I was supposed to be at Geowoodstock...

I had planned last year to attend GWXI in Florida this weekend. Plans change.After several things that went down I have kind of pulled back from the geocaching world. I still give a look here and there, check out new listings, read some of the blogs, listen to some of the podcasts occasionally,but the thrill just isn't there right now. The adventure has gone out of caching for me. I don't hear those first four notes of the Indiana Jones theme song when I see a new cache anymore. Maybe it's me, maybe it's that the new cachers think that what's being put out is an adventure. Either way, here I am.

I've only attended two GeoWoodstocks.

The first was in Warren, PA. That was an awesome weekend for me. I am not very comfortable around large groups of people. I like to hang back, take pictures and watch. I never had much interest in poker but I ended up  sitting through nearly the whole of the Geopoker tournament and really enjoying it, sitting through the podcasters live shows and making a couple of friends out of the bargain (HeadHardHat probably remembers a late night call) and meeting folk from all over. This really brought me out from behind the lens of my camera. I'm so used to being on the other side and just watching that I forget that the picture has sound! I just have to listen. I met Triple HHH, DarylW4, XpunkX, you know all the big names. I met MollyMonkey and made a friendship there that, while infrequent, is always there when we see each other in real life or online. It was a whole new world for me. I also visited Centralia, PA and a part of the abandoned PA turnpike and several other very cool locations. This is what caching is about to me. 

GeoWoodstock IX was very well put together. The exhibits and the flow of it were pretty good. Nothing's perfect, I heard complaints, but I heard way more good than bad. I met some of the people I've always wanted to meet up with. I also had the chance to promote Geocoinfest 2011 which I was helping plan and I really got to see what it meant to put on a great event. I will always be thankful for that to the folk that set up the Warren event and I made it a point to tell each volunteer and board member I met for that event. It was truly worth my time and money to be there. And it was a privilege.

Then came GWX. They took it back to its roots, as close as possible anyway, I still don't understand why it wasn't held in Louisville where the first GW was held.

It was held in Sellersburg, IN. The big difference for me was that this one was very spread out. Hundreds of feet between sections of the event. The flow was very bad. the vendors were sparse, the heat was unbearable. Now they couldn't have done a thing about the heat. That's not in their power to make happen. What I saw was that there wasn't water for the animals brought to the event, public restrooms that were available on the fairgrounds weren't made available to the attendees of the event, people were having to walk in a half mile to the event (there was special parking if you bought the top tier of package, we did), the food line and drink line were split so that you got your food first then had to go stand in another line to get your drink, etc. So much was wrong with this event. Again, this was compounded by the heat, which was out of all of our hands.

Not all was lost for me that weekend. I visited Captain McHarry's Vault, which was one of my favorite caches ever, I ate dinner at Claudia Sander's Dinner House (yes, the Col's wife) and downtown Louisville is something you have to visit. If you're ever there spend a day and really take it in. Sights in between all these and other great places and you get why we cache and take the chances we do.

It's all in the journey. And at the end of it, I don't really have a complaint.
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This led to my decision to stay home this weekend. I didn't want to go and feel like I wasted my money. I am sure the folk in Florida made a fine presentation of GeoWoodstock and I would like to hear from cachers either way how it went. Just post in the comments here or on the comments on G+, it will get back to me.

I stayed home and took the kids to the zoo. It was a perfect Saturday with perfect weather and I couldn't have spent a better day with better people than my family. No caches found, no Munzees scanned, the zoo most of the day, a trip to the bookstore and dinner. We were home by five and relaxing.

I thought about the last two GW all weekend. I had some great road-trips and was lucky to have ended up having at least one great experience for an event. 

I just felt like writing. Thanks for reading.

Geosphere

On Saturday I was allowed to get out of the house for a bit and wander. I cache and munzee and take pictures when I am out and found that Geosphere (iOS) is going to be a great tool in the combining of the output from three sites and two hobbies. All three sites (GC.com OC.us and Munzee) allow a GPX to be downloaded for use on your devices so with a little bit of a learning curve I was able to easily drop all three sites data into one group and export the data to another GPX to send out to my caching partner +Wally Turbeville.

I wanted to try this not just for ease of use but because of something +Dave DeBaeremaeker mentioned awhile back. When we are out in the field playing we don't want to have to switch back and forth between different apps and websites. Having all this data in the same place is much more satisfying as I only needed to run two apps, Munzee and Geosphere, the whole time I was out. It made it a much more enjoyable experience as I took Wally into the wonderful world of OCUS and took him to several of their caches in Charlotte. I am especially glad to see the virtuals with OCUS that I can find and have the chance to place. I was a late comer on virtuals for GC.com and while I have found several, sadly I will never be able to place one. I hated when virts were taken away from GC. I found them to be some of the most interesting caches. I do understand the reason for archiving the cache type though. People abused them and when a few bad apples abuse the right we all lose.

As far as I can tell, there is no icon for Munzees in Geosphere. Come to think about it, why would you need one? You can't scan Munzees from Geosphere or mark them as found. This was all done for planning and mapping purposes. As you can see each regular Munzee was marked as a MEGA because how often are you going to come across a Mega. Both OCUS and GC caches fell under the regular icons of what is available for their particular cache types. Mystery Munzees were marked automatically as CITO. We were glad to have a good map with a nice view of what was available to us in any given area. I opted to make regular Munzees a black pin and virtuals a white pin in the map view and was very pleased with the view I got from that. I was also impressed with the accuracy of the Munzee app in different conditions. It was a nice clear day but I usually have problems dialing in on locations with a GPS under power lines and such. Most of the coords were dead on with an iPhone 4s and the Munzee and Geosphere app. (Props to TermiteHunter for dead on coords at each of his OCUS hides we hit!)

All in all a great day. 30 Munzees, 5 OCUS caches, 4 GC caches. And we had fun! That's the whole point anyway. We found some interesting history due to all three of the different parts of a game we both love very much. Caching gives us more than just coords on a map. It gives us an education, skills we wouldn't otherwise have, friendship. I wouldn't have met Wally if it hadn't been for caching or most of the people reading this. If we haven't met, you never know, could be never, could be tomorrow.

S

The Plan

The plan for tomorrow is to try to finish placing the rest of the caches in my series, Along the Border.

It has been several weeks since I've just been out by myself for a day.

I plan to find a nice greasy spoon along the way for lunch.

I think I'll start on the back porch with a cup of coffee in the swing though.

Then off I go.

Tomorrow will be a full day of cache placement, blogging from the road, and hopefully a find or two.