Mourning the loss of an old friend

They say that time heals all wounds. Talking about feelings of loss and grief is supposed to make the pain go away. I am here to tell you that they are wrong.

I recently lost my Garmin 60csx. I don't know where I lost him. I suppose he might have fallen out of my truck somewhere between Indiana and North Carolina. He was a trooper who never let me down. He deserved so much better then lying on the side of the road somewhere, or on the pavement in some IHOP parking lot somewhere along I-40.

I wish I could convey just how much that little guy meant to me. He wasn’t just a tool for finding geocaches, he was my best friend, and now he is gone. You always gave me great reception even in the densest of tree cover. Your compass was always true.

I know one day I will replace you with another of your kind and I hope we can have the same relationship you and I did. I know there were times I said things in anger at you that I know you know I didn’t mean. It was the heat of the moment. You always knew I needed your guidance.

So here's to you Garmin 60csx. You will always have a special place in my heart.

Godspeed little fella.

Another year gone by

Sometimes I seem to forget about this place. It's hard to keep up with because there is so much else I have to do. My wife and I now have a 6 month old daughter and she takes up most of my free time. I will try and post more though.

I have a geocaching trip planned with my dad this summer. We plan on hitting Soth Dakota, Wyoming, and Eastern Montana. I will post the caches we plan on doing later.

Thats it for now..

Cherokee, North Carolina

Over the weekend of January 12th, my wife and I spent 3 days in Cherokee, North Carolina. She hit the casino while I spent the weekend fly-fishing and geocaching. Saturday, I spent most of the day on the water and it was cold. I had on waders, but the water temperature was such that it went right through the waders. Now, I was not wet, it was just cold. I ended up catching around 30 trout that day. Most were wild and all of were rainbow trout. These wild mountain rainbows are some of the prettiest fish I have ever had the pleasure of catching. For well over 8 years, I have been dreaming of this moment when I would finally be able to get out somewhere and catch some trout. It was everything I thought it would be and more, so much more.




On Sunday, I went geocaching. I only did four because I was not feeling great and there was NFL playoff football to watch on TV. Anyway, all of them were small containers and two of them were lamppost micros. Kind of lame, but I will take what I can get.

Were planning on going back again this weekend and I am going to go fishing and geocaching again. My goal is to catch at least 10 trout on Saturday and do at least 5 geocaches on Sunday. I would also like to do a geocache video and put it on YouTube.

If the fishing is good, I might not be doing much geocaching.

Geocaching January 7th & 8th

With unseasonably warm temperatures here in North Carolina, it has made for some rather sweaty geocaching the last few days. I enjoy colder weather because I can wear jeans and a big carhartt jacket. Wearing those clothes gives me most of the protection I need to go barreling through the woods and thorns and briars without much repercussion. However, for some reason I felt the need to wear shorts out the last couple of days opting for khaki shorts a t-shirt and a short sleeve shirt over that. I am now paying for that decision with several cuts and scrapes on my legs and arms. Now, it didn’t deter me from finding the caches. No sir! Instead, I rambled onward without protection, until the goal was met.

On Monday I did 2 geocaches, Do not HUNT this cache! and MSB-Ocean. Do not HUNT this cache was one of those caches that I all too often make harder then need be. I saw the coordinates overlay on Google earth so I had a pretty good idea of where it was but once I got there, it just didn’t seem right. It was off a rarely traveled gravel road that on one side had a small-forested area and on the other an open field with several creepy looking scarecrows. Anyway, I got the 60csx to within 3 feet of where it said it should be but no luck. Then I saw it, the no hunting sign! Doh! So I checked the back of the sign and there it was. With the clue being “No Hunting”, you would think I could have come up with this one sooner.

MSB-Ocean was your standard ammo can in the woods. Henry the geodog and I, along with my wife, Goldendomer, took the trail for about a quarter mile then did some mild bushwhacking to where we thought it would be. I turned around to look at the little pond in the distance when I heard "uh, I got it". So my wife found it which she enjoyed hanging over my head the rest of the day.

Today I only managed to do one. I woke up with a headache as well as a pretty good backache. By the time I managed to loosen up my back it was already pushing 2pm. So I figured that if I’m going to do one at all, I might as well make it a close one. So Henry and I went for Cats and Dogs and other Animals . This one was only about 2 miles from my apartment. Parking is rather scarce and because it happened to be right next to one I did a few days ago, Wasted Water Treatment?, I decided to park at the same location. So I did and off Henry and I went. As I said earlier, with the shorts on instead of pants it made for an unpleasant experience at times. However, after about 20 minutes or so, we found the prize and headed back to the car.

The last few days have been pretty active for me. I will probably rest up a bit until the weekend when my wife and I will be taking a few days vacation in Cherokee, North Carolina. She will be hitting the casinos and I will be doing some fly-fishing on Saturday and then geocaching on Sunday. I hope to get some good pictures and maybe a video piece or two.

Geocache Movie

So as I mentioned in the previous post, I made a small geocache movie. It's of me doing geocache Wasted Water Treatment?/GC18215

Again, for those of you who see this who may be in the area who have not done this one yet, once the warning graphic comes up, you will want to skip ahead about a minute or so.

Anyway, enjoy.

Geocaching-January 5th & 6th

So I finally had some time to get out there and do a few. It is remarkable how much things change with perspective. With my explorist 100, all the geocaches I would do seemed like an uphill battle from the beginning. Trying to get a signal with the accuracy usually being no better then 30 feet. Then walking and holding not only the gpsr but also the sheet of paper with the hint and cords all at the same time. Let me tell you, walking in the woods trying to do all that is not easy or fun at times. Now, with my new Garmin 60CSx, all that has ended. I now have all the cache information loaded directly into the unit, hint included. In addition, the accuracy I have gotten so far has been amazing. Being able to use the compass to direct me to where I need to go has been a huge help as well. Geocaching is fun again!

So now, I have a few actual days off and I plan to do as many as I can. In addition, I should mention I made a small movie of one of my geocache finds,Wasted Water Treatment?. It’s not much, but hey, I am a beginner so give me a break. Be forewarned, for those of you in the area of GC18215, the cache location is revealed. If you do not want to be spoiled, you will want to skip ahead once the warning comes up.

Geocaching and the Holidays..

So it has been a few days since I last posted. It has been really busy at work and I just don’t have a lot of free time. Anyway, I think I convinced my wife, who happens to be 2.5 months pregnant, that upgrading my GPS is a good thing. Amazon.com has a sale on right now for a Garmin GPSMap 60CSx. Normal price for one of those babies is around 530 dollars. Right now, I can get it for around 280 dollars with a 50-dollar mail in rebate. The Garmin GPSMap 60CSx is a top of the line handheld gps and for that price, it’s a steal. I’m hoping to order it tonight or tomorrow and get it within the next week or two.

Once Christmas and New Years are over and things at work get back to normal I can get back out and do some geocaching. I actually have about 3-4 lined up that I want to do I just need the time to do it.

Geocaching Today 12-17-07

I just got back from doing two geocaches. Both geocaches are located in Kelly Road Park near Apex, in North Carolina. The first one I did was Did The Beaver Do It?. It was in a wooded area near a tennis court. I guess that would explain the 14 or so tennis balls in various states of decay that I saw as I made my way to the cache. The clue in the cache was the same name as the cache so that immediately let me know that I was looking for a downed tree near a stump. So I started checking all those downed trees, which took me about ten minutes because there were so many. Of course it turned out to be hidden at the last tree I was about to check.

The second one I did, Kelly's Heroes, was located about 150 yards east of ‘Did The Beaver Do It?’. Now, I could have walked back to the car, then drove the length of the distance, parked and walked about 100 feet to it, but how much fun would that be? No, instead I decided to be a man and bushwhack to it. Besides, Henry needed some exercise and he looked like he was having too much fun sniffing and peeing on every other tree.

So we walked through the brush, the briars and thorns, finally making it to the location that my gps insisted was were I needed to be. Now this one was a bit tougher because it was a small container and with the amount of downed trees in the area, it could have taken a long time to locate had luck not played a part in it. As I was standing there looking at the gps, then looking around at my surroundings, I then happened to notice something hidden inside a hollowed out log. Bingo! Now had I not seen that, I would not have found the cache because I was not even on the verge of looking there. The geocaching gods were smiling down on me today.

So I went two for two, not bad if I do say so myself.

Days gone by..

The photos above and below are of my Catholic grade school in South Bend, Indiana. My wife and I drove by last summer because I wanted to see some of my old haunts as it were. It was strange because although the building looks the same, the surrounding area does not. Some of the streets are no longer there. Some of the surrounding buildings are no more as well.

When I look back at my time in grade school I mostly think about all the kids who were just bullies, who took every opportunity they could to make fun of others because of the littlest things, their clothes, their hair, they way they talked. I also remember the teachers not being the friendliest either.



I specifically remember one incident in 6th grade where a few others and I were called up to the blackboard to solve a math problem. We’ll the two people who were up with me solved their problem easily enough and sat back down, I on the other hand, couldn’t figure it out for the life of me, was told by the teacher that I would have to stand up there until I figured it out. So besides the nervousness of being up there in front of the whole class to begin with, now I’m up there by myself trying to figure this equation out, and behind me I can hear the other students laughing at me and the teacher somewhere behind me not doing anything to help me or keep them quiet. I am sure I was only up there for 5 minutes or so, but at the time, it seemed like an eternity.

Ah, good times...

Today is a good day

My day off each week for the past two years has always been Wednesday. It was ok, a nice break in the middle of the week. However, today I was told that I would need to change my day off to a different day. My options were Monday and Thursday. Well with those choices, the answer was obvious, Monday. Now with me having Mondays off, I get a 3 day weekend every other week.

I used to dread Sunday nights because of the fact that I had to get up in the morning and go to work. Who doesn't, right? Well now, at least I get those 3 days and can do some things I have wanted to do but have not been able to because there just was not enough time.