The other weekend I embarked on another historical geocaching hunt commemorating the Battle of Brooklyn, beginning first at Fort Hamilton Park, which is easily one of my favorite areas because of its proximity to the Verrazano Bridge. A huge fog was rolling in from the Narrows and covered half the bridge while I was pulling off the exit to Hamilton. It made for a spectacular view, so I took a quick snapshot from the car:

There's something in the mist!!

The British forces had landed near here for the purpose of flanking the Americans from the east, effectively surrounding them on all sides… except for the north, where George Washington made his escape with his army virtually intact to Manhattan and beyond. Tee hee, almost had us there, didn’t ya lobsterbacks?

After finding a place to park, I got out and began my search. The geocache I was looking for is in fact known as a mystery cache, and in order to find its actual hiding spot, I had to first find several clues located throughout the Brooklyn area, then put it all together to calculate the GPS coordinates to the cache. While looking around I decided to take a short walk and took a few more pictures of the famous bridge. I love this area.

Like something out of a Stephen King novel...

You could almost hear the foghorn in the background...

After finishing my walk, I found my first clue in front of a cannon inside the park, and jotted down the details in my iPod. It was now time to find the next clue, which was located in Bensonhurst at the site of the Liberty Pole.

That's a lot of balls.

Bensonhurst is also famous for its 18th Avenue stretch (among other things), but I was on a different mission today. I parked my car again and took a quick walk down the road before finding myself at New Utrecht Reformed Church. The famous Liberty Pole towered in front of it:

Wow, that is a long pole.

The flagpole here marked the spot of a Liberty Pole that was installed on Evacuation Day, when the British finally gave up and left — November 25, 1783. While many other flags were erected, this one, however, was the sixth in a line of uninterrupted successions on this site, making it the ONLY Liberty Pole in continuous use since the Revolution. And of course, it also contained the second clue too. Once I found what I was looking for, it was now off to find the next clue, at the oldest mile marker in New York City. I only had to walk a few blocks before finding it, curiously enough, at Milestone Park. The original stone marker had been removed for safekeeping, but the mileage information it displayed had been recorded on a bronze plaque and set into the angled top of a granite pedestal at the center of the park. The milestone, installed around 1741, marked the junction of the Old New Utrecht Road (today’s 18th Avenue) and the King’s Highway. The clue required a calculation of the distance to Deny’s Ferry, which only this marker could provide, so I made my calculation, then watched as others around the park settled in at tables to either play chess (or do other stuff I’m probably better off not knowing about.) No need to dawdle now, I still had two more stops to go, so it was back to the car to take a quick hop to the Flatlands.

Let's see, Deny's Ferry, Deny's Ferry...

Once I arrived at the Flatlands, I had to find a marker located at the Flatlands Reformed Church, a pretty clapboard building that stood adjacent to an ancient cemetery. I was now on the same spot where the British began its flanking maneuver to Jamaica Pass. General Cornwallis had also marched through here in command of one of the columns, and George Washington himself had traveled the same road a few years after the war.

Pretty!

A tree pushes through two tombstones.

After taking a quick walk through the cemetery, I went back to one of the markers and easily got the clue I needed. One more clue and I would have everything I need to calculate the final coordinates to the cache. This time I had to continue following the path of the British’s night march all the way to the Claesen Wycoff House Museum, an ancient farmhouse that was also used as a guard house for the British. Today it is now the oldest landmark in New York City.

Just so you know, the car wash in the background wasn't around during the time the British marched through here.

I saw no place to park this time, but there was a McDonald’s next door, so I quickly turned in there and then got out to see the old farm house. My last clue was located on one of the entrance gates, so it only took a few minutes of scanning before I found the final piece of the puzzle. At long last! After jotting down the info I needed, I went back to Mickie-D’s and ran into an unexpected surprise:

WHAT THE ____!??

MY CAR!!!!! It was just about to be towed away when I came back. I raced to the tow truck driver and demanded to know what the ^$*% he was doing. He kept writing on his sheet, then jabbed his pen at the sign I had parked in front of. The sign indicated that only patrons of McDonald’s could park here.

“Dude, I was only here for 5 minutes! Are you seriously gonna do this?”

“You’ll have to stop by this address,” he jabbed his pen again at the address on the sheet he was writing on, “and pay the fine before your vehicle can be released again.”

“Dude, I’M STANDING RIGHT HERE. Why do you have to go off somewhere when we can resolve this now?!?” I also told him who I worked for, and was amazed that it didn’t faze him in the least. Then I realized why: I was dealing with a privately paid tow truck driver this time. He must have been hiding behind the restaurant and went to tow my ride as soon as I went next door. Just like that.

At that point I seriously wondered whether I should just grab his head and slam it down on the steering wheel, tear up the sheet that had all my info on it, then hit the lever to lower my car so I could make my escape. I was sure I could get away fast enough before anyone realized what was happening. I started to reach out and…

“Look, I’ll tell you want, there’s an ATM machine inside. If you pay cash now, I’ll drop the car and you can go.”

I thought about it and decided I was better off just paying. I shouldn’t have had to pay to begin with since I hadn’t seen the sign, but it was clearly there and he had me dead to rights. Besides, I had already insulted his mother, his sister, and his last three girlfriends, so I acquiesced and paid the fine rather than watch him drive off with my baby.

$100. Plus city tax.

I went inside and also ordered fries so I could break the change I needed. Ironically enough I ended up being a patron after all, so in a way I had just paid for the most expensive order of fries I have ever had in my life.

Needless to say, I am boycotting McDonald’s for probably the next ten years now. Park THIS, Ronald.

My harrowing experience was finally over once the tow truck weenie unshackled my poor baby and drove away, and after settling down, I put together the coordinates I needed to drive to the geocache. As it turns out, it was hidden somewhere in Prospect Park. Oh boy.

I only had maybe 30 minutes more of daylight left to make a quick search for the cache, but for some reason half the park was blockaded by barriers today. I was gonna have to hoof it at least a half of mile just to where X marked the spot, so I decided to just drive around the barriers and park on the grass somewhere.

And of course, NYPD shows up 2 minutes after I had gotten out of the car to start my search.

Are these people following me around or something? I ran back to the car again and talked to the cop for a few minutes, who had this issue about me parking illegally on the grass in the middle of a city park for some reason. Yeesh, people are so ridiculously green these days…

She however, unlike that stupid evil tow truck weenie, let me go, having acknowledged my supreme awesomeness. I should have told her about him too, but I didn’t want to press my luck. I had probably already violated 15 different traffic laws just getting here from the Flatlands, so mum’s the word for now, eh?

Yes, I admit it, I honked.

Unfortunately my encounter with NYPD forced me to cut my search short, and I had no choice but to go home empty handed. Ah well. :(

On the upside, it did give me something to write about.

So aside from the poison ivy rashes (which reared its ugly head once I came home), I had a nice time in Pennsylvania for a few days.

I stayed at the Fulton Steamboat Inn, probably THE place to stay at if you’re ever visiting this area (and I don’t merely say that because of the sweet hotel girl I met here.) As soon as you come near you can hear folksy music playing in the background, and the hotel is especially a treat to the eyes at night:

Look at all the purdy lights!

Awesome rooms too:

LOVE

After catching a bluegrass show the first night, it was off to go geocaching for the remainder of my trip there. One of the things that I should have realized about this pastime is that when you go outdoors, you expose yourself to unpleasant, outdoorsy things. Like say, poison ivy.

And course, only me, would catch a BAD case of poison ivy by looking around for a geocache at a Walmart parking lot. Yes, seriously. A week later the rashes have left me weeping in a corner for several days now, while wishing death and destruction on the idiot douche monkey cache owner for hiding this thing in a jungle of this VILE, EVIL WEED. Seriously, who expects to run into poison ivy at WALMART? Oy.

I did fare better on future cache hunts though, the most rewarding of which was hidden at a covered bridge here:

Wow... it really covers!

You would thinking finding a cache here would be easy right? Well, aside from almost getting mowed down by passing cars who liked to drive 300 miles an hour over the bridge, when I realized where I had to look…

Errmm...

Are you kidding me?

Oh boy. There was a tiny ledge underneath the bridge, but the only way to get to it was to swing under by holding one of the wooden beams. I’m telling you, I came THISCLOSE to falling into the water. I was sure the wood was going to give way and I would wind up spending the night at a hospital with splinters and pneumonia. Somehow though I pulled it off, grabbed the cache while holding on to one of the beams, and swung out. Behold:

Who does your Daddy work for now, punk?

Inside were several items known as swag (trade items geocachers leave behind) and a geocoin that came from British Columbia, which I took as my reward. :-D Due to their nature though I can’t hold on to it, so I’ll need to drop the coin off at another cache soon, where it will continue its worldwide journey.

After that near brush with death and swimming with the fishes, I decided to avoid the more riskier caches and opt for those that took me to various areas around Lancaster, preferably those places that didn’t require bushwhacking my way through the forests where evil, dangerous things like groundhogs lurked. Filtering those out, I ended up finding one near a game farm:

What are YOU lookin' at?

And one near an Amish store, where I bought a homemade sausage pretzel from a pretty Amish babe. Mmmmmm, mmmmmm, MMMM! She can do Rumspringa with me anytime.

But anyhoo, *ahem*, I have to say, geocaching is definitely providing some helpful fodder for my blogging, primarily because it leads me to places I normally wouldn’t go on my own. Usually I’m just driving around aimlessly when I’m unsure of what to do, (which is pretty much the case for me 90 percent of the time,) so it’s nice to finally come across a hobby that can provide some much needed focus to my otherwise meandering and boring life.

I have more pictures from the trip by the way, so if you’d like to see them you can check them out at my gallery or on Flickr. Enjoy!

While I was researching GPS devices to get for my car, I inadvertently came upon a wondrous thing called geocaching.

The idea behind it is pretty simple: use a GPS device to discover hidden caches around the world that were placed by geocaching enthusiasts. Once you find a geocache, you can sign the logbook to note that you were there, and also post a field note online to indicate your discovery of the cache, and your experiences in finding it too if you so desire. People also sometimes leave items that you can take with you, as long as you replace it with one of equal or greater value.

It’s the kind of hobby that for me would be an answer to prayer. It was becoming a ritual for me to spend my free time by either gluing myself to the Internet in the vain hope that I might finally get a tweet from some smoking hot virginal babe professing her undying love to me, or playing Nancy Drew mystery games and watching movies from Netflix while chowing down on Cheetos. I needed something that would put me out there and give me a reason to move around again, instead of just driving aimlessly around New York with a violent urge to mow down anyone who got in my way.

There were many fascinating geocaches in Lake Placid too, so much that I’m kicking myself for not finding out about it sooner while I was up there, but fortunately, there are tons of local caches in my area to choose from, and I decided my very first geocaching experience would involve finding one hidden in a lamp post somewhere in town.

So off I went for my very first geocaching hunt, and in the dark, cold, pouring rain too! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I arrived at the location, then followed the steps to locate the right lamp post. I had to take a certain number of steps in various directions to find the correct spot, akin to finding buried treasure, and I was exhilarated. Even the bad weather couldn’t bring me down.

Except, I couldn’t find the cache. I looked and looked, retraced my steps, looked again, and still could not find a thing. I ended up looking at each lamp post within a 100 yards of me in addition to the one that was SUPPOSED to hold the cache, and apparently I was getting noticed, as people were starting to stare at me in curiosity as they walked by. I looked up after feeling around under one lamp post to see one group walking by and eyeing me in suspicion.

“Don’t worry, I’m the lamp post inspector, just here to make sure these lights are all working smoothly.” I made a satisfactory gesture as I knocked on the lamp post. They continued walking on.

Where the crap was this @#$% thing already, son-of-a…

So then a police car pulls up near me.

Oh Lord, please don’t tell me these numbnuts actually called the cops on me…

But fortunately it kept moving on. Whoooooo… man, I really have had just about enough of cops getting all up in my space lately too. The last thing I needed was to get yet another stupid ticket, or worse, wind up in jail because I don’t know how to keep my mouth shut for nothing.

Finally, after 30 minutes of getting drenched in the rain and learning how to breathe again after the cop scare, I gave up. I’m convinced somebody had stolen this cache, and that’s what I’m gonna go with, especially considering people had been posting online that this was one of the easiest caches they ever found too, so I’ll insist that the cache was really stolen and not accept the possibility that it was right under my nose all along, and only schmucky idiot buffoons like me would be incapable of finding it.

Sigh.

Ah well, tomorrow’s another day. I’m planning to head down to South Street for a relaxing afternoon by the water, and supposedly there’s another cache right by the seaport that I can go look for. Yeah, we’ll see. I bet that’s probably long gone by now too.