blog posts via the toolbar on the right, without having to sift through them all to find the posts you might be looking for. Now we can directly link to posts that have been since-archived but are still useful points of reference. thanks Google Blogger! Trace Amigos is very pleased, indeed.

Cache Adoptions – Clearing the Area

2007-01-08T14:49:00.000-08:00

Out of pure morbid curiosity, we ran a Pocket Query on “temporarily disabled” caches in the 20 mi. radius around Thousand Oaks this weekend just to see how many caches were disabled in the area. Wow, were we shocked. There were at least 100. This area is certainly very cache-heavy thanks to the popularity of caching and the abundance of hiking trails around here. It's expected to have a bunch of caches disabled, but as we inspected further many had 3-4 DNF's while others hadn't seen any activity for over 2 years!

We kicked out a few emails to the notable cache owners offering to perform a cache adoption to renew the area, and found that a few members had moved out of town and were in disparate need of some adoption pals. 24 hours later, and we were shocked to find ourselves the owners of four (4) caches – two (2) that needed serious maintenance, and one that had been muggled.

Here's the links to these four (4) caches: GCT1PD, GCT2TV, GCRCWJ, & GCKEZV.

The first two caches are part of a series, and the other two are the disabled caches. All four were owned by two different people, each had moved out of town and could no longer manage the upkeep. Now we've only got 46 finds at the time of this posting so we are a bit cache-placement-heavy for our own liking. Adopting caches is something that shouldn't be taken lightly. Unfortunately, few members who leave the area take the time to mention that a cache needs adoption and as a result the cache deteriorates in quality. True, while it may still exist, cachers don't traditionally enjoy opening a cache full of rust only to find a ton of junk.

A perfect example of this was one of the first caches I'd ever found called “Tattoo You at Sunset and E (since archived). It was a crappy AOL tin case full of moisture and covered in soot. Yes, the black stuff from your chimney. Cachers don't usually mind getting dirty, but this thing was placed in a garbage location and it was a park and grab cache. Turned out the owner hadn't been to this cache in over a year.. it showed.

Saturday Spent Out

2007-01-06T18:29:00.000-08:00

Well, the wife and the little geocacher spent the afternoon and evening with a few little friends and gave me the option to stay home. I couldn't rightly pass up a chance to snag a few more, so with our latest GPX file of the easier caches in town I hit the road.

With flip-flops and a pair of jeans, I decided to stick to the terrain 1 caches, and visited 5. 1 DNF, four finds. The DNF was in a residential neighborhood and guarded by a pretty large bumble bee, but to my credit I spent some considerable time looking anyway. No luck, moved on to the others.

One of the caches was atop a small hill in town, sporting a spectacular view of the departing sun. I had the evening to myself, so I only fit 5 cache visits into the afternoon before I hit the road. All in all, a great day caching. Cache count as of this evening is 46 found, 5 hidden.

Signature Item -- Old Mexican Pesos

2007-01-05T17:03:00.000-08:00

Last year when we were pretty strong in our caching, I thought it would be a good idea to explore some potential "signature items" to make our own. Due to size and durability, I really wanted something like a coin, but coins are costly and can't usually be obtained in super-large numbers.. that is, until I stumbled across a coin shop in Thousand Oaks with a bag full of Mexican Pesos.

The old Mexican Peso had been dumped in favor of a new denomination, and the old Peso remained at the value of .001 of a U.S. dollar. That's a pretty poor exchange rate, so (if you could find a batch) they remained extremely cheap. The story goes that the Peso's exchange rate had dropped to a point so low that Americans were actually purchasing Mexican coin Pesos and melting them down for their metals.. the last thing you want as a government is a currency worth more in raw materials than its stated value!

At any rate, we purchased a ton of these from a local coin collector. They worked out perfectly because our geocaching name is a nod to California's rich Spanish heritage, so it only makes sense that our signature item would be of Spanish/Mexican theme.

Here's a rather poor-quality photo of a few:

So if you see an old Mexican Peso in your SoCal caching, check the log. It's very likely that Team Trace Amigos has visited your cache!

2 Found + 2 DNFs

2007-01-05T16:20:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I played par for the course today. In golf that might be considered quite good, but in geocaching it's not that great.

Today we found GCX5EN & GCNQDJ. The two DNF's were GCNHJD & GCT2TV

I left the office a bit early, and despite just getting over a stomach flu I just had to find a few caches. When the bug bites you, there's just no stopping it! Anyways, the first was pretty simple. The cache was hidden amongst the very loose bark on a tree, and in typical fashion, I was looking for the hardest places first despite the cache being a 1 on difficulty. Revitalized, I sped to the next location and parked my car across the street. The cache was placed at a 3-way stop, a very busy 3-way stop, thus making it a difficult cache to spot without looking suspicious. Not one to be swayed by the occasional muggle, I spent my time at this spot -- at least 6 minutes or so -- but came up empty. The hint was silly.. it was a riddle of sorts. In cases like this, I believe difficulty should be set at 1.5 or 2.0 but that's just me.

There were 4-5 caches within 1/4 mile of each other so I hopped back in the car and drove to the next closest spot. It was at a Taco Bell across the street from a company I used to work for. Unfortunately the coordinates weren't exactly spot-on, so I was forced to guess what side of the building the coordinates were supposed to take me. Not wanting to be spotted by former colleagues casing a Taco Bell joint of all places, I spent only a few minutes on this one and moved on.

Lastly, I snuck up on a cache that eluded me last year. With a clear head and simple logic, I snagged it in no time flat. The owner had tucked it into one of those natural "tree holes" and covered it with a few pieces of bark. The previous year, I remember using the coordinates to get "close" but some caches are actually placed spot on to the GPS coordinates posted. I followed the GPS bug and snagged this one in no time flat.

For a brief 45 minutes spent caching urban, this wasn't a bad day! Constructively I'd love to see cache owners using their GPS units more effectively and using GPS averaging when coords are obscured by obstacles. I'd also like to see cache owners use the hint feature for what it's supposed to be.. a HINT!

Tagged them Both!

2007-01-03T19:11:00.000-08:00

Yep, got my first two caches in almost a year today. I was somewhat embarrassed by GCNGFD as it was a no-brainer find. The cache must have fallen down from it's lamppost mount when I visited it last year.

The other was a neat find for me, being my first "second to find" (STF) in geocaching. Second to find isn't such a big deal, but it's better than third! In reality it was pretty simple. While I love geocaching and I have placed a cache similar to this one before, the location was a veritable fishbowl location for muggles. I felt myself being watched, but that never bothers me. I just find the cache, try not to look suspicious and confidently go about my business.

Proud to be back geocaching!!

GC102EK & GCNGFD: Re-Starting the Hunt

2007-01-03T16:25:00.000-08:00

It's been some time since I've cached alone and with the team or other company, so I'm really eager to break the barrier and get one in today. On the way home there's a new cache right off the main road called GC102EK - it's brand new as of 2 days ago and has one FTF. It'd be nice to get a STF (second to find) on my records..

GCNGFD eluded discovery last year when I went by, but the recent level of positive finds has me hoping for treasure. Here's hoping!

Maybe tomorrow I'll have a new cache ready to repair "Forest in Town," but with the wet weather coming I don't expect much luck in that department.

Skype: PDA Functionality

2007-01-03T14:33:00.000-08:00

I've got to say, Skype truly is an amazing piece of software. True, nobody's been able to take a peek under the hood thanks to it being a closed-source program but it's freeware and has some of the best functionality and cross-platform availability of any chat/voice program to date. Additionally, it's a P2P (peer-to-peer) so it relies on servers for profile and connection data only. Bandwidth is shared amongst the network, and so far I've seen next to zero "shared bandwidth" on my machines (using NetLimiter to monitor bandwidth usage).

Loading the PDA back up with software again to make it a one-package geocaching device is a little bit of work, but it's the same software I used before. I just need to reload it again. Thanks to the largest free wireless provider in the USA linksys (joke) I can use my PDA as a cellphone too (thanks to Skype). So if I'm out caching and the phone dies or whatnot, all I need is access to a wireless network somewhere and I can call friends and family to report my successes (or lack thereof).

A Long Time Away

2007-01-03T13:40:00.000-08:00

We havn't geocached in almost a full year now. About this time last year I blew out my knee thanks to some loosey-goosey joints I was born with (thanks mom). Not to mention the little one was only just learning to walk and far less interested in geocaching than the rest of the family. That said, the joints are in better shape and the body is looking forward to some much-needed excercise. Enter geocaching again! Hopefully the little geocacher has more interest at the ripe old age of 2 (which she is intent on telling me about every 10 seconds) which will mean more caching for me again.

First on the agenda is fixing up one of our few placed caches in the southestern part of the town. A notice posted last week indicated that the cache had gotten wet and was dangerously close to a creepy crawly. Time for a re-placement and refreshment of that cache and we'd better do it soon.. it's supposed to get wet and grey tommorrow!

Last week saw the first order for wooden nickels again in over a year. I thought we'd sold them all (save about 30 or so) but we had at least 100 left over. Another geocacher was able to cache away at a convention thanks to his order, and just before we left for a holiday vacation.

Injury Prohibiting Geocaching

2006-03-13T19:45:00.000-08:00

I took a pretty bad fall last week due to my hypermobile joints, and thanks to a condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Type III. No geocaching for this fella for a little while longer..

Placing & Maintaining a Geocache (eg. Take Care of Your Caches!)

2006-03-01T10:31:00.000-08:00

On the way home from work yesterday, I snagged a cache nearby the Circuit City in town. I knew it would be an easy one, and I was counting on it because I needed to get home—momma wasn’t feeling so good and I needed to look after the little one.

I arrived at the cache location, parked the car and hopped out. After spending the “customary 7 minutes” looking for it, I took a look at the hint only to find “purple is a favored color of the Los Angeles Lakers.” At first glance I thought, sure, no problem. I’ll look for something purple, maybe even something related to the Lakers or basketball and it will lead me closer to finding the cache. Nope. Another 5 minutes goes by, and just before I leave I decide to blindly reach under the Circuit City sign and my fingers closed around a small purple cache container that probably once served to hold a young girl’s small jewelry. The cache was small, the log was wet more than once in the past and it STUNK.

Now before I rant, I want to say a very heartfelt thank you to the cache owner for placing this cache, because we know that deep down it was placed out of a joy for geocaching—even if a few elements had been overlooked.

Onto the rant. When you place a cache, it’s good to try and find something redeeming about the location that makes finding a cache in that spot even more rewarding. To the cache owner’s credit, this was placed at a local landmark that was pretty interesting. Where the cache went wrong, was the hint. The name of the cache didn’t do anything to lead us to the cache, so after a while of searching we decided to use the hint to help dial it in a little further. Nope. The hint referred to the LA Lakers and the color purple. The cache container was purple, but you wouldn’t have known it until you actually found the cache as it was completely out of sight. On top of that, previous cachers had posted almost a full year ago that the cache was wet and the log was showing signs of damage. A few even commented that the hint did nothing to help find the cache. In a nutshell, this cache needs maintenance!

The moral of the rant? If you are going to place a cache:

Monitor the responses from cachers who’ve found your cache. Often they can tell you when the cache needs attention, and if the cache has gone missing.
If someone does note that the cache is wet, visit the cache and dry it out/replace it/replace the log, et al.
If you are going to add a hint to the cache, make sure it actually leads the cacher a step closer to FINDING the cache!
If you happen upon a cache that needs maintenance like this, don’t hesitate to use the “this cache needs maintenance” button on the cache webpage on gc.com

Google Earth Accepts .GPX Files & Rainy Days

2006-02-27T16:55:00.000-08:00

Wow. We just learned today that Google Earth also allows you to import .gpx files that we receive from our www.geocaching.com membership through the pocket queries function. Instead of dealing with the Geocaching KML (which shows every geocache in the area up to 150) we can now directly import our personalized geocaching .gpx files into Google Earth. It’s brainless, and can be tinkered with to improve visibility.

Here’s a screenshot of our GPX file import. Amazing!

Can’t wait for the rain outside to stop so we can get back out geocaching. We’ll have to stay urban for about a week, otherwise we’ll have enough mud on our shoes to build a small hut.

Here’s a shot outside my office window in Westlake Village at 4:50pm today:

A weekend Geocaching Before the Storm

2006-02-26T22:10:00.000-08:00

Today the team and I headed out for a little geocaching near a family member in Simi Valley, but when we realized that most of them were gone we opted to stay in our local Thousand Oaks. After a quick bite we headed out to the local park to grab two or three caches—quickly turned into one. Unfortunately only one cache was active in the park, so we quickly grabbed it.

I’m not sure if we’ve posted about it before, but we use the old Mexican peso as our personalized geocaching token, and we traded one for a $1 bill. Doesn’t sound like a fair trade, huh? Well the dollar was a “geocaching” dollar and was being tracked on www.WheresGeorge.com, so we figured it would be fun to take it to our next cache. We had to move quick because the weatherman is predicting a large amount of rain!

All was going great until we moved up the street to our next park for caching. Excited about the chance to do a multi with the entire Trace Amigos team, we pulled up to the first step only to find that… the coordinates had worn away. What’s worse is that these coordinates have clearly been aging over time, and the last fellow to log this cache was only two (2) weeks ago! Why didn’t they alert the cache owner that these coordinates needed a little re-writing maintenance? We aren’t sure, but it was disappointing. Knowing we needed to find at least one more before the little one pooped out, we snagged a cache up the road only to find—and empty ammo box with a log. Nice. At least we got to see some interesting parts to the park that we’d never been to before.

Here’s a picture of the little one before she wiped out entirely:

Hilltop Nirvana - Yet Another Cache Adopted

2006-02-24T22:36:00.000-08:00

Another local geocacher responded favorably to our offer to adopt caches that could no longer be maintained. A cache formerly called “Kurdt Cobain” was the first of a series of three geocaches tied together, that were deactivated because the owner had become to busy with the other necessities of life to maintain the location. We called it Hilltop Nirvana partly because we like the name, but also as a nod to the former cache-owners choice of cache name.

Click here for this cache’s details: Hilltop Nirvana (GCMK5H)

We didn’t adopt any of the other two, as hadn’t seen them and prefer to adopt only caches we’ve visited before. This cache sat on top of a small hill just below the area-famous “Eyebrows on the Hill” buildings that formerly housed our City Hall many years ago. City Hall moved out years ago, and the area fell into disrepair and became a preferred illegal shelter for transient homeless families. Eventually the city released the property for renovation and it is know known as “Hillcrest Center” and is home to new tenants.

When the adoption was completed on geocaching.com’s site, we stopped by this cache for maintenance before re-activating the location. The view from this cache location is phenomenal, but the cache was just a simple 35mm film canister. Adequate, yes. But interesting, no. The Army Decon container we used (look at our blog entry on April 11 2005 for pictures of this type of cache container) is large enough to trade small items and maintain a rather large log for caching. It’s about 1/8th the size of an ammo can, but much more appealing than a 35mm film canister.

Many thanks to Kurdt Green for allowing us to adopt this cache and share it once again with the community of geocachers.

Another DNF - Cache Missing in the Brush

2006-02-24T22:17:00.000-08:00

We intended to find a geocache in a hillier part of Thousand Oaks today, with no luck. Two days ago I stopped by this area, but a quick analysis of the brush told me that I wouldn’t be venturing down the hill in my work slacks.

Today in jeans and casual gear, I ventured down the hill and spent almost 20 minutes searching and searching for an AOL CD-ROM case geocache. Unfortunately, these caches are very slim and are easily hidden in this area. It’s been a few months since this cache was located, and we suspect it’s off course.

Click here for this cache’s details: Barely in T.O. (GCGB20)

Nothing worse than spending 20 minutes in the brush, off the beaten path—unable to turn up the geocache. Oh well. Better luck next time! We have no problem posting a DNF here. It’s critical to help cache owners know the status of their individual caches, and users afraid to post DNF’s actually may end up hurting the cache by “helping keep their reputation.”

Adopted Cache – Stare Down

2006-02-23T16:40:00.000-08:00

Today we completed the adoption of a once popular geocache within walking distance of my office. After noticing that the cache was still inactive after a year, we contacted the owner (Pain & Panic) and offered to adopt the cache if they no longer had the opportunity to keep it active.

Turns out Pain & Panic has moved out of state and the person asked to keep it up wasn’t able to do so. We were eager to replace this cache, and when Pain and Panic agreed we quickly headed out there for a little cache maintenance. Now reposted as “Stare Down Redux” we are hoping this once popular micro cache is active again. The code for this cache is: GCF817

A big thanks to Pain and Panic for allowing us to takeover the responsibility of maintaining this geocache.

Yesterday's Caching Experience in Thousand Oaks

2006-02-23T16:33:00.000-08:00

I left the office early yesterday and spent about 2 hours out geocaching in the local neighborhood. Because it had been a while since my last caching experience (almost a year due to the birth of our first child), there was a plethora of caching to go out and grab. I was actually able to be picky about it too, which was good considering that I was still in office work attire.

Geocaches in Thousand Oaks, CA and surrounding areas:

As you can see, my town is littered with snug geocaches ranging from hilly hike finds to urban park-and-grabs (PAGs). It’s well known in the geocaching community that California is cache-country. It doesn’t matter if you are traveling PCH up to Frisco or heading South into Los Angeles—there’s geocaches everywhere. When I decided to go caching yesterday, I hit about 8 caches and found 5 of them. Given my work attire (slacks and a dress shirt), I had to be picky about what I was going to search for. One individual had hidden a terrain=1 geocache just out of reach, requiring me to scale a very low fence—I wasn’t about to explain the tear in my pants to my wife had I slipped!

All in all it was a good day geocaching, and got our count past 30 caches found. We are small compared to others out there, but the baby comes first!

Our PDA+GPSr Geocaching Equipment - UPDATED

2006-02-22T16:49:00.000-08:00

It’s been some time since I’ve discussed how exactly we (Trace Amigos) geocache, so after a short day of “corporate caching” (wearing my work slacks and dress shirt) I thought it appropriate to sit down after logging my finds and put down our caching technique in writing.

Trace Amigos is not a “die hard” geocaching team logging hundreds of finds each month. We are family team of usually just two and a half, and like many others, we have a little one to look after and she demands a ton of care and support at her young age. When I first began looking into geocaching, I decided that the equipment MUST be multi-functional thus serving to do more for me than geocache. Being in business real estate and CASL, travel is a huge part of my life. In-car GPS units are great, but they are stuck within the car and can’t travel with me. I decided that there simply must be a way to use my PDA for geocaching and travel.

A little research showed that I could purchase a Bluetooth GPSr for around $100 to work with my PDA, so that’s exactly what I did. I also spent another $100 on a program called “Mapopolis” to make my PDA also serve as a turn-by-turn GPS navigator. Both serve to assist me with geocaching AND travel, and I couldn’t live without them!

-To travel, I use my Dell Axim PDA to sync with my Bluetooth GPSr unit, using mapopolis to plan a route and give me step by step instructions as I go. Very useful.

-To geocache, I use the same PDA-GPSr combo, but I use the following three (3) programs to make a quick and paperless geocaching experience:

1. Cachemate – All those details I get on each local cache at geocaching.com can be accessed via cachemate so I can lookup hints and other details on the fly by importing the member-only www.geocaching.com Pocket Queries files. MUST HAVE.
2. Mapopolis – Yes, I use this for caching too. A little freeware program called GPXtoMaplet program takes the .gpx pocket queries files I get weekly from geocaching.com and converts them for use in Mapopolis. Now I can visually plan a caching route, bringing nothing else along but the PDA and GPSr.
3. BeeLineGPS – Mapopolis is great for driving, but it’s all that accurate for on-foot geocache hunting. For this, I use a little program called BeeLineGPS to give me distance, speed, and very accurate GPS cords. The same .gpx file can be imported here, so caching is made super easy.

With a small PDA window mount purchased off eBay for $5 and an equally-cheap $5 aluminum hardcase for the PDA make this my ideal caching combination. If I still have energy later, I’ll post a little more regarding my caching experience today. It was only 5 caches, but quite memorable.

Placing Micro Caches - Be Creative!

2006-02-21T13:33:00.000-08:00

Remember the white micro pill fob’s I received last year from a cheap Amazon purchase? Well I finally got around to camouflaging the first, and she’s almost ready for placement.

The red rubber seal has to be paint free, but the rest of the micro is green enough to hide but not so perfectly camouflaged that you won’t find it hanging in a tree:

Lots of folks in the geocaching community despise micro caches, and it’s understandable why—they aren’t creatively hidden. Many are in for the hunt and the “kill” of finding a cache, while even more are in the hobby to see new things and places. Micros tend to be the most commonly placed caches in less-than-notable locations, so they’ve been given a pretty poor reputation.

Changing the pace of micro caches is the job of every geocacher serious about the sport/game/hobby, and the two (2) primary criteria are simple and must be given credence before stashing a micro away and posting the coordinates:

1. Camoflauge it accordingly (add a magnet, paint it, creatively hide it) just don’t stick with the same old boring stock 35mm film container micros.
2. Try and place your micro somewhere notable! If you cannot seem to meet this criteria, at least try and find something remotely notable about the area you stashed it in. Many of the cachers in it for more than just the find don’t enjoy spending the time to find a cache only to find out that the person who placed it had this to say “An airplane flew over this house yesterday, so I thought I’d place a cache here to mark the occasion.”

Be creative! Share something new! Think beyond the placement of your caches.

First Family Cache - Convincing Them to Geocache

2006-02-20T21:44:00.000-08:00

Today was a monumental occasion. The entire family team logged our first cache together without any cajoling from me! After a quick meal at Macaroni Grill (ideal place to eat good food with a baby—a very family-friendly restaurant) we plopped the little one into her stroller and opened up the PDA. After a quick 10 second sync with the Bluetooth and satellites, we had a fix and began walking to what was to be our first family cache.

In this area, there’s another geocaching team by the name of Ventura Kids. When we arrived at the cache location and the clue didn’t immediately yield cache-gold, I recalled that the cache owner had been given advice from the Ventura Kids on a quick cache relocation a few feet away. It helps to know your major local cache hiders because in this case, the Ventura Kids are famous for magnetic caches leaving only a few places to place them. That in mind, we had the cache in hand in less than a few seconds and I experience a surge of pride as I saw the thrill of the find light up in my wife and little-one’s eyes. It was their first cache!

Here’s a photo I took to commemorate the occasion (Promenade Micro GCNATE):

How did I convince them to join me geocaching? Well, for our family getting outdoors is largely difficult as my better half loves to spend time with her family in town and I love to go places and see new things. Splitting the difference, we can now get out and get some fresh air (her love) and hunt things down using technology (my joy). Geocaching is the perfect middle ground.

Not long after this find, mom’s tummy rumbled a bit from lunch so I took her home for a nap and took the little one out to a quick errand to OSH. Along the way (in the other direction) we grabbed a member-only cache hidden by Dakiba (GCMP08) only to later realize that we didn’t have a pen. We’ll have to get back later and plop our mark on the log to complete the find. Only two finds today, but being casual geocachers I consider it a successful day!

Cachemate: Now for the Pocket PC!

2006-02-18T17:00:00.000-08:00

Wow. We just discovered that Cachemate had released a version of their famous Palm OS caching utility for the Pocket PC so I quickly headed off to Smittyware's website to download the demo version, and boy was I surprised.

Cachemate is really no different from GPXsonar, except for one very critical thing: speed. Now we cache with a terrific PDA-GPSr combo which is entirely paperless and quick. Using mapopolis to get driving directions to a cache, BeeLineGPS to get us directly to the cache on foot, and then GPXsonar to get us details about the cache to aid us in locating it. The problem with this is that GPXSonar is a very demanding program on any PDA and is often slow to use--very easy, but slow nonetheless and on a cache-busy day every second counts.

Enter cachemate. Cachemate dispenses with the unnecessary graphics that GPXSonar has, and is all text based. Cachemate is easy to use, easy to search for caches, and contains all the details that you need to find any cache--what makes it different (and worth the $8) is the speed and little PDA memory the program demands. We can now have Mapopolis, BeeLineGPS, and Cachemate open all at the same time with no effect on speed and usability.

In a nutshell, if you use a PDA to cache you NEED to get cachemate. It's required-ware.

First Post in a Year - Name Change to "Trace Amigos"

2006-02-16T22:37:00.000-08:00

It’s been nearly a year since our last posting to this geocaching blog, mostly because our baby daughter was born in spring of last year—leaving pretty much zero time for geocaching. She’s almost a year old now, and vigorous enough to handle the outdoors like we used to enjoy so we’ve decided to get back into geocaching.

Geocaching was largely the adventure of “acPilot,” but now with the other two on board, we’ve decided to change our geocaching name to “Trace Amigos.” Trace Amigos draws a play on words from the Spanish word “tres” (meaning quite literally, three) but we switched the spelling of the word to give a play on “tracing” geocaches. Phonetically it still sounds the same, and we like it.

Here’s our new Team logo:

I just received a new Toshiba satellite laptop which doubles as a tablet PC—could be very interesting for use on long geocaching trips, so we’ll be sure to post more about geocaching with a laptop here too. It’s a bit fragile, but nevertheless useful so we’ll see.

Here’s a stock photo of the new laptop:

How to Place a Cache in a Location with Obscured Sky, Peventing Accurate GPSr Readings

2005-04-25T10:54:00.000-07:00

I visited a cache last Friday nearby on my way back from a client meeting in Los Angeles, and had everything I needed to find it. GPS coordinates, basic cache data, and the cache hint. Satisfactory? Sure, if the coordinates are accurate enough. Unfortunately, the owner of the cache likely whipped out his GPS receiver, took a quick reading, and promptly placed the cache. His coordinates were about 50 feet off from the mark, thanks to tall trees all around the cache site. Ouch. Preventable? You bet! Let's find out how to lessen the degree of cache GPS innacuracy with a little easy math.

My biggest pet peeve is the posting of coordinates for a cache, when the poster has full-knowledge of the fact that the coords might be obscured by trees, buildings, or other natural and man-made structures. What's the point of cache hunting with a GPS unit if you can't get within at least 20 feet of a cache with your GPSr?!

This would just be a gripe post, if it weren't for 2 simple solutions. A: Don't place a cache here. Geocaching requires a GPS unit, and nobody likes to venture out to a cache site only to find that the coords are grossly inaccurate, thus decreasing the 20ft accuracy to 150ft or more. B: Use basic arithmetic! (my favorite) If you can use a GPSr, then you can probably use a calculator with a certain degree of ease.

It's simple. What you do is walk to a point where you CAN get a reading, and write that reading down. Walk around the cache outside of the GPS obscured area, writing down each individual reading you take. When you are done, average out the readings by adding the readings you wrote down together and dividing the sum by the number of readings you took. This way, you can heighten the accuracy of the cache location by using averages to move the resulting coordinates to an area inside the obscured cache location. Say that three times fast! Confused? I'd probably be confused too, so I've opted to break each step down visually (below) with text explanations for each step.

Here's a diagram of this method (explanation below):

The brown colored container in the middle of the above diagram is in an area obscured by tree cover (represented by the dark green circle). The bluish area outside of this area is clear sky, and accurate GPS readings can be taken anywhere in this clear sky area (represented by slanted blue lines). You can't take any accurate readings under the obscuring tree cover, but you can take as many as you like in the clear sky area, so that's exactly what you do (represented by red circles). Write down each individual reading, add them together and divide the sum by the number of readings you took. Here's an example:

6 READINGS
1. N 34 09.1301 W 118 49.4508
2. N 34 09.1314 W 118 49.4498
3. N 34 09.1303 W 118 49.4507
4. N 34 09.1304 W 118 49.4509
5. N 34 09.1295 W 118 49.4510
6. N 34 09.1302 W 118 49.4516

You don't need to add together the first two sets of each reading (11 22.3333), just the last four digits (unless during your averaging you actually change one of these values )

So lets start by adding together the last four digits of the North readings (1301+1314+1303+1304+1295+1302 = 7819). Once we know the sum (7819), we can now divide it by the number of readings we took (6). (7819/6 = 1303) Now we know the most accurate North latitude reading, which would be N 34 09.1303, where we simply plug in the 1303 from the math we just did into the last four places of the North reading from readings 1-6. Now, repeat the exact same procedure for the West readings (4508+4498+4507+4509+4510+4516 = 27048). Now divide the sum (27048) by the number of readings we took (6). (27048/6 = 4508) Now we know the most accurate West latitude reading, which would be W 118 49.4508, where we simply plug in the 4508 from the math we just did into the last four places of the West reading from readings 1-6.

Take the North and West readings we just created using averages, and viola! You have a more accurate cache location irregardless of the obscuring tree cover: N 34 09.1303 W 118 49.4508. Rinse, repeat, and enjoy!

Cache In, Trash Out (CITO)

2005-04-16T18:30:00.000-07:00

Today was CITO day for the year of 2005. As you can see by the title, CITO means "Cache In, Trash Out." It's a reference given to the caching hobby, calling geocachers to visit all the caches they want, but in doing so to police the area for trash and other waste.

All over the world today, geocachers banded together in a unified collection of trash at some of the dirtiest cache sites. CITO events were established for groups of people to get together and collect garbage in support of our environment and community. While I couldn't visit a big site today, (the nearest was Hollywood) I was able to visit 2 of my local cache sites and pick up trash. By in large, the area I was at looked pretty clean, but after over an hour of walking and grabbing small/large pieces of trash I was shocked at the amount of stuff I'd collected. Here's a photo of the trash I grabbed today before it met the dumpster:

I'm not an environmentalist, but I do respect my home and like to see it clean. Today, in support of the CITO-day theme, I decided to pack out all this trash. Please think about bringing along a big trash bag the next time you decide to go organized geocaching. Don't forget to recycle your glass and plastics either!

Benchmark Hunting

2005-04-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

Geocaching is clearly the cat's meow when it comes to locating things with your GPS unit, but on the other side of GPS treasure hunts is Benchmark hunting. Benchmarks are markers of various types placed by the National Geodetic Survey teams over the past 200 years or so. More and more benchmarks are being placed and logged by other organizations (both military and private), which opens up an entirely new facet of GPS treasure hunting.

Geocaching.com allows users to log Benchmarks in addition to geocaches, so I thought I'd go ahead and explore it a bit. Turns out it can be quite rewarding if you want to just enjoy the thrill of the hunt and/or there aren't all that many caches in your area. I nabbed my first one about 3 days ago, and today on a short drive from Los Angeles County to Ventura, I grabbed 9 more.

Here's a sample of what a typical geodetical survey disk might look like:

Website Ticker

2005-04-14T10:47:00.000-07:00

I must note that Blogger.com does give us users some pretty fancy access for free. Becuase I can tinker with the raw HTML code on this site, I've been able to add links and graphics that I preferred over the stock offerings that Blogger offered. Today I added an HTML ticker and stats tracker so I can see how many people are visiting my site and from where.

Neato beano!

New Micro's Arrived!

2005-04-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

Today my new Pill Fob micros arrived UPS. I grabbed six of these plastic high-impact nitro pill cases off of Amazon at a $1.69 each (cheap!) here: EZY Dose Deluxe Nitro Pill Fob's - $1.69

I plan on sprucing up these containers with area-specific camouflage when it's time to place a few, and their unique design could make it pretty fun. Here's a shot of them with a nickel (for size comparison). Note the red rubber o-ring that seals out moisture:

There's other Pill Fob's out there, even some specific to geocaching like the one in this picture:

Those metal pill FOB's are great, especially with the GEOCACHE markings emblazoned on the front. The only drawback of these containers is price. This particular model is being sold at over $4.50 a piece, not to mention that these colors don't exactly blend in well with the environment.

New Cache Containers Arrived!

2005-04-11T20:09:00.000-07:00

Today the 5 Army Decon containers I ordered from www.armysurpluswarehouse.com arrived, and boy did I get a good deal. Under $10 for these 5! I've already taken the liberty of preparing them for placement as geocaches, with foreign currency, polished rocks, airline memorabilia, and some other small odds and ends.

Thanks to my labelmaker, I'm able to put a clear tag on the inside cap to alert unaware muggles. What do you think? Maybe someday I'll camo them a bit, but being Army issue they are naturally not light reflecting and that's good enough when mixed with the OD green color.

Respect for Nature

2005-04-11T10:55:00.000-07:00

I'm no left-winger, trust me. I've never participated in a tree-hugging event, or a stand in for nature either. But when a fellow geocacher recently drew attention to test in a cache I'd hidden about dangerous insects such as spiders being "nasty," I took notice.

Geocaches don't sit on street corners in plain sight, or they'd be muggled in no time. Spiders, snakes, and other critters don't do that either or they'd likely be eaten up by winged predators. For these reasons, we usually hide geocaches is places less easily located--places that these insects and critters tend to make home. Either way, my geocaching pal was right. Just because these outdoor critters can cause harm to humans, they should not be feared.

Let's face it, for most geocachers the hobby is just another excuse to get out of our cars and onto our feet. Exploration! Usually, outdoorsmen and women tend to respect nature and mutual coexistence of all creatures, but it seems that too often people are frightful of multi-legged bugs and such because of the minor pain they can cause us when disturbed. This fear has created a culture of "destroy or be destroyed" and the nature around us is suffering. I ask, where will we take our children to see the way Earth was before mass overpopulation? What hills and forests will we hike?

The answer is in complete mutual respect. When you reach into a dark hole looking for a geocache, don't get angry with the critter that may get frightened and try to defend itself. After all, they were there first!

First Cache Stashed

2005-04-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to the first cache I ever stashed away: Suburban Hills of TO

After 17 finds, I've become pretty well in-tune with the caching hobby and decided a few days ago to hunt down a great spot and place my first cache. I lifted an empty altoids container off of my mother-in-law and colored it black inside and out. Out here in Thousand Oaks, there is an abundance of rolling hills, and I was hoping to find a location that was not difficult to get to and still had a view. Luck shined upon me as I quickly located an excellent spot for my first cache, nicely situated in hilly suburbia on public land! (see the link above)

The Equipment

2005-04-07T16:26:00.000-07:00

Because I work in Real Estate, my PDA is my lifeline. We're attached at the hip. When the geocaching bug bit me last month, I decided to explore adding GPSr functionality to the PDA vs. purchasing a dedicated unit, and I'm glad I did. After a couple of bucks spent on a decent Bluetooth GPSr unit and some Pocket PC GPS software, I was up and running--paperless!

Here's a photo of my PDA and equipment:

I bought a Dell Axim X30 (mid-range, which is the 312mhz), and the black leather case on the left came with it. I usually use this case for light businessuse because it clips easily to my belt. The hard aluminum case in the foreground cost about $5 on eBay, and I make sure that the PDA is inside this when I step out of the car to look for caches. The small black device in the middle-back with the blue light in the center is my Holux GR-230 Bluetooth GPS receiver. On the far right is my Axim PDA in it's office cradle.

As far as software goes, I use 4 primary utilities/programs, all to which I have provided links for in the far right of this screen:
1. Mapopolis (incredible turn-by-turn navigation system) Cost me about $100.
2. GPXToMaplet (PC utility that converts .gpx files for use in Mapopolis) Freeware.
3. BeeLineGPS (Great for sensitive caching, once you leave the car) Cost me about $30.
4. GPXSonar (.gpx utility that allows you to carry cache details with you on your PPC PDA-I won't leave home without it) Freeware.

True, my configuration is a bit on the expensive side, and thus won't be the perfect fit for everyone. However, if you own or plan to own a PDA with bluetooth functionality and you'd like to use it for GPS driving or geocaching, this is the best configuration I've found (after testing quite a few).

Happy caching!

What's with the nickname acPilot?

2005-04-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

It's actually pretty simple. Over the past 5-6 years, I have gone by many nicknames such as Casper, Risky, etc. When I registered with Geocaching.com, I wanted to start fresh with a new nickname which identified one of my largest interests--commercial aviation.

Still confused? Yeah, I'm getting there myself.. but let's push on. Being a huge commercial aviation enthusiast, I have pictures and displays of various aircraft all over my offices. I'm a complete nut. When I'm not caching, I take part in another hobby called "Aircraft Spotting". Essentially, I camp out in a comfortable spot nearby a large airport and watch the aircraft (and sometimes log the aircraft registration numbers). I've never been able to explore the chance of being a pilot, so I took the next best thing: simulation.

While time is extraordinarily limited these days, I fill this empty aviation hole with flight simulation on my PC at home. Microsoft Flight Simulator makes a very realistic simulation platform for "armchair pilots" such as myself, to have a good time and satisfy our interests. Armchair pilot = acPilot, and that's my nickname.

I probably could have simplified this into 2 sentences, but then that would be a REALLY boring blog now, wouldn't it? :)

Introduction

2005-04-06T17:51:00.000-07:00

I've always enjoyed the concept of a journal, but I guess I always get bored after about a week or two, so this should be an interesting experiment.

This blog was started around one of my favorite hobbies: the art of geocaching. Never heard of it? Don't feel bad, I hadn't either until I stumbled across it on the internet. Now, a mere month after discovery, I own a wireless Bluetooth GPSr unit which works with my Dell Axim X30 PDA to make an efficient geocaching GPS unit. I love this little PDA, and I couldn't live without it, but that's another story altogether.

Rather than reinvent the wheel describing geocaching in it's entirety, I'll just post the link to the headquarters for geocaching all around the world: http://www.geocaching.com

Just a few days ago I was hunting for a "geocache calling card", something that can be used as a marker for caches I've visited. After a brief call with the local coin shop, I dropped by and picked up a huge bag of the old Mexican Pesos (you know, the ones that are worth 1000th of the current Peso, which coincidentally is only .10 cents to the US dollar). They are large and unique enough for my interests, so I think I'll be spending the next few weeks cleaning them up for use! Yay.

The Beginning!

2005-04-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

What's all this talk about Blogs? I'd been asking this question over and over for at least a year, so I figured no better way to find out then actually participating in my own. Who knows? Maybe someday some college student looking for a quote will cite a half-witted comment of my own in their research paper.