Welcome to the AgeFive.com's Iron Chef Geocaching!
Central Coast Geocaching News:
 The Great Santa Cruz Geocache Turkey Bash was tons of fun! Shame on you if you missed it.
Iron Chef Geocaching website to get a make-over to be more small resolution screen friendly!
Check out ICGv3 to see what version 3 will look like (pretty much the same, but smallish).
New Schedule is put out for IC's planned geocache deployment.
Iron Chef and Company plant a few geocaches in Mission Bay Aquatic Park: Whale Poop Isle and Blackbeard's Booty
8/27/2001: Iron Chef begins to journal his adventures at
xenga.com/Iron_Chef/ for your reading pleasure (possible spoilers).
Iron Chef and Company plant a few new geocaches in SD: Gunpowder Point, Otay Wakes, Baja Coronado, & Pyle Driver
Iron Chef and Mr. Big Shoes visit MTRP Mystery Cache and took some Pictures and a Movie! What is Geocaching exactly?
Well... remember when you were a kid and you wanted to go dig up buried treasure and you thought that some
sprinkler irrigation piping was actually pirate loot? Its kind of like that, only less messy usually, and its not exactly in your backyard.
Geocaching is an opportunity to get off your duff and see the world. No, its an excuse to buy expensive equipment
and get off your duff and see the world. That's better. For a more elegant version of this, check out http://www.geocaching.com/faq.asp for the official FAQ and stuff. Good times.
Santa Cruz Geocacher ~ Iron Chef
As a wee lad I loved to go "caploring" (I couldn't speek very gud bak den). I thought it was great to go to places that I had
never been before and see things that were new to me. 16 years later the same still holds true. Then one day I magically stumble upon www.geocaching.com and I think to myself "Ah-ha! An
excuse to get out of my tiny cell!" So equipped with a Garmin Etrex Venture GPS Unit, I went out into the mountains of Santa Cruz with a few maps, some GPS coordinates, and a sense of
adventure. So far it has worked pretty well for me as I have found 134 caches. After the first 85 geocaches, I upgraded to a
new Garmin GPS V and am giving my Venture to my family so that they can get more involved.
Not only is hunting for geocaches good exercise, it gets you out to those great places that you would of otherwise
probably never known about. Sometimes you will find that there are parks or nature reserves right near your home that you never knew about. And considering that as of
14 October 2001 there were 7498 active caches in 72 countries, which means that there is probably one near you. If so, then once the weekend rolls around, go visit
one! You won't regret it. I promise. 
I want some more information about this wicked cool sport!
Check out www.geocaching.com which is the official home of
geocaching. There you can register yourself (its free!) and start checking out caches! You can even add specific caches to a "watch list" that can
send you an e-mail every time there is a change to that cache. Also another hobby for some people is the Degree Confluence Project, check it out at www.confluence.org.
Why the hell would you name yourself Iron Chef?
Hey! Don't be dissing Iron Chef! I call myself that because I like
watching the TV show Iron Chef on the Food Network. Iron Chef takes cooking and turns it into a sport and since Geocaching takes treasure
hunting and turns it into a sport I thought the name only appropriate. Plus when I visit a cache I leave a spoon that
was "borrowed" from UCSC's wonderful dining halls and some instant tea as a matter of habit. Plus, since my
name is "Iron Chef" I try to stick to the cooking theme whenever possible, thus the spoon and such. I leave
cooking equipment in the caches that I create and leave the spoons everywhere else! It makes the game just a bit more fun for me and hopefully more interesting for those people that visit the caches.
Cache In, Trash Out?
OK, and now for the environmentalist speech. When geocaching, always keep in mind that someone has to take
care of our world, so it might as well be those who use it the most. Thus, the  Cache In, Trash Out program. Its a nice thing to do, especially since the areas around some caches have assorted booze
bottles and whatnot littering the ground (not a lot of them, but just enough to make it visible). It is so easy to just take a plastic grocery bag with you and collect a bit of trash
while there. Even just removing a few bottles from careless people is a great help. Really. And conversely, don't pollute the area that you are exploring at! Everything that you take
to the cache site should be coming out with you (peeing on trees is the exception to the rule). Remember that if hunting for a cache results in extensive damage to the environment
around the cache then the cache owner will most likely remove it. So just cache in, and take some trash out with you when you go. Momma Earth would be proud of you for doing it.
|
