It has been quite a while since I last updated the Geocaching page. The last time I found a geocache was in 2023, and then only three of them that year. Two in 2021, and then it dips back to 2019 when I was active. There's a lot of reasons for this. Abject poverty, depression. Losing my geocaching bag with the majority of my belongings in the 2010's somewhere, whenever that happened (I tend to block it out). Somehow, my GPS survived, but at some point, I just couldn't bear it any more. I think the final straw was when my Kabucrikey Geocoin went missing, I think in a box that never made it across the ocean when moving to England. I'd mostly put it down for the other reasons before then, but then the loss of that coin kinda did me in.
And then some things started to turn around. My friend MétisAngel (geocaching.com) offered to gift me a premium account, but I ended up saying to offer it to someone more active. And then I went on a few road trips where, if I had had my GPS on me, I could have found some geocaches in some amazing locations (and also added Wales to my list of places I've geocached). And then the final thing... the old geocoin came back.
Or at least it will soon (I hope I hope I hope). Shortly after the Wales trip, MétisAngel sent me a link to some cool dragon geocoins, and while those weren't available for purchase (I had considered using one as a replacement for the lost one), it did get me to search online for that coin.
And. I. Found. It. Not only did I find it, I found it unactivated on eBay. Oh you KNOW I had to snap that up in a tenth of a second. Now, they only shipped to the USA, but I do have a niece there (one of the Blagden clan), who offered to receive it for me and send it on. And that is where that currently waits... currently in transit on its way to me.
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In the meantime while waiting, I decided that I needed to prep my geocaching setup. While I don't have all the bells and whistles, digital camera, string, wire, I do still have a number of tetra orbs, and a tradeable toy that I've been holding onto for way too long. And so, I made a number of möbius balls, some micromaille balls, and came up with a system to carry them. A large change purse can hold the tradeable and tetra orbs, a small bag inside can hold the tiny stuff. We still have our inkless pen, and while I can't get maps for a GPS this old any more, it'll still point me at coordinates, and that'll do.
It's minimal, it lacks a lot of the bells and whistles that my old setup had, but it'll take me to a geocache and I'll be able to leave my signature item, still unmissed in leaving one in/at every find. I've been told that GSAK is avaiable for free now (though usage on Linux has yet to be seen), but if I can somehow get that working again, I can perhaps update the master list of cache logs. All things to be seen to, but first and foremost, lets get out caching again.
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Slowly, our geocaching kit began to upgrade and sort. Finding a better pouch, find an EVEN better pouch, which had been used to poorly and barely contain my old gameboy games (aw yeah I've got Pokemon Blue and Silver in there, and Metroid II: Return of Samus), we moved those somewhere better, we got tips from MétisAngel and the list of contents from our first geocaching bag (most of which was never used, so we know what can be lopped out). Slowly, quickly, it began to take shape.
We found our spare daisy chain that was once a shoulder strap for my water bottle (which has since been replaced), and found the geocaching Metroid stamp (mental note, apparently I was planning to replace that with a K.T., so I should probably get on that again) and a small medical kit to to in the My Little Pony bag, which went into the purple pouch to help keep things sorted (the tetra orbs can go in that front mesh pocket, and the micros in the bison tube beside the inkless pen).
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And then, the computer side of it was solved. We got GSAK running through Wine on Linux, however it was unable to send waypoints to the GPS as a result of that. However, we *are* able to use this to update the on-site finds list. To add fresh waypoints, we found that Garmin BaseCamp has a native Mac version, which could indeed send to the GPS. So while we need to use two computers for this (I may as well not fight with running GSAK on Mac, since I'd need them on the Linux machine to add to the webpage anyway), we have a working method again! |
 
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< More to follow once that coin arrives, and I decide what else should go in the geocaching bag, spare logbooks and pencils at least >
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