Four kinds of Geocaches, all kinds of Fun

Sun mud trees trail, run jump climb and sign

The day off: Im climbing me some trees

Friday I found four different kinds of geocaches.

Okay not a very sexy start to this post. How about: “I spent six hours running around the woods of Germany, soaking up the sunshine, climbing trees and getting good and muddy”?

By lucky coincidence, I had the whole day off while at the same time Mr Sun, Mr Golden Sun showed up for work for the first time in ages. There was no question I was spending the day outside.

I took the dog and went for a couple hour run through Oberbusch, a woods to the north of Ratingen, a small village outside Düsseldorf.

Lasti and I know these woods pretty good having run/ cached here a lot in the past. There were a couple new caches however. An easy “Puzzle” cache and a tree-climbing “Multi”.

“Huh?” I can hear you asking, “I didnt even know there were different kinds of geocaches.”

A gorgeous sunny winter day in the woods of Germany

According to geocaching.com there are eleven official types and four “grandfathered” types.

The easiest to describe is the Tradi or traditional cache. The coordinates posted online lead you directly to the cache. (Dont confuse type with container size; cache containers come in all shapes and sizes.) Tradis are the most common, especially in Canada.

Here in Germany, they tend to favour Multis and Puzzles.

To find a Puzzle cache, you have to “figure out” the coordinates. My first cache today was an easy one, based on that super famous Cambridge study:

It dsnoet maettr waht oderr we put the leertts in as lnog as the fisrt and lsat leettrs are in the rhigt sopt.

I just had to unscramble the coordinates as below (but in German, eh)

fvie one ttwney trhee ponit fuor stxiy seevn

and then find the cache.

Up into the hills above Kupferdeh

The real attraction to Oberbusch though was the new Multi; a type of cache where you have to find a series of stations (and usually clues) leading to the Final. For this cache, I had to climb six trees and look around in the branches for the clues. Too much fun.

The woods paths were mostly soft

and leafy and great for running on; the swampiest muddiest spots were thankfully just frozen enough that I didnt get wet. Strangely there was no one in the woods and we could run and jump and climb and hoot as much as much as we wanted.

Found the final and headed home for lunch. If you’re counting, thats two cache types and three hours of sunshine before lunch.

After lunch I headed down river to Kupferdreh and then up into the hills. My first find was a Tradi called Quicky in a town park. It did only take about 5 seconds to find, 30 seconds to sign and rehide. Most Tradi’s are quick which is why Germans dont like them. They prefer the thrill of the hunt, a long search leading up to a big climax.

There was no "treasure" at this Earth Cache, just the imprint left by 320 million year old trees.

I spent another three hours up in the hills. The low warm winter light was gorgeous in the beech woods, casting long shadows on the blanket of rusty brown leaves. All that time I was on the trail of a Multi which I never did find. Which is whay Canadians dont like Multis: you spend all kinds of time and energy trying to get one, buy her a few drinks and then go home empty handed. Oh, I mixed my metaphor there. But you get the point.

I did however log an Earth Cache. For these caches you dont actually have to “find” anything, but you visit sites of geological interest, learn about the geology there and send answers and fotos by email asking for logging permission.

This Earth Cache is a former sandstone quarry where you can see the imprint of trees that fell into a swamp 320 million years ago. Hard to get my mind around that number.

What does it mean? It means the trees were here a really long time ago.

What does it mean that I found four types of geocaches? Not much really. Just means I was pretty busy Friday and saw a lot of country.

Foto sets from Friday on Flickr

Trees of Ratingen

Kupferdreh’s Gorgeous Churches

Caching round Kupferdreh

Top Ten Castles in Europe (Intro)

from the point of view of a Canadian living in Germany

 

Isenburg: the ruins of an 800 year old castle no one bothers to mention.

Castles are everywheres in Europe; on every cliff top, above every river, in every city there is one or two. If not a fully restored citadel-turned-museum complete with parapets and towers and suits of shining armour, then at least a hidden eerie ruins overgrown with creeping vines.

Europeans pretty much take them for granted. They grew up with them and were forced as children to visit them on school trips.

They don’t always quite understand the North American fascination with castles. Case in point, I’ve been living in Essen for three years and not until last week, did I discover, quite by accident, Isenburg, the ruins of an 800 year old castle just around the corner from me.

A dozen photos of Isenburg on flickr

My German friends couldnt understand me crawling around exploring these ruins for an hour

When I say “discover” I dont mean to imply I was the first person to stumble on this place – but it was honestly almost that hard. Not once in the last three years, in none of the zillions of conversations about what I “really must see” did anyone ever mention Isenburg to me.

Admittedly there isnt a lot left of the castle; when it was destroyed in 1288, it was the largest structure in Essen but now there are just some partial walls left standing, some half-buried overgrown foundations poking out of the undergrowth, a moat and a restored drawbridge, some steps, and lots of scattered rubble – but more than enough to stoke my imagination.

I spent an hour up there on the “ramparts” dreaming a bit and just soaking up the atmosphere of the place – something my German friends couldnt understand.

Looking down on Lake Baldeney from the ramparts of Isenburg

This got me thinking about all the other castles I’ve seen in Europe. And I have to admit, Im starting to lose count. I figure it’s time I write a little about them. So I’ve decided to crank out a list of my top ten favourite European Castles.

To be frank I havent been that far afield. Ive seen a few castles in France and Belgium and lots and lots in Germany. Nonetheless I have seen some really fantastic ones: Ive seen first hand the inspiration for Disney’s castle, Ive toured the robber castles of the Romantic Rhine, and hiked the hills of northern France, climbing through grapefields and woods of wild boar on my way to forgotten hilltop outposts.

Best of all was sneaking through a recently abandoned castle, climbing right to its upper tower, all the while watching out for the owners and their guard dogs.

Enough anyway to make a good list.

First in the series: #10 Gebrochen Gutstein (Broken Goodstone); ruins on the Danube (Ed.note, 25.1.2011: Ill add the link here soon – as soon as Ive written the first entry )

Rainy days are dreaming/ planning days

Canal skating in Holland and Horn Sledding in th Alps

Unexpectedly have the day off; a wet slippery icy day off. So I skipped running on the ice in the dark this morning in favour of running on the ice this afternoon in the grey light of winter.

And so Im staying in this morning and catching up with a few twitter favourites that i never got to watch. Like this inspiring little two-minute clip of ice skating on the frozen canals of Holland.

Dutch Winter from Kasper Bak on Vimeo.

Dutch Winter from Kasper Bak on Vimeo.

I say inspring cause i immediately jumped on google to see where and when i can go. found this extraordinarily helpful blog: 10 things i learned about skating in holland.

pointed me to the Royal Skating Union’s website which lists planned canal skating dates.. end of january is full of events… id feel more confident about it happening if it wasnt all of a sudden +10 here today…

anyway, ive added it to THE LIST and if the weather turns around, and im still here later this winter, then im going skating on the dutch canals. if not, maybe on the ottawa canal? (maybe ill just add “canal skating” to the list, to be safe)

and then i stumbled on some crazy footage of Horn Sledding on Wank Mountain in Bavaria. Despite the ridiculous names involved, it really made me proud for my little German friends. From my experience here in Essen, they cant drive in snow, they cant shovel it, they are just useless. But they sure can tobaggan.

Horn Sledding was a traditional method of transporting wood or hay off the moutain. Check this short vid from 1934:

The modern race came, like all good things, from a bet. Six sleds took part in the first race on Januraty 6, 1970.

Tell me this doesnt look like fun:

that was german style hornsledding from garmish. below is what the italians (in Olang, Tirol) do with hornsledding:

hmmm… truly stoked for my run now…

Resolutions. Schmesolutions (Saying goodbye to the disposable coffee cup and to resolutions)

To resolve or not to resolve? That's the question.

Im usually big on the New Year's pledges. Big on making the promises. Small on following through.

I forgot til I just looked it up, how many stupid resolutions I made last year. (No, Im not linking to it. Hmmh).

But the other thing I did last year, which Im liking better than resolutions anyway, is set 101 goals to accomplish within 1001 days. I call it "The List."

Ive knocked off 16 of those goals, 85 to go with 847 days remaining. It's fun. The big goal is of course to check off all 101 but it's real rewarding to knock off the little goals as you go.

I only stayed serious about one of my original traditional resolutions last year: I wanted to avoid using disposable coffee cups. By Jan. 7th Id already used two. By the end of June Id hit four and it wasnt til the third week of December, that my number slipped up to six.

Travelling is the hard part. Ive easily eliminated the disposable coffee cup from my daily life. I have my own mug at work and if I buy a coffee out, I sit down and enjoy it properly.

Four of my sins this year came while on the road with a group. Things get harder to control. And one thing I have no control over at this point: I need good strong coffee at good short intervals.

I am working on the coffee addiction and am down to three mugs a day.

Plus Santa offered some help going forward: my shiny new coffee thermos should help me avoid a few of those mid-drive coffee panics. And Im just going to have to say no in the future to the well-intentioned offers of my travelling companions.

Cause in 2011, I resolve to use not one single disposable coffee cup.

Do me a favour: dont let me forget!

Polar Bear Dip 2011

I believe in a Polar Bear dip. It’s important to me; a way of starting the year off right.

Id like to do it every year and so The Dip found its way on to “The List”;  the list of 101 things I want to do in the next 1001 days. (To be precise, at the time of writing, Ive got 84 things left to do in 849 days.)

Adding it to The List is one thing; getting in the water on New Year’s Day is another.

We had celebrated New Year’s Eve with Heike’s sister and her husband. We drank a lot of Wodka. DDR style: straight, or as the Germans say, “pure”. And at some point between the first and second bottle, we became blood brothers. We danced, we set off a lot fireworks, we went to bed just before the sun. We sat at the breakfast table eating pickled herring from 11 until 3.

Heike and I got home round 4.30pm. Already dark. The trails to the river were a frozen treacherous mess.

From experience I packed a bag of dry long johns, socks, a warm undershirt, a warm fleece, and extra sneakers and most importantly, a towel. I put my swim trunks on under my running pants, wore wool socks in my old sneakers, and a thick polyester running shirt. A hat and a headlamp and I was all set.

The trick to getting in the water is getting good and warm on the run to the river. The sidewalks and trails were greasy and so i couldnt really run fast… still with a hat and gloves and everything zipped up tight i was soon steaming.

I carefully picked my way down the snow-covered steps to the canoe launch and even more carefully laid out my dry clothes so they were in the right order to pull on. Towel on top, my glasses right beside my headlamp.

On the run down Id been visuallizing the dip over and over again. Strip and jump. Strip and jump. When it came time, I did just that. I was terrified if I gave myself a second to think about it, if I hesitated, I would never do it.

The cold shock is the scariest part - there is no way to prepare yourself for it - you immediately start hyperventilating and panic wells up in you like a lightning bolt - get out of the water!

The first second when I came up, it was so dark, I didnt quite know where the shore was. When i saw the light from my headlamp, I swear I did a standing jump straight up onto the dock.

I immediatley noticed the air was a lot warmer, around +2, and part of my brain knew i was going to be okay. Another part was totally freaking out and couldnt find my towel. The calm part of my brain thought that was quite funny.

Once I got my fleece hat on, and my upper body towelled off, I was calm enough and exhilerated enough to take a break for fotos.

Yeehaw. This really is the way to start the year!

A cynic might joke, after such a cold miserable start, the rest of the year can only get better. The truth is, it is such a rush, such a blood-pumping, life-affirming shock, that the rest of the year has to be damn good to even compare.

Moral: the time to think is when you’re setting the goal, when you’re planning the trip. if you think of everything beforehand, then the only left to do, is just DO IT!

Climbing out of my comfort zone (geocaching on the local "climbing wall")

All this time, I had no idea what was behind this old concrete wall

As I said yesterday, Im no extreme athlete. The story below of my geocacher adventure is actually quite lame. I wish I was a great climber but the truth is a 4m wall is all I can handle. So far.

Speaking of lame, and wishing I was an extreme athlete, the front page of the sport section here in germany today was an interview with a ski jumper. He was recently on one of those Dance with the Stars Tv shows here and they asked him about that. His answer (translated by me):

Actually Im not that in to dancing but it was a challenge. If you always do the same thing, you never develop. Life is a learning process.

I climbed a bit outside my comfort zone today trying for a geocache.

This cache was only on top of a 4m concrete wall – normally too much for me. Yes Im a wimp when it comes to any exposure – that’s climbing talk for when youre ass is hanging out over the void. 4m is the void in my book.

Or it was until today.

Anyway, luckily yesterday I had read and written about Hendri Coetzee’s motivation to do all the crazy stuff he does.

Which made it pretty much impossible for me to back down out there today.

More concrete walls: the ruins of an old shooting range

I really only went out to see – Id thought Id swing by on my daily run and scout out this new-ish cache. Just scout it out for another day. Yeah, we all know how well that works. It’s like saying I’ll just have one beer with the guys after work and then go right home.

The cache was hidden amongst the ruins of an old gun range (funny we have lived here nine months now yet i had no idea these ruins were down here about 700m from our house. This is why I love geocaching!)

About a dozen concrete walls used to make up a maze or shooting course and now they make up a great spot to hide a cache. The cache was on top of a 5m wall, but with a pulley line running down to the top of a 4m wall.

At first though I stupidly thought I was supposed to unhook the wire from the 4m wall and then lower the cache to the ground. I climbed the wall three times, froze and cut my bare hands on the concrete trying to wrestle the hook free before a better solution occured to me.

the challenge

Finally I figured out I should pull the cache down along the pulley to the 4m wall – duh! – but only one small problem: the pulling motion actually pulled me right off the wall. Twice.

not such a huge climb... but challenging for me

Sat and thought a bit before realizing i needed to push the other side of the pulley away from me – which in turn pushed me onto the wall – the puzzle was slowly coming together.

Still when I tried to turn round to the bird house on the wire, my foot slipped out of its icy toehold everytime. The last piece of the puzzle: I stuck a skinny birch branch in a narrow hole in the wall and presto! a secure-ish wide foothold.

After that it was easy to retrieve the tupperware from the bird house. Signed the log. Smiled. Made one finally climb up the cold concrete, returned the cache to the bird house, pushed the wire away in the other direction, jumped down, threw away the stick and ran home beaming.

Okay, yeah it was only 4m. But I think I might be spending more time down there… maybe working on the 5m wall…

Moral: The best challenges are just outside your comfort zone. Search them out and don’t back down.

Full foto set (including the cache itself)