Shiraz-mataz
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Posts posted by Shiraz-mataz
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1) Snoogans found "Oceola Isthmus" (GCN0C2) on 9/14/06
2) Parents of Sam found "Oceola Isthmus" (GCN0C2) on 4/1/06
3) Parents of Sam discovered "I Met Simulatmore" (TBMJKM) on 5/27/07 at GW5
4) Simulatmore is the former coworker who got me hooked on geocaching!
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I recently went on a very short section hike along the AT. A friend and I attempted the 42 mile Maryland portion from Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hiking north toward Pen Mar, Maryland. Being sea-level dwellers we were somewhat unprepared for the thousand foot elevation changes when coupled with all the stuff we carried. From an AT perspective I've read that the Maryland section is rather easy compared to the rest of the trail. If so, phew! My dreams of taking a six-month hike from Georgia to Maine will require a little more training! We ended up hiking around 25 miles, camping out two nights along the way. If you want to read my caching adventures for that trip, check out my Personal AT Travel Bug.
If you would like to read forums geared specifically toward the Appalachian Trail, I'd suggest checking out: Whiteblaze.
And to read the cool adventures of a lot of the folks currently hiking the AT, check out: Trail Journals.
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From the OP, above:
...If you get into making your own Alcohol it will cost you about $0.60 cents per quart. and you can drink that too...
Having made my own stove and then forking over the five bucks for denatured alcohol at Walmart, the idea of actually making my own alcohol appeals to me! I'm not interested in moonshinin' or even drinking the ethanol myself but as a do-it-yourselfer there's just something cool about taking the homemade burner to the next level. Do you have any suggestions or possible links to sites that offer fermentation/distillation techniques?
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Steak and Mashed Potatos
This is really just a "luxury meal" that I'll reserve for my first night on the trail. For the steak, when you grill steak at home prior to your trip, freeze a hefty piece along with any sauce in a ziploc bag. On the day of the trip, grab the steak out of the freezer and stuff it in your backpack as you're heading out the door. During the course of the day it will slowly thaw and by the time you reach your camp site it should be at ambient temperature. Fire up the stove and boil about a cup (or two) of water, letting the steak basks in its baggie. When hot, remove the steak from the bag and place on a plate. Use the still-hot water to mix with some instant potatos. Your campin' buddies will be so jealous while they're suffering through their ramen noodles!
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Shoes: Teva Terra-Fi Sandals for extremely difficult terrain, or Barefoot for the other 80% of the time!
Pack: Mountainsmith internal frame. I got this for my son when he was in scouts. Since he quit, I adjusted it to fit me and am happy with it. Not sure what specific model/size it is.
Tent: Kelty Gunnison 2. I also have an Eagles Nest Outfitters (ENO) single-nest hammock that I'm looking forward to trying. I still need to buy a tarp for it. Lots smaller and lighter than my tent!
Sleeping Bag: L.L. Bean 20 degree bag
Padding: Egg crate roll-up padding from Walmart.
Stove: Homemade Pepsi Can stove
Cookware: GSI Bugaboo pots
Water Filter: Katadyn Vario
Walking stick: Homemade stick made from a mop handle. I made it back during my days as a Cub Scout Den Leader. I might consider upgrading to the lighter "Leki-like" poles at some point but for now it works quite well.
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I made my own Pepsi Can Stove. Well actually, I made FIVE of them! It was a lot of fun and the quality of the finished product improved each time. In addition to the stove, I made a titanium burner/pot stand and windscreen. The whole thing breaks down and fits inside of my 0.9 liter bugaboo pot. If you check out my cache history you will see a string of recent finds along the Maryland portion of the Appalachian Trail. Until this trip I'd always used a more conventional (aka - "heavy") Coleman propane single-burner stove. On this three-day trip I only used my little alcohol stove and let me tell you, it worked like a champ! I had to use a little more forethought when firing it up to use fuel efficiently since it's not throttleable and takes a few minutes to relight should it burn out while cooking.
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Some people write like that all the time.
How 'bout that! I had no idea my son was actually encrypting his homework all this time!
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TURN YOUR KEY, SIR!
Based on the 1983 movie, WarGames. The cacher follows the posted coordinates to a vacant store in a run down part of town. A puzzle on the cache page is solved to obtain the combination to the pad lock on the door. Once inside, the cacher finds a lone video game in the middle of an otherwise empty room. When the room's motion sensors detect the cacher's presence the game chimes to life and asks, "Do you want to play a game?" The cacher drops quarter after quarter (geocoin after geocoin?) into the machine, playing the game over and over until at long last a threshold score is achieved. At that point the game ejects a single key from the coin return slot. At one end of the room a door pops open when its magnetic latch releases. Through the crack the cacher sees a flickering, flourescent light, beckoning. The cacher takes the key and walks through the door which slams shut and locks. Electronic equipment is everywhere, old computer reels are spinning and lights are flashing. THERE'S SOMEONE ELSE THERE! The cacher is frightened to see another person at the far end of the room. On a large-screen monitor the cacher sees what appears to be his own GC Profile Page and some sort of Administrator command prompt window with the words "Delete Account" and a cursor poised over the "OK" button. The shadowy figure has his own key in the console about ten feet away and his left hand on the computer mouse. All of a sudden he starts to yell at the cacher, "TURN YOUR KEY, SIR!" The cacher takes in the scene and realizes that if he doesn't obey, this administrator is going to wipe his geocaching account out! The cacher puts his key in a console across the room and they turn their keys simultaneously. All of a sudden, loud, creaking noises eminate from the wall and a large garage door begins to groan as it slides to the side, revealing a very dark hallway. The cacher, hesitant at first, take a few steps into the musty darkness and in the distance sees a light shining down from the ceiling onto a pedestal. On top of the pedestal is... a Rubbermade container full of broken toys and McDonald's crap!
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SPIDERS!
When a cacher moves the suspicious pile of sticks next to a root ball it activates about a half-dozen autonomous robotic spiders with six foot leg spans to emerge from their hiding places nearby. These robot spiders have infrared sensors and are programmed to seek temperatures around 98.6 degrees. To log the find, the cacher must down a handful of asprin to ward off a heart attack from shear terror and then actually wrestle these creepy, hairy creatures to the ground before being overtaken and covered in web goo. The cache container is in the jaws of one spider. Find it, and the attack is called off. After making any trades and signing the log, hitting the "reset" but will send all of the spiders scampering away to their hidey holes.
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I was the den leader for my son's Cub Scout den and was always looking for something interesting to do. One of the den mothers actually discovered this particular activity. She told me one of her friends was into "geo CASH-ing" which was some kind of orienteering treasure hunt. I dismissed the idea at first until I found out that one of my coworkers was into it too. After hours and hours of talking about it at work I was stoked to hit the trails! The rest, as they say, is history...
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With the exception of winter months I rarely wear more than my trusty Teva Terra-Fi sandals while caching. They are tough AND comfortable on almost any terrain. But my favorite form of footwear is actually no footwear at all - I love to hike barefoot. No, really. People did it for thousands and thousands of years and if one takes a step back from the marketing hype shoved down our throats from Nike et. al., there's no imperative to fork over a small fortune for something you (gasp) may not really need... It ain't for everyone though - hike your own hike. (I do like my Tevas though!)
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To the OP, was the cache page archived or somehow totally removed as though it never existed? The only cache hide listed under your profile is one called Case and Pickens, and it doesn't appear to be the one in question since people are still logging finds on it.
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You-da-man Dinoprophet! I was sitting here at work doing the same thing (yes, I'm a little bored too...). Looks like your super-sleuthing powers beat me to the punch!
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I ran a "nearest caches" Google Maps check and think you may have discovered "Marauder's T.B. Motel and Super Cache." (GCH4G7). It shows up as being 0.2 miles away from the coordinates you listed. Quite a distance for a container to move on its own but you never know - the flooding or a muggle may have moved it or the coordinates written on the side might be a little off. There were a lot of recent DNF's logged on its cache page so you ought to contact the owner and let them know you may have found it.
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I'd posted a long "not while caching" post earlier but all this sports talk reminded me of one more. A couple years ago I took my son to an Orioles game. They were playing the Boston Red Sox that day. Sitting two rows in front of us was women's soccer star Mia Hamm. She was there to watch her Red Sox boyfriend play - Nomar Garciapara.
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Hey g0t0pless, how about posting the coordinates of these markings so we can check 'em out in Google Maps...
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We have vacationed in Myrtle Beach every summer for over ten years, staying up in the North Myrtle Beach end of the Grand Strand. I'd have to say the caches are a little sparse up that way but the quality is pretty good. Someone else recommended the state parks south of town - that sounds like a great idea!
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Never used this one but it crossed my mind a couple times on cache hunts near houses...
"I'm doing the initial property survey for a 500 unit apartment complex. The basketball court and playground should go right... about... HERE! Oh, is that your house next door? Gee, I hope it's not too loud for you..."
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I found the skeleton of a pirate once! It held the clue to a large final cache. Kinda scared me because I wasn't expecting it but it was way cool! Check it out...
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I'd imagine the incidence of running into someone famous while caching has got to be very rare! I've never run into anyone famous out in the woods, that's for sure. But it did make me think about the handful of famous people I have met in my lifetime...
- Tiny Tim (Tiptoe through the Tulips), I met him during intermission while he was performing with a circus that visited my town.
- Tom Clancy, the novelist. He lives about an hour away and visited the flight simulator I worked at. For the tour, he signed all six (at the time) of his books for me!
- Cathy Silvers - from "Happy Days." She was working the auto-show circuit, geez, must have been 25 years ago!!!
- A few local TV personalities/news anchors from Columbia, SC.
- Gene Cernin, the last man to walk on the moon (he says "the LATEST" person to walk on the moon).
- Miss South Carolina (circa 1982). Walked her to her car after an MDA telethon I was helping to run.
- Sam Nunn (Senate Arms Services Committee)
- Don Geronimo and Mike O'Mara, nationally syndicated radio DJ's who also visited my simulator facility
- I think I saw Rhea Perlman (Cheers) at an airport once.
- Also at Washington National Airport I saw Tim Russert talking on the phone.
- Again at the airport, I saw Clinton advisor James Carville.
- And anchorman Ted Koppel has a house in this county and I've bumped into him a couple times while out and about.
- My cousin is a fairly well-known artist back in South Carolina named "Blue Sky." (he changed his name to that from Warren Johnson). He's famous for his murals around the state.
The previous poster mentioned Hootie and the Blowfish... Darius Rucker and another band member (Jim Sonnefeld?) and I attended the University of South Carolina during the same years. They are in my yearbooks but were not famous at the time. They were performing as a group back then in the Five Points area but I never saw them.
Cool Stuff!
- Tiny Tim (Tiptoe through the Tulips), I met him during intermission while he was performing with a circus that visited my town.
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I usually cache pretty lite with all my cachin' gear stuffed in my son's retired Harry Potter backpack.
- GPSr
- Compass
- Handheld metal detector (Really! I've used it to find carabiners!)
- Pens/Pencils
- Spare baggies
- My signature stamps and ink pad
- Camera
- Walkin' stick/Root hole poker
- Bug spray in the summer
- Water/Snacks if it's going to be a long hike
- Cell phone
- Any swag I plan to trade
Geez, that's a lot more than I thought! It all pretty much just rides around in my truck in case something comes up.
- GPSr
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Sadly no... My first cache find was the victim of a growing problem with people dumping their trash nearby. The hiders gave up and reinvented the theme somewhere else.
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While visiting Oz in 2001, I discovered and fell in love with their fine wine, "Shiraz." I took that as part of my handle and added "mataz" just because it rhymed!
As a matter of related interest... my avatar picture was taken in Kuranda, a town in north Queensland. I thought it was cool because it's at a crossroads, about as faaaaar from home as I can get without actually leaving the planet.
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It's weird - I have trouble remembering "important" stuff like coworker's names, deadlines, history... but I can generally remember most details about the caches I've visited. Granted, I only have a couple hundred finds but I do read through my old log entries once in awhile for fun. And like another poster, I will be driving around with my wife and say, "Guess what!!! There's a cache stuck to the back side of that pay phone over there!" Of course she too rolls her eyes and says, "GEEK!"
Do all hikers & backpackers have missing toenails?
in General geocaching topics
Posted
Jeepers!
I've only lost one toenail in my life when I was closing a garage door, missed the handle and tried to keep it from slamming to the gound by catching it with my foot! Ouch! I second what was said by MarcusArelius about a proper shoe fit. And if you are "slamming" your feet down because you are tired then using hiking poles can also help by relieving the strain on your legs.
Here's where I offer a different approach that may be worth trying. This may sound counterintuitive to a lot of folks but hiking sandals could go a long way toward solving your problems, especially the open-toed styles that still have a solid anchor to the footbed. My personal sandal of choice is the Teva Terra-Fi. They will definitely "free your feet" but they put the onus on you to BE CAREFUL! If you're tromping around now with boots on, you CAN NOT walk the same way with sandals due to the added risk of scrapes from sticks and briars. You will have to be more diligent about picking your feet straight up and putting them straight down without dragging them along - mostly while off the beaten path. As someone who hikes barefoot a great deal of the time, this is a normal gait for me. It will slow you down a little but I have never, ever, not even once had a problem with lost toenails, blisters, scrapes or punctures! Either way, do what works for you and enjoy your hike...