LPCs aren’t always bad

I know, I know….it’s been a while since I last updated the site.  What can I say, I’ve been a bit preoccupied.  I was off all last week for Spring Break with the kids and something always kept me away from the PC.  As I had mentioned in my last post, we went to Cincinnati for a little mini-getaway.  This is becoming a Howard Family tradition.  Because of our differing vacation policies at our employers, having a solid week of paid time off at this time of year is extremely hard.  Cyndi’s company doesn’t reset the PTO clock until July 1st, and mine is accrued as I work.  So for Cyndi to have 40 hours of PTO in early April, she would basically have to not miss any work in 9 months and hope that the mandatory down time her company imposes around Christmas will only take a few days off.  As for me, I just need to not take any time off for 18 weeks and I’ve got ~40 hours of PTO to play with.  So, if taking a weekend trip to a neighboring state is a vacation for us, so be it.  One day we’ll get that big family outing I’ve always dreamed about.  But I digress…

So, I had mentioned that I had planned a cache run for our trip.  I basically did a search for caches I thought were fairly attainable for our short stay, as well as some caches to do on the way down and back.  I had actually amassed a PQ of about 80 caches for us to work with.  Yes, that was quite the lofty goal to achieve, but I figured that if worse came to worse, at least we had a nice pool for which to work from.  So, how did we end up doing?

We found 14.  Yeah, I know.  That isn’t a very big number.  But you have to understand something…sometimes it’s not about the numbers.  Sometimes it’s just about having fun.  We had a lot of activities planned originally for this little trip and I think we may have over-killed it a little.  In the span of 36 hours we took in the Cincinnati Zoo, shoppped at IKEA, and hit up Jungle Jim’s International Market.  Any one of these destinations could easily consume 5 hours of our lives if we let it.  Also, our Sunday had to be cut short to make sure Cyndi made it back home in time for a 4:30 Girl Scout meeting.  Being that Cincinnati is about 2 hours away, that really cut down on our available caching time….which brings me to my topic.

LPCs are looked down upon in the geocaching community as like the ugly stepchild of caching.  They are unimaginative, intrusive, and, in some cases, in direct violation of Groundspeak’s Terms of Use.  But, they also are easy, plentiful, and excellent sources of fun in urban settings.  Because of our lack of time, we had to condense a day’s worth of caching into a window of about 2 hours.  There are caches that take that much time for just 1 find.  So, when it comes to times where I want my geocaching fix but I am either up against an unrealistic time frame or we’re in a densely-populated area, these little bastards prove to be quite the savior.  Plus it helps that literally hundreds of these little boogers could be located in a 10 mile area.  So, armed with a PQ filled with both LPCs and traditional caches alike, we sought out, and found, 12 withing 3 miles of our hotel.  All were nothing more than pill bottles and nano containers under lamp skirts or in guardrails.  Do I care?  Hell no….a find is a find.  Pinto and I did most of the seeking as Cyndi and Mouse sat in the van watching movies.  That’s fine, too.  This is good bonding time with Pinto.  She’s getting so big.  She won’t be my little girl much longer.  Plus I love the look on her face when she finds one….even something as easy as an LPC.  That makes them worthy of my time.

See what a little planning will get ya?

So as I had mentioned in my last post, my OCD-like nature had left me staying up into the wee hours of the morning planning out a cache run for the following day.  My thought process behind the planning was to focus on an ultimate goal location and then work out a path leading to it that had plenty of caches to find.  All told, I ended up with a Pocket Query of 52 caches.  Now, to the less experienced that probably sounds like a lot, while the more experienced are probably balking at the low number.  I didn’t just pick a bunch of 1/1 caches.  I made sure we hit a very diverse amount of caches, some requiring a lot of walking on various terrains while others were as easy as parking next to the GZ and having one of the kids grab it.  I steered clear of anything other than traditional caches for this run, save for 2 Puzzle caches I solved several months back and needed decent weather to find.  Take a look at the map below and you’ll see what we were looking at for the day.

Ignore the smileys, they weren't there until we found them 😛

As you can see, our ultimate goal is at the bottom.  That blob of caches down there is actually Southeastway Park.  When I lived on the eastside of Indy I used to go there a lot with friends, one time even riding my bike there with several of them (a trip that took over an hour each way).  Anyway, that one park alone has 14 caches located within, with another 2 just outside the park’s boundaries to the north.  With such a heavy concentration of caches, naturally I wanted that to be our ultimate goal….where we could spend a good chunk of our day at and hopefully find them all.  Unfortunately, I picked quite a few caches that ended up sucking up a lot of our time so when all was said and done we only ended up finding 3 there.  But no matter, that just gives us the motivation to go back to grab the others.  So…what were the final totals for our run, you ask?  Well, out of the 52 caches I picked out, we ended up attempting 24.  So we got around to less than half.  Oh well.  Of those 24, we ended up finding 22 of them.  The 2 we couldn’t find we had good reason….one of them was located next to a Mexican restaurant that had a lot of Muggle traffic as we were nearing the dinner hour and couldn’t dedicate a lot of time to searching without drawing unwanted attention to ourselves.  The other?  A so-far impossible shelter cache with a 4.5/1.5 rating that was hid back on October 2009 that has 41 DNFs and 0 smileys.  To say I was expecting to find it is nothing but a bald-face lie.  I really just wanted to add my name to the growing list of Indy’s geocaching elite who have all failed at finding it.  We did spend a good 20 minutes or so going over the entire shelter, looking in pretty much every nook and cranny we could reach and even a few places that I thought would have been the perfect place to hid and all came up short.

For the day, we spent almost 7 hours hunting.  We took an hour off each for lunch and dinner and didn’t get home until just after dusk.  We had a blast, and, with our final find of the night, we hit our 300th find.  My goal is to hit 500 by our one-year anniversary….which just so happens to be the day we plan to hide our first cache.  And with the upcoming trip to Cincinnati this weekend, I think we just may reach that lofty goal….so far I’ve mapped out 85 caches to attempt.  Geez, I’m a sick, sick man!!

Maybe I’m just a little OCD, but I always find it’s better to plan ahead than just be spontaneous

So here I am, sitting at my PC after midnight, going over a list of caches I have bookmarked, trying to decide which ones I want to include in a cache run I intend to do tomorrow.  As I run through the logged comments, check the difficulty/terrain information, and plot out the best route, I’m finding my thoughts drifting from the task at hand to the inane amount of work I’m putting into what should be a rather quick and easy process.  With the Geocaching for iPhone app, I can pull up on the fly any cache located in my vicinity.  I can read the comments and get the same information on the fly. So why do I torture myself while my wife is sound asleep next to me?  What advantage do I get in meticulously plotting out a course of potential finds to help me reach my goal of surpassing 300 finds by the end of the weekend?  Easy….I just can’t help myself.

I have always been a bit of a planner.  Sure, spontaneity was one thing I prided myself on when it came to hanging out with my friends, but as I look back, there was always some sort of planning involved.  If I decided I was going to stop by my best friend’s house for a night of whatever-the-hell….I usually had jotted down some ideas on things we could do.  These usually involved going to see a movie (which I had made a note of all the movies I thought we’d all like and the various showtimes for the nearest 3 theaters), hitting up the local bowling alley at just the right time for Cosmic Bowl, or heading to a popular miniature golf course that is known for its, shall we say, “rustic-ness”.  So even when I thought I was being all spontaneous and loose in regards to a random visit with my friends, I always had the outcome sketched out.  Some of my friends actually have commented on it, saying that if it weren’t for me constantly trying to steer the group towards a goal, we probably never would have done anything.  Personally, I think they were making fun of me.

Anyway, what could I possibly gain by sitting here, “auditioning” potential caches for my run?  Surely the information I cull tonight could have been done during the run tomorrow, freeing up the time I’m spending now to rest up for what could be a several hour excursion.  Well, it’s part of my ritual that I feel gives us the most success.  We’ve done some spontaneous runs in the past that ended up with more DNFs than finds. This is mainly due to the urgency of locating a cache nearby that we feel we can do.  A lot of the time we wouldn’t bother to check the logs to see if there had been a string of DNFs lately.  Other times it would be an issue of not looking at the difficulty/terrain level and discovering too late that we, very foolishly, started the hunt for something in a wooded area and we’re sitting here in shorts, sandals, and tank tops.  But, when I spend some time actively looking up caches along a rough path towards a goal location I have picked out, I noticed that our runs were much more successful.  Using the tools available online, I can decide if I feel we can handle a higher terrain ranking based on where it’s at, the saturation of surrounding caches that are relatively much easier, thereby making up for lost time and maximizing the amount of caches we can find in a given period of time, as well as adding in, ahead of time, a number of P&Gs to pad the numbers and also, if necessary, lift our spirits when we inevitably come up short on one.  I find that even an LPC can lift our spirits after a couple failed searches.  After I’ve settled on a set of caches, and even thrown in some difficult ones, just in case I’m feeling saucy (see, I can’t even go out of my comfort zone without planning for it first), I load everything into a Pocket Query (I think I’ll have to do a post on just the terminology at some point…I’m sure I’ll be confusing the non-cachers who happen upon this blog) and then download that to my phone….which I do twice because I actually use another Geocaching app called Geosphere (which I actually think is better than the official app in many ways as it’s more powerful, quicker, and uses last battery), especially when I hunt puzzle caches and multi-caches because I can input additional waypoints and save them for later use if necessary….but I digress.  So when it comes down to it, not only do I have a list of caches I want to find, I also have a backup in case I can’t find some.  So I even plan for failure.  But I swear it’s all worth it in the end.  On the last 5 planned cache runs, we had a success rate of roughly 78% while the majority of runs we did by the seat of our pants was closer to 50%, give or take.  We used to be pretty bad about logging of DNFs (Did Not Finds to the uninitiated) but I have come to realize that it’s helpful to log those….not just as a reminder that I’ve tried and failed a cache and should skip if I wish to avoid frustration, but also to let others know that something MAY not be on the up and up with this cache.  Who knows…maybe it was muggled.

July 4th, 2010 — the start of something new and wonderful

Seeing as we’ve been caching for 9 months now and are at the tail end of a winter dry spell in regards to consistent caching, I figure we might as well catch everyone up to what we’ve done thus far.  So for the next few days we’ll be updating the blog with stories from previous cache outings.  And what better way to start then at the beginning.  I promise that the other tales won’t be so long-winded…this is our first, after all, and we have some ground to cover in getting there.

As I had previously mentioned, we technically attempted our first cache way back in 2008.  Because we lacked the proper tools (namely a GPSr), we failed spectacularly at a 1/1 cache.  Everything in the description told us it would be a quick and easy cache (affectionately labeled as a P&G).  Yeah, well when it’s your first time and you have no help, you’re pretty much up a creek without a paddle if you lack the proper tools and fail to grasp the terminology.  So we pretty much gave up before we ever began.

Fast-forward to July 3rd, 2010.  We are at my parents’ house for their annual 4th of July weekend barbecue.  Everyone is eating their hamburgers and hotdogs in the hot Indiana July sun, just enjoying the simple things.  I happen to overhear my mother asking my brother about geocaching.  Now, this is a term I had only uttered a couple times several years ago but quite suddenly my interest was piqued.  I listened as my brother and sister-in-law told a story of some of the caches they had done recently and the more I heard the more excited I got.  I needed to know more.

During the conversation he mentioned he was using his iPhone for geocaching.  I was floored.  Here I am, a member of IT who has had an iPhone for over a year, and I had heard NOTHING about geocaching on my iPhone.  I never even thought to have used my iPhone for caching, even though I knew it had GPS and mapping capabilities.  So I pulled him aside and asked him for more information.  He whipped out his phone and showed me the Geocaching for iPhone app.  I couldn’t believe it.  Here is the answer to all of my past wishes.  I had always chalked our failure up to not have the proper equipment, and here he is, telling me I’ve had all I needed for the past year.  Duuuuuuhhhhh!!!!!!

That night on our way home I excitedly told Cyndi everything I had learned.  I told her that the only problem was the app was $9.99.  This pretty much derailed the conversation then and there.  Seriously, there are apps that allow you to remotely access PCs that cost less than this.  But when we got home and I went on the App Store, we saw that there was a free app called Intro to Geocaching.  OH COME ON!!!!!  It’s spelled out for us….duh.  How did we not see this a year ago?  So we decided that we’d go out and try to find some caches the next day.

The following late afternoon we decided was the perfect time to go out.  The sun was waning in the western sky and the temperature, while still quite warm, wasn’t stifling.  We logged into the app and the 3 closest caches appeared.  There was one right down the street from our house!!  We loaded everyone into the van and headed towards our first GZ.  Little did we know that the reason this app is free is because you only get the minimal information about the cache.  Had we had the full app, we would have known right away that the last 10 people to attempt this cache all failed.  But, because we didn’t know, we went in blindly, expecting to have our first find in mere moments….20 minutes later we all climbed back into the van, heads low, frustration levels high, beginning to feel that old, familiar feeling of defeat.  BUT, not all could be like this.  Surely we’re bound to find an easy one to bolster our spirits.

Three DNFs later, and we’re beginning to feel like this just wasn’t meant to be.  Ready to throw in the towel, I begin looking for a place to turn around so we could head home.  Noticing we’re low on gas, I turn into a local Speedway.  At this point Cyndi points out that supposedly there is a cache at the payphone.  I pull up to a pump and get out, eyeballing the payphone in disgust.  Then I see it….underneath the phone box itself is a little black box, looking totally out-of-place.  I finish filling up the tank, get back in the van, and then drive over to the phone.  I don’t make it immediately known that I spotted it, as I wanted to see if anyone else would.  Both kids looked all around the phone and Cyndi checked the back, sides, and top, but no one came up with it.  I then put my hand underneath the phone and pulled the magnetic key holder loose.  There it was….our first cache.  I opened the box and we all stared at the little plastic zip-lock bag holding a folded and tattered piece of paper.  Pulling it out I saw a handful of witty names and dates going back almost a year.  I couldn’t believe it….we found our first geocache.  Now…what do we call ourselves?  Seeing all the names on the log made me yearn for something with a little more personality than Pdj79.  I mean, there were names like BuffaloBob!! and Geo Bratz on there.  Pdj79 just didn’t say anything.  I was stumped.  That’s when I decided, since all 4 of us were there, and we would obviously be doing this as a team, that we should call ourselves Team Howard Family.  Well, there wasn’t much space to write the name, so I dropped the Team and just called us Howard Family, on the log.  We then put the log back in the bag, placed that back in the box, and put it back under the phone booth.  And then the thrill of victory overtook.  We were ready for more.

All told we found 4 that evening.  And one of them required help from my brother.  Turns out there is this thing called a “LPC” cache that I just couldn’t figure out what it meant.  I was looking in bushes, trees, under rocks….I just couldn’t figure it out.  So a quick call to my bro quickly enlightened us that these are light pole caches and can be found by lifting up the aluminum, plastic, or steel skirts that surround the point where the light pole connects to the concrete base.  Hindsight being 20/20, that very first cache we ever attempted did happen to have a light pole right at the GZ…instant “Aha!” moment.  Unfortunately at some point between our hunt and that day the cache had been archived so we could never redeem ourselves.  But no matter….there’s literally millions of caches out there for us to redeem ourselves with.  I’m not gonna let one archived LPC bring me down!!

Every saga has a prologue….I guess this is ours.

I don’t know why but I’ve been having a serious itch to blog lately.  We’ve been geocaching for almost 9 months now and we have all these stories that we relate back to others all the time, but wouldn’t it be easier to just relate it to a blog one time and then have everyone read it?  I’ve launched a few blogs in the past, mostly immature rantings about nothing particularly important, as well as one for a weight-loss initiative I embarked on (and subsequently gave up on when I got laid off from my job of 9 years)….but this will be different.  This time I’m blogging about something I’m very passionate about.  And this time I think the blogging will stick.

I have been familiar with geocaching for 3 years now.  Back in March ’08 I read an article about geocaching.  At the time I didn’t own any GPS equipment or even really understood how this would work.  I signed up for an account at geocaching.com using my defacto user name of Pdj79 (a moniker that has been with me since the early days of the Internet when I signed up for my first email address — from juno.com, no less — using the first letters of nickname I was going by and my birth year:  Pimp Daddy Josh…..man that’s embarrassing), read the introduction information for the site, and then searched for caches in our area.  I was stunned by the number, even back then.  I saw a couple that were close to our house and, one evening, my family attempted to find the cache……it was a resounding failure.  We simply could not find this cache, even though we knew from the Google Map satellite photo that we were right on top of it.  Being in a fairly busy area, we became very aware of what it must have looked like to anyone driving by to see a family of people tearing through bushes and lifting up rocks, seemingly looking for something important when, in all reality, we didn’t have a clue what we were looking for.

After a few minutes of this futile attempt, we decided to get back in the car and move on to whatever activity we were headed for.  Because of this, we never attempted to locate another cache….that is, not until July 4th, 2010.  But that is another story…