Here we are half way through our journey or converting muggles and enriching the Geocaching world. Over 400 have passed through our training and the feedback so far is all positive. We are running into the odd case where a non-cacher has been told by his buddy about this exciting program and inadvertently has had the cache locations described to them. This of course kind of takes away from the whole experience of discovery for the youth when they have their turn, but the four different courses we are running them through should prevent a lot of this as we close in on the last 500 or so Scouts.
That is if my voice holds out for the last eight classes. One hour of straight presentation 4 times a day was enough, but they have added a class for the adults after dinner yesterday and today, so a total of 5 times a day. We must be doing something right as we manage to keep 5o or so kids awake in the later afternoon heat over 31 degrees inside the presentation tent. On top of that we added a "Firetack" trail for after sundown and are going to run that tonight.
I'm not sure if "vacation time" applies but it certainly has kept us busy. Fortunately no Bear "lock-down"s today so we didn't have to rush anything. I did run into a resident when we ran into town on our two hour lunch break to do laundry, and she told me that the bear is not really a problem, at least not so much as the cougar...or the bobcat. I don't think I'll mention any of that to the camp chief, but it's good to know.
The PJ07 Legacy Cache is up to 6 finds so far! Looks like most are from within the camp and in fact one is the first find for a brand new cacher so our mission here is having an effect.
The whole crew is still energized and enthused so hope the passion for caching is showing through. When the last slide rolls up with the "Same Planet - Different World!" quote, the applause is gratifying and we hope to hear one day from an experienced cacher that the first got started at PJ07.
3fish.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
HOT HOT AND MORE HOT
Cody (3fish)
Today was the hottest day since we've been here. It was even hotter in the tent. We have had 2 caches muggled so far, but we recovered one farther down the trail the next day, it had been chucked into the bush. There are quite a few bears around here and have been locked down several times (including right now!) Only Larry has seen a bear (his rump taking off into the bush) There have been lots of badge trading so far and we have got a lot of cool ones. The coins from England have arrived and they look very cool. A lot of the kids here are very excited about geocaching...just like the kids from the many times that I have helped out and showed kids geocaching at camp Mclean.
Today was the hottest day since we've been here. It was even hotter in the tent. We have had 2 caches muggled so far, but we recovered one farther down the trail the next day, it had been chucked into the bush. There are quite a few bears around here and have been locked down several times (including right now!) Only Larry has seen a bear (his rump taking off into the bush) There have been lots of badge trading so far and we have got a lot of cool ones. The coins from England have arrived and they look very cool. A lot of the kids here are very excited about geocaching...just like the kids from the many times that I have helped out and showed kids geocaching at camp Mclean.
Monday, July 9, 2007
First Day! We are converting.
Poco #1 Here: First Day of the Program went very well. I think we are converting a number of muggles from the dark side. Everyone is having a good time despite being tired. The Arrogant Worms last night were terrific. Today we expecting Geocaching.com to publish the PJ07 Legacy Caches.Thanks again to everyone from BCGA who has helped us out with all the fantastic caches we have for the Scouts to find.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Internet Woes
Three days, no updates. Thats pretty unfortunate, but our internet connection was cut. Pretty amazing we had it in the first place if you ask the first poco.
I would like to say thats my entire excuse, but alas, I have minor fault for friday's post. After a looong day of work, we finally had a tent over our heads! So with our super AV equipment, we decided to reward ourselfs and watch the Bourne Identity. Good movie, but a long one. It was really late when the rousing tale ended, and we all went to bed. I intended to post in the morning, and was a quarter of the way done! But then the anti-hero of PJ's internet stepped in and my plans of blogging glory were thwarted.
Hopefully I can post about today's events.
I would like to say thats my entire excuse, but alas, I have minor fault for friday's post. After a looong day of work, we finally had a tent over our heads! So with our super AV equipment, we decided to reward ourselfs and watch the Bourne Identity. Good movie, but a long one. It was really late when the rousing tale ended, and we all went to bed. I intended to post in the morning, and was a quarter of the way done! But then the anti-hero of PJ's internet stepped in and my plans of blogging glory were thwarted.
Hopefully I can post about today's events.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Work fascinates me... I could watch it all day....
I have some imediate mistakes to correct, there are not two 911 turbo boys, there is only one. His name is Mark. The other boy's name, who I grouped in, is Daniel. He was not clear to me on what his geocaching handle is, but I assure you, he is no n00b.
So today we woke up at the ungodly hour of 6:00 am to get some breakfast down our throats. When we finished cleaning our paper plates we programed all our coordinates that we took last night for our training caches into our several Etrex units.
We started at the area nearest the beach, which was Daniel's. The reception must have been incredibly off yesterday, and when we got to the cache the GPS said we were about 80 metres away. We had many problems gaining satelites for the first areas caches, even when we went down to open areas like the beach and nearby field.
The next area was mine, it was around the Haida lodge and the OOS feeding trough. Reception was pretty bang on by this time and the lot of us (Mark, Daniel, SFish, 2-poco Sr., Ryan, and another cacher who came to help: Quigly Jones) found my caches without to many problems.
The last area that we have populated with our lovely caches would be Mark's, which is the path that leads up to the subcamps. I kinda felt sorry for Mark when this area was dumped into his hands. Although it's right by our station HQ (which so far is just a table and a laptop since our tent is "behind schedule"), the paths his caches must reside on are right beside where ALL the scouts will be camping. This path will probebly see about two thousand kids run up and down it a day once the programs begin. Thats right, this will be the land of the Smuggles (scout muggles)! Thats like ten times as bad as your regular muggle! Luckily he equiped himself with some real good urban caches (fake rat, plastic ivy laiden L&L, and a nicely painted regular L&L).
When we were done we decided to further scout out the area that may end up our fourth. There was a little bushwacking figuring out our entrance route, but we found a way onto the trail using the evacuation trail. Which prompted the joke "Yes the forest is in a blazing inferno, but wait up guys there's a two star dificulty about twenty metres from here!" It looked decent enough, although we're STILL waiting for the OK from the higher ups.
After that we headed off to some coldcuts waiting for us at the Haida lodge.
When lunch was through with, the OOS in our group under the age of... over the hill... went to hide challenge caches. These challenge caches are extra caches that we hide for those who seem really intrested in the sport after our program. We will hook the people who want a real challange up with one of our many garmen Etrexs, and they can go hunting for the ultimate loot. "Whats the ultimate loot?"
"Uber limited edition PJ07 GEOCOINS of coarse!"
While we were out there we also decided to take extra coordinate readings of our previous caches to get a good average. (Don't want people 80 metres away while they're kicking the log with their foot!) This took us several hours, including goofing off time... Speaking of goofing off, we're to to sure what the senior members of our team got accomplished while we took this epic task under our wing...
Then dinner time crawled on up and we were faced with a tasty looking meal of salmon steaks. Some of our team got special treatment from our man in the kitchen, Bradley.
Mark, Daniel and I, had to finish rather quickly because we had a FOCUS program right after (meaning half way through in OOS standards) our meal! In focus we descussed basic golden rules for leading groups of scouts, and their leaders. It was mostly common sense, and at time sounded like a preachy self-help group for pedophiles, but im sure it refreshed our minds in time for our big deadline. Sunday... thats two days and two hours away...
The coarse ran an hour and a half, but when we were let out we had to wait an extra half an hour for security to deal with a rouge bear blocking the path to HQ. When we got through with that interesting situation, the workday was pretty much over. So Mark, Daniel and myself entertained ourselfs with YouTube, South Park and PurePwnage until it dusk came and I knew I had to get this done before the bear found me in the dark. A real camp experience eh?
So today we woke up at the ungodly hour of 6:00 am to get some breakfast down our throats. When we finished cleaning our paper plates we programed all our coordinates that we took last night for our training caches into our several Etrex units.
We started at the area nearest the beach, which was Daniel's. The reception must have been incredibly off yesterday, and when we got to the cache the GPS said we were about 80 metres away. We had many problems gaining satelites for the first areas caches, even when we went down to open areas like the beach and nearby field.
The next area was mine, it was around the Haida lodge and the OOS feeding trough. Reception was pretty bang on by this time and the lot of us (Mark, Daniel, SFish, 2-poco Sr., Ryan, and another cacher who came to help: Quigly Jones) found my caches without to many problems.
The last area that we have populated with our lovely caches would be Mark's, which is the path that leads up to the subcamps. I kinda felt sorry for Mark when this area was dumped into his hands. Although it's right by our station HQ (which so far is just a table and a laptop since our tent is "behind schedule"), the paths his caches must reside on are right beside where ALL the scouts will be camping. This path will probebly see about two thousand kids run up and down it a day once the programs begin. Thats right, this will be the land of the Smuggles (scout muggles)! Thats like ten times as bad as your regular muggle! Luckily he equiped himself with some real good urban caches (fake rat, plastic ivy laiden L&L, and a nicely painted regular L&L).
When we were done we decided to further scout out the area that may end up our fourth. There was a little bushwacking figuring out our entrance route, but we found a way onto the trail using the evacuation trail. Which prompted the joke "Yes the forest is in a blazing inferno, but wait up guys there's a two star dificulty about twenty metres from here!" It looked decent enough, although we're STILL waiting for the OK from the higher ups.
After that we headed off to some coldcuts waiting for us at the Haida lodge.
When lunch was through with, the OOS in our group under the age of... over the hill... went to hide challenge caches. These challenge caches are extra caches that we hide for those who seem really intrested in the sport after our program. We will hook the people who want a real challange up with one of our many garmen Etrexs, and they can go hunting for the ultimate loot. "Whats the ultimate loot?"
"Uber limited edition PJ07 GEOCOINS of coarse!"
While we were out there we also decided to take extra coordinate readings of our previous caches to get a good average. (Don't want people 80 metres away while they're kicking the log with their foot!) This took us several hours, including goofing off time... Speaking of goofing off, we're to to sure what the senior members of our team got accomplished while we took this epic task under our wing...
Then dinner time crawled on up and we were faced with a tasty looking meal of salmon steaks. Some of our team got special treatment from our man in the kitchen, Bradley.
Mark, Daniel and I, had to finish rather quickly because we had a FOCUS program right after (meaning half way through in OOS standards) our meal! In focus we descussed basic golden rules for leading groups of scouts, and their leaders. It was mostly common sense, and at time sounded like a preachy self-help group for pedophiles, but im sure it refreshed our minds in time for our big deadline. Sunday... thats two days and two hours away...
The coarse ran an hour and a half, but when we were let out we had to wait an extra half an hour for security to deal with a rouge bear blocking the path to HQ. When we got through with that interesting situation, the workday was pretty much over. So Mark, Daniel and myself entertained ourselfs with YouTube, South Park and PurePwnage until it dusk came and I knew I had to get this done before the bear found me in the dark. A real camp experience eh?
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Working it out
We got up around seven for breakfast (which is late by OOS standards), and already we were feeling the strain of the work to come.
Today we explained our situation to the 911 turbos boys and decided to "scout" out the areas that our hands-on geocaching part of our program will occur. These areas run in a circuit and by the end there will be four in total (we're still waiting for the OK to gain the fourth). When our patrols come, we shall split them up into four groups and send them each to a different area. In each area there shall be three training caches. These special caches are designed to be fairly easy (although ramp up in dificulty), and contain typical geocaching content (hidden under geosticks, lock 'n' locks, logbooks ect...). If a group is faster then schedule, then the group of the area next to ours will already be at the end, so we can do the first cache in the neighboring area. This way our groups will not colide and spoilers will be avoided. After this tedios scouting (for the older two) (trust me the senior fish has a hat that has more moisture then the Atlantic), it was time to break for lunch.
After the filling meal of chili and French bread, the two 911s and I split up and took one personal area to hide training caches in. Tomorrow we shall hunt each other's areas and give each other feedback.
When I got back SFish (senior 3Fish), the first poco, and the long-haired 911 were sitting behind the van, watching an informative geocaching DVD on this laptop. We decided it was about time to work on the Audio Visual presentation part of our program. It was about that time that the first poco realized he forgot the A equipment in AV. He snatched up a nearby venture named Ryan and off they went to a nearby supermarket on a quest for speakers.
While they were gone, SFish, the 911 boys, and myself started to build a powerpoint. While doing so, SFish gave the 911 boys a history lesson of geocaching (Tragic plane crash, Selective Availibility, the fabled OCD). Soon the first poco arived with the Speakers, and AAA bateries for our radios, and we decided to head off to Dinner of Mongolian Goulash.
When we got back to work we disected the informative Geocaching DVD for usefull sections that we could use to supplement our powerpoint (kinda like how goulash supplements mash potatoes). We slaved away on that for the rest of the afternoon, and it would have been much more tedious if it was not for our random venture helper Ryan!
We then loaded plenty of monitors onto the tables of the room we were working in. It is to become the internet cafe of PJ.
So I suppose it's time to call it a day, and lord has it been a day, this is the second poco (Pierce) signing out.
Ps: Please excuse the spelling mistakes, this has yet to be spellchecked.
Today we explained our situation to the 911 turbos boys and decided to "scout" out the areas that our hands-on geocaching part of our program will occur. These areas run in a circuit and by the end there will be four in total (we're still waiting for the OK to gain the fourth). When our patrols come, we shall split them up into four groups and send them each to a different area. In each area there shall be three training caches. These special caches are designed to be fairly easy (although ramp up in dificulty), and contain typical geocaching content (hidden under geosticks, lock 'n' locks, logbooks ect...). If a group is faster then schedule, then the group of the area next to ours will already be at the end, so we can do the first cache in the neighboring area. This way our groups will not colide and spoilers will be avoided. After this tedios scouting (for the older two) (trust me the senior fish has a hat that has more moisture then the Atlantic), it was time to break for lunch.
After the filling meal of chili and French bread, the two 911s and I split up and took one personal area to hide training caches in. Tomorrow we shall hunt each other's areas and give each other feedback.
When I got back SFish (senior 3Fish), the first poco, and the long-haired 911 were sitting behind the van, watching an informative geocaching DVD on this laptop. We decided it was about time to work on the Audio Visual presentation part of our program. It was about that time that the first poco realized he forgot the A equipment in AV. He snatched up a nearby venture named Ryan and off they went to a nearby supermarket on a quest for speakers.
While they were gone, SFish, the 911 boys, and myself started to build a powerpoint. While doing so, SFish gave the 911 boys a history lesson of geocaching (Tragic plane crash, Selective Availibility, the fabled OCD). Soon the first poco arived with the Speakers, and AAA bateries for our radios, and we decided to head off to Dinner of Mongolian Goulash.
When we got back to work we disected the informative Geocaching DVD for usefull sections that we could use to supplement our powerpoint (kinda like how goulash supplements mash potatoes). We slaved away on that for the rest of the afternoon, and it would have been much more tedious if it was not for our random venture helper Ryan!
We then loaded plenty of monitors onto the tables of the room we were working in. It is to become the internet cafe of PJ.
So I suppose it's time to call it a day, and lord has it been a day, this is the second poco (Pierce) signing out.
Ps: Please excuse the spelling mistakes, this has yet to be spellchecked.
Words from the senior fish
This is a post from 3Fish:
I have determined that my hat will never dry out from the constant sweat that accompanies hiking up and down this mountain. We have the best manicured campsite in the subcamp and we have the blisters to show for it. Lot's of hurry up and wait today, reminds me of the old days. We have discovered another member for our crew, a novice cacher from Toronto and thank goodness as he is the AV specialist we were missing. Not enough goulash at supper tonight either.
I have determined that my hat will never dry out from the constant sweat that accompanies hiking up and down this mountain. We have the best manicured campsite in the subcamp and we have the blisters to show for it. Lot's of hurry up and wait today, reminds me of the old days. We have discovered another member for our crew, a novice cacher from Toronto and thank goodness as he is the AV specialist we were missing. Not enough goulash at supper tonight either.
So it begins!
This blog is going to depict the daily events of the OSS (Offer Of Service) members for the geocaching station at PJ 07. If the work is not too overwhelming, I, the second poco of the 2-Poco username, will fill everybody in, that is interested on what is going on at our station. I'm sure alot of you will be interested since so many of you have contributed equipment for our use. If we can find a USB cable around here somewhere you may even get to see images! Look for the next post later on tonight to read about all the sweat and tears that went in today's set up!
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