Erwaman's Personal Journal - September 2010

Geocaching, August 2010

I was reading the geohashing achievements page, and I stumbled across a few other interesting things.

First, I was able to claim another geohashing achievement - a displaced origin geohash - on Sunday, August 22, 2010, when I flew out from SFO back to EWR. The displaced origin geohash achievement is for reaching a geohash for a graticule other than the one you were born in for the date you were born. So, for me, I reached the geohash for 1990-10-26 in the 37,-122 graticule. The reason I was able to reach this geohash on the day I was leaving was because the geohash was at the airport!

If you look at the geohash on a satellite map (I use this geohash lookup tool), you'll notice it's located on the runway somewhere. So of course I wasn't able to walk out onto the runway and reach the exact spot. But since I've flown into and out of SFO over ten times in my life, I'm pretty sure at least one of those times, I've gotten within 100 feet of the geohash location, and I think that should count as a successful geohash, considering the geohash location is on airport property. Thus, since there are no precise rules for what is considered a successful geohash and I think I've gotten pretty close to this one, I'm now claiming a displaced origin geohash achievement. Win.

The second interesting thing I came across was geocaching. This I stumbled upon by reading the page for the hash collision achievement, which can be claimed when a geocache is within line of sight from the geohash location. This of course prompted the question in my mind of "what is a geocache?". I googled it and stumbled across the official geocaching website, geocaching.com.

Geocaching is even older than geohashing and involves finding a "cache" (usually a small box, container, jar) hidden somewhere in the world based on the GPS coordinates of the cache, which are posted online. It's basically like a high-tech scavenger hunt.

Interested, I used the "Seek a Cache..." search on the geocaching website to see if there were any caches hidden around Redwood Shores. Surprisingly, there were many! There was even one hidden behind the Redwood Shores Public Library, where I often went after work and on the weekends to do some pleasure reading.

According to the site, this cache was hidden in March of 2007 and had been found over 200 times already! When I first visited the site, the last time this cache had been found was only about a month ago (in July). It was surprising to me that a cache could remain out in the public world for so long without being removed. Very curious whether this cache was still there, I left work on Wednesday, August 18, and headed to the library, armed with my GPS, the coordinates of the cache, and the clue "Under walkway, south side". The library was still open when I went, and while I was walking around the brush looking under the walkway, a person peeked over and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was geocaching and explained what geocaching was. After my earnest explanation, he had a simultaneously amused and baffled look on his face. He said something else and then walked away. A short while later, a woman appeared at the end of the walkway and called to me, "Are you geocaching?" I said, "Yes! How did you know?" She explained that she was geocaching, too, and looking for the same cache that I was. We searched together for a bit, and after about five minutes, she found the cache by the end of the walkway.

The cache ended up being a rectangular, medium-sized plastic storage box with a snap-on lid. Inside, there was a log book for us to sign, a print-out page explaining what geocaching was, and lots of little whatnots, like pins, small toys, etc. You can take anything you want, as long as you leave something in exchange. In this case, neither of us took or left anything.

Excited at having found a cache and met another geocacher, I attempted two more geocaches in the four days before my flight home. The cache at the Redwood Shores Library was rated only 1.5 stars out of 5 in difficulty, so I wanted to try something a bit harder. The next one I tried was the Shorebird Sudoku cache, rated 2.5/5 in difficulty and located inside the Shorebird Park, which I passed every day biking home from Oracle.

This cache involved first solving a Sudoku in order to get the correct GPS coordinates. I solved the Sudoku without problems, but I did have problems finding the cache. In fact, despite two searches in the small park, I was unable to find this cache. Looking at the online log of this cache, it seems like nobody else has been able to find it since August 15 either, which was before my search attempts.

A bit disappointed, I browsed the list of caches for another cache to search for. I wanted to find one by myself before I left California. So, on Saturday, August 21, the day before my flight, I headed to another small local park - Mariner Park - to search for the Norwegian Christmas cache. This one had been last found only two days prior to my attempt, and it was a "regular" sized cache with difficulty 1.5/5. I drove to the park, and then after stepping out with my GPS, I realize I left the paper on which I had written the coordinates back in my apartment. I searched around for a bit without the coordinates, but soon gave up, and went back to fetch the paper with the coordinates. Armed with the coordinates, I found the cache very quickly:

Inside the envelope was a card, which I signed with the date, my name, and my hometown. I didn't take anything, but I brought a few things to leave behind:

The helicopter clock was a gift Oracle gave to all their interns, and the two pins are "schwee" that bandies adorn their band blazers with.

That concluded my geocaching adventures in Cali. However, it seems caches are everywhere, as searching on the site, I see there are many caches hidden in and around Whippany and New Haven, too. Only problem is, right now I don't have a GPS.