Hibernation

It has been so long since I posted here, sorry for the delay but we have had so much going on that I just have not had much time.

There have been changes at work, leading to my working hours being changed, so I now do shift work and a lot of evening work.

We have moved to a newer apartment. We now have a much bigger balcony and our own private sauna in the apartment (pictures to follow at a later date).

Sadly our pets passed away at the start of the year, although we did not stay petless very long and now have two cute female pet rats (trying to teach them to find caches, but they are more interested in playing).

Before all this happened we did manage to take a short trip to England at the end of September and do a few of the local caches, we would like to thank the English cachers for some very good caches.

Yes, Mrs Geocacher still managed to find berries in England

"Erm, sorry are we suppose to be caching?
Well I thought I saw one run in here and hide"

Well not long after our return all the above happenings started, and added to that the winter arrived.
This is when we went into hibernation, with temperatures dropping to minus 21 degrees Celsius on most days  we put all our caching plans on hold, we had worked out some winter caches to do, but even those got passed over as it was far too cold for us.
Along with the freezing temperatures came the snow, and I for one have not seen this much snow in a long time.

Clearing the snow from the canteen roof
(isn't our uniform wonderful, at least it is warm)

Just a small pile of snow from the canteen roof

So finally around April the winter came to an end, and this is when we came out of hibernation.
Having moved about 6 miles (10 km) from where we were living in the city, to a suburb just outside, and an area we had not done any caching before, we thought we would use it to get our Geocaching eye back in focus, after all it would be a crime to not hunt the new caches on our own doorstep.
It did not take long for our Geocaching eye to zero in and we were soon able to log our first caches of the season. Sadly I did not have my camera with me so I do not have any pictures of that first hunting expedition.


Finally a really nice weekend arrived and we decided to visit Geocaching Mummy, plus work out a nice caching route to do on our way there. Whilst looking at potential caches for the route we came across one amusing log entry, it is in Finnish so here is the translation as best as I can do it, to set the scene for you here in Finland they have grill kiosks, they are kind of like roadside food caravans in England, but they are permanent constructions and are like small shops selling basic supplies, and they are not only on the roadside they are also in the towns as well.
So the log entry went something like this.

Cacher goes to search a cache but is unable to because of GeoMuggles NATSBOG.
Cacher sees a Grill Kiosk near the cache location and decides that he is hungry and will get something to eat.


Hungry Cacher to man behind the counter: "I would like a pizza please"
Man behind counter: "Don't have"
Hungry Cacher: "What do you mean? It says on the menu"
Man behind the counter: "Pizza maker gone shopping"
Hungry cacher: "Well a Kebab then"
Man behind the counter: "6 euros"
Hungry cacher: "but your sign says it is 4 euros"
Man behind the counter: "Yeah that's an add"
Hungry cacher: " OK and then 1 milk please"
Man behind the counter: "Don't have"
Hungry cacher: "but you do, I can see a 1 liter carton in your fridge"
Man behind the counter: "Don't have, thats empty"
So the Hungry cacher left without buying anything.


Any way we added this cache to our trip, but like the Hungry cacher we was unable to catch it as once again it was NATSBOG.
We had a lovely journey and logged every cache that we were able to search for, a few places were NATSBOG, but that was not surprising as it was a wonderfully hot sunny day.
We did however manage to log one cache that was on a bridge. "O wow a bridge cache, big deal" I hear you cry.
This concrete bridge is almost 100 years old and even had a battle fought on it during the Finnish civil war, these days not much traffic flows over the bridge as it has a 4T weight limit, and so a new bridge has been built close by.

The view across the bridge

View from one side of the bridge

View from the other side of the bridge, with the replacement bridge in the near distance

Our next adventure took place one evening.

Seeing as it was a nice evening and we did not have much to do we decided to go out and find a couple of caches that had managed to escape us in the past. The first that we headed for we had tried several times before and for one reason or another we had never been able to hunt it down, muggles, weather or some other thing getting in our way.

The cache was part of a series and this part was a puzzle cache, although we do not normally do puzzle caches this one was different as it is part of the series and the puzzle gets solved as you do the other parts, so a kind of multicache puzzle cache combo.

Here we was again back at the final location, would we this time bring and end to this most tricky of caches.

Arriving at the location we were once again faced with muggles, but they seemed to be preoccupied with their own activities, so the hunt was on.

Hunting high and low, ducking muggles and pretending we was taking photos of the scenery, we searched and searched, searching the same places several times over, when at long last the cry went up "FOUND IT", yes the cache had at last been hunted to it's hiding place and trapped.

Finally the cache is caught

So who was the lucky finder?

 

Yes Mrs Geocacher found it

Yes yes we get it, you found it clever girl, and not a berry in sight yet

The other caches that evening went the same way, although Mr Geocacher had his share of finds, this was the most pleasing having been such a tricky find.

Now we are gearing up for the rest of the summer, and Geocache command center is ready.

Hope you stayed awake through this rather long update, I will try and keep more up to date from here on in.

 

Updates

Well I had intended to update the blog on Monday, then again today, but it seems life had different plans for me.
First of all we got a notification of a part of a geo-puzzle we are following, so of course we had to go and do that, so there went Monday, then Tuesday (today) my PC decided that it was going to play up and I had to spend the evening fixing and updating that.
So I am only going to post a short update for now.
Lets go back (way back, no further back than that) lets go back to last Friday, as I had said we were getting ready for the weekend, well we found ourselves with some extra time, so we thought we would go and start our caching weekend, and visit a cache we had previously been too and been unlucky.
This time we were certain we knew exactly where the cache was, but alas we were wrong.
Although we was in the correct location and did eventualy find the cache.

No this is not some horrible lake monster, just Mr Geocacher on the hunt

So then we moved two other caches, where at one we was lucky and found a travel bug that we were totally unaware was there, also at this location Mr Geocacher decided to place his very wet and now useless socks in the waste bin, we were however successful at all three caches and started our weekend off well, returning home in time for our Friday evening sauna.

The sign says it all

Now for those of you who might not know about the great Finnish past time of sauna (pronounced sow (as in cow)-nah not saw-nah), this is where you strip off naked, and go to sit in a small room lined with wood.

The entrance to the sauna

Inside there is a stove with warm coals (the stove is heated by wood or like in our building electricity, and these days you can get the really fake infrared, there is also a smoke sauna, but this is a totally different experience, and one Mr Geocacher has yet to try).
You sit in this small room that is heated between 70 and 100 degrees C, and from time to time you throw water onto the warm coals, YES even in the electric sauna (I know, I know these Finns are crazy, but you just have to do it, it is great), although not in the fake infrared ones, now some Finns will slap themselves on the back with birch twigs, this we have both done of course (although not together), and find this is not for us.

The Hot room, notice the wooden benches where you can either sit or lay down and gently boil yourself

Now assuming you are boiled enough you are then supposed to run naked from the sauna and jump into the lake, this we do on occasion when we visit geocaching mummy (more about her in a later post), we just normally shower and go back to the apartment to enjoy our after sauna beer and cider.
This done we then eagerly awaited Saturday.