Saturday was the first annual “Reviewer’s Ball” for those who are not geocachers the thing you need to know is that every state has volunteers that make sure that a cache meets certain rules before people can go out and find them. It can be a thankless job since they also are the first point of contact to Groundspeak (the folks in charge of geocaching) when someone is upset. The Indiana Reviewers decided to put on an event that originally went by the name “GeoProm” but was changed to the “Reviewer’s Ball.” It was a lot of fun and yet another chance to get together with geocachers and talk about Tupperware. Cecil did end up with a lovely “little” travel bug called “The Ol’ Ball & Chain, Married to Geocaching” TB3ZRQ8. Kind of a “Hey buddy could you help a fella out and move this bug along?” New Rule # 1 always look at the travel bug before saying “Yes.”
"I wear a fez now, fezzes are cool!"
Oh and this was the public unveiling of my fez from Fez-o-rama. Sue said I looked like Sydney Greenstreet when he played Signor Ferrari in Casablanca. I decided with that comment I should probably go on a diet. Then again I thought I looked pretty dapper especially since Cecil & I had matching shoes!
Congratulations to David & Lisa of 4Rushateers for being the actual King & Queen of the Ball. and thanks to all the reviewers who make it possible for monkeys like Cecil, and folks like Sue to go out in the rain and snow, and look under light poles for stuff.
For geocachers sometimes icons are worth their weight in gold… kind of like “badges” in Foursquare. For those readers who are not aware of geocaching (using million dollar satellites to find Tupperware in the woods) let me just say that each type of geocache has a specific icon related to it. Some are more difficult to get- one of those is the GPS Adventure Maze, basically because it is an exhibit that travels the country spreading the gospel of geocaching. As a traveling exhibit sometimes it is hard to track down. It started off in Indiana B.C. (Before Cecil) so the monkey had never logged it and therefore was missing the icon. This weekend the exhibit started its run in Nashville, Tennessee at the Adventure Science Center (until September). So being a three day weekend and having nothing else to do… we headed down to catch the exhibit, get the icon, and a smiley. All I can say is if you know nothing about geocaching, but would like to learn and are anywhere near Nashville stop by. The next time it will be near to Indiana (my home base) will be in 2012 when it goes to Dayton, Ohio.
Besides the exhibit Cecil would also recommend- the World’s Largest Travel Bug Hotel, Walk Like an Egyptian, The Anchor… and a bunch more. If you are looking for icons- there are a lots of virtuals & webcams in town. Cecil did pick up is 1500th find on the way home- so he considers it a good weekend.
This week marks the end of school and while I will be free to pursue other interests starting Friday, I can only hope that I will get all the paperwork done in time to produce the comic this week… keep your fingers crossed.
Sue joined me at C2E2 this year (last year he headed up for one day, this time she came up for the entire weekend) and never set foot in the exhibit hall. She didn’t want a badge (imagine that) and just told me to go have fun. I was glad that she also had some fun too.
Sue and I tend to get confronted with questions when we are together about the key to being happily married for over 20 years (much to the chagrin of my parents). To me it is simple- Sue has never really tried to change me, and I have never tried to change her (fine… early on, we both tried, but after a while we both gave up).
I tend to get grilled about how I could be so understanding when Sue is at a yarn shop or needlework store spending money. More shocking is that I will join her on this little expeditions. We both have our hobbies and if we were to total things up I’m sure we would come out even, besides (as Sue’s parent’s point out) we ended up growing up together and while we might not completely understand each other’s eccentricities they are what makes us special.
So when Sue talks about buying Mink yarn… I might roll my eyes, but I know she will do the same thing when I “need” the most recent gadget or a classic comic book.
So now we know Cecil’s plan to take over the universe… and how ADHD has once again saved galaxy. Flash Fact- Riverside, Iowa celebrates an annual “TrekFest” which has welcomed many stars of Star Trek. Geocachers, there is only one cache in town and it celebrates the Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise: not Robert April, Christopher Pike, or any of the other guys & gals, just James R. Kirk, (Whoops! That was changed after “Where No Man has Gone Before) I mean James Tiberius Kirk. How will all this change now that they have rebooted the franchise and Kirk has been born in space? Cecil might be the only one who knows. Time to head home.
Yes, we were there… and there is a geocache (a single solitary geocache) in Riverside.
We have had some storms and varied weather out here in the midwest so it has been a pretty nice way to test the viability of the solution I went with for the Dr. Who Cache Series containers. Long story short, it kind of worked.
What I was going to do was use a sticker to wrap the decon container, the problem was not the sticker, it was my design. Those people who have encountered this type of cache container know that it has rounded corners. This is fine until you get to a corner. While it did stay on the container, in most places, it didn’t work along the bottom. It seems that the sticker could adhere on one curved surface, add a second curve and it has difficulty. So, with this newfound knowledge I head back to the drawing board to redesign the wrap so that when finished the edges will end up resting on a flat surface.
There is a silver lining to this whole thing- the more I looked at my designs the more I knew I could do better. So I have redesigned the doctors & have also redesigned the TARDIS. Seeing how the original design printed some of the lines were too thin and some detail was lost. I now have a better idea on how to make the design work, which makes me happy.
Am I running out of time? Nope (I have a time machine). I have ordered a special pathtag to go with this series, when that pathtag arrives… then I am behind schedule. Until then I’m right on schedule!
Yes, it was a fascinating hotel (but it was cheap). The women’s restrooms were labeled “Damsels in Distress” The murals painted on the walls were done to look like tapestries. There was a swimming pool and hot tub (under repair) along with a rather interesting restaurant. I do not recommend the pork tenderloin unless you really don’t like pork tenderloins, then you might end up hating pork tenderloins.
Yes, when we got to our room we discovered that the decor had not been updated since the 1970’s, but we did not notice any bugs.
I hope everyone has a great weekend and will join us on Monday to find out why Sue & Cecil dragged me out to Iowa for a long weekend at the end of winter.
So as we crossed over the boarder to Iowa on this epic adventure we did end up getting one cache (GC2A17V) before calling it a day. After that we headed for the hotel in Iowa City. Sue had made the arrangements looking for something cheap and near the interstate (so we could make a quick getaway if needed 😉
We pull up to the hotel (in the dark) and we are greeted by something we might have seen in England… kind of, sort of, in a weird midwestern surreal way. Yes, we had found the only Tudor inspired Best Western in the world! There had to have been a sale on gargoyles… Sadly, there was no cache in the parking lot. Secondly, when I checked into the place on Foursquare one of the tips was “bugs.”
We were tired and headed to our room…
I know, I know, German geocachers do actually find real caches and sign logs… I also know that there are geocachers in the U.S. who don’t play by the “rules.” The thing is there are many geocache owners who find that their cache has been logged by someone (strangely a lot of times a German) who has miraculously also logged a cache in Fiji (and South Africa, and BeJing and… ) the same day. I’m assuming that German GPS units also contain a teleportation device. You might think it is just me, but if you check out Cecil’s storefront you’ll see a “Don’t Be a Geoslug” t-shirt (blatant plug) this was actually designed for a fellow cacher in Illinois who was tired of people not actually visiting the caches he had placed. In some cases someone had actually gotten another geocacher to sign logs for them. After a conversation with some fellow geocachers I had thought about changing the wording to “nicht eine Geoschnecke sein.”
Like golf, geocaching is one of those “games” where character is tested. On the golf course, you keep score, in most cases no one is looking over your shoulder counting your strokes or seeing if you moved the ball. You know if you cheated, you know it’s cheating & you have to live with it. In geocaching, you know what caches you have found and which ones you haven’t. I know Sue has over 3,000 finds and I was there for a lot of them, but since being kicked off the “ProfessorZoom” account I have only counted caches that I have found since tagging along with Cecil (around 1300).
Life when you aren’t a “diehard cacher” sometimes isn’t fair… then again I did finally get a chance to drive Poppy- Sue’s new MINI. I was even behind the wheel when we broke 1000 miles!
One nice thing about motoring & caching I have discovered is you tend to be able to go a bit further. When I was younger I could deadhead over 1,000 miles in a day (now- not so much). Stopping for a cache every once in a while actually helps me not to get tired, it breaks up the monotony of a long straight drive.
