Event Season

The next month brings 3 events I'm attending. I'm finally going to an official WGA event on Saturday at the chili feed, then the Madison pizza meet and greet, and then a pancake feed outside of Janesville. what's going to be fun is that all 3 are going to be in different areas, so will have different geocachers at each of them. it's coming at a perfect time too, since basketball season is done at the end of this week. I have a few varsity games left and then get a month off before soccer gears up.

the countdown is also on for the second trip to Bristol for the spring NASCAR race. we'll probably cache on the way down, and planning a quick side trip over to North Carolina to add another state to the list... last year was an awesome experience, and now we're even better prepared for it, so should be a great time.

sadly, I didn't get the Board of Directors position in the WGA. wasn't really holding out too much hope though. not many people know me online since Madison cachers don't really frequent the website, and before my nomination I wasn't exactly a vocal member. Maybe in a few years with more appearances at the WGA events will help. oh well.

my first event

this past Saturday, I hosted the Lonely Cache Game Event in Wisconsin Dells. Due to the spotty weather, I wasn't sure what the turnout would be, but ended up with nearly 40 people attending. the only downside was the lack of LCG participants that actually attended. only one other team from the top 10 made it to the event. even so, everything went smoothly. besides the coins and other prizes I brought, Team Deejay donated 10 more, plus MrRRKing donated quite a few ready-to-hide containers. we ended up with 32 door prizes for 23 teams, so everyone went home happy. Deejay also had a chance to distribute a few coins to the monthly winners who hadn't received them yet, and I mailed the remaining coins to the rest of the top 5.

although I won't be playing nearly as much this year, I'm already looking forward to next year's event, although we'll see who steps up to host this time around.

#2000

this past week i finally surpassed 2000 finds while on our honeymoon in Belize. it took quite a bit of planning for it to happen down there... throughout december i slowed down my finds so that i didn't get to close before the trip, but as i neared the departure date, i realized i probably wouldn't have a chance to find as many in Belize as i originally thought, so had to go out an extra day and find 10 more. it ended up working perfectly. we found a cache in Guatemala and then 7 in Belize. for number 2000 we rented a golf cart to explore the island, and we ended up on the very south end getting 7 caches along the way. i doubt i'll ever have another milestone cache like this regardless of number...

Nearing 2k

For the last few months, I've had the goal of finding my 2000th cache on our honeymoon in Belize. I was making very good progress until the snow came, but then I got worried. however, in the last week I've had two good days despite having over a foot of snow on the ground in Janesville and Hudson. today, I went to Stillwater, MN for the day hoping to get 15 caches. the morning was pretty rough, with only two virtual finds in the first 2 hours and 4 dnfs. as I headed out of town and away from the bike paths the caches became much more winter friendly. I ended the day with 9 straight finds and a total of 20. now i have less than 30 to go for 2000. tomorrow will be spent in River Falls to get me close, then I'll wait for the trip. #2000 should happen either in the first few days when we go to the Mayan ruins at Tikal or on Ambergris Caye. There are a few FTF chances down there yet, but they'll have to stay that way through the new year. I guess i can hope...

amazed at attitudes

this week i had a mystery cache published that may be difficult to say the least. GC21ARD is one that will require much more luck than anything else. however, shortly after it was published, i received an email from a cacher who said they were just going to ignore it, and asked if i was going to do anything for the local cachers that had already found all of the area caches. evidently they don't like it when they can't be first, or at least find it in a very short time after publishing. instead of being patient and maybe finding the key in a new cache that gets published, they would rather have me change the cache idea to make things easier for them. of course in the 2 days after this cache was published 4 more also popped up... obviously the key isn't in any of them (yet), but who says it wouldn't be by the time they got around to finding them?

a new hide

Last week i hid a nano cache on a cannon... kind of a spur of the moment thing. i saw a park in downtown Oregon that was being redone, and noticed that they cleaned up and remounted a howitzer on the end of it. there aren't a whole lot of caches in Oregon, so i decided to add one more. 6 straight official DNFs to start, and a few unofficial, and i guess i hid a pretty tough one. gave the hint as a note on the page and finally got two finds. it seems to still be eluding people. i feel kinda bad, but at the same time i don't... since i've searched high and low to find similar hides. i think i'm still going to do one on the tank back home in Mellen though. not going to be too many searchers for that one being in the northwoods.

today was also my first traveling cache find. the commander has a traveling cache that's still going after 7 years and 56,000 miles. discovered a few coins inside... but there wasn't much room left to leave anything.

end of the fall soccer season

a funny video for you before you read...
Referees Deserve Respect

I finally finished my last tournament of the season this weekend at Reddan. just in time too... my shoes are split near the sole from all the games I've done. counting high school and club matches since august (and one tournament in July), I've officiated 96 games. I've looked back to see how many more games I had to turn down due to being out of town or other non-soccer commitments, and my total would have been 112. that comes out to over a game a day from August through October, and even more considering I did no games on Wednesdays due to playing racquetball.

It was a successful season for me though, besides regular season games and random club tournaments, I was chosen to officiate at the Girls State Cup this year, chosen to do the Midwest Regional League, and had a WIAA playoff game. Next year I will be upgrading another level, and was told at the State Cup they wanted me to upgrade to a State level referee by the end of the following season.

now I have 3 weeks to rest up before basketball season starts up.