St. Patrick's Day - A Caching Event for R-L Painter

I met Lars's geocaching name back in the winter/early spring of 2011 and have always wanted to meet R-L Painter in person.  One of my friends at the time published a cache at the Lacey Transit Center late winter/early spring and we waited off in the distance to see who would be show up first for an FTF.  We thought it might be him but we weren't sure.  Because it was just getting into spring, it was still dark at around 5-6 p.m. Like creepers, we watched.  Eventually he found it and we walked over and introduced ourselves.  Lars said he has been seeing our names on caches throughout Thurston county lately.  I told him I began caching July 2010 and I have found just under 200 caches.

Over the years we would run into him on FTF's and wondered how he got there way before we did.  For example, a cache would publish in Rainier, I live in Rainier, as soon as I got the notification I was out the door, with or without shoes and I had less than five miles to drive.  Lars lives in Lacey off of Ruddell Road which is about 13 miles away.  How in the world did he almost beat me here?  Later we found out he lives for FTF's and somehow his notifications were quicker than ours and he had a few minutes head start.  I thought everyone got the same amount of time on FTFs?  Maybe not.

On a few occasions Bob, Bev and I would meet up with him and cache.  It was usually locally.  I remember a time we accidently ran into him, his granddaughter and wife on the Yelm-Tenino trail near McIntosh Lake and we walked down the trail towards Tenino picking up caches along the way.  I checked up on the ones I placed for mom.  Mine was more of a maintenance run than finding caches.  It was a fun few hours chatting with Lars and his family.  We would run into him at cache machines and local events.  It was always fun to see his familiar face and hear his caching stories.

I found out around the same time my 10,000th milestone was published in the FTF magazine that Lars's FTF milestone was also published.  He saw my post on Facebook and he said he had an extra copy and wanted to know if I wanted it.  I told him sure!  I headed over to his house and he greeted me at the door.  We chatted for a few minutes, he handed me the magazine and I thanked him.  I handed him one of my pathtags just so I had something to give him.  I told him I would see him around which I did a few times after the visit to his house.

Then I heard the horrible news, Lars had stomach cancer and it had progressed aggressively.  He had been going to therapy but still geocaching and hanging out with his family as much as he could.  His last big adventure was with Bob and Bev during the 2016 Auburn Coin Challenge.  Before that he, Bob and Bev had completed the Rainier100 Geotour.  Lars found a few more here and there and his last logged find was April 18, 2017, You Gotta Gnome What You're Looking For (GC742MG).  In those 11 years he found 8,902 caches and had 589 FTF's.

Lars passed away on May 10, 2017 and he will not be forgotten.

His wife, Lynn decided to have an event, Celebrate R-L Painter (GC7HE32), to remember Lars and his love for geocaching.  She had it on his birthday almost a year after he passed at Dirty Dave's.  Lars had been caching for 11 years and amassed a lot of swag that Lynn wanted to raffle to his fellow caching community.  His hides were also up for transfer.  I got a few of his containers and pathtags as well as one of his caches in Yelm, Bypass....To Nowhere...(GC2HFCM).  It was a nice event and many people came.  We shared stories about Lars, ate pizza and thanked Lynn for hosting an event in his honor especially on his birthday.

It's hard when you lose a member of your geocaching family.  The events and the random meetings will never be the same.  I am glad I got to meet Lars over seven years ago.  The competitions to get to the FTF's, the stories, the moments shared and the caches found with Lars will always be with us every time we go out geocaching.

Next Adventure:  Easter Sunday

A Geocaching Presentation

About a month ago Chris (Mc3cats) asked if I would do an outreach presentation to the Tumwater Rotary Club.  I let the message sit on my screen for about an hour.  I really hate standing up in front of people and talking.  I've struggled with it my whole life.  It has gotten better with time but it still is awful.  I sucked it up and told him I would after asking Tim if I could take an extended lunch to do a presentation.  Tim enthusiastically said yes and told me to take Liz with me.  Chris gave me some more details about what I was going to be doing and gave me a contact for the rotary and sent me a Powerpoint presentation.

I spent the week texting Denise to find out more about this presentation.  She basically said to come up with a title that pops to get everyone interested.  She added most of the people I would be presenting to were an older crowd.  I told her that Chris had a pre made presentation he would like me to use and she said that was okay.  I was going to add some of my own flair to it.

I talked to her on the phone for about an hour the weekend before just to hear how the monthly meeting would go.  She outlined the itinerary and told me when everything was.  They typically ate first, then got into the business part of it, I would be presenting around 12:20 for about 15 minutes, then questions and then they wrap up.  She added that Dave, one of the oldest members dresses up every year like a leprechaun every March and to try to add something that has to do with leprechauns, pots of gold or treasure.  I told her I could see what I could do.  She finalized our conversation asking me for a mini biography that she could put in the March newsletter.  I told her I would have it to her in a couple days.  She thanked me.

I worked on my biography and my presentation over the next few days.  No matter how many times I went over it I will still be nervous come game day.  I gathered a bunch of swag, containers, coins and other memorabilia to show off to my audience just in case they needed a visual.  I packed all of this up and made sure I had the brochures that Chris gave me.

That morning I remembered to wear green and hoped that Liz wore green and remembered her camera so she could take pictures of the presentation.  She made sure to text me that morning stating that she remembered the camera and that she would see me at work.

I got to work and most of the morning we worked on getting ready for April enrollment.  Around 11:30 Liz and I headed to the back and got into the Escape.  I was really nervous at this point and kept reviewing what I was going to say in my head over and over.

We rolled into the Pellegrino's event center over by the Costco in Tumwater and Liz helped me bring in my visuals.

We weren't sure which room we were suppose to be in so we explored.  The first room was a gathering of people that were either learning how to cook or watching someone get ready to cook we weren't sure.  We continued down the hall and found the room we were suppose to be in.  We were greeted enthusiastically by Denise who explained everything.  Since we got there before noon she wanted us to eat first.  We grabbed our plates and they served us corned beef and cabbage, rolls, potatoes, salad and a dessert.  It was delicious.  Liz loves food and she enjoyed it too.

After we were done eating they began their meeting promptly at noon and then it was my turn.  Denise introduced me and Liz and I got up to the podium and began my presentation.  Liz was my slideshow clicker.  I began with asking how many people have heard or have actually geocached and to my surprise over half the room knew what it was.  I went into what it was, how to do it and added some of the most memorable caches and locations I've been to.  Of course I was pretty nervous and kept messing up but I was hoping they didn't notice because Liz sure did.  Haha.

I concluded with questions or comments and actually people asked me questions and one lady actually geocaches with her daughter who is in the Girl Scouts has a live cache over by a camp near Black Lake.  I still have yet to find that one.  We took a couple pictures with Dave.

Denise visited with me for a little while and I found out she grew up in Tekoa in eastern Washington and she had a costume shop she does out of her home on Rich Road.  I thanked her for the rotary hospitality and she thanked me back for coming and teaching the group about geocaching.  We grabbed our stuff and went back to the Escape.  I asked Liz, do you wanna go find some victory ice cream?"  I barely finished the sentence as she was exclaiming yes.  The closest ice cream place was Lime Berry fro yo.

We went in and we found the flavor of ice cream and toppings we wanted and I guess they have this thing where if you guess how much your ice cream weighs and if you are within a certain couple ounces you get it for free.  We were both close but not correct.  We ate it on the way back to L&I and it was delicious.

We found a place to park and headed in.  Tim was there to ask us how it went and briefly talk about it.  I knew he let me do it because it was a growth and development opportunity even though it didn't directly involve my work at the state.

Overall I am glad I did it even though speaking in front of people gives me anxiety no matter if I am an expert or not on the subject.  For some reason my brain shuts off when I get up there and forget everything I went over in my head.  One more thing to add to the ol' resume.

Next Adventure:  St. Patrick's Day - A Caching Event for R-L Painter

Fort Steilacoom and Chambers Bay

This was going to be the first nice weekend and I asked mom what she was doing and she said nothing.  I asked her if she wanted to go to Fort Steilacoom just to get away from the house for a while.  Plus, I wanted to go geocaching.  I noticed there was a virtual inside of the park and wanted to redeem some of the DNF's from last year.

I had mom drive over to my house so we could get on the freeway right away rather than driving all the way to Rainier and then back into town.  I told her to bring her day pack and her camera.  When she got here, she used the restroom, I finished packing some snacks, my back pack and headed out the door to the Escape.

We got on the freeway and headed towards Lakewood.  I wasn't sure how many people would already be at the park and if there were enough parking spots.  I made a wrong turn when we got near the park and had to turn around.  I found a parking spot and had to avoid all the people trying to get in and out of the parking lot.

I got out my back pack and we stuck everything we would need into it including water, some snacks, keys, wallet and mom's camera stuff.  We locked the car and headed to the first cache that I DNF'd, Farming Legacy (GC5RKF2).  I knew where it was and couldn't get to it last time because someone had screwed the bolt on too tight and I had no tools with me.  This time I had my multi tool and that took care of it.  I signed our names and put it back.

We wandered around the area for a while and mom took some pictures of the barns and the trees.

I told her we had a few more caches in the area I had to redeem.  The place was crawling with people and dogs.  Since the next one was at a dog park we had to blend in.  I knew of the general area the cache was in but missed it last time I was here.  PET ME-PET ME! (A Two Finger Cache) (GC6KV25) was across the dirt road from the fenced off dog park.  There were so many people around tending to their dogs they wouldn't even notice what we were doing.  I took a different approach this time and found the cache right away.  It was camouflaged perfectly.

The virtual, Grave Concerns (GC7B6TB) was a short walk away from the dog park near the grave yard.  All it required us to do was take a picture in front of it.  Easy peasy.

The final cache in the park I wanted to redeem was at the edge of the park on the other side of where the RC planes flew.  As we walked there were a few people flying their planes.  Hidden Clues and Secrets (GC5PN6Z) fooled me the first time but now that I found one similar to it, it made it easier to find and I found it instantly.  I felt dumb that I didn't find it the first time.

We walked back to the parking lot and asked mom if she has been to the park at Chambers Bay and she said no.  I was very surprised since she spent a lot of time as a kid in Tacoma.  I told her we were going to hang out in Chambers Bay for a bit.  I put the coordinates into the Nuvi and headed that way.  We knew there were going to be a lot of people and hoped that we would be able to find a parking spot.

When we got there, we saw that cars were every where!  This was going to be a challenge to find a spot to park. We circled the entire parking lot twice before we got lucky.  I nabbed that parking spot so hard.  We put together some of the stuff we would need in our pack, locked the Escape and headed over to the bridge of locks.  Two winters ago Ben and I came to visit with our locks (https://cougval.blogspot.com/2017/02/bens-birthday-and-chambers-bay-love.html) and mom and I walked over there to see if I could find them.  Since they were up there for over a year I knew the Sharpie pen we used to write on it would be weathered away.  I had to consult pictures so I could remember where we locked it.  Found it!

But couldn't find the other one at the end of the bridge.  Might have to check later.

We enjoyed the area and then attempted to find Bridge of Locks (GC4KX0W) because the hint was so bad!  We checked exactly where the hint told us to look and did not find anything.  Then I remembered that it was probably a lock instead of something magnetic.  I have no idea why I thought that probably based on the hint that was given to us.  I looked at some past logs and had a good idea what I was looking for now.  After a few minutes I found it, signed the log and made it look like we weren't doing anything with the sea of people around us.

I asked mom if she wanted to go down to the trail and walk towards the ruins and she said "let's go!"  We made it down to the trail and I saw there was one more cache nearby, Valinor (GC4PV01) and as I got closer I wondered where in the world someone could have hidden this one.  Then I had an idea.  I searched with that idea in mind and found it pretty fast.

Those tall pillars that we walked past still and always will remind me of the AT-AT's from Star Wars.

We walked past the ruins and then on our way back to the Escape, we tried looking for the other cache, Firefly (GC736H9) but really didn't get to look all that hard because of all the muggles around.  I would have to save this one for another time.

We got back in the Escape and took a really long time to get ready to go just because there were people waiting for our spot.  People have done it to me and it was my turn to repay them.  I did not feel bad about it either.

Since we ate our snacks and wanted something with a little more so on the way back to the freeway we stopped at Fred Meyer in Lakewood.  Mom picked up a few things for home and I needed something to eat.  I chose a sandwich and chips mostly because you can't go wrong with it and it's easy to eat.

As we got closer to the freeway, we passed the Clover Park area and saw Mountain View Cemetery.  My great grandparents, great-great grandparents and my grandpa are all buried here.  I haven't been here in years.  Mom tried to remember exactly where they were and took a few minutes of walking around checking.  It was nice to reflect where I came from even though I only got to meet Grandma Bea and Grandpa Clyde.  I can't believe they've been gone for over 15 years now.

We visited for about a half hour and then got onto the freeway and headed back to my house.  Ben was at work so I spent some time getting cleaned up and logged my caches while watching some Netflix.  I got everything ready for the work week and headed to bed.  It was a nice day and I hope we have many more to come.

Next Adventure:  A Geocaching Presentation

New Mattress

A few weeks ago I seriously considered getting a new mattress.  A few months ago Ben and I went mattress shopping but really couldn't afford a mattress payment.  Today our mattress came in the mail from Walmart.com.  We needed a new mattress badly and we went online and found one we could afford since we've come across a little bit of extra money recently...

Ben called me and told me that the mattress came while I was at work.  He said that he would wait until I got home so we could open it together.  When I got home, we opened the box and read the instructions and it said that it had to breathe for 24 hours.  Ben had to work that evening at the fire station so I guess that meant I get to sleep on the couch!  I was not about to go sleep on our old mattress because it made my lower back suffer tremendously. He helped me wrestle the old mattress into the garage so it could be taken to the dump at some point. We then took it out of the extra room and flopped the new mattress onto the frame.  There it rested for 24 hours.

The couch was more comfortable than the old mattress and the Frankenstein mattress pads we clothes pinned together to make a super mattress pad.

The next day while Ben was on shift, I washed all of our bedding so when it was time to put the mattress on the frame it has fresh bedding on top of it.  I washed everything.

When all of it was finally done, I spent some time making the bed (kitty helped) and then I laid in it.  It felt so nice.

That night we both slept in it for the first time and the next morning we were sore because our body had to adjust to something different.  It should get better as we continue sleeping on it.  Maybe someday we could get a better one but for now this one should work.

Next Adventure:  Fort Steilacoom and Chambers Bay