The 1st Tuesday in November
As the jury entry generated a lot of emails from overseas*, I thought I’d mention a uniquely Australian event. Here the first Tuesday in November isn’t election day, vole appreciation day, or International Talk Like a Politician Day: it’s Melbourne Cup Day.
The Melbourne Cup is a horse race. It may be Australia’s major horse race, the highlight of the Spring Racing Carnival, and attracts entries from all over the world, but really it’s just a horse race.
However it’s more than a horse race. I can almost feel my head exploding each year as the phrase ‘the race that stops the nation’ is trotted out yet again, ad nauseam. All over Australia people dress up and have lunches and/or large afternoon teas while sipping bubbly, women purchase dresses and hats or the ever fabulously fabulous ‘fascinator’. And these aren’t just the people actually attending the race at Flemington, where ‘Fashions in the Fields’ sometimes eclipses those horses running around on the grass; these are people who wouldn’t normally know if a horse race is even being held. Or care.
Melbourne Cup Day is a public holiday in the state of Victoria (where it is run) and in the Australian Capital Territory. There’s been talk of making the Melbourne Cup a national holiday. I think that if it was a national holiday, fewer people would take notice of it. This is the race that stops the nation because it’s an excuse to stop. I’ve been involved in office sweeps and had wine and nibblies in conference rooms, however if it was a holiday I’d be out doing things I actually enjoy. I know I’m not alone; the attraction of the Cup to office workers is that it interrupts your day at the office. And I’ve still never worn a silly hat to celebrate!
* Yes, judges here do wear ‘those wigs’. As do the judge’s assistant, prosecutor, and defence counsel.
Jury Duty
Yes, I’m an Australian citizen, so from time to time jury duty beckons. I’m not one of these people who just automatically objects to jury duty or tries to get out of it. Indeed, if you try to defer jury duty all that will happen is that you’ll be required to do it in a month or so. However I am finding out the down side. Read the rest of this entry »
Meet the Spindoctors
When Spindoc Bob announced in the forum that his family would be coming for a visit to Tassie, of course an event had to be organised. This time it was at Tranmere Hall, and despite a key mix-up earlier in the day, everything went well! The turn out wasn’t huge, but obviously all the quality people were there!
Orac7000 won the FTF prize: getting to show off his muscles helping me get the BBQ out of the cacheMobile. Unfortunately my husband, Scott, was in Adelaide where his father is in hospital, and there was no way I could get it out myself. A bit of trivia: orac’s the only other attendee who also attended Tassie’s first geocaching event, The Devil’s Day Out back in November 2004. Although he had a bit of a geocaching hiatus, he’s back out and ready to hunt!
Soon other eager and helpful cachers arrived - SamCarter scrubbed the BBQ plates while I stood by and described how filthy they were to SG-3 while the pjamesk crew started hauling out chairs and tables. I don’t know why some people think I go to lots of work when organising an event. I put a lot of thought into the venue as it can really make or break the event and usually seem to bring half my kitchen (although always forgetting essentials). However when the event actually starts, geocachers always are willing to get in and help. Which was essential; a case in point: our BBQ is the only food prep device that my husband understands and I have no clue about. And I’d like to keep it that way as when we have BBQs at our place, I usually have more than enough on my hands without supervising the actual BBQ as well. So I openly admitted my stupidity, and a herd of helpful males set to work getting the BBQ going, risking life and limb and burnt fingers. I’m glad 5commer3 smokes or it could have quite a short BBQ indeed!
More arrived: rehikemike (his first Tassie event!), SHoTSPoT (a newbie still in the single digits!), red tag, gspblu/March Brown, Mrs Cheesy Pig and Piglet, Sog n Paulus with Mr Oscar, gorbak (who I somehow never got a chance to talk to). And then, fashionably late to create a grand entrance (or suffering from ‘just one more cache’ syndrome? 
) Spindoc Bob, Nay, and Zac arrived. It must have been odd for him: to us his face and voice are so familiar most of us felt we already knew him, however we must have seemed a pond of strangers. (There weren’t enough of us to be a sea of strangers.)
So with the meet and great phases of the event over, we got down to eat. There was a lot of food, a LOT of food, and a lot of talking. The young ones played on the playground, the oldies stood around and talked, and a young schnauzer scored an enormous amount of food.
As most of you know what happens at this stage of an event (eating and chatting about caching adventures past and future, red tag letting out puzzle secrets, etc), let us turn our attention to what this event would have been like for Lottie, Snuva’s canine successor. Lottie’s been our sweet little dog for 11 months now, and although she’s gotten over most of her show dog aloofness (she’ll now roll in wallaby droppings like a real dog) she still finds events overwhelming. At this event she spent the first while keeping an eye out for my legs. This was quite important: there were many strange legs, but the only legs she trusted were Snuva’s. After a time the torsos attached to some of the strange legs started breaking through Lottie’s defenses with pats and scratches. And then she was completely disarmed: SAUSAGE. For a time Lottie started stalking strange legs. She knew that Snuva was aware of when she was last fed, so eyebrows needed to be fluffed, paws needed to be raised, and a hungry look needed to appear in those brown canine eyes. SUCKERS!!! There was more than enough meat to go around, and as the only canine working the crowd there was also time for breaks to hunt down the most choice pieces of ground in the area and have a good roll. Sweet, sweet, rotten smells!
As the evening progressed, sweets came out. Lots of them! rehikemike brought one of his mother-in-law’s chocolate CWA cakes, Mrs pyjama guy made cream horns, there was a slice, lamingtons, red tag did sticky date pudding, and I’m not sure what else. Wowsers!
The one drawback to the venue was lighting. There were not external lights, the room overlooking the outside area was the one room I couldn’t get into to turn on lights, and the streetlamp next to us was out. So by 9-something people where again proving themselves to be helpful and assisting with taking chairs inside, some strong men manhandled the BBQ into the cacheMobile (thanks gspblu/March Brown and 5commer3!), and stuff was generally cleaned and cleared. But I’d had a great time! Despite being someone who considers herself a bit introverted, somehow a little horsey had galloped down my throat by the end of the evening. And when we got home, before I’d even loaded the dishwasher, Lottie was upstairs on her beanbag asleep. So much for the boundless energy of the young!
Thank you all who attended! Thank you for helping out, thank you for the conversation and laughs, and Lottie thanks you for the feeding my poor, food deprived schnauzer!
The Lady
When Julian went to school in Lenah Valley, most mornings we would drive past an old woman walking her dog. She was such a feature of our drive that we began to make guesses on whether we’d see her that day, which coat she’d be wearing, and whether or not her dog would have a coat on too.
Julian’s older and moved on to a new school, however occasionally if I’m at Cornelian Bay in the middle of the day I see her! I saw her yesterday and again today! Today her dog, Peter, had gotten away from her so she asked me to catch his lead. When I came back to her with him, she told me I’d done my good deed for the day and could now be naughty.
I have sort of told her how we would see her most mornings, but of course she doesn’t realise what a big part of our drive she was. Apparently she no longer lives in Lenah Valley, but I find it exciting when I do cross paths with her. As we’d make up stories, she now seems to me to be a mythical creature - sometimes good, sometime evil, and always spurring us on to create stories.
Hobart Show Day
Usually Hobart Show Day, which falls on a Thursday, is our chance to have a springtime 4 day weekend for camping and caching. This year things didn’t quite work out that way. Scott’s in Adelaide (where his father is in hospital), and I’m hosting a geocache event on Saturday. Lottie and I could have gone away just for Thursday / Friday, however as Scott is away the BBQ for the event is already in the cacheMobile. A bit awkward for camping!
So the plan was that Lottie and I would head up the Derwent Valley; there are some walks/caches around New Norfolk we haven’t hit yet. I was taking my time over coffee, waking up gently, when I received an email for a new cacher, Roehm, who was having trouble getting a cache published as I also have caches in the area. One of them was temporarily archived, so he was contacting me to see if I wanted to give up the spot. I actually already had my container mostly ready so didn’t want to give up the spot, so we agreed to meet up. I don’t want to give away his new hide as it still hasn’t been published, however I liked his hide and what he was trying to do with the cache, so agreed to move mine. It was nice meeting another newbie, and best of all (of course) Lottie had a blast as we walked back and forth. We were near the water, so she got plenty muddy and smelly. Happiness!
While the paint was drying on the new container, I gave Lottie a much needed bath then we went around in the car while she dried. We tried checking out Anaconda (which had closed early for Show Day just before we got there), did some scouting for another of my temporarily disabled caches, did some footwork for a puzzle, then did two traditionals. The trads were easy ones I’d sort of been ’saving’ for when I had little time but wanted a find, but as I wasn’t going to get to New Norfolk I thought I may as well do them.
I re-worked my hide to a new multi, set it, wrote up the listing, and then another Hobart Show Day was finished.
Front Garden Paving
A combination of being geocachers and generally incompetent means we do not always get things done around the house terribly speedi-ly. However if you look at a ‘time-lapse’ view of things over a couple years, you can see we eventually do make some progress! We decided 2 years ago to turn the front ‘lawn’ into garden beds and paths. Well, amazingly enough, we’ve done it in under 2 years - with time (and outside man power), who knows what we could do! Read the rest of this entry »
Mobile Phone Caching
This won’t be very interesting for most of you, but it’s what I’m thinking about at the moment: my new phone. It’s a Nokia 6110 which arrived yesterday (while I was away, of course), so I’ve spent part of today figuring how to get Pocket Pocket Query onto it, how to convert unfound caches into Nokia landmarks (GSAK macro, of course), and how to have PPQ accessed directly from one of its buttons.
I’ll see what Pocket Pocket Query is like. I don’t see this as replacing my Garmin 60csx, however I was hoping Pocket Pocket Query would mean I wouldn’t have to carry my PDA. I’ve loved and used CacheMate for years, but anything to cut down on the extra gear I carry would be good. As I’ve hated my phone for years, and as always liked Nokias I’ve had, the 6110 seemed a good choice since prices have come down.
But Pocket Pocket Query doesn’t have the nice ‘log’ feature CacheMate has. Sigh. I have no memory and loved being able to log the find, note any trackables, etc and see them all in a list at the end of the day. And when I hit a lot of caches, of course could use CMconvert and get my logs up to gc.com quite easily. Anyway, I should get out and use PPQ it before I dis it completely!
And the phone is nice; we navigated together the 1 1/2 blocks to meet a friend at lunch. And I took a bad photo of a work friend. And I can have photos of Snuva and Lottie on it. And it synchronises with Outlook nicely. Did it mention it’s shiny? Ooooohhhh - shiny!
What’s Stupider Than Using a Mulcher in a Wind Storm?
That’s right, you guessed it - you don’t have to be a rocket surgeon to know the answer is: NOTHING. However that’s how I’ve spent most of the weekend. Read the rest of this entry »
Group Caching + Night Caching = FUN
Despite the snow on Mt Wellington, the calendar tells us it’s now spring. And as the number of geocaching visitors from the mainland is stepping up, I can believe it! Our latest visitor is hi_pressure from Victoria. He met up with some of us Monday evening at the Carlyle, and last night there was a festival of night group caching goodness when hi_pressure, SG-3, the DDTs and Snuva met up for a fun time of bumbling in the dark!
We met up the car park near TMAG. The DDTs were on a bit of a mission as they are participating in the GeosportZ competition and wanted to visit a cache that would give them high points with a couple other teams. I’d already found Think Inside the Box, but I brought along a laptop so hopefully SG-3 and hi_pressure could figure out the puzzle and we could visit as a group. Either it was easier to figure out without a herd of children around or the poking with a pointed stick was effective, but soon the whole group have the information to enable a group hunt.
Then I made a bizarre decision: I thought hi_pressure and SG-3 might want to do Nelson’s Signal as well. So our first stop was the CSIRO car park so we could walk over to the first waypoint. I somehow managed to pause in my annoying chatter long enough to avoid being hit any cars zooming past at all of 40 kph. The required information eventually revealed itself in the torch light, and we made our way back to the car park. And it was at this point that SG-3 and hi_pressure realised they would need to refer to an image, however the image didn’t appear in either of their devices holding cache information. I checked my laptop and no: no internet connection, no image. So we phoned el golco to see if she could get onto a computer and provide us with a description of the image; she somehow seemed a logical choice as 1) she’s friendly and helpful and 2) she lives not far from where we were headed. Well, she was as friendly and helpful as we thought she’d be, however she was in Melbourne! But she quickly accessed a computer and described the image. So off we went to the next stop!
I followed the DDTs, who kindly decided to show hi_pressure quite an interesting scenic route to Think Inside the Box. Out we all hopped, and out came the torches and electronic devices of various description. I didn’t bring a torch as I’d already found the cache and thought being in the dark would help me resist looking at GZ while others were still hunting. I really wish I’d remembered my camera and maybe even taken a video; it was quite amusing watching all the torches and hearing everyone clashing with the nearby triffid. If you didn’t know what was happening this convergence of torch-bearing humans in this spot would look quite strange. We did get a few strange looks from muggles walking past, but who is stranger: us, out doing bizarre things but with a purpose, or muggles, out walking just to get somewhere or enjoy the exercise. No contest! Anyway, hi_pressure used his brain rather than GPSr to make the find, and we were soon off again.
Our next stop was our original destination for the night, Mt Nelson. Not having hover craft, we parked outside the gates and headed off to We Come in Peace. No really, I’m not trying to pimp my own caches, but as the group was originally going to include a female cacher who wanted to do this in a group rather than alone it seemed a good choice. The DDTs and I were just there for the walk, so SG-3 and hi_pressure bravely took the lead, despite the occasional flash of lasers (which usually seemed to hit T in the eyes) and the themed soundtrack (provided by T). As there are still geocachers who have yet to do this cache, and as muggles must not know where the stash of friendship markers is, I won’t go into any detail that would reveal the secrets of this cache. I’ll just say that the cache was found, alien blood was spilt on the log book, Flip’s dried and irradiated cousin was seen, and one of the aliens was reunited with his crew.
A stop on the way back to the lookout had hi_pressure and SG-3 looking for HAPPY BIRTHDAY!, which was rather appropriate as it was set by Caxixi to celebrate el golco’s birthday - and she’d helped us out earlier in the evening. The darkness wasn’t very helpful in finding this one, and DD and I blinding everyone with flashes in our attempts to take a few photos probably didn’t help! But the cache was found and logged and everyone’s eyesight recovered enough to do a little star gazing, although SG-3 will now need eye surgery thanks to us - I do hope it all goes well! (And don’t even mention Colinoscopies!)
The final cache SG-3 and hi_pressure sought of the night was my stupid idea, Nelson’s Signal. And here’s why my thinking they should go for it wasn’t such a great idea: waypoint 2 is closed at night (well, AND we had to phone someone for the image on the cache page!). I knew some people had done it despite it being closed, however maybe hi_pressure and SG-3 didn’t really want to stand on top of benches whilst trying to train their torches through the windows of a locked building to find information. But they did. So coordinates for the cache location were calculated and we all headed off through the wallaby and rabbit filled darkness for them to make their find. I was half expecting to cap off my stupid idea by them getting a DNF or being attacked by a Sabre Toothed Wombat in the dark, however the group survived and the cache was easily found.
As it was almost 10 pm and for most of us work beckoned in the morning, we called it a night. I don’t know how the others felt about it, but I enjoyed myself thoroughly!
Re-Occurring Non-Caching Non-Event
There were a couple visitors in town, so I attended the re-occurring non-caching non-event on Monday to catch up with Big_Matt again as well as see Warren and Maxine from Michigan, famous for MaxB on the River’s TB Group Tours. I’d met Warren and Maxine briefly when Lottie and I bumped into Mrs Cheesy Pig while out caching on Saturday, so more of a chance to talk (and exchange Kiwi mud wrestling stories ) just couldn’t be missed. It was great having a chat with everyone - once I stopped being anti-social and changing all the settings on gspblu’s new Oregon GPSr to read ‘Property of SNUVA’.
If any of you are wondering what gift to get me as a bribe to be your friend, I would like an Oregon with Australian City Navigator and/or a Nokia 6110.
I guess we’re moving into tourist season! Next week hi_pressure from Victoria will be in town, so I think there will be a couple night caching trips taking place! And in late October we’ll be welcoming Spindoc Bob & family.
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