Our geocache was called "By Cricket!" and the location is S 37°47.135' E 175°16.318'. To find this geocache, we went on a journey through Hamilton. Our expedition began with sprinting to catch the bus at the University of Waikato. We took the bus to the furthest stop, all the way to Seddon Park- the national cricket stadium. Upon reaching the stadium, we discovered that one of our GPS units couldn't locate satellites and the other unit's batteries were dead. Luckily, we think quickly on our feet and switched the batteries into the working unit. All was good until we couldn't figure out how to program the point into the GPS. Luckily, Jessi is our resident geocache expert and after fiddling with the unit she got it! We followed the electronic signal, and it seemed that we had to climb a fence to reach our cache. We thought about laws, trespassing violation fines, the 24 hour video surveillance sign, and the groundskeeper giving us strange looks...but- we needed to find this for Art! All for you, Art! So, we all climbed the fence, watching the distance to target point numbers falling drastically- 45 m, 22 m...3 m! "Almost there," we thought! We ran into the huge yucca plants, scrambled through the thick plantings sacrificing all for our academics. For a while, we thought we lost a team member into the dense overgrowth...but she later emerged full of cobwebs- and full of frustration. We were upset, but all was solved with Amanda's quick thinking and resourcefulness. She solved the encryption clue, "just another brick in the wall". We quickly realized that we were in the wrong location, re-hopped the fence and started pounding on all the random bricks we saw. We may have looked like maniacs and crazys. But, as we said before, do it all for Art. Meanwhile, the groundskeeper got off his mower and stared at us. The next moment we looked up and saw he had left his mower unattended. This could only mean that he was going to get backup to arrest us. We knew we had to move fast! Reading the clues out loud, blindly following the GPS unit, we were frustrated, tired, and grumpy but we had to do it for Art. We were about to give up when Rina stumbled upon a strange plastic container hidden behind a plastic tarp and within a wall adjacent the practice field- our geocache! We were elated, giggling, and twirling in circles with our find! We took photos, left an American dollar, and adding our name to the log book! A successful geocache indeed!
No comments:
Post a Comment