Military Training

Out today to one of the military training areas for the British Army. I'm still surprised that people can just walk through these areas!

Todays focus was a geocache that was not too far off of the parking area and had a low difficulty rating. Plus it mentioned 'hedgehogs'. Not real hedgies. These were military hedgehogs. Huh? Yep. That's one in the photo.

Then decided on the longer walk cache with the 3.5 terrain rating. Off we went.















Nice views from the ridge.

Ran across quite a few dog walkers. Their dogs were running loose. Penny dachshund had to stay on her lead. She is a really docile dog EXCEPT around other dogs. She just goes mad. A spaniel ran up to her, approached slowly and they sniffed noses, then suddenly Penny tries to fight. She's mad! Anyway, she's on the lead for the time being.

We finally got to the cache. Thank God for the hint because my gps (Garmin 60CSX) took me to about 40ft from where it actually was located. Hmmm. I hope that means they used an old gps and not that mine has an issue. Oddly, the ammo can was covered in a burlap cloth. That worried me at first as I couldn't tell what was actually in the burlap bag. Should I touch it? Is that the cache? or something else? You gotta worry when you're digging around military areas!

I was able to drop off a traveling geocoin sent to me by 3doxies of Tennessee. As a fellow dachshund lover, she asked me to place her coin for her over here to travel around Europe. In return, I got one of her awesome coins for my own collection! I sure hope her coin doesn't run into any issues. Seems like a lot of them go missing for sure. Good luck little coin!


And finally back home with wet belly dachshund who promptly found a sunny spot by the window and went to sleep until the sun moved and she crawled over to her pillow. Tough life.

Putting Together a Micro Letterbox

I remember when I started out that I would have given anything to 'see' what these letterboxes were before I tried to find them or even think about creating one. How big are they? What kind of containers? What do you put in them?

Hopefully, this might help someone out there. Here's how I put together a microbox. . .

First, one of the most common containers for a micro is a 35mm plastic film container. They are nice and small. Fairly rugged. More or less waterproof.

I almost always cover all my containers in camo tape. It just helps them out. I saw a large ammo can geocache one time that was so well done with camo tape and fitting in with the surrounding bush, that I nearly fell over it! Another cache I remember being a favorite was one done in tree bark camo. It was positioned in a hanging place on a tree trunk. It blended so well, it was nearly impossible to see. Be creative with camo tape. You can get some at most every hunting/fishing store and even WalMart. I'll have to find a source in the UK.

Now, on the container in this example, I added a piece of hanger in the tape so that I can hang it in a tree. Not only do these type of hanging boxes make it easier for me to place, they're really convenient for finders who can grab them quickly and re-place them in your designated spot.

So, what goes in the micro? First off, you need a log book that fits. I cut some paper to 1 3/4" x 3 1/2" sheets and staple them at the top. This size fits the 35mm's perfectly. Once you've written the title on the logbook and stamped it or added any other info to it, I like to put it in a plastic bag. (WalMart sells a nice mixed set of small plastic bags that fits this.) Even though most 35mm's are pretty watertight, they still get moisture. And if someone doesn't snap the lid back on correctly, the contents will get wet. Pulling a wet logbook out of a microbox without a baggie is a drag. You usually end up tearing them to get them out. The bagged logbook slips out nicely.

The stamp obviously has to be small enough to fit a microbox. More than once I've carved a stamp that ended up too big to fit. Lots of trimming had to be done to get a fit. Should the stamp be in a plastic bag? Well, I've seen it both ways. For me personally, if the logbook is covered, I don't put the stamp in anything. The only reason I've ever seen to use one was so that leftover ink on the stamp didn't get all over everything. It's up to you. You might have to cut down a baggie to get one small enough for a micro, but it will work if you are determined. The stamp in this photo was not carved by me, so when I got it, it was already in a bag.

Finally, I usually add a first finders certificate to my boxes. When I first started letterboxing, one of our local boxers always added them. Since I was often the FFer, I acquired quite a few of them. So, to return the gesture, I started adding them to mine, and that boxer ended up with quite a few of mine. It was really fun. I'm still doing them. My certificates are the same size as the logbook. I put them in their own plastic bag so the finder can just grab it and go.

To complete the microbox, I put the bagged logbook in first. It will expand to the sides. Then the FF certif and the stamp fit in the center. Put the lid on and Viola! You have a micro letterbox!

Hurry, go plant it! :)

Penny Arrives!

After 11 weeks here in the UK without Penny Dachshund, she finally arrived this week!

Quite an ordeal to ship a pet. There is still a 6mth quarantine requirement, so Penny had to stay behind until she fulfilled it - and all the paperwork involved. Then she had to get flea & tick treatment within 24hrs before flying. Then she had to go into a plastic crate and travel in the luggage/cargo hold. In the dark. For the 9hr flight. :(

Finally her plane arrived and she had to go through and be checked through customs. They check her microchip and let them out for bathroom, food, & water in their kennels. We hired a pet travel service to handle the whole thing. The agent picked her up and cleared her after customs. Then I had to drive to Gatwick Airport which is an hour away to meet the agent and get her.

She was quite timid and unsure when I finally got her out of the cage. Then, she remembered. Then I got kisses and she curled up on my lap for the ride home. Once home, more food, water, and a bath (she was smelly!). Then a trip to a park where she got to run off of the lead and stretch her legs. Back home for lots of exploring to do around the house and garden.

Unfortunately, it's been a rainy cold day today and will continue for the rest of the week. So, we may be stuck in - but that's okay. Now we've got Penny to keep us entertained!

I've been waiting for her to join me in getting the caches around Fleet Pond. Hopefully, next week we'll be out there!

Letterpod Patches

I love listening to the few podcasts I subscribe to - a few geocaching ones and the only letterboxing one I've found. . .Letterpod.

You can find the link to the right under the 'Sites I Recommend' section. New host jackbear is doing a great job of putting these together and drumming up interest. Not only will you continue to see more audio podcasts, but special video podcasts are being planned also.

Go to their site and check it out .

Then, when you're a dedicated listener, make sure you order of their new neat patches. Very cool.

http://letterpod.podbean.com/patch/

Fleet Pond & Hedgehogs

We found a wonderful nature reserve this weekend - Fleet Pond. 52 acres. It was so lovely that I'm having second thoughts on how I want to place the remaining hedgehog letterboxes. Perhaps the whole series placed around Fleet Pond would be more desirable than placed all around Surrey county.

Below is the link to the site. Check it out and let me know your feedback. Since there doesn't appear to be many letterboxers around the whole Surrey county, perhaps having all the stamps at one location would be more effective for getting people to come and visit.

What do you think?

http://www.hart.gov.uk/index/leisure/leisure-countryside_services/fleet_pond.htm

Sculpture Park and Black Swan

In one of my normal wanderings, I drove by this interesting looking place yesterday. 'Pride of the Valley Sculpture Park'. Hmmm. What is this? So, we stopped and went in to see what it was all about. What a neat place! It is an outdoor 'park' with sculptures placed randomly around a wooded and ponds setting. It was a nice day, so we decided to see everything.

As we were approaching the reception area to pay, I kept hearing this 'peep-peep' 'peep-peep' noise. Like a baby bird or a little chick. What is that? I kept looking around but didn't see anything. Suddenly I heard it right near me. I jumped around and looked. A few feet off at the edge of the water, was a black swan. 'Peep-peep' he looked at us and said. Beautiful. He was just beautiful. All by himself/herself. It just floated in the water looking at us looking at it making that peculiar high pitched peeping sound. Wow.

The park was really neat. Wonderful variety of art sculptures. All for sale actually. Although I don't think I would want something that's been out in the elements for inside my house. But most all of it looked in good condition and the quality of work was outstanding. We had a lovely walk around and enjoyed it.
















If you enjoy art, and find yourself around Farnham, Surrey, check it out. I'm going to see if I can do a Waymark for this place.

Books - Laugh Out Loud

Don't you just love books that make you laugh out loud? I just finished another Bill Bryson book (I think it's the only one I hadn't read) and parts of it still make me smile. Even though the book takes place in the 50s when Bryson was growing up in Iowa, some of it you can just relate to - at least I could - reminding me of people or places I've known. . .a couple excerpts I found funny. . .

"Actually I don't know why he had a hole in his throat. It was just a fact of life. A lot of rural people in Iowa in the fifties has arresting physical features - wooden legs, stumpy arms, outstandingly dented heads, hands without fingers, mouths without tongues, sockets without eyes, scars that ran on for feet, sometimes going in one sleeve and out the other. Goodness knows what people got up to back then, but they suffered some mishaps, that's for sure."

"Getting money from Mrs. Vandermeister was a perennial nightmare. Her front door had a small window in it that provided a clear view down her hallway to his living room. If you rang the doorbell at fifteen second intervals for an hour and ten minutes, you knew that eventually she would realize that someone was at the door - "Now who the heck is that!" she would shout to herself - and begin the evening long process of getting from her chair to the front door, 25 feet away, bumping and shoving her walker before her. After about 20 minutes, she would reach the hallway and start coming toward the door at about the speed that ice melts. Sometimes she would forget where she was going and start to detour into the kitchen or bathroom, and you would have to ring the doorbell like fury to get her back on course."

"The only heat the sleeping porch contained was that of any human being who happened to be out there. It couldn't have been more than one or two degrees warmer than the world outside - and outside was perishing. So to sleep on the sleeping porch required preparation. First, you put on long underwear, pajamas, jeans, a sweatshirt, your grandfather's old cardigan and bathrobe, two pairs of woolen socks on your feet and another on your hands, and a hat with earflaps tied beneath your chin. Then you climbed into bed and were immediately covered with a dozen bed blankets, three horse blankets, all the household overcoats, a canvas tarpaulin, and a piece of old carpet. I'm not sure that they didn't lay an old wardrobe on top of that, just to hold everything down. It was like sleeping under a dead horse."

And so on it goes.

What was the last book you read that made you laugh out loud?

Foxy Loxy

And here we were blaming the neighboring cats for getting in our trash! Never saw a fox in Texas. I heard rabies killed them all off - don't know if that's true or not. We did often see coyotes though. The small ones look a far bit like this actually.

This poor creature looks like he/she's suffering from a nasty skin afflection like mange or such. Must be quite hungry as it comes right up through the yard to the back door for our bread bits I throw out for the birds. This was about the 3rd time I've seen him in the last week, but couldn't get a photo off until today.

Full Steam Ahead

I've mentioned Surrey county quite a bit, but haven't ventured into Hampshire on this blog much. But he's something fun we did in Hampshire. . .we took a ride on a steam train! The Watercress Line runs from Alton to Alresford. (Alresford being about halfway between Alton and Winchester).













We did just the ride part, but they have a wonderful dinner ride complete with linen, china, and wine on Sundays. (I think that would qualify as an adult only function.) Also a dress up Halloween ride and a Christmas ride where Father Christmas (or Santa Claus as we would say in the states) meets all the children during the ride.














Hampshire is known as Jane Austen country. Her last home is near Alton and she is buried in Winchester. So as you're chugging along past the countryside, you can think about the days of horse-drawn carriages heading out to London or Southampton from here.

Geocache FTF

My first geocache FTF today in England! Yeah! Only my second FTF overall. Lovely walk through the 'wild' part of Farnham Park - just over a mile total. Temps in the 60s (F). Great place to walk your dogs. I'll have to bring Penny dachshund here.

I Am the Mom

This funny video keeps coming and going on YouTube, so wanted to preserve it by listing here.

For all moms out there. . .

Enjoy!

A Coin for a Puzzler

If you listened to Episode 7 of the Letterpod podcast, you heard Dewberry talking about puzzle caches. Here's a neat geocoin that might help you out. . .LizardToadZ Decypher Coin. Forget stashing it away with your other geocoins. Carry it in your backpack and use it out on the trail. . .especially in Houston. :)

Here's the link: http://www.thecachingplace.com/
decyphercoin.htm

And if you'd like to 'discover' my coin, the tracking number is: PC1YET

Oh, and the yellow bits on the back of the coin are glow-in-the-dark. Oooohhh.

A New Patch Arrives

To commemorate visiting the Ducks Pool letterbox at Dartmoor with the Moor Tor-ists last month. Yeah!

To Write or Not to Write

Have anyone done that National Novel Writing Month project where you write a 50,000 word/175 page novel in one month?

That just sounds massive to me. I really don't think I could even remotely drum up the discipline to do it. But what an accomplishment if you could. Below is the info from their website. I particularly like the part where it stresses that QUANTITY is more important than QUALITY. At first that just sounds wrong. But then once you think about it, it really makes sense to get people to just WRITE. Sitting down and writing. Hmmm. I might have to think about this a little. Is novel writing one of those things you're supposed to do before you die?

Maybe I can do it. . . .

From their website:

"What is NaNoWriMo?

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

In 2006, we had over 79,000 participants. Nearly 13,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

So, to recap:

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time.

Who: You! We can't do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: Sign-ups begin October 1, 2007. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

Still confused? Just visit the How NaNoWriMo Works page!"

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Still Hitching Rides

I got notification today on a hitchhiker of mine. I hadn't heard from it in so long, I almost fell off my chair to see that it was still alive. It was my Traveling Dachshund HH in honor of the 4 dachshunds I had at the time. (One ended up going to a new home and the other 3 have since died.) :(

A quick look on AQ showed it was launched just over 3 years ago! Three years!

They just keep on going and going and going. . .