Found my 1200th hunk of plastic - wrecked my camera - cause i dont know when to quit

It's real easy to go too far with this geocahing foolishness

More than a little pleased with my 1200th geocache

Its real easy to go too far with this geocaching foolishness. I should know: i just found my 1200th hunk of plastic junk. And, hindsight being what it is, i can see that would have been a good place to stop. But no, i had to go and get all greedy.

No matter what anyone says, numbers are important to geocachers. And we generally like to celebrate milestones with special finds; we go out of our way, maye even wait a couple days so we can find a memorable cache, something interesting, challenging, out of the ordinary, something we wont forget.

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For my 500th and 1000th finds, for example, I made sure my son was with me – for 500, we went to the Holy Grail of Canadian geocaching, GCBBA – the first cache above the 49th parallel hidden near Chester, NS.

For the 1000th we took a little 8k stroll along the beach – on a chilly drizzly blizzardy day – to the very end of Munroe’s Island in Pictou for GCRC8X. Jony insisted I “claim” the find and he took a foto which Ive been using as my buddy icon all over the internet ever since.

My son and I with GCBBA - the first cache in Canada and my 500th find

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I havent been finding so many caches since I came over to Germany.

Claiming 1000

In general, German caches require more work to find. For instance most people here hide multis – meaning there is more than one station involved – so you might have to find a dozen clues before you find the cache.

And people here really like puzzle caches, where you have to solve a riddle or riddles to find the cache. Germans seem to like this kind of thing – they often spend a whole afternoon to find one cache, while in Canada, I have found more than 70 in a day.

Canadians often just throw an ice cream bucket in the woods and call it a cache.

Finally though, ten months after coming to Germany, ten months after breaking 1000, I hit 1199 on Friday, August 20th. Then the thinking began: what do I want to do for 1200? It’s not a huge milestone so a part of me considered not worrying about it; just finding a boring old 35mm film container stuck to some guard rail or a church’s drain pipe – yawn.

Lasti 'saving' me as I swim across the Ruhr to GC11GKX

But there were several caches nearby worthy of a 1200th find.

Late last winter, as the ice everywheres was melting, I solved an extra tough riddle cache – it will be a story in itself some day, when I ever get to actually grabbing the damn thing – the riddle was hard enough, but the coordinates showed the cache is hidden on an island – the only way to get to the thing is by paddle boat or with the right temperatures in winter, you could walk across the ice.

Ive been waiting on that one. Also there was …anne Ruhr… a “canoe” cache less than 500m from our new flat but on the other side of the river. The land around the cache is fenced off by the water company. So the only approach is from the river – by water. A normal person would take a boat.

I dont have a boat, so a couple weeks ago I tried to swim over – well I did swim over despite our dog lasti trying everything he could to stop me – heike says the dog was trying to save me – i thought he might kill me quite honestly – i lost a croc in the battle and came away with some nice scars.

That day I didnt find the cache. But it would definitely make a great 1200th…

Zeche Charlotte - ruins of an abandoned mine near our house

There was also the cache on the site of the abandoned Charlotte Mine (GC27X9A) , not more than 200m from our house. This was a T5 multi – T5 is the highest terrain possible. It means you need special equipment, in this case, climbing gear.

Because it is so close, I had been down to the mine a few times, just to check it out, and see what might be necessary for gear.

I had managed to climb in the damp dark slimy mine opening without a rope and look for the clues. I hadnt found them yet, but then I hadnt given it my all. The second station required no climbing – just a willingness to squeeze through a narrow muddy opening, crawl over a mountain of tires and search for clues in the dark. Hadnt really even looked for them yet either.

But for the third station, I was going to need a rope – the clues were down about 20′ in a mining shaft – 20′ is not too far to jump down except I would be landing in water and so i couldnt tell what i would be landing on – and then 20′ is too much for me to jump straight up on the way out – I would need a rope.

Right after finding my 1199th, with all these thoughts in my head, I was shopping and saw a 20m rope for sale for 4€. Not exactly a climbing rope but it would do for this mission…And then that night, my neighbour hauled out a real climbing rope and said he’d come with me on Sunday. Right, for a special 1200th i could wait. Even though it was a weekend, my precious days off, usually my biggest caching days – I would wait.

Inside the mine opening of the Charlotte Mine - looking for clues

Sort of. I spent Friday night studying the cache description and the logs of those who had found it thus far. Their fotos gave me tons of information – i knew the property pretty well and though they had made some effort to not reveal where the cache was exactly, there were just enough clues in the fotos to help me narrow it down considerably. Still best to wait and go with a rope…

Sort of. Lasti and i took a stroll by the mine site in the morning, just to make sure everything was as it should be. Everything wasnt. The grounds were all dug up, big trenches, mountains of rubble here, piles of bricks there – and parked to one side, a line of excavators, bulldozers and trucks.

And then I saw someone rummaging around the mind opening; I couldnt tell if it was a worker or another cacher, so Lasti and I left the way we had come. When I got home, i went to the cache page and read the worst possible news.

Heike and lasti searching the mine site before the clean up

yes that had been a cacher i had seen, and he said that the site of the final cache location was dug up and so he believed the cache was gone. it looked like id have to forget the mine cache for my 1200th.

sort of. when heike got home from work we decided to take another walk through the mine site for a closer look – this time there was no one around and we saw just how much had been dug up – the whole place – its seems they are going ahead with a planned renaturalisation of the property – its the perfect spot for a park as it abuts an abandoned railbed turned bike path – heres hoping it does become a park.

but there was little hope for the cache. the whole place had been dug up and graded, rocks and bricks sorted into piles, metals and other garbage in other piles – a baustelle – german meaning construction site and utter chaos. i had just about given up on finding the cache…

I looked over the old crumbling wall and there it was... my 1200th geocache

sort of. i had a rough idea where the cache was – and so we walked along the top of an old crumbling wall – i pointed out to heike a bollard i had seen in the fotos – and then i took a look over the side – !!

yes it was that easy – hanging on a chain in a little niche about 4 feet down the wall was a big green ammo can – i got heike to hold my feet and over i went – with the very tip of my fingers i hooked the chain and hauled it up – my 1200th find – a T5 – with no special equipment – except for heikes hands on my ankles – yeehaw

yes sir, sometimes the hard ones are easy, and sometimes, the easy ones turn out to be way too hard…

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yes sir, maybe if id just quit there. but no, i never seem to be satisfied – my ‘cacheing motto is “just one more” and so, that night i started thinking i might as well find the cache across the river

geocaching's dark ugly secret

and it looked like there was a puzzle cache near the river too (GC236CN) – thats the trouble with puzzle caches – you never know exactly where they are til you figure it out; so i set to figuring it out – it was a a picture of two flattened rubiks cubes – with numbers on them – “solve” the flattened cubes and the numbers are in the right order to make up the coordinates

i couldnt manage to solve the flattened cubes, so i built little models out of them from paper and then i was able to visualise the solutions. the coordinates were right on the path to the cache across the river – right behind the water treatment facility – oh yes

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sunday morning, before sunrise, i sipped coffee, laced up my sneakers and made quick notes about clues and streets -  then i set off jogging to the other side of the river and around behind the water treatment plant. 6k.

Cachers biathlon - solve and run, solve and run

i found the first station of the rubiks cube cache: a tupperware container holding two REAL but scrambled rubiks cubes – when you solved them, you got the coordinates to the final – a great idea – orginal and fun

it reminded me of a sort of cacher’s biathlon… run solve run solve run…

after finding that cache, it was a hop skip and a jump to woods which hid a hole in the fence around the water treatment plant property – id found that hole a few months ago while thinking about grabbing the river cache from land – i had been waiting for a bright night or early weekend morning…

the woods were easy to navigate but at the edge along the fields i found a wall of thick thorny brambles – it was a slow painful struggle to try and slip through their silently and without making a ruckus

i wasnt super worried about getting caught on an early sunday morning, but still i crouched and steathily slunk across the wide open fields to the trees along the river edge.

One last peaceful foto before i jumped in the Ruhr and killed my camera

there i had to fight my way through more brambles and six foot high stinging netttles to the tree where the cache was hidden – once there, this time, it was a quick and easy find (GC11GKX) – thorns and brambles the only problem – no man-shredding dogs

so to make the mission a little more interesting, i swam home – i thought it would be more fun and i thought id avoid going back over the property and risking getting caught – and besides it was shorter – a 2k jog instead of 6k

the swim was so easy and pleasant without the rescue dog gnawing on my arms and legs – as i neared the far shore i stood up and enjoyed for a second this unusual view of this otherwise fully familiar spot

worth a foto, i thought, drawing my waterproof Olympus 770 out of its ziplock baggy – id stuck it in there with my gps and house key “just to be sure” – then i heard a strange plop – my house key falling in the ruhr – and disappearing forever into the murky sediment that coats the bottom

The very last image from my Olympus 770 - Rage against the dieing of the light

while i looked for the key i stuffed the open ziplock bag back into my pocket – and that i think is how the camera got wrecked – that and shes been thru too much to be waterproof anymore – shes battered and smashed and the hatch is off the USB connection – all i know for sure is, the last foto ever taken with my good ol Olympus 770 was taken at 7:48 on August 22 – a dark murky fog

Tough cameras at their end know dark is right,
No memory card can hold it all,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

No cache is worth a 400$ camera, a sandal and a house key. but the way i see it. now that ive been through all that crap, my caching karma is probably all loaded up on the good side – i could probably find me a bunch of easy ones now…

just one more anyway…