Tour Day

Monday, August 17, 2015          trip odometer 3,980 miles          Still in Everett, WA

Today was the day I had signed up to tour Geocaching HQ! At least, I thought I’d signed up, but received no confirmation e-mail and arrived to find my name was not on their list. However, a cancellation left a spot open and I gladly took it.

In actual fact, except for a couple of tour people and one or two others, Groundspeak was closed today for a well-deserved comp day after their weekend labors. The ‘tour’ consisted of only the lobby, but glass walls allowed glimpses of practically the entire space and even out through the wide windows. It looks like a lovely work space, spacious and with only that lobby lacking a window.

There were some great displays including the actual travel bug that went to the ISS which I totally forgot to discover! A widescreen wall television displays, in real time, views of Google Earth showing random logs from caches around the world that are being found (or, for people like me, logged) at that moment. Most of the ones that came up were in Europe because it was after 6 p.m. there. This television is hypnotic. Much better than anything I’ve seen on cable in a long, long time. The lackeys present included Paulie their permanent tour guide. She explained what they do there, and mentioned that they are always hiring new website developers. Dream job! She very clearly explained how we can give feedback to Groundspeak and how important it is, gave a brief history of the company, then answered questions. We had plenty of time afterwards to look at all the displays and they even gave us a free giftie with the Groundspeak equivalent of a Pathtag. I bought several exclusive items from the HQ store including a coffee mug from their corporate lunchroom, the Signal Café, and the obligatory “Geocaching HQ. Been there. Logged that.” T-shirt.

After that, I set out on the HQ Geotour. Apparently Fremont has declared themselves an “Imagi-nation,” not a part of Seattle or any larger political entity. I’m sure this does not exempt them from paying taxes to said entities, but it is an acknowledgement that this is a laid-back, artsy community of the type I haven’t seen since the early 70’s. Street art, and I mean sculptures, plaques and rock patterns set in the sidewalks, architecture, and functional items made beautiful as well as useful, abound. Solstice Square had patterns set around a ‘sun garden’ that I bet align on the Solstices, and plaques depicting symbols associated with celestial phenomena from cultures around the world set into the concrete or the garden retaining wall. Walking around finding caches, I saw shops (including a folk music emporium I couldn’t resist), eateries, mini-parks, two nurseries, antique dealers, natural food stores… I could totally live here.

The Geotour was designed to introduce people to this area, and is themed on the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” as part of Fremont’s declaration is that this is the center of the Universe. (Not the dumbest thing politicians have ever declared, alas; and mostly harmless.)

My first find was one I must have walked past a half-dozen times during the event: A lovely fake rock in a planting circle just off the bike path behind where the food trucks were Saturday. The logs (two books) were very full despite having been replaced less than a week ago.

After that, I could not resist the Golgafrinchan Telephone Sanitizers’ puzzle cache. Thanks to NOT overthinking things, I opened it first try. The location was a sort of large porch or covered patio displaying items from history, including a pay phone. The adjacent café had placed tables as well, and I brazenly used the telephone five feet from a table full of muggles. How would they know I was not using it for its original purpose?

I figured I’d climb the two blocks to the Library but it was not yet open, so I continued climbing the additional three blocks to the Troll. This hill is so steep ridges cross the sidewalk, apparently for the purpose of slowing water when it rains and catching debris it carries.

I saw the Troll during the Lab Cache hunt. When the Aurora Street bridge was built, it appears a contractor with cement leftover and a sense of humor decided to sculpt a troll under the end of the bridge with the leftover concrete. Life-sized, assuming trolls are twenty feet tall when in “loaf position.” I was afraid I’d have to climb over, around and behind the critter like the dozen or so kids there were doing, but the cache description said trolls like to pile their droppings neatly and they look (understandably) like lumps of concrete. With these clues and a little observation I was able to casually grab this one and sign the log.

This was the closest I was going to get to the Post Office cache, and it was halfway down the hill, as closely as I could tell. This was a seven-block walk, and, to my puzzlement, there was no post office anywhere around. I leaned on a newspaper kiosk and pondered. Then I noticed two things: the newspaper box was locked with a combination lock (very rare) and was displaying an ancient copy of the “New York Times.” Moments later I had the cache open. The “post office” designation was because it was full of postcards neatly sorted by destination. They are meant to be carried to a cache closer to their destination and recipient, and I extracted one bound for Pennsylvania. I won’t it get all the way to Lansdowne, but I will get it 95% of the way and place it in a TB hotel or other often-visited cache to be carried the rest of the way.

After the long walk, I chose “Within Reach” as my next cache goal. As closely as I could tell, this was very near the Starbucks I’d seen Saturday. This was not the original Starbucks (1^st and Pike, another part of town) but it was in Seattle and was as close as I was going to get. I enjoyed an icy coffee delight, a scone and a banana. Lunch! Afterwards I went diagonally across the intersection to an amazing metal sculpture of a leaf curling a good ten feet above the rippling ‘stem’ that dove in and out of the concrete. It forms a totally whimsical bike rack. The cache was obvious at the bottom rear of the leaf part, but there was no convenient number sequence provided in the cache description. Instead, a series of stones set in the sidewalk below could be interpreted as the combination, which I did successfully.

Now it was back to the library, but there I was thwarted. The description said to go in and look for WP1. I strolled the entire library, from vestibule to computer carrels, and saw nothing. Only when I got to the children’s section did I spot a large cardboard W on top of a set of shelves. The books on top were all by authors starting with W, but it was unique in the library and might well be my clue. So, on the shelves below I searched for P, authors starting with P. The cubbyhole I found contained exclusively Beatrix Potter in the familiar 4 by 4 editions, and behind them was a box wrapped in Victorian paper. It was neither the cache nor a clue, just a spacer to keep the tiny books ‘faced.’ After hours of reflection I think I should have looked in her first book, “Peter Rabbit,” and the coordinates may have been written inside.

But I was tired, footsore, and my energy reserves are not what they once were. I decided the other three caches in the series were too far to walk, especially since I had one failure and would not complete the series anyway. I drove back to the hotel, making stops for gas and minor purchases, then immediately took an hour-and-a-half nap. This restored my fuzzy brain to its more normal operational levels.