The Queen Of Geocaching. Well, At Least The Princess….
Kathleen Knight, residence Gainesville, is an old friend of ours. We first met her when she married our old Subterranean Circus accountant, Richard Allen, a nefarious character if there ever was one. Anyway, Kathleen has always struck us as a relatively serious person, not a lot of nonsense involved, even though she did once fall into the dubious category of thoroughbred horse owner. Kathy and Richard owned a modest farm hard by the Interstate in Alachua and went through the usual highs and lows of horse-owning. Kathy lost a foal and we commiserated. Kathy had a good sale and we celebrated.
Eventually, Kathy and Richard split up as everybody seems to do, and she kept on with the horse effort until finances dictated otherwise. In the meantime, she carried on her usual activities, working, raising her son, Philip, and taking care of everybody she knew who needed help, which was a considerable number of people. This sort of benevolence pretty much guaranteed that Kathy would never accumulate a mountain of money but, strange person that she was, she figured doing something for her fellow man might be a better use of funds. What a concept. She continued the practice in future years, traveling to strange Asian destinations, donating time and whatever money she had. Kathleen once lost a beloved horse to EPM and when she found out Siobhan was working on a cure for the disease, she sent a check for $2000 even though she has to scramble every month to pay her bills. We tried to send it back but she wouldn’t take it. Long story short, Kathleen Knight Allen is not your average wild-and-crazy guy. So we were a little surprised when we got a funny letter from her.
You Think You Know Somebody. And Then….
Kathleen Knight writes….
Last January, I went with three Marines and we attempted a world renowned Geocaching run. A “run” is where there are a lot of caches (find each one with your GPS, open the container—usually a 35MM film container—sign the paper inside to prove you were there, place it back into the container and hide it just where you found it). Then you jump into the moving jeep (no stopping for slow members).
First, I have to say I am soooo glad we rented a jeep. Loaded up on extra gas (on the roof of the jeep), food, water, a pillow (for me, of course). I cannot tell a Floridian how hard it is to drive in an inch or two of snow when you are doing about 70 mph between each cache and slamming to a stop to let the team members jump out to find the cache. My bat head lamp worked great.
We were headed to the Extraterrestial Highway, which is in the middle of the desert in Nevada. Well, we landed in Utah, cached our way through Arizona and New Mexico. Then, after sleeping in the jeep, cached our way to the beginning of the ET Highway (over 1000 caches in 100 miles). GC rules are that each cache must be at least 0.1 miles from any other. In order to claim the most caches in a “day”, you have to start at one second after midnight. Little did we Floridians know, there is SNOW and ICE in Nevada—even in the desert—in January. We wore gloves for a while until we realized that they slowed us down. We also wore plastic trash bags over our socks, under our shoes.
Twenty hours and fifteen minutes later, we had hit over 1020 caches! They have competitions like this in 22 countries and our effort beat them all! I knew it would be just a matter of time before a team of ALL Marines came along and beat our time but it never happened, so I guess we’re world champions or something. Our record will never be broken because a while later a cacher pulled out onto the Extraterrestial Highway in front of a snowplow and almost got killed, resulting in the promoters of this jolly fun pulling up all the caches and retiring the ET run. I am very proud but I will never EVER do it again. I have made my mark and I am still waiting to get the feeling back in my toes.
Anyway, this year I am flying with a friend to the Philippines to try for a cache that was put out in 2007 and which no one has ever found. It is in the volcano on Manila’s island. I am going to rent a donkey and sit on my ass all the way up and back from the cache. If this is not exactly cricket, the rules say it is acceptable. By the way, I only need seven more caches and I will have 3000 under my belt. Wish me luck. Oh, and by the way—there is a cache at the South Pole if you’re interested.
You go get that one, Kathy. We’ll join you on the Maui caching trip.
Secret Worlds
We are always fascinated to discover another tiny universe out there, one populated by legions of otherwise sane people who have, in their travels, somehow bumped through the door of some nether Wonderland and been taken in by its charms.
The thoroughbred world is such a universe. Although it is an expansive industry covering several countries and has been in existence for a very long time, people are only remotely aware of it and that only because of the annual Kentucky Derby, the following Triple Crown races or maybe the Breeders’ Cup.
Nonetheless, many of these small planets are floating around out there, accessible by chance. You might even find one you like. As for Geocaching, it has its charms. Some people like to hike for the exercise or the pleasure of communing with nature or the opportunity to view places unreachable by automobile but others would be more seduced if the hike were enhanced by an objective, a competition. Thus Geocaching. But where did the madness begin?
The Origins Of Geocaching (Wikipedia)
Geocaching is similar to the 150-year-old game of letterboxing, which uses clues and references to landmarks embedded in stories. Geocaching was conceived shortly after the removal of Selective Availability from GPS on May 2, 2000, because the improved accuracy of the system allowed for a small container to be specifically placed and located. The first placement of a GPS-located cache took place on May 3, 2000, by Dave Ulmer of Beavercreek, Oregon. The location was posted on the Usenet newsgroup. By May 6, 2000, it had been found twice and logged once. According to Dave Ulmer’s message, the original stash was a black plastic bucket buried most of the way in the ground and contained software, videos, books, food, money and a slingshot. A memorial plaque now sits at the actual site.
For the traditional geocache, a cacher will place a waterproof container containing a logbook (with pen or pencil) and trade items, then record the cache’s coordinates. These coordinates, along with other details of the location, are posted on a listing site. Other geocachers obtain the coordinates from that listing site and seek out the cache using their GPS handheld receivers. The finding geocachers record their exploits in the logbook and online. Geocachers are free to take objects—except the logbook, pencil or stamp—from the cache in exchange for leaving something of similar or higher value.
Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica. After 10 years of activity, there are over 1,532,000 active geocaches published on various websites. There are over 5 million geocachers worldwide.
Who Knew?
Well, five million people and their friends did. That’s a lot. But the other day when I asked about a dozen people if they ever heard of geocaching, nobody did. Sharon Cinney said she did but she had it confused with beachcombing. So—again—what else are we missing out there? You let us know.
Meanwhile, we called Kathy Knight and told her we needed more information on geocaching so we could tell our thousands of viewers all about it. We made arrangements to meet on New Year’s Day morning at ten o’clock at the Gainesville Steak & Shake (in back of McDonalds’s) on Archer Road, where all the hip geocachers meet and greet. Kathy said it would be an exciting four hours! We thought two or three might be just peachy. We went to bed early on New Year’s Eve excited at the prospect of exploring this new horizon. Uh oh. At eleven thirty, we get a call from a distressed Kathy Knight.
“You’ve got to come over. I’m in bed and I’m naked.” Much as we used to like getting these invitations, we’re practically married now. But wait, there was more.
“The ambulance is on its way and I need to put some clothes on.” Kathy thought she was calling her son, Philip.
“This is Bill, Kathy—what’s going on?”
“I don’t know. My leg is killing me. I can’t move.”
We were inclined to put it all down to DWD—dancing while drinking. Those table tops seem further from the ground when you get older. And it was New Year’s Eve. Turns out, however, that Kathy had sustained what seemed like a modest fall a couple days earlier. What might have been a hairline fracture morphed into a much worse one at the top of her femur and she was carted off to Shands Hospital, not too far from, of all places, the Archer Road Steak & Shake. We were a little disappointed about our geocaching cancellation so next morning we went down to Boringville—no, really, it’s just down the street—to track down a cache Siobhan had discovered on the internet. Bereft of the requisite equipment, we did not find it, of course, but we celebrated the attempt in Kathy’s honor. We went to visit her a couple days later. She thought if she hurried along her recovery, she might make that plane to the Philippines in three weeks. Her doctor was a trifle less convinced. “Surely you jest,” said he. But we know that a piffling injury like a busted femur will not keep a tough girl down long.
“There’s still Antarctica,” she said, hopefully. “But you’ve got to go in the Summer.”
No shit, Kathy.
The Wonderful World Of Republicans
Our other accident victim, Irana, wrote us a note after last week’s blog asking if we had to put “the Republican” after my sister Alice’s name. Of course we do, Irana. It’s part of Alice’s blog identity now. She’d be disappointed if we left it out. It makes her less anonymous.
Irana, of course, despite being blessed with the advantages of Italian and Jewish parents, is also a Republican. And how did we end up with such foolish and misguided friends, anyway? In Irana’s case, it must have been all that LSD. It does unexplainable things to your mind. But speaking of Republicans, as we so often do, they’re dropping like flies out there. It seems like just yesterday when Herman (The Ladykiller) Caine was charming audiences with his 9-9-9 baloney. No more Herman. This week, we finally got rid of Michelle Bachmann, Christian fanatic extraordinaire and profound Mensa reject. We’ll miss poor old Michelle and her bungling commentaries on world affairs, but we’ll just have to buck up. It looks like Rick Perry might be next man on the trapdoor but he wants to hang around to see what kind of support he gets in South Carolina, bigot central, evangelist eden. Newt’s looking a little droopy also, but he’s always got that perky little blonde to pep him up for the time being. Rick Santorum, the Flavor-Of-The-Week, has no money and is only taken seriously in the retarded states, although there is no shortage of them.
We’re hoping Ron Paul, who the Republicans will never nominate, decides to run on an Independent ticket, thus sinking the Republicans’ presidential hopes. We don’t think old Ron is up for the hassle but we can hope. Does anybody really want the snake-oil salesman to win? Even the Republicans are desperately searching for an alternative. Do you really think you can take four years of Mitt smiling down at you? Do you actually think HE has the answers? He couldn’t find a cache with an all-world GPS tracking device. And FOUR marines.
That’s all, folks. And thanks for the grapefruit, Torrey….
