1000th Post

According to my stats page, this is my 1000th blog post.  So to celebrate, here is a picture of my wife with a chameleon on her head:

Photography Milestone

This is Blue Ridge Outdoor magazine, October 2015 edition:

This is my photo on page 5:

Yep, I can now add "published photographer" to my resume.  Go me.

If you are curious, the story of this photo (not the article in the magazine, but the adventure I was on when I took it), is covered in the post "Geocaching Asheville".

Cheers!

Milestone: My First North Dakota Cache

Today I claimed my first cache in North Dakota.

Milestone: My First British Columbian Cache

Today I claimed my first British Columbia cache, collecting all 10 provinces for my geocaching map.

Go me.

Milestone: My First Albertan Cache

It is official.  I have logged my first geocache in Alberta. Only one province left to go!

Milestone: My First Saskatchewan Cache

I have claimed my first Saskatchewan cache.  I only found one today, mainly due to the fact that shortly after I found the cache, a storm came thru that lasted most of the day - 80KM/H winds, lots of rain, and flat terrain makes for some treacherous driving, and some crappy caching.

However, I did manage to get a smiley, and some decent photos to mark my first foray into Saskatchewan.

Only two provinces to go!

Milestone: My First Manitoba Cache

I have found my first cache in Manitoba!  This marks my 7th Canadian province I have cached in Canada.

(Please excuse the bad selfie - its hard to take one with a DSLR when one is in the bush).

The cache was in some thick brush, nearish the "Largest Petrified Stump In The World", which given its made out of concrete, but deep in the woods, makes me think it was an abandoned roadside attraction from back  in the day.  Either way, it is impressive, is it not?

My travel companions didn't want to hang out in the brush long enough to find the cache, hence the selfie.

So, 70% of Canadian Provinces cached - not to shabby.

Googleversary

So today marks my official 10 year anniversary as a real life full time Googler.  True story.

I haven't done anything for 10 years before... feels kinda good.

Achievement Unlocked: My First Austrian Cache

Yesterday was a geocaching milestone double header. Shortly after grabbing my first Liechtenstein cache, I also grabbed my first Austrian cache as well.

It is always a good day when one adds two country maps to ones geocaching statistics map.

Achievement Unlocked: My First Liechtenstein Cache

Today I added another country to my geocaching map:  The Principality Of Liechtenstein.

Liechtenstein is a small country directly to the east of Switzerland, and sandwiched between Austria.

It is one of the smallest countries on earth - of the 249 countries, it ranks at 219, with only 160 square miles for the entire place.  It also boasts a total of 187 geocaches.

The cache I found was the closest one to the Swiss border, and is a TB hotel.  We then went on to find the very first geocache in Liechtenstein: Liechtenstein's First (GCC2F4).  The country is nestled in the Alps, so I was treated to this amazing view from the cache location:

Achievement Unlocked: My First Swiss Cache

Today, while biking my way thru the mean streets of Zurich on the way to the office, I stopped by a little park called the Klopstockweisse, and found my first geocache in Switzerland.

Thats one more map space filled in for me!

Finding the cache involved hopping a fence in the woods at the edge of the park, which gave it that air of danger and adventure.

It was also situated in the shadow of a castle: Schloss Sihlberg:

It is never a bad geoaching situation when there is a schloss involved. Fact.

Achievement Unlocked: My First German Cache

Today I logged my first geocache in Germany, and earned myself the following souvenir, for the Rheinland-Pfalz, which is a state in Germany.

Interestingly enough, it wasn't the first cache I logged today, despite spending the entire time either in an airplane, or on the ground in Germany itself.  You see, I had found 3 Lab Caches before making this find. However Lab Caches are not geolocated based on region in the geocaching.com database, so while one had to be in Germany to log a lab cache, the cache itself is not listed as being in Germany, and therefore doesn't qualify as a German cache. See what I mean?

(If this confuses you, don't be alarmed. You are not the only one.  It also sums up most of my annoyances with Groundspeak over the silly half-assed ways they implement new things like lab caches... but I digress).

The cache is in the old city of Mainz (pronounced more like Minez).  Mainz was devastated during WWII (don't mention the war!) and 80% of the city was flattened.  Luckily some parts were preserved as it is quite a beautiful area, as you can see.

There is plenty more Mainz goodness to cover, so stay tuned!

Achievement Unlocked: Geovan Of Destiny reaches 100K

Hard to believe we've put 100,000 miles on the GeoVan of Destiny.  Its been to 38 states, 6 provinces, and way too many awesome adventures to mention (most of 'em are recorded in this blog: Google it.)

We have many more adventures planned, so hopefully she will last for a few more years to come.

Milestone Unlocked: I Tought I Taw A Utah

Today I went to this location, hung on the side of a cliff...

The button reads "Save A Bear"

and earned myself the Utah souvenir.

The 4K Cake

Last night I went to a geocaching event in town.  When I arrived I discovered that the local cachers had made a cake to help me celebrate my 4000th find milestone!

 That is pretty awesome, and a nice surprise.  You know you have a good bunch of geocaching friends when they bust out cake.

Here is the group shot.

Thanks guys!

4000

Today I hit another geocaching milestone: my 4000th find.  I  made the grab while hiking with my caching buddy SaSiCo in Henry Cowell Redwood Park near Santa Cruz California.

Details of the adventure coming soon, but for now, I give you the photo of victory.

12-13-14 15:16:17

This picture was taken on 12-13-14 15:16:17.  The last sequential date/time for many, many years (using American, non Y2K compliant, date formats).

Geocaching Adventures: Puerto Rican First

This is me at the entrance to the park at the end of today's adventure:

 I am exhausted. Very exhausted.  I just completed one of the hardest hikes I have ever done in my life, all so I could find my very first Puerto Rico geocache!

OK, OK, so it is actually my second Puerto Rican geocache (the picture from my first cache, found 30 minutes before, came out all blurry. I didn't have my hiking buddy, Joel, along at that point to snap a better photo. So we're just going to have to buy into the lie and suspend disbelief for now, all right?).

For the purposes of geocaching stats, Puerto Rico is considered a different country, which means today was also an "add a new country to my stats" day. A momentous occasion to be sure.

I found it at the base of this tower here:

At the top of said tower, Yokahú tower to be precise, I got stunning views of the surrounding area:

Which all makes for a very memorable "first cache in a new country" day.

There is actually way more interesting things to the story of this day, but I am exhausted (see first photo above - I still look like that, tho now I am sitting beside the pool at the hotel instead of lying in a heap on the lawn at the entrance to a national forest), so that story will have to wait for another day.

Stay tuned!

Geocaching Milestone: Geocalendar Filled

It is universally true (sometimes) that if you give a geek a statistic with empty spaces, and he will do his best to fill those spaces in.  In this case that empty box was a stat on geocaching.com that lists every day of the year that I have found a cache.  Today, while attending an event in Charlotte,  I finally filled in all those boxes.  My geocalendar now looks like this:

I have been consciously working on this for a while now.  Two years ago I had 165 days without cache finds.  I knew I had no chance of completing in in a year - my schedule simply would not allow it, but I planned my geocaching trips to hit as many as I could.

In January of this year I looked at my progress and noticed I had knocked the empty days down to 41. So I marked those on my personal calendar, and resolved to find caches on each of those days.  Many of them fell on days I would have cached anyways, like during Geowoodstock, Going Caching, and Canadian trips. However many involved waking up really early in the morning to drive out and grab local caches (local being a misnomer as most where 10-20 miles away) that I had saved especially for that purpose.

I am now done and I can now swear off all "find a cache on this day" challenges (my least favourite kind of challenge), and get on with the business of exploring the world on my own schedule.

Have you completed your calendar? Let me know in the comments below.

National Bike Challenge Success

This year I have been participating in the National Bike Challenge.  It is an effort to promote and increase cycling, and runs from May 1st to September 30th.  

My goals for this year were to get Platinum level (2500 points), and to log 1,000 miles. I hit Platinum last month, and today on my commute to work  I logged my 1,000th mile.

Mission accomplished.

I even have 2 weeks to spare.