Hey BTW did you like the Lazy Bulldog Item that TEF left?? bet that as well would have come in handy :) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Sparks" To: Sent: Friday, April 11, 2003 3:51 PM Subject: [Az-Geocaching] Re: New record > > > > > > 2. New record (gale and mike) > > 3. Re: New record (jr davis) > > 4. Re: New record (Regan Smith) > > 6. Re: New record (Regan Smith) > > 7. RE: New record (Webb Pickersgill) > > > > We'd like to thank all who offered their congratulations for our > marathon caching day on Wednesday. Some of you asked for ""all the gory > details."" I won't bore everyone with _all_ the details but will say a > few things. Like any challenging task, the details are in the planning. > We had been planning for weeks. In fact, our original plan was to > just beat the old record (long held by Wolfb8) back in March. but when > we saw what Cacheless and the Webbman did last month, we decided to > postpone until April and give them their day in the sun. [:-)] Seeing > what they were able to accomplish made us realize that we would have to > beat the record by more than just one or two. This meant we had to wait > for some more caches to be placed within our planned caching area. This > was the hardest part. While waiting for new caches to be placed, there > were a few on our list that were archived. This meant we had to expand > our coverage area a little more that we had planned. Eventually we > decided on a list of about 60 caches that we felt were do-able, if we > started early in the AM. Once we had the list established, we spent > hours poring over street maps and topo maps. We also had to carefully > study all of the logs for any hints or clues that might help us find the > caches. We also spent some time driving around various sections of > town, familiarizing ourselves with the streets and park locations, > finding the closest parking, etc. From all the information gathered we > were able to put together a street-by-street, turn-by-turn plan of > attack. Of course, we had to check the cache pages almost every day to > see if any caches were made unavailable or archived or had excessive > no-finds logged. This was all time-consuming and sometimes mind-numbing > work. > We decided to go on a weekday because most of the parks don't have > nearly as many visitors then as they do on weekends. We also decided to > leave very early-- we got started at 2:15AM. This enabled us to travel > quickly from location to location for about the first 4 or 5 hours, > since there was very little, if any traffic. This also meant that, > until about 6:00 or 7:00AM, there was no one around to deter us from > searching full-tilt. Of course, this also meant that some of the parks > and such would be closed but, for the most part, this didn't cause too > many problems. There were a couple of instances where we had to walk > just a little bit more than we hoped because of gates blocking vehicular > traffic. > There were a few caches that gave us some problems but I won't say > which ones. For the most part, though, they were all relatively easy to > find. Most were urban micros, after all. [:-)] We spent about 17 hours > caching and returned home shortly after dark. We were up till about > midnight logging and stuff. We apologize for the brevity of some of our > logs but we plan to go back and edit them and add a few more details > when we have time. We did have some excitement at a couple of caches, > such as Saturday Night Fights and Lazy Bulldog, later in the day. You > can check the logs for those if you want. > For the nay-sayers out there: We were a team of two on Wednesday, > since our two kids were in school. One of us drove while the other > navigated. Sometimes we both got out and hunted. Sometimes only one, > while the other waited with the vehicle running. On two instances, we > split up and hunted separately for two different (very close by) caches > but, in both cases, one person was either unable to find their > respective cache or unable to reach it so we both ended up finding the > second cache together anyway. For some of the virtuals, we took digital > photos of plaques and stuff and then extracted the text from them later > on to send to the cache owners. For a couple of the museum caches, we > did divide the questions between us and searched for the answers > independently. We did sign the guest books with our team name, as > required. A couple of the caches were ones we had visited in the past > but were unable to find. We came this time equipped with the knowledge > of where we had looked before and also some hints that we had squeezed > from others who had already found the cache. Never did anyone reveal > the exact location of a cache. For the multi-step caches, we completed > all but the final step in advance. For the puzzle caches, we solved the > puzzles and had the coordinates confirmed by the cache owner in advance > so we wouldn't be looking iin the wrong place. And no, we didn't have a > laptop and a satellite link. Just a desktop computer (at home), a > Garmin 12XL and several reams of paper. [:-)] > Thank you all for placing the caches that we were able to hunt for. > > -- Team Sprocket > > > ____________________________________________________________ > Az-Geocaching mailing list listserv@azgeocaching.com > To edit your setting, subscribe or unsubscribe visit: > http://listserv.azgeocaching.com/mailman/listinfo/az-geocaching > > Arizona's Geocaching Resource > http://www.azgeocaching.com