St. Elmo's Fire

29/02/2012 By Kabutroid
Third and final cache of the day! A pretty good caching in general for the elusive February 29th. Got me a traditional cache, an event, AND a puzzle cache... and on a work-day in winter no less (not that February 29th takes place any other time of the year). I had actually solved this puzzle several days ago in what eventually ended in a learning lesson. See, I had never really bothered to figure out how to project waypoints. Any time that’s been needed in the past, I’d just go to point A, walk back and forth a bit so that I knew what direction to walk (I have the Garmin that doesn’t have the electronic compass), and followed that until the GPS said that I had walked X meters away from the original coordinates.

However, since at the time I noticed the cache, I was at home, it was night, and cold as hell. Thus, I figured it’d be a good time to figure out this projecting thing I’ve read about here and there. I imagined there’s SOME way of getting the GPS to actually... do something, except that I figured it would still have involved me actually physically standing at the starting coordinates. Nonetheless, one google later and I soon discovered that it was possible (at least on the GPS used in the online instructions... not sure which one it was, but it wasn’t mine) to go through some menu options to project a waypoint... but which involved selecting the waypoint to begin with, not just going from your current coordinates.

A little bit of figuring out here and there, since my buttons weren’t the same as the ones in the instructions, and I am now fully aware of how to project a waypoint on a GPS.

Which is probably a REALLY good thing, because before googling this, I somehow mis-remembered that the whole cardinal rose “zero” direction was North, and instead for some reason was picturing geometry back in high school where “zero” was always the line to the right... East... and rotated counter-clockwise from there. For a bit, I thought that the cache was located somewhere around or past my apartment, which is about 300 meters from the coordinates. Although, I found that doing some unit changes beforehand also made things a bit easier when entering into the GPS.

So, with that mixup cleared up, I set off for the final coordinates. One quick walk later, and I found myself near the coordinates. I kinda figured it would be hidden somehow I this manner, given where the final coordinates ended up being on the GPS map. Thankfully though, there appeared to be a few geotrails to help me through finding this in the dark. A few incorrect spots looked at later, and I soon had the cache in hand BigSmile . Opening it up, I found the cache was entirely empty except for the logbook, so I dropped in my signature item (and in retrospect, I should have dropped some more swag in there as well... damn hindsight 20/20) and signed up the logbook. Surprisingly this cache hasn’t had too many finds yet... but I’ve noticed that puzzles tend to get less action, even though it’s a fairly easy puzzle right by a residential neighbourhood with tons of street parking available.

But that’s besides the point. The cache having been found, I closed it up and replaced it from whence it came. Mission accomplished! Three different cache types and a DNF all logged on February 29th. I think if virtually any other caches are planned for needing a find on every day of the year (with the exception of needing to do that all within the same year), I think I’ve got this date pretty well covered.

And just to see what the namesake of the cache is, I headed down the residential road to go to the original coordinates as well, since taking that route on looked to be about the exact same length as walking down St. Anne’s. I found myself pleasantly amused when I got to the original coordinates Smile .

Thanks for the fun puzzle and cache extraordinarily close to my home!

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and micromail ball