I started preparing for today already yesterday evening, or rather as soon as the power came back on in the afternoon and I was awake – the power came back at 2:30 PM, and I woke up an hour later. I started writing a program to automatically download geocaches from the web, but I dropped it for several reasons, for example because as an unregistered user they won’t show me the cache details, and I don’t yet know how to log in automatically from code.
On top of that, I had no idea how to write the GUI, so I gave up on it. In the evening I didn’t know what system to use for the caches, because I was already sleepy, and even if I weren’t, I’m no great thinker. In the end I printed 3 A4 rectangles from a large map of Ostrava, numbered the individual caches, then printed each cache’s page and wrote on it the number the cache had on the map. That way I printed 3 maps and 2 caches, and sadly no more, because like an idiot I hadn’t brought paper from the bedroom. The next day I got up at 8 AM.
Until 11 AM I mostly printed the rest and read through it as I went – another 15 caches in total, of which I printed only 13, because 2 would have used up a lot of ink. So I had 15 printed + 2 unprinted + 1 that I couldn’t open on gc.com. By then Martin had shown up on Jabber, so I asked him whether today was still on. He said yes, and I had until 11:30 to find my wallet, shave and have lunch. I didn’t manage to shave, and even so I only left at 11:45.
I jogged slowly for half of the way, and luckily my heart didn’t hurt one bit. In the end I got to the station well ahead of time, my train wasn’t leaving for another 11 minutes, so I covered the 4.5 km in 38 minutes. Phew. I got on the train, I was in Cesky Tesin at 12:36, and I still had time to withdraw money from an ATM, then buy paper tissues and a ticket. I walked to the train and we left 5 minutes later, so I just texted Martin that everything was going like clockwork. The journey was perfect, a change in Kuncice and then meeting Martin at Ostrava Stred.
I was already looking out for him from the train, recognizing him by his hair, but ha! betrayal!, Martin had had a haircut. I got worried whether we would find each other, because I hadn’t received a reply to my text – the reply was on Jabber, but I didn’t have my Android with me, which was a mistake, as you’ll learn below.
These are the caches I had on those 3 maps (caches in bold are the ones we visited, underlined ones are the ones we found, gray ones are unprinted. WARNING: The following text may contain more or less detailed or accurate hints):
- GC1DBC1 – Animals in Nedbalky
- GC13D8W – Dr. Milada Horakova Orchard
- GC2BJ0Z – Notable Trees of Ostrava 1
- GC26BG8 – Salamoun Mine – on gc.com people wrote that only the last scraps of the logbook were left and that the cache urgently needed maintenance. The owner responded by temporarily disabling the listing, but Martin and I couldn’t agree on what that listing actually is.
- GC35ZHX – HZS-MSK Fifejdy Fire Station – This one was quick, thanks to Martin; I had no idea where a cat hides when there’s a fire.
- GC1KR8Y – Rescue I. – IBC MSK – We searched for quite a while until some man came along and showed us the cache – it was hidden under a stone. Strangely, the man then walked toward IBC even though he had come from the opposite direction – I’d like to thank him for that.
- GC16MH2 – OSTRAVA – exLevitating cache – ahem… this is where we spent the most time. You couldn’t really concentrate on searching, because the muggles on the Ostrava-Stodolni platform were very numerous.
Judging by the hint and the name, it’s still not clear to me where the cache is now, but I reckon it will be somewhere near the ground – because the name is “exLevitating cache” but the hint is “movie-style. look up”. We waited for the RegioJet train to arrive, but it was pretty much in vain, because afterwards there were even more people on the platform. While we were wandering around the platform, a very interesting girl asked us (or rather Martin) whether we were looking for a cache, and when Martin confirmed it, she pointed us back to the elevator.
We gave up in the end – some idiot probably stole it, and if so, I wouldn’t wish him anything nice. - Unknown
- GC1ZHC3 – DVC – The cache was probably inside the Museum of Art, but we were looking for it out behind it.
- GC1KNTH – FOUR-LEAF CLOVER, or Captain Kidd’s Treasure
- GC12BED – Stodolni – Easy as pie. It’s true, though, that hunting nothing but such easy caches isn’t all that much fun.
- GC19KEK – Three Little Pigs – Without a more specific hint we didn’t stand a chance.
- GC3KGGK – Municipal Slaughterhouse in Ostrava – I was surprised that people find it just like that on their way to school or work. Besides, this cache was supposedly a nano – meaning the smallest cache possible. Hm.
- GC1B35K – Sissi Chapel / Sissi Chapelle
- GC1B3J8 – Croatian Tie
- GC36FPB – Emzacka
- GC2K50P – Evangelical Church of Christ
- GC12BE0 – Jindrich Shaft
So these were the caches I had picked out. About the GPS – we might have found that nano more easily if Martin’s GPS had worked – next time I have to bring at least my low-end Samsung Galaxy Y. We got back to the station at 5:23 PM, so we spent almost 4 hours hunting 3 caches.
It didn’t feel like 4 hours at all, more like 2. Admittedly, during the hunt we also stopped at a restaurant for a drink, where I had a strawberry Cappy, so subtract about 30 minutes from that. I got home at 7:30 PM. But I’m already planning to take another look around Poland and Cesky Tesin to see whether I can hunt down another cache or two :-).
PS: The photos are on 👻 There used to be data here. Now it’s just an empty lot on the internet..