Part two coming soon.....

Sorry for the delay in posting part two - believe it or not most of my nights have been spent logging the caches - the only problem with such an epic caching session is writing the logs afterwards!

Sure it would be easy to rock through and put "TFTC" on every page - but these caches have all been placed with care and consideration by their owners, and in return for their hard work it is only fair that there is a least a little bit of detail and care placed into the found logs.

Anyway - SandipantsNZ is also working on the video editing and photos - so at some point in the coming week these should be uploaded here too.

Have to say - anyone who has happened upon the blog due to either following one of the QR codes we left, or from one of the cache logs on GC.com - WELCOME - and please do check back for the full story and to see some pics and video from the day itself!

Steve

(PhantasmNZ)

The Day - Part One

Well, it's been over a week now since we finished the Cache-A-Tron raid - and all good intentions of getting the story online have slipped a little! - In fact the 164 caches we got have still not been logged by most of us. That said, we had an awesome time, and it's something we'll remember for a very long time.

The story starts the day before... when we found a few more cachers wanted to join the crew - SP HP MP, and the husband and wife Merlin's Beard team both decided to join the crew - unfortunately though, our custom geocoins had already been "minted" - so whilst they could join the party, they couldn't quite be immortalised in the same way!

The night before was filled with all those little jobs that should have already been done! - Finalising the cache list (using GSAK - by far the best geocaching app on the planet), and using this to provide GPX files for my Garmin Oregon 450, Magellan Explorist and another export that was fed into another awesome bit of software - Tyre - which took the ordered cache list, and turned it into a waypoint by waypoint route file for the TomTom.

Furbies printed out our labels (we decided labels was the best way to go to quickly log our finds, and we included the QR code on them for good measure (maybe one day somebody we don't know might read this blog!!!!) Fortunately we got confirmation that SP HP MP and Merlins Beard were coming before the labels were printed!

Finally the cache sheets were printed and stapled - 16 pages of notes, in cache order, with hints, and distilled descriptions (and clues from logs) - thanks to Loz47 for her "homework" on these - along with size Difficulty/Terrain and cache owner (always useful to know to look for patterns, favourite hide types etc). These log sheets turned out to be an absolutely vital asset without which we would have simply failed. for ours we used the really great "road trip" GSAK macro.

Then it was off to bed - probably later than was sensible considering the day ahead - alarm set and in what seemed like minutes, it was time to get up again!

The crew all arrived at my place in West Auckland, and we loaded up the chilly bins of water, food and other essential supplies, swapped walkie talkie frequencies (merlins_beard were in a second vehicle) and hit the road.

The cruise down to Paerata (near Pukekohe)allowed time for reflection on the task ahead, and the setting of ground rules - particularly around our "hydration break" rules - as our on-board nurse MissFeez was on her day off, and not prepared to look after anyone with dehydration or sunstroke!

We also prepped our timer (max 5 minutes per stop) and checked out cache list for notes on the first cache - nano - needs tweezers - "take the strain" - and arrived at GZ looking for the fake wire tensioner we knew was out there.....

The Custom Trackables

Our custom Geocoins came from a discussion with well known Auckland cacher Zork V at the European mini-meet at Mission Bay a week or so before. Zork is well known for his creative custom coins and TBs, and along with Kev of the Geocachers.co.nz geostore, have been responsible for a number of small run custom trackables,

Plan was hatched to have a custom coin for each of the CacheATroners to leave along the trail. As the design for the coin developed though, it became apparent these trackables were destined to hopefully lead a more interesting trackable life - rather than have a mission to travel far and wide, or go to somewhere special, these geocoins want to continue the tradition of "number runs" long after the Hamilton raid is a distant memory.

The coins' mission is to travel to as many caches in as short a space of time (each 24 hrs) as possible - that means "visiting" every cache along the way, and, to keep on moving, being left in a cache, rather than be kept by the cacher at the end of the day. It was soon clear that these coins needed to come with us, and visit all the caches of the day, and then be released into the wild at some point a little later on (I know this kind of breaks the mission before it's even released - but hey we had custom coins made - the elast we can do it make sure we're first to log visits!!)

Only disappointment with the coins is that in the rush to get them made, we didn't actually create a "proof" first - so the QR code (that links to this website) actually didn't come out to well in the dye-sublimation/heat transfer process. We'll probably have to apply labels over the fuzzy QR codes - but at the end of the day, having custom coins is awesome!

Expect to see the coins around the place some time soon!

We did it!!!

Full stats to follow - but we completed 164 caches in about 22.5 hours (from first to last cache)

Not as many caches as the Auckland cache raid managed - bit we were never going to get that many in such a spread out caching zone.

We're really happy with our results, in the end it was lots of fun, as well as being just a little bit tiring!

Thanks to the Hamilton geocaches for some awesome caches and Thanks to the whole Cacheatron team - we did it!!

Leg 1 complete

Well we've finished leg 1 25mins late (though we had an I scheduled fast food break )

Stats are 73 out of 79 so far - one injury of note (sandipants's toe) and all in good spirits so far

Yeeeehhaaaaaaaa

Here we are... On the road 1

2.5 hours in - 20 out of 22 caches found.

Teams in good spirits and we are hitting out finds in less than out 5 min deadline (apart from 2!)

Only 2 injuries so far too barbed wire to the head for sp hp mp and scratch for misfeez

1 More Sleep!

Thought I'd jump on the bandwagon (or should that be blogwagon?) and write a contribution to this thing too...

Now 1 day out we're all starting to mentally (and physically) prepare ourselves for the mission ahead. I think the longest i've ever done continuously caching would be around 12hrs and this will be double that. I do have faith in our team though, after a couple of recent reqs (much shorter than what is ahead) we've got the whole 'read out the description, what are we looking for?, where are we looking?, sign log and out of there' thing pretty down pat. The boys shoud be creating some stickers for us today to stick onto the logs so that will speed up the process that end too.

Over the last couple of days my task at hand was to trawl through the geocaches on our 'hit list' and pull out any useful info that will help us get the cache in hand as quickly as possible. This included looking at the recorded size of the cache, the description (and any hidden clues), the hint and a quick scroll through the logs. Pretty much pulling out anything that told us what the cache was, where it was and how to get to it/extract it. Have to say this was quite an interesting process, some had so much info that we should be in and out, well below our 5min limit while others may prove to be a bit more difficult but that's all part of the fun! Hopefully multiple sets of eyes searching will be a definite advantage.

Furbies and I went to visit Zork yesterday to collect our specially made event coins. They look pretty cool. We've all got one each and we're going to hold on to them for the mission and log them as visiting every cache that we visit while out on our mission, before setting them off and asking others to take them on similar missions. Hopefully they'll get a fair few caches under their belts :) Steve (PhantasmNZ) did an awesome job designing them and Zork an awesome job printing them out onto white coated alluminum for us. If you're needing anything made/printed (including replacement travel bug tags) I recommend that you contact Zork as he's always happy to help out.

I think today's task will be scrolling through the last of the puzzles that MissFeez and PhantasmNZ have been working so hard on over the last couple of weeks and double checking that there aren't any more that need solving. I was surprised to see so many in our 'hit list' so they've definitely been hard at work solving them :) I'll then be off to collect a chillybin so that we can have a good supply of liquids in the car (think I'll be stocking up on the V.) and help MissFeez out with some cooking/baking so we've got some snacks along the way. Then I'm thinking an early night will be on the cards so that I can stockpile some of that sleep stuff...

Bring it on I say! :)

~Loz47