I found the above on video on the geocaching blog. They feature interesting geocachers and I thought this guys story fit the bill. You can follow the link to find out more information about him. He is basically a bomb disposal specialist and has recently returned from Iraq. His geocaching handle is JrBYRDMAN162.
Category Archives: Geocaching
Back on the Trail Again
Its been a busy six weeks. Vacation to southern California, wife’s family reunion in western Oklahoma, two trips to Wichita, Kansas in two weeks, ill advised geocaching outing in the Kansas tall grass without chemical protection resulting in massive chigger infestation (I took pics but deleted them, you can thank me now), and a lingering sinus infection. I finally went to the doctor’s office and got to see the PA. (How come doctors are called doctors and PA’s just have a first name? I told the front desk I was their to see Miss R****, and they didn’t know who I was talking about.)
You know how it goes, chigger bites “resolve themselves,” doctors (and PA’s) are generally clueless about running injuries but luckily Miss R**** had an orthopedic student shadowing her that day and he pronounced that I had a swollen ITB (shame on you!!!, its the iliotibial band, a tendon that stretches from your knee to you foot on the outside of the leg)but I should be good to go in a week. Miss R**** was doing a furious head bob agreeing with el studiante, at least Miss R**** was able to prescribe some antibiotics.
So anyway I went home, took my medicine, and healed up. Wednesday night after work I went out for a test drive on the Arkansas River trail and ran four miles with no problems.
Life is looking up.
What have I learned. First, never, ever, ever, go into tall grass without Deet. Second, my Doctor’s day off is Wednesday. Miss R**** is cute as a button and very nice, but she is not a doctor.
Road to a 1000
Those of you that have read this blog know that I am crazy about geocaching. I started about 7 years ago and have been at it ever since. For several years my wife Sweetie, and SuperPizzaBoy geocached with me but they have backslided, fallen of the wagon, and left the one true path so I have been pressing on mostly by myself.
One of my goals over the years was to find 1000 caches. That is not that great a number actually. I have known geocachers that have found that many in a year. I ran into a couple geocachers in California that had over 14,000 each. For my type of geocaching, keeping it fun, I can average about three or four a week and I’m happy.
Recently I got up to 994 geocaches just prior to a family reunion in western Oklahoma this past weekend. I was going to have leave everybody on Sunday to drive to Wichita, KS for the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association annual convention. That drive Sunday was my opportunity to get to a 1000 caches.
So off I went, first a trip down memory lane,
Believe it or not, I hope that you don’t hold it against me but I used to work for BP many moons ago. While working for them I bought the above office building for them. It is right on Highway 66 and just over the fence from I-40. I paid only $85K for it during a bad oilfield depression. The addition behind it? My old boss, one of the nicest guys I ever worked with, still gets mad about it, almost 20 years later. We were expanding and I asked him how much money I could spend. He said $100,000. I said OK. So when I bid the building out, I told the contractors that the bid was $100,000. The winner would be the one who gave me the best building for that amount. I thought that was pretty clever. My boss thought otherwise.
And oh, if you think that it looks a little bleak. You are right. The front double door was added by a subsequent owner. When I worked there, whenever somebody walked into the front door on a windy day all the acoustic ceiling panels would raise up. Hey what do you expect for $85,000.
Oops, I’m sorry, this is a geocaching post. Well, guess what there is a geocache close to the building. How did you guess? I think it was number 996.
I headed down route 66 to find a few more caches. I just love Route 66. I love interstates even more!!
In Yukon Oklahoma right outside Oklahoma City, I found this cute cache.
I might use a different shot of this for a Ruby Tuesday post. What do you think?
Later on, I had to get off Interstate 35 to go find a cache.
I just love dirt roads. Love’em love’em love’em.
This is where I found #1000, near a cemetery. Cemetery geocaches are great. I had to poke around a little bit before I found it. Why did it have to be on the other side of a barbed wire fence in some heavy brush? Why?
Wow, a 1000!!!! The crowd went crazy!!
You didn’t know geoaching was a spectator sport did you? Shows what you know?
Anyway, now what? I guess that I’ll go find some more!
Geocaching Kokopelli Series
Don’t tell Sweetie but our next trip is to go find these caches in southwest Utah. I want it to be a surprise!
She would really like to go to Hawaii on our next vacation but don’t you think this would be more fun?
Geocaching Picnik in the Heat
Last weekend was HOT and HUMID. I went to see my favorite MIL Nana and check into why her swimming pool filter wasn’t working. I finally figured it out and got it fixed, grabbed a few of her cookies that were right out of the oven and then hurried on home to help Sweetie clean house went to find a few geocaches (don’t tell Sweetie, OK).
There were four of them scattered down a trail along a turnpike. Have I mentioned that it was hot?
(I subscribe to Picnik.com now and I just love playing with it. I know that over processing photos can be annoying and I promise to be more subtle in the future but let me have my fun now, please.)
I found four caches in all, here are a couple of them.
Four caches was enough. I was cooked.
By the time this is posted the Yogi’s will be headed for cooler climes. Hopefully I’ll have more to write about than heat and geocaches when I get back.
Geocaching 101
(Updated 12-12-2023)
I have been asked to explain what geocaching is and how to do it. Geocaching.com has this great little short video that explains the basics of what it is and how to get started. It does a lot better job explaining it than I can.
Be careful, it can turn into an obsession.
There has even been a movie made about geocaching. Its called Splinterheads and here is a trailer.
You need at a minimum two things to go geocaching. First is a free membership at geocaching.com, second is a GPS receiver or a smart phone to download the geocaching app. Base models of GPS’s cost less than $100 new. Check your local Walmart, Academy or other sporting goods store, Amazon, and I’ve bought several at huge discounts on ebay. Know though that almost everybody uses a smartphone these days.
If you live close to Tulsa and want to go find a few let me know and we can meet up. There are well over a thousand caches in the city we’ll go see if we can find some.
Geocaching, Skirt Lifting, and a Drawing for a GPS
Its been sweltering down here in Oklahoma lately. I know its supposed to be hot here but it seems like a little extra hot lately. Friday evening our downstairs air conditioner quit working. Thank goodness for the upstairs unit. It is a lot smaller but it was the little air conditioner that could. It kept the house tolerable, especially upstairs. The repair company we used was swamped and couldn’t get to us until Sunday afternoon. They got it fixed in short order.
Of course, since the house was cooling down I felt it was time to do a little geocaching outside where it was a 100 degrees. First I had to replace a cache that had been missing since January. Our local reviewer, “General Disarray” had sent me a nice little email asking me to take care of it, or else.
I already had a geocache container. I gave it to my friend Baloney for Christmas as part of a Secret Santa Gift Exchange. She kept it for a while and gave it back to me. OK with me, she kept the cap, complete with cap light, and the Edward tshirt.
.
You can tell, since she is paler than Edward, going outside is not her thing. She has lost her tan since then.
Anyway thanks to Baloney I had a container and went out and replaced my “Little Haikey Creek” Cache. The area is prone to flooding and the other caches have washed away and are probably floating around the Gulf of Mexico, soaked with BP’s Macondo well oil, along with a bunch of green sea turtles. So I elevated the cache this time. It’s going to be a little easier to find.
Of course, its a little hard to get to as you have to go down this creek about a quarter mile or so. The link to the cache page is here in case you want to try your hand at finding it. Let me know how you do.
For anybody out there who might want to get into geocaching. Heidi over at TheGoodStuffGuide.com has a post on geocaching with kids and has a giveaway going for a kid friendly GPS receiver preloaded with caches (it will work just fine for adults also). Just click here and leave a comment to enter the drawing. Of course she was smart enough to include a few comments from moi about geocaching with kids.
Speaking of kids, mine was at his Nana’s house swimming. Smart kid. I was swimming also, in sweat and deet. While I was all stinky I decided to go find some geocaches. The first one I went to said was adjacent to a school and “technically not on school property.” (Geocaches are forbidden on school property for various reasons.) I went looking for it and finally found it.
You can barely see it at the base of the pole. Dude, since it is attached to the school fence, I think technically it is on school property. I’m not going to rat you out though.
The next one was a little bit more clever. Do you see the container?
Do you see it now?
I love stuff like that.
By this time it was really hot and nobody else but me was out and about and I was feeling really hot and nasty. So it was time to do some skirt lifting. Sweetie doesn’t approve of my skirt lifting hobby but hey sometimes I just cannot help myself. My favorite kind of skirts are short skirts. Something about them…
So here is a good example of a very short skirt I lifted on Sunday,
Isn’t that nice? Who could resist that lifting that skirt? Underneath the skirt was something I was longing for, my 979th geocache find.
Sometimes when you lift skirts you are helping somebody out. Their skirt is not adjusted right and you can set things right when you let the skirt down. Here is a good example of that.
I mean if you had a skirt that was all askew wouldn’t you appreciate it if somebody set it straight? I thought so.
Tight Squeeze
I had my day off today. SuperPizzaBoy and I hung out a little bit and ran a few errands. I decided to go find a geocache. It was so hot SPB asked if he could stay in the truck and listen to the radio. OK, but don’t touch nothing, ok, you can touch the radio control, ok you touch the gum container if you need more, ok you can touch the door handle if the truck is burning and you need to get out, ok you can touch the seatbelt to get out of the truck when it burns, OKAY!!! You know, its a burden when your kid is smarter than you are, a lot smarter.
You know what else is a burden, a pot belly, that is a burden. I looked all over for the cache and then resigned myself to where it is:
Yep, I decided that I was going to have to go through that gap. I didn’t know the cache was in there, I didn’t know where else it could be. Luckily I didn’t have to get my whole self through there. Just my manly sunken chest, arms, and big head. And there it was, right at the limits of my reach. I did get the cache, pull out the log, sign it, and replace. Well maybe I replaced it a couple inches closer for the next middle aged, pot bellied, sunken chest desk jockey geocacher to find.
It was worth it though. It was so danged hot, I said enough for geocaching. If it is too hot for me to go geocaching, then you know its hot.
Wanna Have Some Fun??
Lets go Geocaching!
This looks like a good place to start..
You first, I insist!
If you scream and nobody hears you, is it really a scream?
Wordless Wednesday – Impenetrable
Son and I planted a geocache near downtown Tulsa a few weeks ago. Everything was cool until I got an email from a couple of intrepid explorers who said that they couldn’t find the cache because of the impenetrable grass.