Over a month or so back, it became clear that my first choice Christmas present, a Nintiendo Wii, wasn’t a viable option – I suspect many people didn’t find a Wii under their tree this year, either.
When I knew the Wii wasn’t to be, I thought long and hard about a fallback choice, and I decided upon a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx GPS unit.
Irene spent weeks doing her best (successfully) trying to convince me that, since she couldn’t find my first choice, she’d picked something that wasn’t on my list.
In the end, the GPS was under the tree. This one’s several models “up†from my father’s GPS, which is what we always take to Taiwan or when we go on a long trip. Amongst the most critical of features is that this GPS uses a standard USB connection, which allows it to talk to my MacBook. (I’ll make another post concerning my research shortly.)
Unfortunately, it’s been a cold, windy day, and, what with it being Christmas and all, there’s been nowhere to go. I took a walk around the block first thing in the morning with the unit but, well, that’s a little boring.
This evening, after watching the Doctor Who, Voyage of the Damned Christmas special, I worked out how to use the “Geocaching†mode on the GPS. It has a special place just for downloaded waypoints from geocaching.com an it keeps track of the ones you’ve found.
I’ve never tried the whole geocaching game, but there was a cache located less than half a mile from my house. With GPS in hand, I set out into the cold, dark Christmas night, not knowing what to find.
For starters, the city was eerily quiet, unlike during the day when the neighbors were playing loud party music and one of the car alarms was going off continuously for five hours. It seemed as if the city turned down the street lights, too, for it was darker than usual, but at least there were more stars visible in the sky.
The only thing that broke the desolation was an occasional car, and a few silent people standing outside, quiet as ghosts.
I began having second thoughts. I know the area well enough that I couldn’t think of a suitable “public†space that the cache might be hidden in. What if it was a ruse? Someone plants a geocache entry on the website just before Christmas. They know people will get them, and they’ll be drawn to the cache. They know some will come at night, and when they do: BAM! It’s an episode of Torchwood.
With that cheerful thought in mind, I continued on, now warily looking over my shoulder.
When I arrived at the cache, I was surprised that the GPS had led me to a house just two doors down from an old friend’s house (since moved to another state.) The second thing that struck me was so strange that I circled the marked spot twice. It was in someone’s front yard – no mistake about it.
In the darkness, I decided that I had better not try to locate the actual item, lest I be mistaken for someone with more nefarious designs.
Postscript: I went back and checked the notes on the cache and the notes indicate that it is located – with the owner’s permission – in the front yard. Still, I think I was wiser not to go poking around at night.
It gives me a great idea though: A geocache webcam. Now I just have to figure out where to put on so I can monitor the visitors!
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