Powercaching
Last Sunday stefmaus and I went out to our first powercaching session. Initiated by MOON’S EYE having found more caches than we in total after his vacation in Hilton Head, stefmaus decided it was time to get the lead back.
Not far away dieVerena made an advent calendar for a friend. Each day leading to christmas in Decemeber she published a cache as door for benzol. 19 doors were published here in a forest, the other 5 way too far south to get there for us. Anyway, stefmaus planned to find these caches yesterday. I added some so we would get 25 caches this day pushing our “most finds per day” record.
As usual way later than planned (this time because of software problems with GSAK) we headed out at 11:30 hours to get a sandwich at Subway before we finally started for the destination area. (We were only 2.5 hours to late this day!).
Our first cache was on a bridge over a highway. You wouldn’t believe how many muggles can pass such a bridge, that even is not really connecting living areas, on a Sunday evening. Finally we found it in a classic location, logged and put it back.
At our third cache of the calendar we met Yurn and snabbitsocker (two really nice guys). They also want to find the 19 caches, so we continued our tour together. We were not alone in the area as we noticed soon. In the logs two other teams were 15 and 20 minutes ahead.
The day got more exciting with each cache. The hides were very creative and superbly handcrafted. My favorites were the doors number one and two.
Door number two lead all four of us, quite experienced, to search in the wrong place for at least 15 minutes. We confused muggles taking their dogs out and other cachers who thought it’d be better to pass by. It was then when I decided to extend the search region and to approach the site from a different direction when I found the cache.
My personal favorite of this set was door number one. We approached it to the end of our tour because of our optimized search pattern (did you ever hear your partner say “Honey, we should have prepared a search pattern at home”?).
Again we searched for a time that felt like ages. We found excellent spots to hide a cache, one more classic than the next. But we didn’t managed to find the cache. I was up to surrender and took a break sitting on a bridge railing when the hide jumped on me. Again, the idea was outstanding and the cover was crafted with so much skill that it took me away. I loved this one so much that I listed it as “most creative cache hide” in my top caches list.
At the last two caches, the tour turned into an event tour. We met another cacher at the next to the last cache and found that one together. Yurns and snabbitsockers last cache to find was the one we found first. Teasing them how easy it was to find (the coordinates are really exact so stefmaus and I found it instantly) we build some pressure and had a fun time watching them passing the hide a few times. 
When they finally found the cache muggles approached from both sides of the way. From the right a couple approached slowly and hesitating, which was strange at least. They turned out to be the cachers we confused at door number two. From the left a couple approached that turned out to be another pair of cachers. One of them was a lady, LilaMaus, who wears only violet cloth. Very unique and the nick fits.
This cache became a mini event with more and more cachers closing in. At the end of the day we met 9 unknown cachers from the greater region.
As we Yurn and snabbitsocker planned to find some more caches. Additionally to mine they prepared some nanos, I didn’t add to my list. They offered to lead the way, so we rushed off the site to find 10 more caches. Snabbitsocker turned into a cache finding machine and “swedish” light master in the dark, when we arrived the locations.
We finished the day with a meal at Burger King and continued our chats about other caches we found earlier, vacations, planned caches and recommended caches to each other. We absolutely have to do this again. Yurn and snabbitsocker were such a nice company. (Snabbitsocker, get ready for “Räuberträume”.)
Thanks for the great day to the owner dieVerena, our company Yurn and snabbitsocker, the folks we met and my wife and cache partner stefmaus.
PS: I didn’t link the caches or the cache list here to make the search as fun for everyone as it was for us without any spoilers.
[...] our first powercaching session in Darmstadt (read about it here) we learned that we can’t keep everything in mind we wanted to note in [...]