I think we're ready, done, finished, prepared. The list:

• A sign (with coordinates) has been created
• Caches have been placed, and cache notes have been printed
• Name tags are printed
• Balloons (...are being inflated)

What's left? Hmmm... pack the car with tables, barbeques, food, things, more things

Are you ready to come to Strömsholm? We hope so! See you tomorrow!!

(Back to the balloons )

 This weekend it's time to celebrate 10 years of geocaching!

According to geocaching.com there are 335 events in the world celebrating 10 Years! this weekend. In Sweden there are 16 "10 Year!"-events. Even though we have only been geocaching since last year we are hosting our own little celebration event in Strömsholm/Kolbäck (Carbon Creek)

We've only been to two events so far (including one flash mob ) and are kind of nervous about hosting an event, but we hope we'll pull it off .... It can go either way really

Anyway, we've just been out placing new caches that will be released at the event - and are really excited about that as well! It will be hard going to sleep tonight.... Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Zzzzz.... *snortle* ... where was I?

Ehm.... yeah: Welcome-welcome to the "10 Years! Carbon Creek, Sweden"-event, bring food and a plaid, good mood and a maid (what??)

G'night to y'all...Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Last weekend we took a trip down to Karlsborg just to get away for a short while. After a quick descision a hotel room (family size) was booked and we were off. We had never been to Karlsborg before - it was just one of those "let's go somewhere" things that happens sometimes. Our geocaching hobby sort of helped us with the "where should we go"-part: we wanted to go to a "state" where we hadn't logged any caches yet

We didn't know anything about Karlsborg, but in the end it was a really nice place: water everywhere and really friendly people (everyone just kept saying "Hi" as if they really knew who we were!)

The hotel room was completely ok, the thai food in the evening was really good (but it took far too long a time to get the food), the breakfast was a bit boring (but it was a small family owned hotel, and not even we expect there to be a really huge selection of breakfast goodies then).

And the geocaching was magnificent! There were caches everywhere!! Mostly micro caches (which is not really the best family caches, but the kids liked it anyway)

We really didn't want to go home! But in the end we had to (work, kindergarten, car going in to the shop etc)

Anyway - I highly recommend it: "when you're down and troubled... take a weeeekend trip"

(More pictures from Karlsborg will be up shortly... I just have to sleep some first )

OVER AND OUT!

The only thing we have to say for ourselves is that we have been busy caching and trying our best to get some new FTF's. SO what has happened since last time we wrote a new entry? Well we decided it was time to go see if we could find the cache: Trinitrotoulene (GC1Q6QJ), surprisingly it was quite easy to get to despite the recent logs it had. We went on to find some more caches in Västerås before heading home, we only missed one and that was Down Under (GC1ME24) where ice made it impossible to enter. Late in the evening the phones chimed, announcing the release of a new cache in the area, obviously we had to see where it was and if it would be possible to make it an FTF, it turned out to be Wall-E (GC26BRP) which has a terrain rating of 4, a ladder was stowed into the GC vehicle and off we went. When we arrived it was obvious that the ladder would be needed and we fetched it from the car. After this the cache did not put up much of a resistance , whilst figuring out where this cache was the phone chimed again announcing another new cache in our search area. After logging Wall-E we went on to see if we could find the other new cache as well (not much hope of getting another FTF that night. Sure enough when we arrived Sucken and Zacke.se was already there. After talking for a while it was decided that they would borrow our ladder and log Wall-E as well. Thank you Team Gaia-58 for this nightly adventure! The following day Zacke.se released a new cache in Västerås called Vattenverket (GC26D30), in what could be called nothing but record time we were off, only to be beaten to the FTF by DME73 and lhasa_runner in second place. Congratulations to you! The following night Zacke released two more caches (Notudden (GC26EVQ) and Tegeludden (GC26EW1)) we decided to wait until later the same evening to log these since we had other plans for the evening, it must be said that logging these in the middle of the night and with a slight drissle of rain was a cold and potentially dangerous choice. A couple of days later Zacke.se was at it again and released the cache Lövudden (GC26GQH) as it was quite early in the morning so we gambled on going, thinking that the competition was sleeping, this time we arrived at the scene first but of course the GPS decided that the batteries were out. While we were trying to fix this Team Gaia-58 and Jimmy&Maria entered the scene soon after this the cache was found and we had another FTF! Thank you Zacke.se for the collection of new caches! Whilst this was going on Maria was trying to figure the new lhasa_runner mystery Mismatch (GC26EVJ) and around lunchtime on Saturday she had figured it out and off we went to log what we hoped would be another FTF and sure enough we were first this time too! Thank you lhasa_runner for a fun mystery and we are sorry it took us almost 24 hours cracking it .  Later that evening we decided to "tidy" up some around Irsta and try to find at least one cache that has eluded us in the past. 

Below are a couple of pictures from this trip:

Over and out for today!

A couple of days later it was time to log some solved mysteries i Arboga, here we only failed with one of the caches we had set out to log but this was not due to us not finding the cache but rather due to not finding a suitable parking but we will be back!

On the 17th it was time for an FTF race again! At 01.20 the iPhone chimed announcing a new cache called A Cachers Nightmare (GC26X9Q), the description called for rubber boots and good patience, the later not one of my strong points... Leaving the rest of the family home (sound asleep) I went away, armed with a change of clothes, headlamp, 3 flashlights and of course rubber boots. After parking in what seemed like a good spot I got out of the car and headed into the field, soon a large ditch did it's best to stop me but I soon found a weak spot and crossed it effortlessly. Now it was smooth sailing all the way, and the cache was soon found. Thank you GP-Esset for this night's walk in the woods and thank you for the extremely generous FTFprice! In the afternoon the same day we were invited to a birthday party in Sala and obviously we couldn't go to Sala without logging some caches, this time we decided to wait with geocaching until after the party, remebering the last time we tried to combine a social visit to Sala with geocaching... The sight was set to make another attempt of finding a couple of caches that we had tried finding earlier but failed. This time we had no problems at all finding them, we must have really had the caching eyes with us this time. As an ending to the evening we decided to try finding Sala's "darkness cache" called Sala by Night (GC23TEB), of course it had to start raining but we were not going to let that stop us so I went out in the rain with Moa and Max in pursuit, after a really nice walk around Sala the cache was finally found. Thanks to Falkz for this nice cache!

In order to log at least one cache a day we went to Enköping yesterday to log a couple of solved mysteries there, the most memorable must be The Numbers (GCT19K) that was really fun looking for! Thanks to S.P.A.M for this cache!

Oh I almost forgot, we also managed to log Sucken's cache Vallbymotet yesterday. Now that the winter seem to have released it's hold on Västerås it was possible to get to it without risking too much, thank you for a challenging series!

Yesterday when I was at the store the phone chimed in my pocket and it was notifying me that there was a new "unknown cache" in the neighbourhood. I didn't realise it was an Unknown cache at first so I was half way out of the store before I came to my senses and called Maria instead. She said that she had seen it and that she was working on it so I continued shopping... Eventually I left the store and headed out to buy some pizza. When I came home Maria had an idea on how to solve the mystery and sure enough, I didn't even get to finish my pizza before she was done and I was on my way. I quickly found a place to park the car and headed towards the location of the cache. Some not to advanced climbing later and I had the box in my hand, would I be the first one to log it? The suspense while opening the box was immense and YES we were first!  Such a nice feeling to sign a fresh logbook that has never been touched by geocachers before (exept for the owner of course)  on the way back I met half of lhasa_runner and we had a nice chat before heading home.

It is so nice with new mysteries where us out of towners have a chance to FTF!

Spring in the air, sunshine and happy people all around () made us want to go Easter-geocaching. So we decided to go to Skinnskatteberg (where there are surprisingly many caches in a very small area ). We packed food, snacks and beverages, our kids and ourselves into the geo-bus and took off towards Köping (aiming for road 250, and all of the geocaches we could find )

Kids and parents were all happy-happy-joy-joy, jumping out of the car with great speed (and some with great ease ). By lunch time we reached Skinnskatteberg, found ourselves a nice parking space next to a lake and ate our lunch. After this we decided to try to reach a cache that would require some walking: Kroksudden. After 50 meters all but one gave up the quest - it was just to hard (especially for the kids, but also for the mother-youngest-child-package ) walking in the snow. Markus went on, but gave up after a while, he just couldn't find the cache!! On his way back to the car he chose between a heart attack (walking in knee deep snow) and the risk of drowning in the ice cold water (if the ice on the lake would have given up) - and chose the risk of drowning.

Whilst waiting for Markus, me and the kids pretended to be pirates (and I got the fancy name: Kapten Sur-Ulla) and on our way back to the car, I got stuck, fell and couldn't get up (snow is really cold when you get to sit in it, not being able to get up, did you know that? )

So... we got a bit wet and cold, but we didn't want to give up anyway - so we went on into Skinnskatteberg to log a few more caches. And when we came home, we had found 19 caches - which is our new personal best (... number of geocaches in a day)

But the day was not over yet - I was sent out to hide two new caches, this time in Västerås. But you know: you're not very invisible when you're dressed like a forest hugging lunatic with bad connections in the fashion industry and a mysterious genetical colour blindness  

Anyway: the caches were hidden in ode to my father (after we found that there were a few holes in the geocache coverage in Västerås that coincided with places strongly connected to his life)

All was well up to this point. But going back home I accidently killed Bambi (or his mother)  just a few hundred meters away from our house

This is what our car looks like today:

Five important meetings in Stockholm this upcoming week - which means I have to take the bus, then the train and then the subway to reach work (which means 4.5-5.5 hours of commuting per day) instead of working-from-home-due-to-problems-with-my-car. Come friday, I don't think I will be in a "happy-happy-joy-joy" mood anymore. But perhaps a bit of geocaching on saturday or sunday might cheer me up? Keep the new caches coming, if only to save one persons sanity

Join us in celebrating the 10 years anniversary of geocaching! Take a look at our event on May 2: "10 Years! Carbon Creek, Sweden" (more details will come further on!)

 Hopefully there will be less snow, and more green stuff by then

We went geocaching yesterday, with one primary goal: to reach the magic number "500 finds". We had two to go, and since we had unlogged geocaches in Västerås we thought it shouldn't take too long (now that winter is gone )

First out was "Personalklubben" - a cache that was terribly hard to find a couple of months ago (in the ongoing snow storm), and now with no snow at all it was surprisingly easy to find (disco disco good good!!)

After this we thought we ought to take a walk, thinking that there shouldn't be snow anywhere (how wrong we were!). "Kärringhällarna" was our next stop (and cache find number 500!). The cache was easy to find, but the snow and water (and the kids that love to jump into snowy water) made sure that the next stop on our geocaching tour was "HOME"

Sun is shining, and it seems that spring is finally here. Now we can easily find five hundred more reasons to go out looking for tiny boxes in the middle of nowhere!

After work yesterday I decided to try to log a cache in Örebro that Maria solved a while ago, it is called "Orebro:Brainiac". On the way out from work it turned out that Tomalars was also on his way home so we decided to log the cache together. I had been at the location earlier but the amount of Mugglers nearby made it virtually impossible to log the cache safely then. Now however it was nice and empty on the location. After having logged that cache we decided to try to find some more of the caches in the neighbourhood (Örebro that is) and the result was pretty decent for a quick and spontaneous after work caching session. When I got home it turned out that "sillen" had logged a few of our mysteries and he also reported a DNF and that he had lost one cache. I took a quick walk from home to check up on the cache that was logged as DNF just to make sure it was still there since Sillen usually finds the caches if they are there. When I got to the location the cache was there so there should be no problem logging it in the future. The cache in question is: YTHGIE, all you have to do is solve the mystery and then go find it! I also had to make som emergency maintenance on the cache Zoo Sign as it had gone missing in action. A new container is now in place and the terrain rating is adjusted to reflect the absense of snow (yes this is actually harder to get to now that the snow has mostly gone). To log this it is good to be really tall or to stand on something (there you go, a hint that isn't available on the cache page). 

Right now we are thinking about hosting an event in may to celebrate 10 years of geocaching, keep an eye out in the Kolbäck area to see if we go through with the plans.

over and out for now 

Hello again! Yes... I know... our blog entries are "few and far between" nowdays. But we've had to prioritize "real life" with: our building project upstairs, selling a car and caring for sick kids ("winter vomiting disease" and chickenpox)

We have however had time enough to create two new mysteries:

• Zoo Sign
• Edmund

Congratulations Lhasa_runner on finding both of them first! Hopefully we will see a few more logs on them as well (soon?)

Oh well... back to reality, once again!