Friday 25 February 2011

How a frontyard cache kicked of a 9 hour nightadventure

As you might know, I am not a fan of frontyard caches. Nose around in other people’s frontyard while the neighbours are watching you from behind the windows is not particularly my cup of tea. Last autumn however, I got an invitation via Twitter from @adriaanfemke_a to visit their frontyard cache and have a nice autumn beer. This last offer was exactly what I needed to pay them a visit. Besides the beer offer, I was really curious who the team behind the very creative caches like ‘Van de kaart’ is.

After the first handshake, the topic quickly changed to quality caching. After exchanging some recommendations for quality caches, there it suddenly was: the offer I could not refuse. “In January we are going to do ‘Waardeloos!’, would you like to join?” Off course I would like to join! The cache is going to be archived end of March and according to many people this is currently the best cache in the Netherlands! I was already working on this cache myself but got stuck at the third exercise, which was pretty worthless. A friend of A&F had already cracked the challenges and got a start certificate for end of January. Yes, I was very happy to join them!


The weekend before our night adventure, we had a little preparation meeting, which ‘forced’ me again to find a frontyard cache but also gave me the opportunity to meet some other geocachers. Again, the meeting was a lot of fun and we all were excited for our night adventure. During the next week, there was some sad news, A&F could not join our adventure. So, a few days later, I found myself in the woods, temperature -4 degrees Celsius, only the light of 4 flashlights and with 3 people I just knew for a week… We walked 20 kilometers, taking 9 hours and a daylight trip the day after (we made some terrible mistakes) but we had worthlessly great fun! ‘Waardeloos!’ truly is one of the best caches in the Netherlands.

However, what most changed my mind is, is what a boring frontyard cache can start… So if you are planning to find a frontyard cache, make sure to announce your visit so you can meet the people behind the cache. Please keep in mind that I am not accountable for the fun you will have!

A&F have already found ‘Waardeloos!’ as well. The cache will be archived in March but cache creator Phoenix Night is already working on its successor ‘H!’. With great expectations my new geocaching friends and me are all looking forward…

Thursday 24 February 2011

Not only birds are tweeting

As you might have noticed, at his been silent on my blog for quite some time. I have experienced that blogging takes time, time I did not have. So I limited myself to 140 characters with a twitter account. Posting geocaching adventures in 140 characters appears to be fun, challenging and fast. So if you want to follow my geocaching adventures, follow @rhrnl on twitter.com!

But.... I have a little more spare time recently which I will use for some topics which need more than 140 characters. So for some 'easy reading' geocaching content or geocaching stuff to think about, keep your eyes on this blog! By the way, the best way to follow a blog, is by using a rss reader, like google reader.

When I signed up for my twitter account, I discovered that not only birds are tweeting. I was not the only geocacher active on twitter, half the geocaching community was already there! Twitter appears to be an excellent medium to keep posted on everything what is going on in the geocaching community. One of the most active geocachers on twitter is hollands most notorious cacher @barnynl. If you like his nagging sense of humour, simply follow him on twitter and you will be among the first to know who his next target in his fight against the decay (verloedering) of geocaching is. This way twitter appeared to be very good for my daily need of geocaching content!

Which interesting geocacher do you follow on twitter for your daily need of geocaching content? Share the fun with me and tweet me his accountname!

Tuesday 15 February 2011

Geocaching is going Social!


With the release of the beta maps late December, you got this pop up when you visited the beta maps for the first time. In this pop up there was the announcement of something called Geocaching Social, something I see a huge potential for and I already blogged about half November. With the recent release of new features on the site and loads of interesting features in the pipeline, Groundspeak is really moving forward with the geocaching.com website to get all potential out of it. I just hope that geocaching social turns out to be something like I have described in my November post or even something better!

Are you also curious what Geocaching Social is going to be or do you have your own opinion about what it should be or could add to the geocaching community? Write it down as a comment to this post or discuss it on the globalcaching forum (in Dutch). Big thanks to Hemma for referring to my blog!

Ps. I am having plans to revive my blog. More details will follow next week, so subscribe to the RSS feed already to keep updated!