I Lost My Spot Messenger – And It Found Itself

This weekend I took a trip to my brother’s house in Wabash, Washington, near the Green River. On Saturday we took our kids down to a favorite fishing/relaxing spot on the river, and I brought my Spot Messenger along so I could check in and let my wife track my whereabouts from home. When we got to the river I checked in, sending an automatic update to Brightkite and on to Facebook. I then set the Spot to tracking mode.

After spending the day at the river, we were preparing for the mile and a half hike back up out of the gorge, and I attached my Spot to my nephew’s backpack. Spot dutifully tracked us up the trail to the trailhead, but by that time I’d forgotten about it.

When I got home from my brother’s house, I realized I didn’t have my Spot. I pulled up my Spot page and took a close look at the track it had uploaded. Oddly, the Spot was not at my brother’s house, but at a house a mile or two away.

Where did my Spot go?!

I hoped that maybe my nephew had gone to a friend’s house. So this morning I asked my brother to check whether my nephew had the Spot, and sent him the Spot tracking map.

Turns out my nephew didn’t have it. This evening I got a call from my brother. He had printed out the Spot map and a picture of the Spot, and drove to the house shown on the map. He knocked on the door, and asked the woman who answered whether she had found something that looked like the photo. She said she had, but how did he know?? He showed her the tracking map, and she happily handed over the Spot. She had been riding her horse in the park, and found the Spot near the trailhead. She’d had no idea what it was, nor how to return it. Turns out she needn’t have worried!

Brightkite

I’ve never been much for the whole social networking thing, but I’m intrigued by the location-based nature of Brightkite. Like Twitter, you can post short notes and photos, but Brightkite adds your location to your post, so that those following you (or strangers, if you let them) can see where you are – roughly or precisely, depending on what you choose to share. There’s also a nice little iPhone app that makes checking in and posting very easy. I’m giving it a try – like this blog, we’ll see how long it lasts…

Sunday Creek Bridge Closed

Just got this notice from King County Road Alerts:

SPOTLIGHT:  The Sunday Creek Bridge, a small span located on North Fork Road Southeast 17 miles northeast of North Bend, will be closed at noon on Friday, Oct. 31. The bridge will not reopen until the King County Road Services Division can replace it.

North Fork Road SE at Sunday Creek Bridge, 17 miles northeast of North Bend
Area: North Bend
Status: Closed 10/31/2008 12:00:00 PM, Bridge Replacement

More detail from King County:

Sunday Creek Bridge will be closed starting Oct. 31

Sometimes a bridge just can’t be repaired or upgraded. That’s the case with the Sunday Creek Bridge, a small span located in a remote area 17 miles northeast of North Bend. The bridge on North Fork Road Southeast will be closed at noon on Oct. 31, and will not reopen until the King County Road Services Division can replace it.

The condition of the bridge has reached a point where county bridge engineers do not feel it is safe for traffic. The replacement project is tentatively scheduled for the summer of 2009, but construction funding is still pending.

There are no homes beyond the bridge. It is used mostly by recreationalists, logging and quarry companies, and the forest service.

That bridge is quite a ways up the North Fork Road, but unfortunately does cut off some geocaches, including my Blackhawk Mine.

Sunday Creek Bridge

Dipping my toe back in

While my mom is still in rehab – recovering from quadruple bypass surgery, a heart attack, and a blood infection – I’ve been able to hit a few caches this weekend. Still having to spend a lot of time caring for my dad, who had a stroke about 18 months ago, but am getting out a bit more these days. We’re hoping to bring her home in the next week or so. Maybe one of these days I’ll get her out on a cache or letterbox hunt. A few weeks ago things didn’t look good at all, but today it’s a very real possibility.

Down for awhile

No caching and no boxing for me for awhile. On August 26, I took my mom to Overlake Hospital for a quadruple bypass, expecting she’d be home in a week or ten days. Now, over two weeks later, she’s just finally leaving critical care. The bypass surgery itself went okay, but she suffered a heart attack immediately after. Then, almost two weeks later, when she was about to be discharged, she went into shock due to a rare infection in her bloodstream. That now appears to be under control, and we’re hoping to get her home this weekend, just shy of 3 weeks in the hospital. Then, of course, it will be a long rehab, and she’ll need a lot of help. So, not sure when I’ll be back in action.

The Longhunter, Revisited

I have refreshed and reset two caches to reconstruct Blac Raven’s outstanding multi-cache, the Longhunter. See In a Duck’s Nest, Revisited and The Longhunter, Revisited. A potentially helpful topo map is here.

Seattle Parks

On November 30, I submitted a Public Records Act request to the City of Seattle after reading this thread. They finally responded yesterday – here is a PDF of the request and the responsive documents.

Working on a Christmas series

… or at least, thinking about it. I have several great images to carve, but things are really busy at work right now (10+ hour days), so I haven’t gotten around to carving them yet. My hope is to get the series planted this weekend.

I love that AQ allows limited-time boxes – that’s not allowed in geocaching, for no good reason.

Letterboxer, meet geocacher; geocacher, meet letterboxer.

Follow the Signal, my new geocache/letterbox hybrid located in the Redmond Watershed Preserve, has been getting a pretty positive reception, and that is very gratifying and encouraging.

My goal in placing/planting this cache/box was to introduce as many participants of each activity to the other activity. I don’t necessarily expect geocachers to take up letterboxing and vice versa (though some cachers have indicated they will try more boxing, and that’s cool!); rather, my hope was to alleviate some of the unnecessary suspicion and tension between the two groups. The main source of that is the probably-rare but truly-unfortunate tendency for cachers who mistake a letterbox for a cache to unwittingly take the letterbox’s hand-carved stamp, thinking it is a trade item. I figure the more we know about each other, the less problems we should see.

I’ll admit that a secondary goal is to show cachers how fun letterboxing can be. I think a lot of cachers dismiss letterboxing – if they even know about it – as too low tech (no GPS, at least most of the time) and maybe a little “girly” (with all that hand-carved stamp business). The bottom line, though, is it’s fun. If you cache because you like finding new, interesting places, you’ll enjoy letterboxing. If you think the clues are always turn-by-turn and thus eliminate the challenge of navigating to the prize, think again; some clues are downright cryptic. Many are very creative and a hoot to follow. As for the stamps: Yeah, it’s intimidating to think of carving your own. But remember, you don’t absolutely have to. And if you do give it a try, you’ll find it’s easier than it sounds, and pretty darn fun as well.

Like I said, people are enjoying it. Here are excerpts from some of the cache logs I’ve received so far:

• “Very nice cache! Glad to see one of these rare icons in our neck of the woods. I had this idea that maybe the wife would be a bit more into the letterboxing aspect as she isn’t very into the geocaching part. I was right. She loved reading the clues and I have a feeling once our daughter is born that we will check out some more letterboxes in the area.”
• “I had a lot of fun with this one. I decided for a change of pace to do this “Letterbox Style”. The description was just perfect and I quickly had the cache… er… letterbox in hand. I really enjoyed this.”
• “Thanks much for introducing us to this and for a nice cache!”
• “Found with our family…including 4 grandchildren. They loved finding it.”
• “Brought ______ out for this one today. It took him a few to catch on to what we were doing when searching the letterboxing way, but when he got it, he really got it. Had a lot of fun and found the cache himself in no time!”
• “I really liked your custom stamps, by the way! Thanks for a nice outing, even with the crazy additional waypoint!”

So far so good. (And by the way, these are the sorts of online logs that I sure wish we had in letterboxing.)

Online Logs

I love letterboxing and think AtlasQuest is a great site. However, I really, really wish it allowed at least the option of online logs, a la geocaching. Here’s why.

New Blog

I’ve moved my blog to WordPress primarily to create online logs for my letterbox plants. Thanks, Lone R, for the great idea!

BBo’M?

Now, more boring than ever.

Helpful?