Bubbler Dash
wrote a note for
[copy of geocaching log] [thanks for including a code this time!]
Today school ended at 2:30 because it was sport day. After school I spent an hour with one of my friends, converting her to a geocacher and finding two caches nearby. As soon as I came home after 3:30 I heard geomum yell "hurry hurry hurry hurry!" and I knew what it was about. About 15 minutes later we were ready and out of the door.
We decided to risk the street parking - it was a fairly rainy day - and luckily we found a spot near the start of the cache. It was then time for our first attempt.
Our first attempt was not so smooth. The iPad (which we had to run with; my GPSr is a garmin dakota and they are about the only advanced garmin that doesn't do whereigo!) kept stuffing up along the way, as in it wouldn't notice you were in the zone of one bubbler or wouldn't give you the question for the next. We also missed a couple bubblers, which didn't add to the fun. It was all a very frustrating and stressful experience, especially with the added pressure of a possible FTF and the reward of finding at least 17 bubblers in time. That first attempt we only found about ten bubblers, which was fine for this cache, but not so fine for Bubbler Squirt. But with the possible FTF we decided to go for this one before trying again to get at least 17.
It was a bit of a walk over, and we were still pretty frustrated with the iPad, but it was a walk with good views and a nice temperature. We arrived at geozone, originally on the wrong level, and it took us a couple minutes to find the cache. Judging on the hint we had suspected that this would be what it was.
We started getting the container. Geoboy went first and went slip sliding down the boat ramp where he fell over, ending up with a nice gash on his arm. I went next, and not thinking that he had fallen over there, did the exact same thing and hurt my hand. It took a couple more trips but finally we got the container, opened up and found we were first to find!! Whoopie!! FTF!! We took the 5 dollar FTF prize (thanks, will spend on our next cache) and signed in as FTF. Then replaced as found.
TFTC Tyreless, unfortunately we made it a lot more stressful than it should have been. It is a really great cache though, and very different to the other 6 wherigos we've done.
Here are some tips for a better experience:
- If your device is stuffing up and you know you will not get enough bubblers for either this cache or Bubbler Squirt, it is a better idea to go back to the starting point if you're near and start again than waiting the remaining minutes and then starting again.
- Do not miss one - it will start coming up with some "you've missed one" messages and it will be hard to continue. If you miss one the first time, identify that one and remember it so you won't miss it the next time. If you know you won't make it and are missing one still - try to figure it out while you have extra time - we put in the distance and degrees into my GPSr when we were stuck to try and figure out where a missing one was
- At geozone, do not run when retrieving the cache!! I must stress this point, as it is not fun sliding down the ramp and you could get a lot worse injuries than we! Tyreless - you should probably include something like this in the description.