November 20, 2004, 10:33 pm Actually, the day was beautiful, but the geocaching was dismal. I proposed to the co-pilot (Karen) that we hike at Las Trampas and find a number of the caches hidden there. I didn’t give her enough warning and she had lots of other things already planned. So I went alone, but decided not to go to Las Trampas. I’ll leave those for when she can go.
I only scored 3 out of 9 tries. Man, I hate micros.
20 Nov 2004 10:00 AM Tired of Micros (Pleasanton, CA)
I had scoped out Tired of Micros a couple of weeks ago, but with the number of people around it didn’t seem a good idea to do a search. This morning there were kids in the playground and climbing over and under a large eucalyptus limb that had fallen during the night, but they all seemed to be preoccupied. I found it in the first place I looked–it looked like the most promising place, but it was also a lucky choice.
20 Nov 2004 10:30 AM An Old Adobe (Pleasanton, CA)
An Old Adobe is a virtual cache at the Kottinger Barn. Kottinger married into the Bernal family and began farming 4,500 acres received as his wife’s dowry. This is the first time I have ever stopped to look at this old structure. Identification of a large object attached to the south side of the barn is part of the cache.
20 Nov 2004 12:15 PM It’s Modern (Pleasanton, CA)
It’s Modern is an interesting steel structure. The biggest problem with this cache (I think) is finding legal parking. I tried to do a night find here a while back, but couldn’t figure out the parking. Finding both parking and the cache was straightforward today.
November 18, 2004, 8:12 pm 18 Nov 2004 4:15 PM Arroyo Mocho (Pleasanton, CA)
Figuring out where to park for Arroyo Mocho was more time consuming that finding the cache. Turns out I could have parked quite close, but a Zone 7 truck was already parked there. 18 Nov 2004 1:00 PM Some caches we haven’t seen (Pleasanton, CA)
Some Caches We Haven’t Seen is a puzzle cache that requires information from the web. This wasn’t too difficult to figure out. The cache is hidden in east Pleasanton in a green belt I didn’t know existed. The GPSr did an accurate job and after poking around a bit I just barely caught sight of something. Turned out to be the cache.
18 Nov 2004 12:30 PM Plumbers Other Friend (Livermore, CA)
Plumbers Other Friend is a multi-cache that’s just about like a puzzle cache. After searching around the primary coordinates for the directions that were said to be there, I gave up and went to the owner’s designated backup website. There I learned that the directions at the primary coordinates are no longer available, and the web page must be used for directions to the final cache.
The final coordinates must be derived with some calculations, and while they are simple, I must confess that I made a number of errors. The errors were small so I was in the correct general area, but I was pretty sure where the GPSr was zeroing out was not a good hiding spot. Finally realized my error, and zeroed out right at the cache location and found (fairly quickly) one of the best in plain sight hides I’ve seen.
The cache was last logged as found on April 29 (more than 6 months ago). There was water in the cache and it was so hard to open that I almost gave up. It finally broke loose. Luckily the log was only damp.
November 17, 2004, 3:40 pm Magic Trig is a puzzle cache (and I’ve got a string of puzzle cache finds going). The puzzle is to find at least 2 and up to 4 satellite micro-caches. Each satellite will contain the distance to the final cache location.
I could only find two of the satellites, and I only looked for three of them. According to the logs of other hunters, satellite 2 went missing because of construction. I couldn’t find the one out in Sycamore Trees Park, even though I looked a couple of times. Still, it is possible to solve this with just two found satellites.
The obvious solution to me is to use a 7.5’ paper map and a compass and draw circles corresponding to the distance. The intersection of the circles marks the location of the final cache. Unfortunately, I don’t have paper maps, and my mapping program doesn’t have the ability to draw calibrated circles.
The cache description suggests using the pythagorean theorem. I tried that for a while, but I have lost the math skills I used to have. I also tried using Excel Solver, but I had trouble at first getting it to converge, and then when it did say it found a solution, it was inconsistent.
In the end, I just used the GPSr to measure distance to each satellite. The circular error was fairly large because the GPSr doesn’t measure with very many significant digits. However, after about 30 minutes of looking and trying to get both distances correct I found the cache.
|
Consider this:“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.” Romans 13:8 |