Oops, missed it.

This past weekend was busy. On Saturday, Gwen had a choir practice, then her hip-hop class (seriously) and after that, we all packed it up and headed to Port Moody for our first geocaching event!

The caching event was the GeocoinFest Multi Event (GC14J5X). The event consisted of a bunch of geocoin collectors getting together and showing off their coins. On top of that, there were two local vendors, Landsharkz and Worldcaching, and just general cachers from around “Metro Vancouver”. It was essentially a meet-and-greet in a small scout hall with a few dozen cachers. There was also the opportunity to “discover” all the coins and a number of travel bugs by writing down all the tracking numbers of everything there, but that seems a bit like cheating to me. We’ll continue to discover only those things that we actually discover at caches.

We met some of the cachers whose names we recognized from various caches, and I have to say that I was surprised that many of them were younger than I expected. Also, a good deal of the cachers seem to be middle-aged women, once again proving that I know nothing.

We bought a number of things from the vendors, including a number of cool geocoins and some other trinkets:

• A small tube (see: buffalo tubes) that will be used as a micro cache somewhere around town.
• A first-to-find prize (a “BC in Blue” keychain) for our first cache hide.
• A neat gecko light that needs to be seen to understand.

Sunday was, of course, Thanksgiving. What I didn’t mention was that Saturday night we spent (well, Gwen spent) making rolls and pies. A few dozen rolls (that turned out better than any Gwen’s done before!), 2 apple pies, and 2 pumpkin pies. I wasn’t a complete bad husband — I peeled, chopped, and prepared the apple pie filling — but Gwen did the lion’s share. On Sunday, the turkey was stuffed and prepared before Gwen went off to church, leaving me to put it in the oven and, um, supervise its cooking.

In the end, I think it turned out pretty well:

We had Carla and Tomer, and The Vet and The Brit over for dinner and after-dinner Wii and euchre. Fun times. Bowling, Smooth Moves, and Brain Academy. Fortunately there’s no video evidence.

Monday was shockingly fine and sunny … so we went caching! We headed down to the south shore of Vancouver (on the north bank of the north arm of the Fraser) and picked up a bunch of caches. We met a group of people at a cache called “Kid Cache”. These people were huddled around a single GPS. A mother, father, a set of grandparents, a toddler Aidan’s age, and an infant — quite a sight and not exactly inconspicuous. It was pretty obvious what they were doing so we offered some assistance. The cache was an easy find (Gwen found it!) and the other caching group joined up with us as we collected a few others in the park. It wasn’t our first experience meeting other cachers while on the hunt, but it was the first time we found other caches as a group. It was fun, and as it turned out, the other cachers were newbies … the Kid Cache was only their 7th find. After 3 DNFs the day before, I think these three finds buoyed their spirits considerably.

On the river bank, there was some drift wood that sure looked like a Sad Goat:

And now, we’ve prepped and placed a cache nearby — our first! — and if it passes the review process, I’ll blog a bit about it.

TTFN!

Well, when I got up this morning, I certainly didn’t expect to be answering questions at the Burnaby Detachment of the RCMP today. But plans never seem to go as expected.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Today, after having a not-quite-total-loss of a weekend due to incompatible schedules with the boy and Gwen, and due to uncooperative weather, we were determined to get some geocaching in.

I located a suitable cluster 10 caches within a 1 km radius out in South Burnaby and we were off around 10:30am. The weather was overcast with light showers, typical for the weekend. We picked up the first cache pretty easily; it was a drive by in a small park underneath the SkyTrain.

The second cache, however, seemed to be in someone’s hedge (street side) on a quiet residential street. With plenty of people around this Labour Day, including what seemed to be a pack of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Gwen made a quick check, but the muggle pressure was getting to be too much.

Fortunately, there were a few more caches nearby, and they didn’t prove too elusive. After grabbing those ones, we tried again with the one in the hedge, and this time came up with a purse. I checked in the purse to see if it was a poor choice of a cache location, but no. In fact, it was full of someone’s ID. We hit the GPS and got it to route us to the nearest police station.

The Burnaby RCMP detachment is in Deer Lake Park, and beside the Burnaby Village Museum. We’d not been to any of the detachment, the park, or the museum, so it was quite in line with the spirit of why we do the geocaching!

The conversation at the detachment, though, was a little uncomfortable.

Me: I found this purse and noticed it had ID in it. We brought it here right away.

RCMP: Where did you find it?

Me: I found it underneath the hedge at this address (gives the nice lady a parking receipt with an address scribbled on the back)

RCMP: What were you doing underneath the hedge at that address?

Me: Um … have you heard of geocaching?

RCMP: No.

It went downhill from there. There a few more questions on where I found it, who’s house it was, and what it was I was doing there. Then she asked me to leave my name, phone number, address, and the time I discovered the purse … and the nice lady scribbled it all down on the back of the parking receipt.

On leaving the RCMP detachment, we noticed that there was a Carousel advertising free admission! The carousel is part of the Burnaby Village Museum — a real, old-style carousel with a mechanical music machine, and old-style horses going up and down, and the works. Aidan had a blast! After sucking us in with the free carousel, we paid the admission to go into the Village Museum, where they had face painting, a touchless petting-zoo, and turn-of-the-century (the 20th century, that is) demonstrations of smithing, farming, cars (ok, slightly after turn-of-the-century), and general “what life was like” exhibits and buildings. It was much more extensive than I expected (although not quite Sherbrooke Village).

Gwen and Aidan rode the carousel again on our way out of the Village Museum, despite the (now) incredible line-up.

We left the park and decided to go back to the park we were in before, to pick up a few more caches — in particular one where there was a Travel Bug that hadn’t moved for quite some time. We picked up one, and headed down the hill for the other, only to discover we were decidedly on the wrong side of a very steep ravine. We piled the (now) cranky toddler back into the car, threw the gear back in the car and drove around to the other side. It was a successful TB rescue.

We grabbed a quick bite to eat (um, 4pm … but we had snacks, drinks, and a “pizza bread” for Aidan during our sojourn) and headed back into Vancouver to dump the TB collection we had amassed.

It was pretty close to 7pm when we arrived back.

So, the day didn’t quite turn out as expected, but the rain held off, we had fun, discovered a new part of the city we wouldn’t have visited otherwise, and at the moment I’m not in jail.

What will next weekend bring?

After the world’s. Slowest. Drive-through. Service. we made it to the drive in last night.

The first movie was “Hairspray” (not bad, but not great)l. It started at 8:30pm and ran for two hours.

And Aidan thought it was great. “Look!” “Movie!” “Dancing!” “Singing!”

For the whole two hours. We cuddled him. We strapped him in his seat. We created a “bed” for him in the trunk with blankets and his pillow. The movie, and trucks, and people were just too distracting.

At 10:30pm, between the shows (the next one was “Rush Hour 3”, more or less forgettable) we tried in earnest to get him to sleep. In the end, Gwen crawled in the back with him, and eventually got him to sleep.

It was after 1pm when we got home (the third show was “Transformers”, but Gwen didn’t really want to see it, and I don’t think I would have stayed awake…) and the boy into his own bed.

And, wouldn’t you know it, for once he cooperated! It wasn’t until 8:45am that he woke up this morning.

Final verdict: not a raging success, but also not a disaster. Certainly better than the last time!

This morning (GC14TA3), then the PNE, then this evening (GC14TA8).

It’s been a good day.