Iron Boogers

[+opey one]

Not for sure if this topic has been touched before, so I'll give it a whirl anyway.

 

Relating to the great Tim the Tool Man Taylor of Home Improvement, I recall an episode of him clarifying his impecible sense of direction due to the formentioned. Needless to say, they continued to stay lost......

 

Long before I came across geocaching and the great uses of a GPSr, I felt I could make my way just about anywhere, just for the "gift" that I SEEM to have anyway. Mind you, I said SEEM, so let's not get too critical.

 

I grew up in the mountains and deer hunting especially was the sport of choice, due to family and friends.

 

I've been in countless regions of mostly Virginia and Tennessee, and never failed to make it back to camp regardless of what terrain or obstacles that came.

 

Most trips from camp ranged from a 2 to 4 mile walk to a specific spot, then I chose my own mountain to hike to the desired spot to hunt.

 

It never failed, I just had some kind of sence of my surroundings, even though we left camp many hours before daylight anyway. And on a few occasions, I was after dark returning to camp, dragging my trophy.

 

Then I discovered the GPSr, and it totally changed my mind altogether. I thought this was WAY too easy. For what it's worth, it was....I took it with me this past rifle season and did not have to use it, but I did, just to mark my new stand if I plan to go there next year. I never had to use it to return to camp. Another for what it's worth- it was approximately 3.22 mi. from camp to stand.

 

How many of you can honestly say that you can make it back to an area using your own built in compass?

 

Sure there are many who say, "I know I can, you idiot!" But have you ever tried it?

 

That's where I'm going with this, to make a short story long, so hang loose.

 

I watched a show on the Discovery Channel a while back about how they trained the Marines on one type of challenge they had to face.

 

It dealt with being disoriented and having to find your way back, and to climb a mountain with an elevation change of 8000 feet.

 

They had to make their own fire and live off the land with just enough MRE's to suffice.

 

I thought that was cool and made my own bow (to make fire), and then got my wife to take me to a well known mountain from home. The elevation change was not 8000 feet, but from the bottom to the top WAS a challenge.

 

I spent two nights (Weekend), on my own and had to live off the land, too. I was fortunate to have a tent, but no light whatsoever.

 

What hunting I did was during the daylight, as I did manage to snag three bluegill from a nearby lake. With a few worms and ants, I made it through the first night (fried ants.... and an accumulation of them are quite tasty, kinda like the "crunchies" you get at Long John Silvers).

 

That meal almost filled up my hollow tooth, so I settled for Slim Jims and Penrose hot sausages! I found out real quick that I could not master the bow! []

 

At the prementioned destination time, I was to make it back to the precise parking location. I did manage to do so three minutes before the ride came.

 

Yes, I am familiar with this area, as there are paths and some easy trails, but I did not use any of those, I made it as hard as I could for myself, considering the trip back down the mountain was at between 2:30 and 3:OO am.

 

I felt like Rambo on his best day!

 

I made it. The GPS unit is great, though!

 

Thanks for lending an ear. O1

[+Smitherington]

I don't know if you are blowing smoke or not but there is no way I would try that. I suppose if I went in knowing that I had to find my way back out I would watch my surroundings more than I do but I am afraid I would do some wandering. Most people walk in circles and I have done that before. I am thinking of a moonlit night behind the campus of MTU in Houghton MI with snowshoes on.

No, not me. I commend those who have that inate sense of direction. I am a GPS or map and compass guy.

[Jamethiel]

After reading that, I had to share: My mother has such a bad sense of direction that when we go shopping at the mall, she can be walking downmall (from where we parked), go into a store, come out, and walk upmall without noticing! She never did make it all the way through the mall without getting turned around and having to rewalk half of it. It drove my brother and me nuts, we'd tell her we were two stores down, past the one she went into, and we'd find her looking for us two stores back the way we came. Of course, Potomac Mills is over a mile long. And the time she couldn't remember which end she had parked at was hilarious!

I'm personally thankful for my father's sense of direction and the fact that I managed to get some of it. It has come in useful since I moved to Montana.

-Jennifer

 

Age does not bring wisdom, but it does give perspective.

[+Bloencustoms]

I actually lit a cigarette from a bow drill once. Took about three hours to get a feel for the technique. It's something I'd use after all the butan, matches, and magnifiers are gone.

 

"Searching with my good eye closed"

[+MountainMudbug]

We camped last night in the Smokies - I got lost in the dark returning to the tent from the bathroom, and that was only a few hundred yards.

 

On the flip side, I had no trouble finding the bathroom in the first place, so perhaps I have built-in bathroom radar as many women do......

[+opey one]

quote:

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Originally posted by BloenCustoms:

I actually lit a cigarette from a bow drill once. Took about three hours to get a feel for the technique. It's something I'd use after all the butan, matches, and magnifiers are gone.

 

http://angelfire.com/pro/bloen/images/eyes.GIF

"Searching with my good eye closed"

---

 

Yeah, I really didn't get the WHOLE concept of the bow, as I did make some cinders, but couldn't make them do anything. I broke the string I started with and then used my boot strings, lol.... If you can appreciate a bow to start fire, it was more jumping around with the boot strings than doing what it should. Hee hee, that's where Master Bic came into play, so I wasn't really roughing it, but I tried

[+Jamie Z]

I'm one of those who is terrible with direction. I don't get lost at the mall, but stick me in the middle of Memphis, and I have to do a bit of driving in circles before I figure out which way I have to go.

 

What you've described, though, Opey, is exactly what I'd like to do. When I was 10, I wanted my dad to bring me across the lake at our weekend cabin and leave me, but he never would. I mean, I don't think I was truly prepared, but I wish he would have taken me out there and showed me what I would have to do. I envisioned myself catching fish and cooking my food over a fire I had to build. I mean, how much trouble could I have gotten into at age 10?

 

Someday...

 

Jamie

[+opey one]

quote:

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I envisioned myself catching fish and cooking my food over a fire I had to build. I mean, how much trouble could I have gotten into at age 10?

 

Someday...

 

Jamie

---

 

Enuff said. I wish everyone would try it, though. It was a great experience and McToys were a blessing....Along with the double quarter pounder w/cheese! The crap I cooked was enough to turn the dog's nose up

[+pdxmarathonman]

quote:

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The crap I cooked was enough to turn the dog's nose up

---

 

Hypothetically I hope. If you had your dog with you, then all your directional claims about finding your way home are moot.

[+Stunod]

I'm pretty good with my bearing when I'm outside. I can always tell you which way is North without even thinking about it. Don't need to look for the sun or stars...I can just "feel" it.

 

Now, bring me inside a building and I'll have no idea which way is which. I'll be lucky to figure out which way is up.

 

"Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand."

[+opey one]

quote:

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Originally posted by pdxmarathonman:

quote:

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The crap I cooked was enough to turn the dog's nose up

---

 

Hypothetically I hope. If you had your dog with you, then all your directional claims about finding your way home are moot.

---

 

All fun aside, I did not have my dog. That lazy bones would've let me go off and leave her!!

 

Wherever she feels compelled to lay down (which that's almost anywhere), she would, and I THINK she would make her way back, I guess.

 

And for the record, the dog really resembles my avatar. Not a cat, and not big ears, and not smoking...., maybe the same color...But kinda resembles the avatar...Go figure....

[+Web-ling]

I've always had a keen sense of direction. As a preschooler, I had the annoying habit of telling my mother how to get places when she got lost while driving.

 

I remember reading several years ago in some science magazine that one theory for why some people have an extremely good sense of direction is that they may have a very small, slightly magnetized iron deposit in their brains.

 

Maybe the iron's not in the boogers...?

 

[+H. & N.]

So Whenever I am driving around, or walking around, I NEVER have a problem finding where I need to go, or getting back to *home base*. But the minute my husband gets into the car with me driving, I can't find my way around a lit light post in midday. Maybe it's the old double standard shotgun seat driving.

 

Heather

 

Heather and Nate

[Bender]

Someone is always telling me where to go. How could i possibly get lost?

 

Bender

[SilverBob]

I too have been blessed with a fine sense of direction. I grew up in Cheatham County Tennessee and moved west when I got to high school. Without forests all around, I couldn't understand how anyone could get lost out here. I mean you can see a hundred miles or more!

My perceptions changed when I met my lovely wife, Red Molly. As much as I love everything about her, she's helpless when it comes to navigation. She has gotten lost coming back from the salad bar!

Since we've started geocaching, however, I think she's starting to figure things out a little better. She now has her own GPS 76 and can actually use it! She's found several caches on her own, and is developing a sense of where things ought to be. At least now she knows which side of the road to watch.

I'm not ready to let her navigate when we're boating on the Sacramento Delta yet, but if she keeps learning, I'm sure the time will come.

 

SilverBob

 

We can always count on the French to be there when they need us.

[+ErSamin]

I have not always been the 'outside type', but as a teenager traveling in Europe, I found that I could find my way around any city you plunked me down into with map and no problem at all. This might not equate with winding your way in the woods, but Rome and Paris were not remotely planned on the grid system!

 

"Could be worse...could be raining"

[briancm]

I've never had a problem with direction in the US, but when the Army stationed me in Germany, I was always off 90 degrees. I remember one time I was out scouting a hunting spot with a coworker, and he was amazed at my sense of direction. Nothing to it, I just kept track of where I'd been and the turns I made.

 

Part of it is the northwest forests, too. I met a retired Army colonel who served in Vietnam. He complained that our forests were thicker than the jungles in 'Nam. (He also complained that he had traveled the world over, and his Glock rusted when he reached Seattle...) The upshot with the forests is that you can just turn around and follow your own trail back, like retracing your footprints in the snow.

[+W8TVI]

I have yet to get lost...

when I go caching I turn off the GPS when I head for the car. I can also find my way back to most of the caches I've been to.

 

W8TVI's Geocaching Pictures

GeoX Geocaching gear!

That torpedo did not self-destruct. You heard it hit the hull. And I....was never here.

[+Bloencustoms]

quote:

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What you've described, though, Opey, is exactly what I'd like to do. When I was 10, I wanted my dad to bring me across the lake at our weekend cabin and leave me, but he never would. I mean, I don't think I was truly prepared, but I wish he would have taken me out there and showed me what I would have to do. I envisioned myself catching fish and cooking my food over a fire I had to build. I mean, how much trouble could I have gotten into at age 10?

 

Someday...

 

Jamie

---

 

Many times I've almost wished to get lost, just to test my own abilities. Probably quite a few outdoor enthusiasts share a secret desire to have to survive in the wild. The problem is, most of the people I know that really want to get lost are so well read and prepared, they couldn't get lost if they tried.

 

"Searching with my good eye closed"

[Cloak_N_Dagger]

I also grew up hunting, and always seemed to be able to return to camp by an almost direct route, even though my route in, may have been winding around. I don't really know how to explain it but it works. Maybe it's the minerals in our local water ... or ... Maybe it's just some kind of DNA make-up, linking me with Homo Erectus.

 

When I was younger I did a lot of 'coon huntin' at night. We would run the ridges chasing the dawgs for several miles sometimes. Often in unfamiliar places. We always made it back without a GPS.

 

Of course now that I have a GPS, I use it to mark my hunting stand sites, and the boundries of our property so that I can transfer the waypoints to a topo map. This way my "out of state" hunting buddy, will have an easy way to navigate our property when he comes to hunt.

 

--------------

Changing some folks mind, is like trying to herd cats.

 

[+WildcatRegi]

My flight instructor would always be surprised when after he would disorient me and then ask me where the airport was, I'd casually point in the direction it was in.

 

That being said, I sure do appreciate having a GPSr! Having a vector to my destination gives me the great illusion of knowing where I'm going!

 

But while I'm driving, I always follow the philosophy of "You're not lost until you're out of gas!"

 

 

"The hardest thing to find is something that's not there!"

[+Markwell]

My wife and I chuckle at my Iron Boogers as well (and yes, we use that term). My dad took me driving while I was on my learner's permit and got me a good 40-50 miles from home on an interstate out to the middle of nowhere. He then got me off the interstate and told me: "No major highways, son. Find the way home." I got us home in just under an additional 15 minutes, without a single wrong turn. I guess I too have that inate sense of direction.

 

I do have problems reorienting myself after I've been on a road that does slow curves throughout a town. That seems to mess with my internal compass. Luckily, here in Illinois most roads are straight N/S or E/W grids.

 

All that said, I love having the GPS and Compass to tell me that I'm right - or to tell me that I'm completely off base.

 

Markwell

Chicago Geocaching

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

quote:

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Originally posted by opey one:

<snip> and then got my wife to take me to a well known mountain from home. The elevation change was not 8000 feet, but from the bottom to the top WAS a challenge <snip> At the prementioned destination time, I was to make it back to the precise parking location. I did manage to do so three minutes before the ride came.

---

 

Two questions that beg asking are: What did your wife do with her two days, and how elated was she to see you again?

[+Technojunkie]

My wife and I have discussed the fact that once I've been somewhere before, the path from A to B is pretty much solid!

 

Now, I may not know where I'm going enroute, but I can always find my way back once I've been there, and then that path/location is pretty much part of my "basemap", so to speak.

 

It's kind of like when playing Command and Conquer or many of the other real-time strategy games - once the map is unhidden, it says unhidden!

 

While driving, I often reply - "Oh yeah, I know where we are - I was lost here once..." - meaning of course the first time...

 

Location specific memory - it's a grand thing...

 

Tim

KB5OGH

================

I just need a fix!

[+FFC]

Has anyone else ever had the ability to never be lost and lose it? I've never had a problem getting anywhere but in the past couple of years I find myself referring to maps more and more often and even taking an occasionaly wrong turn. I blame it on limited brain capacity, now that it's full things have started to fall out....

[+opey one]

quote:

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Two questions that beg asking are: What did your wife do with _her_ two days, and how elated was she to see you again?

---

 

Funny you should ask.....She just about pulled her hair out with the two kids ( one is 5 and the other 15 months). Needless to say, I was welcome back, but had to take a bath first and foremost

[+Renegade Knight]

Yes and no.

 

Out in the middle of nowhere and because I can and do pay attention to landmarks etc. I can find my way back even via a different route out.

 

However, put me in some strange office building and it seems like I make the wrong turn out of the bathroom every now and then. That bothers me.

 

=====================

Wherever you go there you are.

[+carleenp]

Both my mother and I have a great sense of direction. It would be very rare for me to get lost. If I travel a route once, I can always get back again. I also look briefly at maps before trips and then just go without usually needing to look at them again. Except in a few rare cases (usually in the mountains), I have always been able to "feel" which direction I'm facing. My mother is pretty much the same way. I'm not sure about my father though.

 

I have friends with no sense of direction that have driven me nuts because they constantly ask me for directions when we go somewhere together, even when they have driven there several times before.

 

[+mornin'glory]

when i told my mom that dad got me a gps for christmas(& what it was for), she laughed & said "why? you have the best sense of direction i've ever heard of". even inside i just know which way is which. i do wonder what causes that. anyone?

 

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[+Delta-S]

I do fine in the outdoors, but i'll get lost quickly in a large building.

[+DavidMac]

I guess I've been blessed with a photographic memory when it comes to locations. I drove over 5000 miles last summer, and can still sit down and draw out directions for nearly every turn from my home in TN to Wyoming and back. Too bad I can't remember more important things (or are they less important...) the same way. Tell me your name and I'll forget it within 30 seconds... When it comes to orientation, I am either dead on or get turned around exactly 90 or 180 degrees; I once drove all the way from Minneapolis to Chicago with my internal compass flipped and telling me I was going west, this almost drove me to insanity . Trouble is if I go to a spot and get disoriented, my brain sticks to it for life, and even after 10 years there are some places where my brain says that north is really west, etc.

 

...Not all who wander are lost... unless the batteries in their GPS die, their maps get ruined by rainwater when their pack leaks, and they find themselves in a laurel thicket. Then, they are probably lost.

[+cachew nut]

I've always had a good sense of direction, but since geocaching with a GPS, I wonder if I still have it. I find that sometimes after finding a cache, and start walking back to where I came from, the GPS tells me I'm wrong. I blame it on watching the GPS and not the trail. I'll need to go hiking without my GPS one of these days to test out that theory.

 

As far as using a bow drill to start a fire...no luck. I've been trying since the first episode of Survivor. It's extremely hard and tiring. I have done a lot of personal research on primitive skills and I know that I have the technique down, my notch in the right place, etc., it's just that I really can't tell one kind of wood from another, I believe that is where my problem is, as it's important to know this.

 

Now that the warm weather is here, I will try again, I'm determined to be able to do it. I hear that once you do it that first time, you are almost always able to do it again. For what it's worth, I can usually start a fire with my magnifier in under a minute. I read about how you can poke a small hole in a leaf and spit over the hole, and use it as a magnifier to start a fire. I tried with no luck. I think you need to be at the equator at hign noon to get this to work