Whidbey Island Cache Machine

I posted the first draft (.PDF) for the Whidbey Island Cache Machine last Friday. The event's coming up on January 3, and will involve considerably more hiking than previous cache machine events. The views will be well worth it.

Yakima Cache Machine II is Saturday

I'm looking forward to the Yakima Cache Machine II event more than any cache machine in a long time. Maybe it's because the first YCM five years ago was my favorite of the 15 I've organized. Maybe it's because the drive through the Yakima River canyon is, IMHO, the most fun drive in the state -- even better than 101 along Hood Canal, or the Olympic Peninsula loop. Maybe it's because I'm the navigator for a carload of cachers (dsvaughn, GeekGirl, and hydnsek) who are gonna be a barrel of fun. We're even gonna meet up on Friday before the event for a 3-mile, 12-cache hike through Cowiche Canyon.

I'm giddy.

(And yes, Yakima has poker rooms. Maybe it'll cover my hotel room costs.)

Smattering of stuff

• After my $504 online bonus hunt win in January (yay, PlayersOnly.com), I lost $200 of it at Palace playing $3/$6. Bah.
• The odds caught up a little bit for the February bonus hunt. +$104 instead. The EV is +$186, I think.
• The Yakima Cache Machine II is scheduled for March 29.
• Shortly after Happy Days' closure, I contacted the state gaming commission to see what I should do with my $35 in chips. After a few missteps, they had the owner of the casino give me a call, and I'll be exchanging them for cash sometime soon.
• Back on December 4, I was one of only two people who spoke in favor of Lakewood casinos at a gambling forum. This didn't surprise me, because most of the invitations went out to church groups, and it was hosted by the Tillicum/Woodbrook Neighborhood Association, whose leader is on the record of opposing gambling. The other person who spoke was the casino manager at Lakewood's Macau Casino. From what I understand, the city of Lakewood takes a B&O tax of 11% of gross receipts, meaning that when you play a $10 hand of blackjack, although the casino has a 1.5% edge over you (your expected return is $9.85), the city has an 11% edge over the casino (the casino's expected return is $8.90, plus 15¢ from the player). To be profitable they've got to count on the player cycling through their money eight times before cashing out (8 * 15¢ = $1.20, which earns them 10¢ after paying the state $1.10).
• Apparently, dozens of casino employees attended a hearing on the future of casinos in Lakewood on February 6. I'd hoped to attend, but couldn't make it. The advisory board who heard their statements agrees with them, and on Wednesday, recommended to the city council that the moratorium on new casinos in Lakewood be lifted. It's up to the city council now, who can do whatever they want, in spite of the advisory board's advice.

Geocaches save lives

Two happy ending stories:

A pair of experienced climber on Mount Hood got caught by a storm, so aborted their attempt to summit the mountain, and then missed their turn on the way down. They built a snow cave overnight, and when they woke up, they spotted a piece of flagging tape in a tree, connected to a water bottle with this cache inside -- with its own coordinates. When they warmed up their cell phones and got a call from the sheriff, they were able to tell exactly where they were. (CNN video, NW Cable News.) KOMO, as usual, botched the story and instead says they found a GPS hanging from a tree.

A woman and her dog are in an off-leash park in High Bridge, New Jersey. The dog falls through the icy lake, and the woman goes in after him. She gives up and runs to the empty parking lot looking for help. Just arriving: a cacher looking for this cache. While the woman goes in after her dog again, he calls the park police, who save the dog and the woman.

Cache Machine roundup

My daughter and I got 47 caches in Vancouver this weekend, starting in a group of about 30 people at 7:15 a.m. on Saturday, then in and between groups for the next seven hours. We took a brief rest at the hotel, then hit the road again to get three more before dinner at 5:15. We had about 60 people at dinner, and I got several e-mails and talked to a few people who wouldn't be making it to dinner. I'm guessing roughly 75 people attended.

I haven't decided whether I like lamp post micro-caches less or just slightly more than micros in the woods, which I hate. This cache machine had a lot of them. Unfortunately, when my goal is to get to as many neat places in a day as possible, if a microcache is there, I want to go there, too. And it's tough to tell what spot might be neat (e.g., a 180-degree view of the Columbia River and the Portland Airport, but the cache is a film canister under a trash can) and what spot might not be (e.g., a Humane Society office with the non-stop whining and barking of several soon-to-be doomed dogs, but the cache is a large ammo can next to a tree.)

More importantly, I spent a very nice weekend with my daughter, just her and me, exploring, laughing, picking on each other, and enjoying each others' company. I'll remember this weekend for a long time because of that.

The event got mentioned in another cacher's log, Rose Red.

Caching at lunch

For the first time in almost two years, I went geocaching at lunch. I searched for North Lake Woodland Walk. My log follows, Blackberry typos and all:

[found] August 17 by travisl (1165 found)

It's lunch time, and I'm faced with two options. I could go to the new Round Table Pizza for the third time this week, and have all I can eat yet again. The latitude of my pants have been strongly opposed to this idea, and if my bathroom scale were a GPS, it would be throwing longitude errors ("max value 180").. That idea's out. I could head over to PJ's and play poker for an hour. Nah. I've told myself that if I ever do that, it's proof that I am indeed the degenerate everyone suspects I am.

A third option comes to.mind: I could go geocaching. I haven't done that at lunchtime in ages. The weather's cool, and although I don't have my geopack, my GPS has been rattling around in the car since the Spokane Cache Machine.

This one fit the bill perfectly. It's close by, a short hike, just off the trail, it's not a bleepin' micro. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to lose a pound and not a dollar. TNLNSL.

(And this is the first cache I've ever posted a find to from a cache site. Technology's getting cooler every day.)

Grays Harbor Cache Machine

After two years off, I'm hosting another cache machine event: the Grays Harbor Cache Machine on September 22. It's not likely that I'll actually make it to dinner that night, because I'll need to be in Vegas by 9:00 a.m. the next day (a six day computer forensics class), but for me, planning is just as fun as the event itself.

Geocaching again, briefly

Caches are a lot easier to find when you've already been there three times. More at Kelly's blog.

Archiving another cache: too much bureaucracy

I received an e-mail from the Washington State Geocaching Association last night, stating in part:

If you have already established a cache in a Washington State Park but have not informed the park manager or have written permission to establish a cache PLEASE promptly take steps to get that permission per the new directive as soon as possible.

Well, my Potlatch cache is certainly one of these, because it's in Potlatch state park, I hid it on March 17, 2002, and I never obtained written permission to play the game in the park.

I checked out the new policy (effective July 6), and I certainly don't want to take the time to meet with the park ranger, obtain a permit for it every year, and visit the cache every 90 days. I also don't like having to indemnify the state against claims arising from the geocache's existence. It's a lot easier just to archive it, and let someone else who wants to jump through the hoops place one in the park.

Fish kill near Sund Rock

Divers at one of the best diving spots in the state (at the site of my Sund Rock geocache) are reporting the worst fish kill in three years. Lack of oxygen's the culprit.

The Tacoma News Tribune's on the story.