[Az-Geocaching] Re: New record

[Regan Smith]

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" <scottsparks1@mchsi.com>
To: <listserv@azgeocaching.com>
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