You Still suck.
11 months (almost 12) ago I wrote a post about how the whole country came to a standstill. I know I am late posting this as many parts of the country are now thawing, but it still applies to the recent “closedown” of Britain. I repeat it here for good meaure:
You Suck.
Two days of a little bit of white stuff falling from the sky and the whole bloody country stops. Schools get “Snow Days”, workers look out the window, decide the roads aren’t paved with gold and use the excuse to stay in bed.
Buses and trains are cancelled. Airports close and those that do decide to brave it (like me) try and drive (or ride) to work using the same selfish attitude and driving style that they would on a summer’s day. Then they have the nerve to act surprised when they slide into the car in front of them because they haven’t taken account of the icy conditions, tailgated the car in front and hit said car when they have to try and perform an emergency stop. Learn to drive your car properly and account for the conditions you pussies.
Schools get closed on the slightest whim already. I can say for almost certain that most of the schools in my area used the snowy conditions to save a little money. It can’t be about teachers not being able to get there. One Geocaching teacher that I know got a “snow day” and then went Geocaching!
Prepare for the weather. We only had six days’ notice that it was coming. Oh, and gritting (which is mostly a bullshit excercise anyway) does bugger all when the spread of “grit” on the road is so bloody thin and going over 2 inches of snow.
For the record, I took the Wednesday off. I would have been quite happy to walk but I had a stomach bug which meant that I couldn’t be more than about 10 minutes from a loo. I live an hour’s walk from walk. I have been to work every other day since.
Next up: Dear Cisco – You Suck. Or at least, your website sucks. Coming soon…
We took the dogs for a walk this afternoon, the first time we’ve felt inclined to do so since the snow arrived. Thankfully we were able to get to my parents which meant that we could easily and safely let them off the leads. Of course, it almost meant that I was able to take a few more photos!
I took about 20 photos in all and have uploaded the best (8 in all I think) to my January 2010 Snow Photobucket album
Having hit the 200 Geocache milestone (which in the grand scheme of things is not many), I have started looking at some more adventurous Geocaching trips.
There’s a few “rings” of geocaches in my area. For the uninitiated, a ring of caches is exactly that. The Cache owner will hide a number of caches that the finder (me for example) can walk round, finding the caches and ending up back at the start location (normally where you park the car if you are following the instructions).
Some of the rings that I want to walk are (links to first cache in ring)
There are lots of rings of 10 -12 caches too, a couple around Winchester and an excellent one (so I’m told) near Salisbury.
Of course, if you’re into slightly more extreme then have a look at iCache. This excellent new website has been set up by a member of the emcache group and provides some interesting statistics about the caches in the UK. At the time of writing there are 53789 active caches in the UK (according to the site) and more are being published every day. The site owner is adding new information every day and one section that he’s added today is the 100 Highest caches in the UK. This gives you the height of the cache as well as other information.
I quite fancy Britain’s Highest Geocache, some 4406 feet above sea level and only a difficulty rating of 2.5. The terrain is rated as a 5 though as the cache is on top of Ben Nevis!
However, that’s nothing compared to the inspiration for this post! Rainbow Hydrothermal Vents is rated as a D5/T5, although I would rate this as a D10/T10 if it were possible. When rating a 5/5 it’s normally because specialist equipment is required. In this case, you need a submarine!
I placed a small plastic horse, now called “Sea Horse”, beside a Hydrothermal Vent at the sea floor 2300 meters down.
Using the Russian Mir Submersibles, we placed our “Sea Horse”, and travel bug #TB31F1, at the sea floor. We were on a scientific research mission. Good Luck Finding it! Please return it if you do!
Deep Ocean Exploration, the people that run the Mir subs are, unfortunately, not planning any trips down there at the moment, and even if they did, there’s no way I could afford it. Still, it’s a great thing to aim for/dream of as, even after 7.5 years, the cache is available for First To Find!
I will settle for a few of those caching rings for the moment, and maybe one day I’ll be able to get to find the Ben Nevis Cache.
The snow got to us this evening. I had a text message from my wife around 3.30 saying “there’s white stuff falling from the sky”. That was it. I said my goodbyes for the day at work and headed for home. Thankfully there was nothing around and I made it home in about 15 minutes.
My dad and brother took almost four hours to get home and Daze took just over five. My father-in-law abandoned his car and walked the last 4 miles, giving a total of 5 hours to get home from Waterlooville to Fareham (about a 25 minute journey normally). My brother in law (as far as I know) is still (at 11.10pm) still stuck on the Motorway from Southampton, having left work around 5pm.
Of course, I took the opportunity (once I had charged the camera batteries) to head out the front of my house and take some photos. Here’s a couple of the better ones:
Looking down my road. I stood in the road to take this! Just as it finished the exposure I saw a friend who was walking home from work having left his Mini there. He’d been at work since 0600 and got home around 10pm.
This is how my front garden looks. I reckon we’ve had about 4 inches of snow and while it’s not snowing right now I reckon we might have more over night.
Either way, I think I’ll be walking the 3 miles to work tomorrow! Will need to leave here around 0600 to get there in time, guess I should go to bed!
There’s a few more pictures in the album on my photobucket account. I hope to take more photos tomorrow if the snow is still around and will post them here if and when I do.
Take care out there everyone!
When I started caching my first find was GC1FT7B – Shark Of The Gill(ies). Shortly afterward I set myself a target of 200 caches for the year.
Mid 2009 I thought it wouldn’t be a problem as I was going “great-guns” and at the beginning of August I was at 120 caches. No problem, 80 to go in 4 months – that’s only 20 a month I thought.
I then didn’t log a find between October 4th and November 23. That’s essentially two months without a find (slacker!) and I was starting to get a little worried. Thankfully I managed to log 20 in a week in London at the end of November bringing me much closer.
When the Christmas break started I had 7 finds to go. No problem I thought, I have loads of time. Yeah, and loads of rain, cold, sleep, outings and TV to get in the way! Realisation: Holy crap, it’s New Year’s eve and I still have six caches to find.
So, this morning I left my luvverly wife in bed and headed for my Mum’s. I shouted up to my brother who was just getting dressed “PUT OLD CLOTHES ON, WE’RE GOING OUT!”
He appeared in old clothes and after a quick cup of tea we were off. Thankfully there were six caches fairly close together in Portchester (about two miles from home) and we managed to get all of them, three micros (Portchester Common One, Two and Three and Portchester Micro One, Two and Four).
The photo is my brother at Portchester Common 1.
The coordinates for a couple of the caches were 40 – 50 feet out but with a little searching and the use of the hint and we found them with little trouble. I even managed to get a geocoin into Portchester Micro 1!
So, with mere hours to go I hit my target of 200 caches, a great relief after days of panic over whether I was going to make it.
We have also set up an account for my brother on geocaching.com. His account handle is FremaGoGo (his Star Wars name!) if you want to see how he’s getting on. When I left him he’d logged 5 finds before having to go out. He doesn’t have his own GPS but will be using Dad’s eTrex H and will either cache with me or Mum and/or Dad for the next few months until he’s confident enough to go out on his own.
Thanks for coming out with me this morning bro, here’s to many more finds during 2010!
Hitting 200 finds means it’s time for me to hide a new cache. Right now I am thinking “ammo box” and “puzzle cache”. Watch this space!
2010 for me means at least another 200 caches, a couple of series – Sussex Amble, UK Mega, and at least 4 more hides (1 per 50 finds).
I would love to hear what other Geocachers have planned for 2010 – leave a comment and let me know!
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