Today is my anniversary

Eight years ago today I embarked on a pathway of joyful bliss and began a new journey that would lead to greater discovery, understanding and happiness than I ever imagined would be possible and a deeper appreciation about what is really important in life. No, I'm not talking about getting married, although that's been terrific too. I'm talking about geocaching. Eight years ago today I found my first geocache. Her name was Beverly. She was just a little plastic container under a bush, but for me it was love at first sight. I don't keep in touch like I should, but it was good to virtually check in on her today just to see how she is doing. Although she is getting up there in years, it looks like Beverly continues to be active and is still entertaining and enlightening her visitors.

Why do people cheat on virtuals?

Just a heads up -- if you own a virtual cache and you care whether anyone is placing bogus finds on it, you may want to check for a find by a geocacher named The-Sledge. He/she posted a find on my American Gothic virtual cache today and dated it Dec. 31, 2007 -- so it wouldn't appear at the top of the list, I guess. I deleted it. I see he posted many other finds in many states, supposedly on that same day. I don't understand why anyone would go to these lengths.

La première dérive

My daughter is undertaking an interesting GPS-based project today for one of her art school classes. She calls it Dérive, which is French for drift. Jacey has been geocaching with me a few times over the years, so it's interesting to me to see how she is applying her experience with GPS to create this project. You can read the blog she created for this here. I'm not sure I completely understand what's she's doing, but I'm looking forward to reading about it and viewing her photos.

Heading home

If you submitted a new geocache in Iowa that was published this past week, you may be interested to know that I clicked the "publish" button from Grand Cayman. We were there this past week on a scuba diving vacation. In fact, we still there... er, here... waiting at the Grand Cayman airport right now for our flight home. I just discovered there's free wifi here, so I'm online killing time for the next hour and a half. Mary is on her computer too, and she's telling me the temps back home are supposed to reach the 50s today. Looks like we won't be hit with the frigid temps that Midwesterners experienced this past week. Woo hoo! Here are a couple of photos from the past week. These were taken by Matt Leverson, a professional video shooter from Albert Lea, Minn., whom we met down here. You can see more of Matt's photos and videos at his web site. When we weren't diving, we had time to look for a few geocaches. We did manage to find two that were within walking distance of our hotel.

The day the music died

I'm two days late posting this, but it has now been 50 years since the music died.