101 in 1001 Update

I have three achievements that I have made toward the list in the last few days, which I shall list before moving on to the bulk of this post which will be about my geocaching adventure today.

1: I purged a good part of my room. I'd say 30-50% of the purging is now done, but I've obviously still got a while to go. I've tossed out most of my books: next comes my clothes.

2: I reached 300 unique visitors. I'm still getting a result of about 3.2 new visitors per post: I'd like to up that to about 10 in the next few months.

3: I found, with Rowland, 2 geocaches. That makes it up to 4/10. We'll have to start going further afield, after we find the cache that has eluded us thrice already. That'll also complete one of Rowland's list items. You should check out his blog here.

Today was a pretty big day in terms of physical exercise: it's probably the longest I've travelled under my own power in one day. Ever.

Rowland was our Mega-Ultra Navigator Supreme, if you asked him, and did a fairly decent job if you ask me. We went to North Richmond first, about 4 km away, and then proceeded to grab some very tasty chips for lunch. We then went about 2 km up hills to reach the first cache.

The GPS was pointing to it being around a big tree: but it happened to be on private property. Me and Rowland hewed and hawed for about 10 minutes about whether or not to actually go in and try to find it. I was adamant, however, that it wasn't on private property, and as I moved back about 20 metres to try to get a better fix, Rowland managed to spy it: it was very, very well camouflaged in my opinion. Elated with our success, we signed the book and moved on.

Both the GPS and Rowland were wrong about which direction to take after we reached the end of Grose River Road (as Rowland pointed out, Grose River Road should take you to the ACTUAL RIVER) but it was a fun time anyway, as after trudging up the hills with our bikes, we found a dead-end, and proceeded to coast back down. I did one at full speed, and all Rowland heard was: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh! Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

However, we then went back and took the other way, and finally managed to find it (Rowland collapsed on the beach in joy when we did) and started our search. The GPS quickly pointed us to a vast field of long grass, and it took us about 10-15 minutes to find it. The GPS kept cutting out, so I'd try and coax it into turning on (low battery at this point) and when it did, I RAN in the direction the GPS said until it cut out. Then I'd continue that way for a minute, then try again. Eventually we narrowed it down, and once again, Rowland spotted it. It had a mini Rubik's cube in it, and luckily I wanted a Rubik's cube, so I took that, and left a Chess computer game there as a trade (Chessmaster 8000, I have the 10th edition).

We then proceeded to go across the river, but I wasn't prepared for how deep or cold it would be. Despite wearing my shorts like an old man, I still got the bottoms of them soaked. It was BLOODY cold, my feet were ice-burnt by the end of it (or at least it felt that way) but after a break, and application of a towel, we headed back to Richmond.

All in all, twas a great, great day. We'll have to bike to Windsor next week...