{"id":88,"date":"2008-09-12T23:01:43","date_gmt":"2008-09-13T06:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=88"},"modified":"2008-09-12T23:11:23","modified_gmt":"2008-09-13T06:11:23","slug":"geocache-and-geoseek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=88","title":{"rendered":"Geocache and Geoseek"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is my second post in the Kiri Learns to Use Technology Ten Years After Everyone Else series (previously: iPods<\/a>). Due to an exceedingly generous friend<\/a>, I now have my own GPS unit. That means I can join all the cool kids at geocaching.com<\/a> and play technological hide-and-seek!<\/p>\n

I set out today at about 4 p.m., equipped with GPS unit, camera, sunglasses, water, notebook, pen, wallet, and iPod Shuffle. Well, first I spent a little while fiddling with the GPS unit to learn its interface. I pushed buttons for a while until I figured out what each one did, and what kind of information the unit could provide (all sorts!). I then fiddled with it some more until I figured out how to set a “waypoint”, which I named HOME (always nice to be able to get back to where you started). I was impressed at how intuitive the interface turned out to be; I am an inveterate manual-reader, but since I did not have a manual, I had to learn by trial and error. This actually worked quite well, which I attribute to good interface design. I reset the current trip memory to start fresh from HOME and set off walking.<\/p>\n

<\/a>My first target was a benchmark<\/a>, used for surveying purposes. I had only a dim idea of what one might look like, but I decided to see if I could find it. It turns out that EV2479<\/a> is only about four blocks from my house. I walked along the sidewalk, staring down at the GPS unit, until I reached the specified coordinates, then looked around. Nothing. I found an interesting plaque dedicating a tree to a couple that had passed away and a metal label on a streetlight about 3 inches off the ground, but nothing that looked like a benchmark. After a while, I gave up and kept walking along the road, until (naturally), I almost walked over the benchmark. It wasn’t where it was supposed to be — but the webpage does note that “the horizontal coordinates were scaled from a topographic map” and indeed, the latitude was correct but the longitude was off by 0.026 minutes.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Next, I decided to tackle a real geocache. The closest one to my house ended up not working out; there were too many people walking around, and I gather that part of geocaching etiquette is to not be obvious about what you are doing, so that the non-geocaching folks (referred to, of course, as “muggles”) don’t get curious and come steal\/vandalize\/enjoy the cache. However, while looking around, I did encounter an awesome praying mantis. They were right about interesting serendipitous discoveries while geoseeking!<\/p>\n

<\/a>After a nice long walk, I finally found my first real geocache. I reached the location and sat down on a rock to puzzle out the clue for where the cache would be hidden. Unlike the benchmark, I didn’t even have a fuzzy idea of what I was looking for, except that it would not be in plain sight. I got up and explored trees, bushes, rocks, and the railroad ties that were erected all along the jogging path. Finally, I sat back down on the same rock and at some point realized that I was literally sitting next to the cache (revealed due to the unnatural way some dead weeds were positioned). (I’m being a little vague so as not to ruin the surprise for anyone else.) <\/p>\n

<\/a>I rolled a rock over and found that the inside had been hollowed out and capped! I opened it and found a log and a tiny ziplock with “treasure” inside. The log not only had names and dates, but it seems that some people have custom stickers made up, and others even have customized stamps. I added my name and the date to the log. I believe the tradition is that you can take a piece of treasure if you replace it with something similarly small and fun, but I was content just to look and replace everything. It took me a little while, as I had to replace it in between joggers and people pushing strollers and a horseback rider passing by. But it was a beautiful evening and it was great to be outside… and away from the computer! All told, I was out for two hours and covered 5.5 miles.<\/p>\n

<\/a>So here’s my first find… and here’s to several more. :)
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This is my second post in the Kiri Learns to Use Technology Ten Years After Everyone Else series (previously: iPods). Due to an exceedingly generous friend, I now have my own GPS unit. That means I can join all the cool kids at geocaching.com and play technological hide-and-seek! I set out today at about 4 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[33,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}