Quick update.

Quick updates on the two missing caches:

1. The Local Movie Locations / Celebrity Stalker Memorial cache has been moved to a new location.  The new spot can't handle a cache container of the same size as the last one, but I should be able to put something in place eventually.  For now, it's a boring old bison tube.
   
2. The new Video Game History #1 - Breakout cache is not done yet.  I bought my supplies last week but have been spending my time working on Jack's birthday party props (Minecraft!) instead of building the cache... or caching, come to think of it.

Since I'm going to be all spoilery and put instructions together for the Breakout cache container anyway, I may as well reveal that it was / is a street hockey ball.  The game Breakout dealt with a ball hitting a brick wall - my cache consisted of a ball hidden in an old ruined wall in the park across the street.

The nifty think about this container is that it's large enough to hold small trinkets, waterproof, and able to be camouflaged, so it's not just an orange hockey ball.  When done, the container ends up being waterproof (well.. I wouldn't make in an underwater cache, but it can be dunked underwater for a while with no ill effects) and hides well, so I'm kinda excited to write up instructions.  Well, maybe not excited. Mildly enthusiastic?  You get the idea.

Not one, but two caches missing...

I previously mentioned that my Breakout cache had gone missing, and confirmed over the weekend that my Local Movie Locations / Celebrity Stalker Memorial cache has gone missing as well.

Someone had emailed me about the condition of GZ at that cache, right in the middle of my pain / health issues, so I had never been able to check it out.  I had noticed that it hadn't been found since April, and there is another cache in the same park hidden in a similar way that has still been getting traffic, so I was beginning to fear for the worst.  Someone was kind enough to log a DNF saying that they found some possible parts of it, so I took a look over the weekend, and damn it, it's gone.

This is another opportunity for me to document this type of cache build... but wow, it took like 12 hours to make the first one, mainly due to all of the trial and error.  I found a new home for it and will start making plans to replace it soon, but this really sucks.  Oh well.

My new trackable - "Jack's Travel Bug Game"

I picked up a few trackables way back around my birthday, and have been slowly getting them out into the world.  I knew that I wanted to do something different for our newest Travel Bug, and came up with the idea of making some sort of simple game.  My original thought was that you would have to roll an 8 side die, each number of which was assigned a cardinal or intermediate direction, i.e. 1 = North, 2 = North East, 3 = East, etc...

I kept this idea in the back of my mind and started talking it over with Jack, and he really wanted another trackable named after him (he's so humble, isn't he?) like the original Traveling Purple Dice.  He wanted to make the game a bit fancier, so I started jotting down ideas as they hit me.

The final result is shown below.  It's 2 sided, so I just combined both sides into one image. If the image below isn't clear enough to read, you can see a better version here.

Feb. 19, 2013 EDIT - I'm finally sending the bug out, so created a page with the instructions here in case the original copy goes missing or anything.

Click to enlarge.

This will be laminated (with packing tape - cheesy, but effective) and rolled up as a scroll.  I have a large bison tube with an attached key ring that's big enough to hold this scroll and the 8 sided die. I'm still working out how to decorate the tube so that people actually open it, and don't just assume that the tube itself is the Travel Bug.

Bison tube, die, and game scroll.

I think that this strikes a nice balance - the original, easy, no-need-to-think game is still here, and the newer rules make up the "full" game.  I think my favorite part of this is Step 3 of the full game, where you have to sneak an odd word into your next cache log.  I actually made the list out of words that were all visible from my desk at work, so yeah, it's an interesting place to try to be productive.

I think I'm going to try etching The Game or Jack's Game on the bison tube with my Dremel, and then using crayons to really get a bunch of wax in the etched grooves.  Even if the wax eventually wears away, it will still be visible.  I'll post a picture when I figure it out.

My third cache is live!

Cache number three is officially live!  Local Movie Locations / Celebrity Stalker Memorial has a new home in what's officially known as Recreation Park, but what everyone actually calls ABC Field.  This cache commemorates the time spent in 2011 filming Silver Linings Playbook in the area. This movie was filmed in and around Ridley, Upper Darby and Lansdowne, among other places.

Google view of ABC Field.  I should try to take a kite aerial photo here.

I learned a few lessons with this cache.  My original site was located near where this picture was taken by my cousin-in-law:

Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.

Unfortunately, the walkway they are standing on overlooks the local freight rail line, and a cache placed in that area would be in violation of Federal law or something.  I took great care in selecting an area that was safe, but getting local cachers in trouble with the feds would probably diminish this hobby a bit, so I moved it.

I have run into plenty of caches near train tracks, but when I thought about it a bit I realized that those were all near local passenger lines.  I'm not 100% sure that it makes a difference, but it was a no brainer for me to just move this to another park that had previously has no caches in it.

My wife played a huge role in the creation of this cache, as she spent the weeks that they filmed here stalking Bradley Cooper.  She denies it, of course, but if you describe what stalking is without actually using the word "stalking", she totally agrees that that's what she was doing.  I'm not going to argue with her about this one, because deep inside I think she knows that I'm right, and she did stalk him.

The cache container I made for this one is like nothing I've ever seen before.  Internally, it's nothing more than a Bison tube, but it has been crafted into something totally unique.  I had previously run into some waterproofing issues, but quite a few more coats of a few different types of varnish seemed to do the trick, and my location is at least slightly protected from the weather.

All in all I'm happy with how this came out.  It's different than what I've been working on with the Videogame History series, and 98% of it was inspired by my wife's suggestions, but I still enjoyed making it, and I hope that plenty of local cachers enjoy finding it.

Cache in this post:

• Local Movie Locations / Celebrity Stalker Memorial

Birthday Madness Part 1 - My first two caches are live!

The past few days have been so busy, cache-wise, that I'm splitting this into two separate blog posts.

As I mentioned before, my 40th birthday fell on the 17th, so it was the perfect opportunity to use up some of my excess vacation time and take a few days off to both go caching and to officially submit my first few caches for review.  I'm happy to report that my first official caches (not counting my adopted one) went live yesterday!  Video Game History #1 - Breakout and Video Game History #2 - Frogger are officially out in the wild, and several people found both caches on the day they went live.

Breakout from the Atari 2600 version.  Wikimedia Commons image shown.

I live within walking distance of Eastlake Park In Ridley Park, and there was only one cache in the 14 acre area, so this was a natural spot for me to place them.  I was able to find spots that fit the theme of both caches, and I'm sticking by my "no generic cache container" rule.  Each container is pretty unique, though I have to admit that while Breakout is like nothing I've ever found, Frogger was inspired by a few caches I picked up when I first started caching.  Frogger is probably the more fun of the two containers as well.

Frogger.  Wikimedia Commons image shown.

This whole process was a series of firsts for me.  Originally, I wasn't sure what to put in the cache as an FTF prize.  Since Breakout was my first cache ever, I ended up splurging and left a new 8 GB thumb drive.  Frogger is a smaller container, so my choices were pretty limited. Conveniently I had a Where's George? dollar that I picked up at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire about a month ago.  Considering that it's kinda sorta trackable (not many people bother logging them) AND it's worth $1, it was a win/win for everyone involved.

I had spent a little time over the past few days getting averaged coordinates, and finally dropped both caches off on my birthday this past Wednesday.  I had been writing up the cache descriptions for a little while, and since I knew I would be in the area caching yesterday, I submitted them for review first thing in the morning.  I wasn't sure if the local reviewer would actually come out and check the caches or not, but I guess the answer is "or not", as they went live within about an hour of me posting them.

Cache number 3 was also ready to go, but apparently my placement is in an area that is unsuitable as it is pretty close to a train overpass.  The area itself is safe - there is a huge fence blocking anyone from getting near the tracks - but its very proximity to the train could be an issue due to federal law or something.

It's really no big deal as I had a "Plan B" spot picked out already.  It's less related to the theme of the cache, but it's in a busy park that has no other caches, and I'm sure it will get plenty of cacher traffic.  when I took it down to move it I noticed that I needed to beef up the waterproofing, so this being told that I had to move the cache alerted me to a problem that I may not have caught until it was too late. Sweet.

All in all, I'm pleased with how the caches came out, though I can foresee the next ones being more unique.

Shameless plug - if you're in the area, come check them out!  The three caches in this park are all within walking distance of one another, though it may be a bit of a stroll.  Come out on a nice day, check out the scenery, and find some caches!

Working on my first caches!

I'm officially working on my first caches!  My plan is to spend the next few weeks putting them together, and then having them ready to submit by mid October.  My birthday is on October 17th and I'm taking a few days off that week, with nothing planned but Geocaching.  I figure it'll be as good a time as any to get my caches out into the wild.

I've been on the Geocaching subreddit a lot these days, and a common discussion has been about the frustration people feel when new cachers flood an area with simple, uninspired caches.  I have to admit that my original ideas for caches when I first started out in July are significantly different than what I'm working on now.  I'm up to over 80 caches found so far, and each one has given me ideas to use on my own.

Without any spoilers, I can let you in on a few things.  I'm working on three caches, two of which are based on Video Game History.  I built an arcade machine a few years back that played every arcade, Nintendo, Atari, Commodore 64, Intellivision, Vectrex, Sega, Neo-Geo, etc... game ever made.  I'm using the theme of a particular game for each cache, and the container and/or location will reflect that theme. I have been ruminating on this for a while, and have come up with decent ideas for:

• Asteroids
• Battlezone
• Breakout
• BurgerTime
• Centipede
• Dig Dug
• Dragon's Lair
• Donkey Kong
• Frogger
• Galaxian / Galaga
• Joust
• Minecraft
• Moon Patrol
• Pac Man / Ms. Pac Man
• Paperboy
• Plants vs. Zombies
• Pole Position
• Q*Bert
• River Raid
• Space Invaders
• Spy Hunter
• Tapper
• Zaxxon
• Zork

I can probably come up with even more than that, but this gives me plenty to start with.  The neat thing about these is that none of them are a nano, magnetic keyholder, bison tube, or lock and lock container.  At least not standard models of them.  I have a heavily modified bison tube in the works that will look nothing like a bison tube when it's done.

The first two that I'll have ready are Breakout and Frogger.  I'm also actively working on Pac-Man, Joust, and Plants vs. Zombies, but I'm not planning on them going out for a few months at least.

The best part of this is that I live right down the street from a park that's begging for caches.  There is one cache there now (View of the Lake, which was the first one I ever found), and room for at least two more.  I've been scouting spots and have a good idea of where I'll place them, and once I'm sure I'll spend a few days getting good averaged coordinates from my Garmin.

I also have a third cache in the works that's unrelated to the Video Game theme - it's an idea that my wife came up with, and I'm running with it.  We'll see how that one turns out.

All in all, it's an exciting time for me these days.  I have a little work area set up to create the caches, and it's a bit of a mess, with paint and other stuff cluttering things up a bit.

Before I forget  - here's a neat tip.  I'm making a custom container for one of the caches, and needed a way to seal up the container.  I ended up going online and buying some piggy bank stoppers.  They are soft and flexible enough to make a really good seal against the elements, and were really cheap.