Caching with Big_Matt

Big_Matt, of Big Matt and Shell, had a work trip to Tassie. He arrived a day early, so Lottie and I met up with him for a few hours of geocaching!

I found my 1000th combined GCA/GC find back in January but have been close to getting my 1000th Groundspeak only find for ages now.  So I thought going with Big_Matt would be a good way to make the cache all the more memorable.  so I did a couple caches on Saturday, then Sunday morning Lottie and I snuck into a Waterworks Reserve entry with no ‘No dogs’ sign and found AWwC(OSoV) (well – I found the cache; Lottie wanted to chase small animals).  Then we entered the reserve the ‘normal’ way so I could park 100 m as the crow flies (but at the bottom of a hill) from Pipe Graveyard.  Lottie’s bark certainly carried well in that small reserve!  But these caches got me to 999, so I did some maintenance on A Walker Tour of Hobart then headed to our meeting point near CENT5ational Geocoin Exchange. 

Big_Matt hopped into our cacheMobile and we were off to the cache I’d picked to get 1000: Call Me by Fidjit.  To quote my log:

It was a beautiful wintry day, although I must admit the clouds suddenly seemed to come in when we got to WPT1 and realised neither of us had a pen. Not to worry, big_matt had a PDA, so I called out some numbers to him and we were soon on our way again, the day sunny and the birds cheery.

GZ didn’t take long to locate, however upon opening the cache those storm clouds seemed to close in again: although there was a screw driver that looked like one, there actually was no pen! How could two cachers as experienced as we are forget a pen! Oh well – as we’d both already admitted to each other being absent minded enough to leave GPSrs or keys at cache sites, I guess forgetting a pen is not out of the realm of possibility. But this is where big_matt proved himself to be quite a gentleman: he offered to go back to the car for a pen. Being a generous person I allowed him to do this (much to the shock of Lottie!). (I was considering phoning Fidjit and making him come for a Sunday morning walk!) So I soaked up the sun while he had a walk, and upon his return we logged the cache.

The only sad part is dak wasn’t going to tell me the Ultra Secret 1000 Finds Handshake until I had 1000 Groundspeak only finds – so I guess now I’ll never find it out.

It was a fun and memorable cache, and ‘woo-hoo’ to me for hitting 1000 finds (again).

Then we headed up to the summit of Mt Wellington.  It had snowed the week before, so the summit was busy but we luckily got park quite easily.  Poor Lottie stayed in the cacheMobile while we climbed up the trigpoint for the view and for Big_Matt to log the virtual Trigpoint Scenes 1. 

Before hitting Rocket Ship we stopped by the car for some makeshift snow shovels (i.e. a container and a squeegee!), then made our way through the snow.  The snow was piled so deeply and was so lovely it was actually easier to walk to GZ through the snow than it was when I’d logged the find (well, as long as you didn’t step near a plant and go through the snow up over your knee!).  Unfortunately, the snow was banked up too deeply and was too icy for Big_Matt to be able to find the cache.

Lottie had been beautifully patient in the car, we went for some caches she could go to, first hitting Bicep then Squiddly Diddly.  Then we took Matt to see some ferns at Jackson’s Ferns ‘n’ Logs.  I thought we had time for a few final finds in South Hobart, so started at the first waypoint of Raise a Glass, Raise a Cheer.  Next we stopped by Linear Park #3, and while I was photographing the Cascade Brewery with a snowy Mt Wellington in the background I heard a couple approach Matt and the word ‘geocache’ get mentioned.  It was Mr and Mrs akb123!  Great!  We chatted about handheld GPSrs for a while (they’ve just been using a Tom Tom – imagine!), and they were able to hand off a large TB to Big_Matt. 

Next we went to Not An Ocean Cliff Cache, which Lottie especially liked as she could be off lead for a few minutes; I think she would have preferred it if Big_Matt had taken longer to find the cache.  Then it was up the hill to Ultimate Battleship: Snuva’s Throne; Lottie’s favourite part of that one was spotting a pademelon!  Somewhere in there we also finished the multi. 😉

We were going to quit and be back at Bit_Matt’s rental car by 2:30, that way Big_Matt would still have plenty of daylight so he could cache his way to Launceston, is destination for the night, and Lottie & I could get to the dog obedience class.  However somehow we were an hour late – oops.  I didn’t mind missing the class, and Big_Matt phoned just after 7:30 pm to let me know he’d gotten an FTF in Campbell Town – so hopefully he didn’t mind being too late either!  He’ll be back in Hobart Monday night, so who knows – night caching after the re-occurring non-caching non-event??