Geocaching and bouldering

Yesterday I went geocaching and was able to use my bouldering skills. It had a difficulty rating of four and a half stars. The highest rating is five stars. The cache was midway up a pine tree. The problem was that the lowest branch was six feet up. What to do? I had a McGyver moment and saw two possibilities brute force, or make use of my environment. About 300 feet away from the cache were two things that might help a shopping cart and a oil drum trash can. I opted to take the plastic bag out of the drum and roll it over to the tree. Once the drum was upended I could reach onto a branch and pull myself up the tree. From there I was able to climb up to the tree until I reached the cache. I signed cache log and slowly worked my way down the tree and finally landed back on the drum. I rolled the drum back to its home and was on my way.

Geocaching extravaganza

Last week one of my colleagues, who is also a geocacher, suggested that I should revisit a park that I had cached in a couple of years ago. Back then there was only a handful of caches over there which I was able to easily find in an afternoon. When I pulled up the map in geocaching.com, I found that there were now 30 new geocaches. This morning I got up early and cycled along the Ottawa River parkway before crossing the Ottawa River into Quebec. Before I reached the park I had some adversity. As I was cycling all the north side of the Ottawa River I got my first flat tire. I replaced the inner tube and celebrated by having my second breakfast at McDonalds. I was within a stone's throw of Lac Beauchamp park when the second flat tire occurred. Since it was early in the day I decided to persevere and find as many caches as I could. I started by caching the east side of the Lac Beauchamp before heading over to cache the west side. Some of the caches were more unfriendly than others as two of them involved wading through knee high mud. The recent rains had made some of the trails impassible. I headed back to the chalet to try out an innovation, the geocaching iPhone application. I had used the app yesterday to locate a couple of caches and to log my finds aka "field notes" but decided to put it to the test of logging 15 finds. The app worked great. I was able to retrieve the description and logs of some the caches that were hard to find. I'll post a review of the geocaching app in the future. After munching on a Clif Bar I headed north to locate a final geocache and was glad that I did. Sweet! 16 finds!

I retrieved the bike from its hiding place and started my slow trek home. Along the way, I stopped in at McDonalds for a late lunch/early supper. After an hour and half of walking I was back in Ontario. Rather than walking with the bike home I decided to leave it locked up at the office and to replace the tire and inner tube tomorrow at the lunch hour.

Geocaching milestone #1,000

Over the weekend, I achieved a geocaching milestone that has been looming for a while, finding my 1000th geocache. The find was special as it was located in a deer yard with many deer milling around in the background. I discovered geocaching by mistake a couple of years ago when doing some research about GPS satellites. I had bought a watch with GPS capabilities to help me train better for my road races. I discovered that there was a geocache close to where I lived and looked into buying a GPS handset. At this time, I thought they were very expensive and not within my reach and most likely very complex. I went to my local Mountain Equipment Co-op and found that I could get a starter GPS for a couple of hundred dollars. My first geocache was located underneath the rail bed of an abandoned railway bridge. The cache had been disguised to look like a piece of steel with the rivets sticking out. To a novice it would look like a steel plate attached to the underside of the bridge but hidden behind it was the geocache. After finding my first geocache I logged into geocaching.com and found that there were more caches near my place and I started to explore more the city with my GPS handset. One of my most memorable cache is still "Crusty the Clown." You have to climb to the top of a pine tree where you find a bird house. When you opened the door "Crusty the Clown" shoot out at you which scares the crap out of you. After signing the log book I climbed down the tree and cycled to another nearby cache. As I start my second 1000, one of my goals is to try and geocache in more Canadian provinces as well as US states.

Geocaching, the military, and bow hunting

Yesterday, I was out geocaching and with the expectation that it would be cool and quiet afternoon. This was not too be. As I was driving up to the trailhead I passed two groups of army recruits decked in cammo, face paint and carrying an assortment of rifles, sniper scopes, and machine guns. They looked like a serious and dangerous bunch. At the last moment, I noticed that most of the guns were plugged. They were hoping to ambush another platoon concealed much deeper along the trail. Lucky for me the first geocache was in the opposite direction and an easy find. I continued along the trail and noticed a guy in cammo sitting midway up a tree keeping very calm and quiet. Later I would find out that the woods were occupied by deer hunters with bows. The third cache find was what I call a "gotcha." The cache was suspended 15 feet in the air and hanging from the nub of a branch. Standing on a three foot stump and using a 10 foot long branch I was able to knock the cache down. As I was lifting the cache back into place along came a couple of deer hunters wanting to know what I was doing. I showed them the cache and my GPS and explained what geocaching was all about. Before they headed back along the trail I asked them what to do when in the woods during deer season; do you move silently or make some noise. They suggested to make more noise that you would expect of a deer prancing through the forest.

Sneaky Geocaches

Yesterday, I went geocaching along the Ottawa River and eventually located a sneaky geocache. The GPS told me that I was within a couple of feet of the cache but where could it be. This link shows where the cache is. The cacher had transported the tree segment home, sliced off the top, ground out the core and the put dowling support to secure the top. From a distance it looks like a large tree stump sitting next to the river. Afterwards I was reading the logs and noticed that the tree had stumped a lot of people.

Civic Holiday, Colonel By day or John Graves Simcoe day

The first weekend in August we have a holiday that has many names, Civic Holiday, Colonel By day or John Graves Simcoe day. I decided to head to Montreal to see if I could achieve my geocaching goal of 900 finds. On Friday night, I joined a long line of people at the bus station heading to Montreal. In all there were 180 folks in line for the 5 p.m. bus. Security was heightened as they had undercover cops and sniffer dogs checking out everyone’s luggage. Once at the McGill residence, I found that the place was overbooked for the weekend. They have another nearby residence which I checked into and was upgraded to a better room at no additional cost. On Saturday, I joined a line of five people eager to buy the iPhone. I bought a white 16 gigabyte phone. WooT!

Over the next couple of days I did a geocaches marathon finding 26 geocaches putting my finds tally at 902. On Monday, I headed up to the Apple store which is located in the second largest mall in Canada, the le Carrefour de Laval. I was talking one of the specialist (blue shirt) about my challenge in getting the native Yahoo mail on the iPod touch to work and he suggested seeing one of the Genius (black shirt). After an hour the genius couldn’t get the Yahoo Mail app to work. I opted to use some custom IMAP and POP settings to get it to sort of work and not work. All in all it was a great holiday weekend.

Animals in the Hinterland

Today I was geocaching in the Greenbelt of Ottawa and trying to locate some caches in deer yards. As I was walking to my next cache I heard a branch crack and stopped dead in my tracks. This could have been a good or bad decision. If a tree or branch was falling I was going to get whacked. I was lucky as whatever made the noise stopped too. Through the cedar underbrush I could see that I was five feet away from a deer. We stared at each other for a while and then it flicked it tail and was off on its way. A little later on I spotted another one heading away in the distance. My current find tally is 875 and so my goal of 900+ finds by the end of the year is quickly coming within sight.

Apple – WWDC – iPhone coming to Canada

On Monday, I received some much expected news from the Apple WWDC conference. Steve Jobs announced that the iPhone 3G would go on sale in Canada on Friday July 11. This was exciting news. During the day I had been infrequently been following his keynote speech through posting on macworld.com blog. Jason and I talked about the WWDC but it would take until the evening before I had a chance to listen to the keynote speech. I was stoked when I found out that my cellular phone carrier will be selling the iPhone. I am hoping that they will release the contract details in a couple of days. There is one thing I am eager to explore and that is, the GPS capabilities of the iPhone which was only very briefly demonstrated during the speech. It would be sweet to be able to use it when geocaching.

One of the applications that they featured is me.com that is described as “Microsoft Exchange for everyone else.” It is a subscription-based website that allows you to keep your mail, contacts, pictures and documents in sync not matter what device you are using. I have read the web pages describing the product but still not sure if I would ever need the functionality that it offers. I’m curious what others think of the product.

Hmm, only 30 more days before the iPhone arrives…

Geocaching

One of the goals I set for myself in January was to have found between 900 and 1000 geocaches. This past week I was able to go geocaching on three occasions. (current tall 886) I set a new weekly record by finding 18 geocaches. Yesterday my geocaching got off to a rough start as I spent much of the afternoon searching for geocaches underneath light standards at shopping malls. I don’t really enjoy this sort of urban caching. By mid-afternoon, I stopped in a Starbucks to log my finds using my iPod touch and to see what other caches were in the area. I copied down the coordinate for six caches which would take me into some of the wooded areas and parks in Kanata. As dusk was starting to descend the forest drew cooler and quieter and the wildlife started to appear. From a distance, I could see a furry black blob walking towards me at a slow and steady pace. It could either be a skunk or a raccoon. As we got closer the raccoon decided that I was a larger animal and headed off the trail while keeping a watchful eye on me. My next animal encounter was will a flock of deer. I was headed down a railway bed that has been converted into a jogging trail. To my right, I heard a branch break and I stopped dead in my tracks. The wind was blowing towards me. It was a family of deer that were planning to cut across the trail. I stood still, held my breath as they came with ten feet of me. They were suspicious but quickly headed into the woods without flapping their tails (a warning sign of problems).

Geocaching

Today, I had a meeting on the outskirts of the city. In the case of Ottawa this means a heavily wooded area. I decided to pack my GPS and to do some geocaching after the meeting. Over the course of a couple of hours I found five geocaches. The forth find was the most memorable. I had hiked down to the end of the trail to find my third cache and noticed that the next one was 1,500 meters away in a southerly direction. This is where the fun begins! I set a reference point for the next cache and started walking through the woods. Along my trek south I spotted a couple of cotton-tail deer, I navigated around a beaver bog, hiked through a couple of (cedar) deer-feeding yards, spotted a couple of deer hunting platforms and finally forded a couple of streams by walking across downed trees. It was a fun afternoon.

Fiddleheads and swing

While out geocaching on the weekend I spotted another sign of Spring, fiddleheads. They are one of the first ferns to appear in the Spring and grow very quickly before disappearing. They are a delicacy and have a unique taste when prepared properly.

Last night I had a really fun time swing dancing. It was great for a couple of reasons, a live 20-piece jazz band, a new venue with a dance floor that has a new bounce, dancing a record number of dances in an evening (15) and dancing with many of the folks that I dance with regularly on Friday night. One of the organizer, swing dynamite, showcased their latest dance troupe submission to the upcoming Canadian Swing Championship in Montreal in May. I think that they will win an award as their dancing rocked. I am hoping to check out their dance lessons in the future.

Sore for a good cause

As I type this entry my legs and bum are a little sore and tired. Yesterday, I cycled 90km/56 miles as part of the MS-Bike tour which took me and 600 other cyclists from Ottawa to Kemptville. We stayed overnight at Kemptville College and cycled back today. Over the two days of cycling we covered close to 160km/100 miles. I was able to locate a couple of new geocaches that were placed recently. Rather than stays in the dorms, I decided to camp and was able to use my solo tent which worked out great as they don't have sufficient dorm space for all cyclists. In a couple of days, I'll post a story about one of my first experiences with diesel fuel. While touring the campus I saw something that brought back memories of a misadventures in the occurred when I was in Grade 5.

Scavenger David Morrell

Last night I finished reading another good book. It is David Morrell’s “Scavenger.” The book came on the market in March and I was waiting for it come out in paperback but after reading the inside corner again I bought the book and couldn’t put it down. Scavenger builds on many of the happening of his previous novel, “Creepers” and continues where it left off. I like David Morrell as he is an author with the ability to say and express a great many things with few words. He relies on your imagination to flush out the details. The book contains reference to GPS, geocaching and letter-boxing which I thought were cool. Early on in the book I figured out the central theme and enjoyed watching the way he has the characters perform their roles. It was a good book and I recommend it highly.

HP

I stayed up last Friday night until the magic hour with 1500 people at the largest bookstore in town. The line was so long that it took me 30 minutes just to get my hands on the book. While waiting for midnight to roll around I skimmed about of books on Vista security and thought about how secure I was not make my laptop. Once I had the book I headed over to the 24 hour grocery store to buy a quick snack of rice pudding and started to read the book slowly. I hit the sack at 3:00AM by which time I was really tired. Yesterday, I continued to read the book a work through the first 100 pages. Not much has really happened to this point which is nice as there are 600 pages more to read.

I sent out two geocaches recently and they are being found. I went for a 7 mile run this morning along the Ottawa River which felt good after being stationary yesterday. My Wednesday night intervals with the Running Room are going well and I'll post an update later in the week.

I hate Urtica dioica...

While geocaching yesterday I ran into some urtica dioca. It is weed that I don't like interacting with as it always leaves me itching. Urtica dioca is commonly known as stinging nettle. My aversion to stinging nettles is sort of like Jason's to poison ivy. The cache was 40 yards away and the only way to get it was through a patch of stinging nettle. My first brush with the nettles was not fun. I jumped into a stream up to my knees and washed away the irritant. I wasn't too concerned about the water quality of the stream. I jumped up on shore and through another patch and found the cache nearby. It was back again into the stream to wash my legs again. Once home I washed my legs with Hibiclens and then with betadine. I thought I had nipped the problem in the bud. A couple of hours later I tried hand sanitizer with a moisturizer. In the wee hours of the morning I tried a 3M skin cream. I stopped by the drug store this morning on the way to the office and found relief and it felt good. It came in the form of polysporin. I coated my legs in the stuff and felt normal again. Ever couple of hours I would lather on some more of the cream. The cream is yucky as it sort of like wearing dried glue on your legs but it is given me relief. Next time I see a geocache surrounded by stinging nettles I may take a pass until I'm wearing pants.

Geocaching adventure...

Yesterday, I did my first research session in 30C/86F conditions. The training sessions are four hours long and once outfitted you feel like a test pilot as you have a variety of sensors inside and outside your body, all measuring how you are reacting to the heat. In a future post, I will describe in detail what happened and will happen at my two sessions next week. The next sessions will be at 95F and 104F. It is fun training in the heat but the only bummer is that you don't get a tan.

While geocaching yesterday, I made a data entry error that put me on the wrong side of the Ottawa River, on the north, Quebec side. When I got to the apparent cache site all I could see is a large patch of poison ivy. Would a geocacher put a cache in the middle of a patch of poison ivy. I double checked my coordinates and had entered 24 rather than 23. The correct coordinates put me back on the south, Ontario, side of the Ottawa River. The cache was a little nasty as they had magnetically attached the first waypoint inside a metal culvert leading underneath a sidewalk. You had to reach elbow deep inside the pipe to fetch the metal canister to get the next set of coordinates. The final cache was hidden inside an old willow tree that was apparently surrounded by poison ivy but I think that the folks at the cache before me didn't know what PI looks like. While leaving the cache I spotted a red fox which was cool. It looked like a super sized cat and was on the prowl for dinner.

Minivacation

I've spent the last couple of days at my parent's place which has a panoramic view of Lake Ontario. On a clear day, I can look out and see the Toronto skyline which includes the Skydome. The weekend started off with me driving my father to the airport as he had a business trip in the states. I was able to get in some geocaching, home maintenance and catching up with my parents, brother and nephew. I fixed my nephew's mp3 player and usb drive which made him happy. I cut out the wooden frame of the four windows that my father and I will replace later this year. I bolted the aluminum storm windows on to act as temporary barriers until the vinyl insert windows arrive from the manufacturer. Today, I replaced the internal door lever on the screen door so that G couldn't push his nose against the door and accidentally get out. I finished my second Barry Eisler novel with another four waiting for me to read back in Ottawa. It has been hot with temperatures averaging in the hight 80s. I'm looking forward to heading back to Ottawa tomorrow where it is a little cooler. Once in town, I have to start preparing for my next adventure, a long weekend of hiking over the upcoming holiday weekend.

Cycling, geocaching and rabies...

On Saturday, I went for my first cycle of the year and it was to Dairy Queen, on the other side of the Ottawa River, in Quebec. I was excited. It could have been that I was at Dairy Queen or my inaugural cycle. As I think about it, it was likely the cycle.

Today, I searched out a handful of new geocaches that were slightly out of the city. The plan is to go for progressively longer and longer cycling workout to build up my legs for a cycling tour in early August. I tried out my new camelback with my REI backpack which has a pouch for the camelback. The combination works great and now, I realize what I was missing out on during my Shenandoah hike. The camelback keeps your back cool while cycling and gives you hydration on demand.

At my second geocache, I met my first raccoon of the year, who I think was rabid. Raccoons are nocturnal and think one was walking along the trail in broad daylight, he looked emaciated and looked as if he had lost all of his inhibitions. He looked a little freaked out. I let him walk by using the bike as a barrier. On my way back from finding two other caches, I got my first flat tire of the year as I was cycling along a corduroy road. I brought along a spare tire, the tire levers and a pump so, I was back in business in about 15 minutes.

Long weekend...

My long weekend in Montreal, Quebec is quickly coming to a close and it is time to get back to normal stuff. Over the weekend, I located ten geocaches and moved my tally up to 704 finds. It felt good to finally surprass 700 finds. The Body World exhibit was really good and I'll check it out again next time I'm in Montreal. The exhibit runs until early September, so I'll see if it is better the second time around. It was interesting learning about our bodies and its various components. At the same time, it was like being at a funeral as most folks spoke with hushed tones and moved around very somberly. The exhibit allowed me to review some of the material that I am learning in my podcast-Nutrition Science class being taught by a U. Cal Berkeley professor.

When I'm in Montreal I usually stay at McGill as it is convenient and affordable. One thing that suprised me is that I am getting better at taking the STM, the subway. After getting into town, I implicity knew which of the three lines to take, which direction to go and where to get off.

I picked up a new book by C. J. Box, "Free Fire." It is mystery about a series of murders that were committed in Yellowstone National Park and because it is a federal park, for jurisdiction reasons the criminal can't be brought to justice. (IBSN 0399154272)

Montreal and Body World

This weekend I am heading to Montreal, Quebec for a long weekend of geocaching, exploring and R&R. We get Monday off as a holiday for something called Victoria Day, so I thought it was time to head east and see what is new in the city. One of the things that I am looking forward to is the Body World exhibit at the science museum. I missed the exhibit when it was at the science center in Toronto. I think Jason saw the exhibit when it was in Philadelphia. It was just opening when I was in Phoenix, AZ. After missing the exhibit so many times and being intrigued by the web site it will be one of the highlights of the weekend. In keeping with tradition, I will run up Mont Royal on Sunday morning.