Skiing, No Boating - Lotto 6/49

10/09/2011 By Kabutroid
Wow... really had to crank my stealth skills up for this one. I was originally planning to tackle this cache sometime in the past week, but in the end we didn’t make our preliminary trip out to here until today. What’s today, asks you? Ah, say I... today is smack in the middle of the Winnipeg FMG Dragon Boat festival. It started on the 9th, and ran until the 11th. My wife’s first two races were both on Saturday. We had originally planned to scout out how to get here ahead of time (and thus look for the cache with a lot fewer bystanders), but never got around to it. And so today was my day to cache.

Since my wife’s races were at 2:00pm and 6:00pm, I figured it would make the most sense to go after it inbetween. It’s not like it’d be any busier or quieter at any point I was there, so I just picked the most convenient time. So after her first race, I wandered off to go hunt for the geocache. As it turns out, I think the sheer act of walking probably helped me out quite a bit. I swear to god, it must have been at least 12000 degrees celcius outside. And the racing being stuck on a stagnant pond, with absolutely zero shade, with little to no breeze… it did not make for a comfortable afternoon. When we were just sitting in our chairs, I think we were literally cooking ourselves. And so, the walk at least forced a little bit of air to pass over my skin and cool me down slightly. Emphasis on slightly.

So with the races continuing, I wandered around the pond towards the coordinates. At first when I was guestimating the location from the North side, I had figured it to be a bit of a different location, but once I got there I at least figured I had a slight bit of cover to work with. Thankfully, there was virtually nobody sitting around this side of the water. I did a quick circle around ground zero, looking high and low hoping to spot the cache container. No such luck. Sitting nearby, I pulled out the palm pilot and checked the description and past logs... no help. Another quick circle around however spotted the cache, and I quickly came up with a method to obtain it while looking as inconspicuous as possible. Checking with my wife and friend later (who were watching me here and there) confirmed that it appeared as though I was just relaxing and watching the race the entire time. Always a good sign. I soon parked myself in my previous sitting spot with the cache container partially behind me and signed up the logbook. One chainmail ball later, and I closed everything up. As previous cachers have mentioned, the container is missing one of the side clasps, but everything is bone dry regardless so no harm no foul it seems.

Using a similar tactic as before, I once again worked the cache container back to its hiding spot, and soon had it hidden as I had found it. I had been timing my retrieval and replacement at such a time when the boats were about 2/3 done the race... close enough to the crowd of people that everyone would be looking to the West to see them, yet not far enough that the boats would be between myself and them. And given the method I had to either grab or replace the cache took mere seconds, it worked out quite well.

After replacing the cache, I wandered over to the shade of the trees on the South side of the water for a bit (where only a handful of other smart people were), I kept an eye on the cache hiding spot. Seeing nobody else check out ground zero, I felt confident that my caching had been ignored. Mission accomplished BigSmile .

Thanks for giving me a cache that had an unexpected chance to offer a unique challenge. Oh, and for those curious, my wife’s team came in last on both of today’s races, but on the plus side came in first in the ‘important’ race on Sunday that actually matters . And if I never hear the songs ‘Wipeout’ or ‘Hawaii Five O’ again, I will die a happy man ToungeOut .

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and chainmail ball