I went geocaching (read yesterdays post for explanation) again today but sadly I didn’t find any cache today either. First I went looking for the one I looked for yesterday and then I went looking for another one nearby. I’m not giving up though. Going on a treasure hunt like this is way too much fun! Besides, it’s pretty damn good exercise. Today I walked around looking for caches for three hours. Yesterday for two. Since I’m on a diet I’m trying to take a daily one hour walk so this geocaching thing means even more walking.

An interesting part of geocaching is trying to act somewhat normal in front of the “mugglers” (people who don’t know of geocaching) while you’re walking around with your cell phone following gps coordinates or poking around in the grass looking for caches. I searched one area next to a rather big road for quite a while, walking back and forth reading the coordinates, searching the ground. I’m pretty sure I looked rather odd but I decided, what the hell, why care about what people make of this behaviour? I looked so much weirder calibrating the gps (waving the phone around in circles) yesterday anyway!

I’m going geocaching again tomorrow. This is a perfect hobby! Mainly because it’s spring and I love being outside in the spring. It doesn’t even matter what I do, as long as it’s outside. But of course it’s more fun if I have something interesting to occupy myself with. Then there’s of course the exercise aspect of it. Much needed! Haha, can you believe it, I have a outdoor hobby! All my hobbies are things done inside, in solitude. Painting, reading, web designing, writing, sewing. I just wish I had someone to go geocaching with. It would be a lot more fun if I didn’t have to do it alone.

Now I’m going to make dinner. I’m starving! Not too weird considering I’ve been out and about in the sun, at times walking through quite difficult terrain, for three hours.

Today I tried my hands at geocaching. It’s a game of sorts in which “caches” are hidden. Caches are containers with logs and sometimes small things which you can take from the cache when you find it if you replace it with something new. At www.geocaching.com caches from all over the world are listed. Every cache listed have directions how to find it in the form of coordinates. GPS-devices are used to find the exact coordinates and with that the cache.

To my great joy my home city is full of caches so today I tried to find one not too far from where I live. It’s located somewhere on Vebobacken, the highest point in the city, which happens to be a place where I hung out a lot when I lived here the first time around. In other words, a nice place to visit both for the view and the nostalgia. So why not go there and try to find a cache? I didn’t find the cache though. On geocache.com there was a mark on the map for where the cache was supposed to be which didn’t match the coordinates. I walked around in the area for ages, thinking my gps app must be malfunctioning. I understand now that the mark on the map probably wasn’t exactly where the cache was, because that would have been too easy. Once I realized that I walked the way the coordinates pointed instead and when I was ridiculously close to them the battery of my phone died! I must have walked around in the forest for about two hours in total so imagine how disappointed I was when I had to leave the place without having found the cache. I will go back there tomorrow though.

I really do wonder what the “mugglers” (people who don’t know of geocaching) who saw me tought of me. First there was the woman who saw me while I was calibrating my gps app. When you calibrate it you move your phone around in circles. I can only imagine how odd I must have looked standing there making circles in front of me with my phone. Once I saw her I started waving the phone a bit differently, like I had a bad signal and tried to find a place where it got better. Then there was the jogger who jogged up and down the road to the hill a couple of times, just as I was looking through the woods close to the road. He passed me by while I was searching the area looking under rocks and poking piles of leaves with sticks a at the same time as I was comparing the coordinates I had written down on a note to the ones on the cell. I really do wonder what he made out of my odd behaviour.

All in all, my two hours in the woods was a rather disappointing experience since I didn’t find anything, but tomorrow I will. I’m familiar with the gps app now and I think I was really close to the cache when the cell died. I’ll get back to you tomorrow. The cache will be found!