Saturday,
August 15, 2015 Seattle, WA
I popped out of bed early, showered
off ground-in dust from two states, shoveled in breakfast and some horrible
coffee, and allowed plenty of time to get to the Block Party by 11, party time!
Of course, things went wrong right away. I had no street address for Geocaching
Headquarters, and programmed the event coordinates into Minerva. Unfortunately,
Minerva is set for degrees/minutes/seconds, not decimal degrees that geocachers
use. After twenty miles, we were diverted onto a highway heading due east. That
was obviously wrong. I canceled navigation and used the Garmin and its compass
arrow to go the remaining ten miles. It’s not quite as bad in a city as it is
in a rural setting, but I still ended up circling blocks and taking streets
that suddenly veered the wrong way. When the distance readings showed about 300
yards I began to look for parking and found an indoor lot with an
insert-quarters box, a typical arrangement in Seattle.
For a seaport, the city is very
hilly and I had to go several blocks, downhill all the way, until I spotted a
street statue, a grouping of several people… most of them wearing Geocaching
t-shirts. Heartened, I crossed there and spotted the crowd half-a-block down. I
had arrived. Really arrived. In
moments I was threading my way through throngs of folks wearing geocaching
shirts, carrying backpacks with achievement patches and tracking numbers, and I
spotted Signal the Frog looming over a clump of youngsters wearing
crayon-colored Signal paper crowns. Long lines, separated alphabetically,
stretched in front of the reservation pavilion. Music played, and I got out my
blue notebook and began jotting tracker numbers. Some fellows from Germany had
necklaces of jingling trackables, and handed me a computer-printed sheet of
their numbers.
At the head of the line I was handed
a lanyard, with a combination name-badge and guidebook to the party; including a
schedule of events and a map of Solstice Square, which runs diagonally through
the entire block and down to the waterfront. I was also given a drawstring
backpack containing my pre-ordered items, the event t-shirt and geocoin. Then I
was on my own, with the day before me. First order of business, to sign the event log, which was a
tall blow-up ground balloon shaped like the number 15 on a ‘log’ base. Two “lackeys,”
the oddly proud title of Groundspeak employees, handed out sharpies and I
signed and drew my signature rabbit. Then I joined the line for the HQ
Geocache, the last of my goals of the most prestigious caches in the world.
This moved slowly, but eventually I signed the log.
I wandered down the line of
Rubbermaid storage bins filled with trackables from all over the world, and
paused at the Tapsnap tent for a free photo of me and Nermal. This may end up
being the only picture with me in it from this whole trip. Then I went to the
evil cache container display, and the Block Party activity tent next door.
“Lab caches?” asked the pleasant
lackey there, and I walked away with a sheet detailing eight lab caches I
thought I’d never have time for. I consulted the map, and saw “Rest Rooms”
clearly marked on one side. Yep. I trod down a series of steps (hilly,
remember?) to the row of portapotties and made my mark.
Ice cream was the closest of the
food vendors, which were a long line of trailers lining a lot marked “Adobe
Parking Only.” (Google HQ is the next building west. This is the neighborhood
of Geektown.) And I shortly was strolling up the vendor street having a tactile
experience with two scoops of rich chocolate ice cream. All the usual vendors
were here, plus Podcacher and a number of local organizations for caching and
related activities. Once the ice cream was gone, I found a hydration station
and guzzled two cone cups of water. Then I bought a sports water bottle from
GpProxy and didn’t have to worry about hydration again. Later I bought a few
souvenirs from the Geocaching vendor booth and took more pictures in places
where the crowds had thinned. During the vendor lane stroll I actually ran into
Keith Petrus, editor of “FTF Geocacher Magazine,” because I could not resist
signing a ukulele which was his souvenir item of the Block Party.
Back up the stairs, taking in a few ‘cacher
stories’ on the stage and sharing one of my own, then off to tour the museum
tent. While there I spoke to a lackey about what they will do in the future
instead of more Block Parties, and she mentioned the possibility of a permanent
space in HQ for visitors, and a greater presence at mega-events around the
world. She was also very, very helpful about tips for my HQ tour which I’d
signed up for, set for Monday morning.
But I noticed one fellow, scribbling
on a familiar-looking sheet while staring at one display. Was it possible one
of the lab caches was in here? That was it for my restraint. Moments later I
was scanning my sheet of Lab Caches and was programming one into my Garmin. For
the next few hours I tromped up and down those hills, crossing streets,
following and sometimes temporarily teaming with other cachers. At one point we
went into the parking garage under HQ, penetrating far into its dim depths,
down in the private sub-level, to be given UV lights and led into a pitch-black
subterranean forest, looking for our clue word. We found other clue words on lines of
laundry, on the side of a building across the harbor looking through borrowed
binoculars, on one of two dozen globes set up in a little park, on one of
hundreds of plastic balls in a big treasure chest, and more. Yes, I persisted
and found all eight. And, no, I forgot to claim my prize when I asked the event
lackey the link for entering the clue words and making them official cache finds.
A quick sandwich from the Chopstix
vendor (what a fusion… pulled pork Oriental style) and the day was over. I am
so, so glad I had the notion to come to this event, the last Block Party. Yes,
it was inconvenient to make the time, and expensive during a year I really can’t
afford much more expense. And the actual trip, eight days of pretty much hell
with a few nuggets of wonder, ended with me here, in the place I wanted to be,
at the time I wanted to be here. It was fun, and it was worth it.
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