Cache-versary

I found my first cache (Sudoku Madness) exactly one year ago, on May 8th 2006. One year later, the counter displays 869 finds and 15 hides.

More than 869 caches found, here are a few things summarizing how this year of geocaching has been for me:

• It brought me back to hiking after a 3 years hiatus
• I rediscovered or discovered many great local parks
• I learned about poison oak, discovered my immunity to it (so far)
• I've been convinced for 364 days that I was immune to ticks
• I got my first tick bite (last weekend)
• I got stung by a bee
• I saw many snakes, including 2 rattlesnakes (and got rattled at by one of them)
• I encountered many black widows
  
• I drove through (almost) every single street of South San Jose
• I lifted thousands of (lamp) skirts
• I discovered incredible and secret places very close to home
  
• I got a bachelor of puzzleology
• I got my Geo Metro out of the garage
• I read both The Hobbit and the Fellowship of the Ring in English just for the multi series by mbrill
• I developed an interest in geocoins (somehow limited by the amount of money involved)
• I learned tons of English vocabulary (stump, fence pole cap, trifecta...)
• I let my cell phone fell in the Los Gatos Creek (it's still working)
• I lost my dear camera while searching for an evil cache
• I managed to wear out my GPSr battery (but I just bought a new one)
• I participated to a GBA deathmarch (and preparing a new one for this weekend - with a brand new battery)
• I hid a few caches (15 hides total including events)
• I posted more than 1100 times in the GBA (Geocachers of the Bay Area) forum
• I attended 3 CITO events (including hosting one)
• I attended 13 official regular events
• I attended many unevents at the boardwalk and one in the Peninsula
• I hosted an event
• I spent hundreds of hours playing with Google Earth
  

Most importantly, I made a lot of great friends and this is the best part to me. This has been a great Geocaching year!
Here's to the next one!

Beautiful Almaden Quicksilver

Sunday was quite hot and it was perfect for a good tough hike in Almaden Quicksilver County park. I had a list of 7 caches that I wanted to get but I think I underestimated the time and effort it would take for me in this heat to reach HotboxII at the end of Enriquita Trail from the MacAbee trailhead.
My route was the following:
Senador Mine Trail, Guadalupe Trail to the reservoir, Mine Hill trail above the reservoir, Providencia Trail, and Enriquita Trail. 8 kms and 3 hours after I started, I was at HotboxII.
Back via a longer section of Mine Hill Trail and the las short steep section of New Almaden Trail. I also hiked and back on Randol in a vain attempt to grab "Three's company".
It was hot, very hot. I even saw a young rattlesnake crossing the Guadalupe Trail in front of me.
I finished the 16km hike pretty beat, as the sun was setting. Later in the shower, I noticed that a tick was stuck on my leg. For the first time, I had been bitten by a tick.
Perfect training for next weekend's "deathmarch" in Sierra Azul, right across the stream.

Reynolds Road Shave

Saturday's main activity for me was the participation to a very successul CITO Event (my 3rd one), Reynolds Road Shave, hosted in Sierra Azul OSP by Shadow101.
The Santa Cruz mountains are beautiful. Unfortunately, some people have a tendency to consider that throwing their garbage in the ravine is the best way to dispose of it, despite the "no dumping" signs.
And this means that along the public roads in those mountains, you will find that the ravines are totally trashed. I've noticed three different types of trash.

• Free and scenic areas are always littered with bottles of beer or alcohol. People gather there to drink and they leave the place trashed.
• Ravines along free access road are trashed with garbage bags. People drive up those roads with full garbage bags in their cars and just dump there when they find a good spot for doing this.
• Then, there are the big stuff that people don't know how to dispose of or just can't afford paying for disposal services. Ovens, fridges, TV, old cars, doors, etc...
  

It's really sad to see those beautiful areas treated this way. Unfortunately, dealing with garbage is very expensive. I think we pay about $45 every other month for garbage collection, and this does not cover large items, nor extra garbage. And it keeps increasing. Unfortunately, not everybody is able to pay that kind of fees and it forces people to find alternative (and bad) solutions.