besem

I am moving to the Eastern Cape for good come the New Year, and I'd need someone to maintain my caches up north for me, or possibly adopt them. The caches I need maintained are: Is Nederlands Afrikaans? The Matrix Cabbage PopCo Any volunteers up for it? The only cache will take some work to maintain is PopCo due to its components - ideally I would want to meet up with my maintainer beforehand to hand over the material needed to replace if necessary.

Exciting stuff! I like the Favourites idea. The Dutch geocachers have a system where for every 20 caches you find you can award a "Geo d'Or" to a cache you like. On the geocaching.nl site you CAN sort them by percentage of Geo d'Ors to finds, which is very useful. Looking forward to the new changes!!

Whoa, this picture almost looks computer-generated! No idea where it is, though.

Niiiiiiiiiice!

"This video contains content from bbc, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds" Too bad the BBC is stingy - even on YouTube! Found another video, though: Pretty dang awesome!

They release lots of air below a school of fish, which disorients them and make them sitting, er, ducks?

Bubble Nets? Close, but not quite Seaweed nets?

Haha, I hope your stickers are tiiiiiiny! You haven't done an Oom Louwtjie cache yet... Ek't daai surprise verwag... met of sonder Bloem. Ek't 'n verhandeling wat 1 November moet in, so die volgende twee maande gaan maar staaaaadig oor die klippe wees. But come December...

Asterix knows his stuff! All yours, cincol.

Check it out, from Back to the Future III: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46oT0l56AMA . I've been reading Churchill's "A History of the English Speaking Peoples" the last few night, and it's proving to be fascinating. One thing that stood out for me was the time of complete peace and sophistication under Roman rule, around 300-400 AD. Back then a greater proportion of the general population of England had hot water facilities in their houses than even today. After the deterioration around 400 AD, very few Englishmen had the privilege of a hot bath, a condition that would remain until the 1900s. My question, however, is fairly simple. What was London called under Roman rule?

Well, if Back to the Future didn't just make it up on the spot, it comes from the name of some pie whose dish was delicious to throw around.

I'm most likely in for this!

Weet nie van enige ander nie, maar hierdie EarthCache is in Afrikaans.

Got the idea - but which SA city? Gah, I should know this. I studied in Bremen for 3 months and recalled hearing about Bremen's Twin in SA. Let's go for Kimberley.

Highest Altitude lake? No idea where it is... South America?

I saw the Perseids for the first time last year when I was in Holland, lying on a mattress on the roof of my apartment building. Clouds spoiled the fun a little, but it was still an impressive showing. Nothing like the Leonids, though - I am eagerly awaiting 2032 to see if the storm will recur! The leonid particles come from the comet Tempel-Tuttle which is a short-perdiod comet passing by the sun every 33 years or so, littering the earth's orbit with fresh new particles, which, hopefully, we'll hit in full force come 2032. The particle stream, I mean. Not the comet. Take it away CH.

I'll have a go an keep the topic astronomical. On an average night, you can expect to see about 7 meteors (or shooting stars) per hour. Sometimes, however, earth passes through particle streams of higher density, resulting in so-called meteor showers (ranging from between 10 to 30 meteors per hour) and once in a while we'd hit a particularly dense patch, resulting in meteor storms (more than one meteor per minute, but often many more). In 1999 I briefly witnessed a meteor storm at rates that approached 1000 meteors per hour. This famous storm seems to recur every 33 years or so - what is the name of the storm? If you can give me the constellation it emanates from, it'll suffice.

I reckon about 50,000 years. I've been out of the astronomy scene for a while - last time I heard the highest speed a spacecraft has reached is about 18km/s. At that speed, and ignoring slowing down effects of the sun's gravity, it'll take around 70,000 years. I presume the Helios is somewhat faster, and a gravity assist by Jupiter will do wonders for it.

Bing bing bing! We have a winner. The pic was indeed taken on a previous attempt, about 5 days earlier, when the Jukskei nationals were being held. Quite a sight, really.

Which cache is Sheila visiting?

Some of the following caches may not be active any more - it is hard to keep up to date with archived (and newly published) caches. I have my doubts about the actual age of the first cache on the list - its code does not correspond with its placed date. The oldest surviving South African cache (bottom of the list) comes in at number 176. 74 of the oldest 100 surviving caches are in the USA. Rank Code Name Country Placed Date 1 GC1HTTN Daylight Saving Time Machine United States 2000-05-03 63 GCKXM5 HAJ 4: zero-nine-left Germany 2000-10-24 64 GCKXM6 HAJ 2: two-seven-left Germany 2000-10-24 65 GCKXM8 HAJ 3: two-seven-right Germany 2000-10-24 77 GC1F11 Sydney Geocache Relocated! Australia 2000-11-11 93 GCM65A Liegenbleiber Germany 2000-11-27 98 GCM729 LINDEN GUERILLA II - Kommando Eduard Hoffmann Germany 2000-12-04 There are a number of caches which looks dodgy on the above list, and I'm pretty sure some of those that remain are not in the correct order. I don't think one can really trust the "placed date", since it's editable by the user, and you can select any date you wish, or it could be wrong by accident (e.g. for my own PopCo I reused an old cache page I created but never published, and forgot to alter the placed date - it was wrong for several weeks before I fixed it). Is there a way to compile a similar list by "Published date"?

Ha! Ek WOU sê die monument lyk bekend - een van die eerste caches wat ek in Johannesburg gedoen het. Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori (GC1FDVQ). Ek't op dieselfde dag ook my eerste Tonteldoos cache gekry, toe ek nog nie 'n clue gehad het waaroor dit gaan nie, en sodoende nie die clue in die cache neergeskryf het nie...

It was a tough decision to let them go, but it had to be done, I'm afraid. I'll be keeping an eye on the situation, and if my two remaining caches up there stay intact for a year or so, I'll consider reinstating the series. In the meantime it opens up the mountain for other cachers who'll perhaps be more fortunate than I was!

Well, it IS Bloemfontein, so... The caches are almost all micros, but there isn't a single "usual" micro - they're all pretty creative and if you're not used to his hides yet, they can be pretty difficult as well. The locations are rather arbitrary in general, though - lots of front-yard and road-side caches - and the coordinates are sometimes rather off, but the novelty of the cache containers made up for it in my opinion, even if it meant a few DNFs and moist logs. Stopping by for a cuppa with Oom Louwtjie is also highly recommended. I probably won't make a trip from CT to Bloem *just* for caching, but if you're coming this way anyway, extending your holiday by a day to do some caching in Bloem will definitely be worth it. There are enough koppie-caches with nice views and workouts to keep you busy. I managed 54 on a day there (including the koppie-caches), and I wasn't even chasing numbers.

I was afraid it might be during the SAMO Prizegiving weekend, but luckily it's the weekend after! Lookin' forward to get another CITO under my belt.