I thought I would be geocaching all the time in 2013, but reality was rather far from that wish. Even though I had invested quite a bit of money in a brand-new Kellys trekking bike, it did not push me to go caching more – instead I just fooled around at home and came up with nonsense to the nth degree. And because I would like to change that this year (even though I do not know whether I will finally manage to move to Ostrava, where I would be afraid to stick my nose out the door in case an ambulance, or better yet a funeral service, took me away), and as the title already suggests, you know where I found the inspiration for today’s GeoHunt :). I woke up at 8:30 in the morning. I added the remaining caches of the Zubate Zaby series to my DB and thought about where I would actually go today.
My first choice was Karvina, but since half of the connections were not running today, I had to pick something closer. And because I already have almost everything in Tesin, the second nearest town was Trinec, where on the contrary I had almost nothing yet. On top of that, a whole bunch of new (and easy, even for me!) caches by the geocacher mirabolante had popped up there, so the choice fell on 3nec :).
Since I still have neither a web feature nor a userscript that would let me update the values in my DB according to the current state of the listing on gc.com (but I just figured out how to do it – I will simply write another UserScript that I will use only in Firefox), I had to load each listing on my own website, then on the gc.com website, check whether they were the same and, if so, write them down in a text file. In the end I had a list of 24 caches that were unchanged and that I had either already solved or that would be manageable to solve in the field. In the end I came up with this list:
- GC2045Y – 52 – James Alfred Wight
- GC3M076 – 65 – VTIPNA CACHE
- GC35PHF – 69 – PTACKOVE
- GC3M8VT – 84 – Pamatnik padlych
- GC171VZ – 86 – WERK – KKO
- GC33926 – 88 – Hvezdarna M. Kopernika
- GC3DH7K – 90 – TST #2 – Petistovka (c.p. 500)
- GC2BXMB – 112 – Beskydmountains, Jahodna 407m
- GC2XJ2H – 115 – Strazci – sochy u nemocnice
- GC44T38 – 119 – Dejiny Trince
- GC3KCH8 – 121 – Potok Listnice
- GC3GPZ1 – 136 – Trinecky gympl
- GC2J680 – 139 – Obecni slunecni lazne
- GC2F60W – 151 – Jahodna – Prumyslova
- GC19HHT – 153 – Vendryne – sv. Katerina
- GC2BQGF – 157 – Beskydmountains, Babi Hora 492m
- GC40RWK – 232 – Velke doly
- GC4DQY6 – 304 – Trinec centrum – zeleznicni zastavka
- GC4M29F – 414 – Trinec
- GC4VNX1 – 415 – Kamenny brod
- GC4N4WJ – 416 – TST #4 – Obytny urednicky dum cp. 509
- GC4VZ92 – 417 – Skryty rybnicek
- GC4VNXC – 418 – Rybnicek
- GC4PGD2 – 419 – poklady trince a okoli 2
Then I tried to download the GPX into my Garmin, but because I had upgraded the jQuery library from some version 1.7 to 2.0, the clause if(checkbox.attr("checked") == "checked") stopped working. As a result, an empty list of caches was sent to the server every time and only an empty GPX file was generated, so I had to replace the if above with if(checkbox.is(":checked")). After that everything was fine and I could finally download those caches into my Garmin.
Then I installed the Wi-Fi printer on my AGAIN AND AGAIN (…) reinstalled Windows and tried to print a map. But no matter what I did, the Windows image viewer simply printed it on only half a page, so I opened it in mspaint, which printed it much better, specifically like this:
The numbers you see there are the IDs under which the caches are stored on my website, and you will find the same numbers in the middle of the list above. This is how I did it: I found a cache on the map, (failed to) hunt it down, looked at the map to see which cache was nearest, found its name on the second sheet of paper with the list, searched for it by name in the Garmin and let it navigate me there :).
One more thing about the printing: I tried to print it on my sister’s printer, because the toner in our laser printer is running out, and I even called my sister about it and she said I could borrow it. However, a blank page came out, so I tried dipping it into boiling water at full depth for about a second to loosen the nozzles and the ink. After that, though, the same thing happened – only a blank page came out, even though the printer acted as if it were printing with great effort. This forced me to print it on the laser printer, but it was not very contrasty or “clear”.
In the end I did not leave the house with my brother until after 2 p.m., and I found the first cache with my brother at 14:36 – that is when the first photo of it was taken. My brother drove me right up to it, and I just told him where to go as I watched my GPS navigation. (In the following text, the caches I found will be shown in bold and those I did not find in red 🙁 )
We found it within about 2 minutes – it was the cache GC4VNXC – 418 – Rybnicek . A little further on there was a very similar cache, namely GC4VZ92 – 417 – Skryty rybnicek , which I found as well. That one, however, had me wandering around a bit – I do not know, I can never quite get my bearings on a map, and even less so with a compass. I went back along trodden paths, where I met a dog in a kennel on a meadow and a family with small children, and then on the main “Neborska” road, from where I headed into the forest park for the cache GC4VNX1 – 415 – Kamenny brod .
That one, on the other hand, I found on the very first grab, I did not even look at the hint – the map was still showing about 50 m to go, but I saw a suspicious tree stump and that was it! I went back along the path I had come by and headed to the final of GC3M076 – 65 – VTIPNA CACHE , which I had solved long ago but had simply never made it to this part of Trinec :).
And that was also the second-to-last cache I bagged today, although I visited 3 more. The first one not found was GC4N4WJ – 416 – TST #4 – Obytny urednicky dum cp. 509 – a mess, electricity running from a pole into the ground and several electrical cabinets next to it. I preferred to get out of there quickly. The second one for the collection of unfound caches was GC4M29F – 414 – Trinec .
I went to the other side of Trinec and did not expect it to get dark so quickly. By the time I got there, it was already so dark that I had no choice but to go back to the Trinec Centrum train stop, because this cache had a difficulty of 4/5 and the hint “Ziju na vode i na sousi. Ano, jsem kes.” (“I live on water and on land. Yes, I am a cache.”).
While I was waiting for my brother, whom I had called right after failing to find the Trinec cache, I went to bag one more cache, GC4DQY6 – 304 – Trinec centrum – zeleznicni zastavka – that one was easy, and there was a lamp shining there too, so I could see everything well. And that was the end; then I went back to the parking lot, my brother arrived about 7 minutes later and drove me home. At home I then showed my mom the 69 photos I had taken today while “GeoKosing” :DD and everything went back to the old routine. But tomorrow I would like to go caching again, and once more to Trinec :).