De-caching the Geocache

The battle of the GPS units. Okay, I own one too many GPS units, I have the handheld one on the left and the Palm OS unit on the right. The Garmin iQue 3600 on the right has all the bells and whistles for terrestrial navigation but I'll probably end up selling it and sticking to the Garmin eTrex Vista on the left.

The reason I'm driving with the GPS units is I was headed towards a geocache or I should say, a geocache not-wannabe. You see there was a geocacher that placed a cache near the entrance to Kekahakai State Park and wanted it removed. He emailed me a year ago and I never spent the time to stop and look for it.

Here's what he emailed me:

I made a huge mistake in attempting to hide a geocache on the Big Island. I am contacting users there in hopes of having it removed and the site done away with. I am using geocaching.com to contact as many people as I can to assist in destroying the site of my il-placed cache. I am unconcerned with the contents though I would appreciate the courtesy of the travel bug hidden there being carried to another, legitimate cache.

Why I want this cache destroyed has become a lengthy story. Suffice it to say that the labor of love expended to create the cache and its marker have been overwhelmingly surpassed by my desire to no longer be involved with geocaching.com thanks solely to its administration and approval staff. I am looking for help in removing this cache to prevent my error from becoming litter on your landscape.

You will find a coral grafitti in the shape of the Groundspeak logo outside the entrance to Keaha Kai park, on the west side of Rt 19, approximately two miles north of Kailua/Kona airport. The coordinates are N XX° XX.XXX W XXX° XX.XXX. (coordinates removed by me) They have never been posted and will thus never be found thanks to my inability to follow the rule about placing caches on vacations and the absolute adherence to this rule by the approvers. I wish to inconvenience only one other person this one time to remove the cache and destroy the grafitti rather than pawn off the "maintenance" that far too many of the approvers are bent upon enforcing. If you can help me, I'll greatly appreciate it and will leave your game for you to enjoy without me.

So I headed for the coordinates and I spent about 30-45 minutes looking around for the cache. I couldn't find it. The Groundspeak logo is long gone as the coral has already been recycled by other people for new messages. Maybe someone has already found it. I don't really have a way to contact the person who sent me the email since it was sent via the Geocaching website without a return email address. I do have a hint as to their email address so I've sent an email in hopes it gets to him. If the Travel Bug he put in there has appeared on the web then all is well and the cache has been found.

If you think you'd like a crack at finding it email me and I'll send you the GPS coordinates.


Click on the above image to see the general area where the cache is supposed to be hidden.

*UPDATE*
Just got this in email: Yes, the cache was removed though I do not remember by
whom. I am pleased to hear the groundspeak grafitti is
also no more. They deserve no less.

Honoring the fallen

Memorial Day at West Hawaii Veteran's Cemetary.

Today we honor those who have served their country with the ultimate sacrifice on this Memorial Day. And we pay tribute to those who serve in the military currently and in the past.

Betsy and Aaron

More shots

Darling Nikki

Tequila Shots

Tastes like Soylent Green?

A Canadian pig farmer might be charged with up to 60 serial killings. And I always thought it was just the maple flavor of that Costco bacon produced in Canada that added the flavor. Can anyone say Soylent Green?

You gotta figure that there's a chance the farmer was disposing of the bodies via the pigs which were then sold to market.

Da Masters

Me, left, and Jim at his graduation party. Jim just got his Masters via University of Phoenix online so he had to do it up right with a party.


Now this is a party! Live music with the Kona Gold Band rockin' and bluesin' it up. Though the old lady across the street called the cops on us a few times, she was the only neighbor that didn't drop by to enjoy the party.


A big keg of Kona Brewing Company Golden Ale along with more beer, wine and other favorite beverages.


And of course no party in Hawaii would be right without lots of food. They had the grill going for salmon steaks, chicken, hot dogs, etc and lots of other food brought by people.


More BBQ than we could eat. Also desert foods and stuff too. A nice way to end a 12-hour work day.

Constitutional for Charity

That's local radio personality, videographer, on-air TV talent, emcee, musician, yadda, yadda Lyman Mederios videotaping the Visitor Industry Charity Walk. Lyman let me hitch a ride in the back of his pickup truck as we made our way along the 3.4 mile charity walk route. The path had six aid stations where folks could grab stuff to eat like ice cream, jello, Korean chicken and rice, gourmet corn dogs, smoothies, etc. I kept grabbing food to give to our driver so he wouldn't get bored as he waited for us running around. You could very well gain weight instead of losing it on this walk. Made for a long day as I started at 6:30a.m. to photograph the start of this event.

I mentioned to Lyman about Podcasting and he seems to be interested. Could this mean we finally get our first Big Island Podcast and maybe Hawaiian music? I actually submitted a sound clip to OpenPodcast.org a few weeks ago so maybe I was the first but there has to have been someone else before me. After all Podcasting is eight months old, a lifetime in Internet time.

Going to the North Shore in town

Had a late lunch at North Shore Grinds which isn't on the North Shore, I guess it used to be, but instead it's on 10th Avenue in Palolo Valley. I found out about this place via Cheap Eats on KHNL one night on their newscast.


Check out this menu, click on it for a larger more readable view. This is no ordinary plate lunch joint as you can see by the selection of food they have. Sure they all have rice and mac salad but stuff like seared ahi with cilantro pesto won't normally be found at your typical lunch wagon.


Here's a secondary menu on the side and there was also a third board that had some other specials on it one of which was already erased when I got there so it must have been pretty good.


This place is pretty small inside with only about five or six tables to eat at. I did see people dropping by to pick-up orders and some would leave with eight plate lunches in bags out the door. Whoa! Either a hungry office or family was gonna eat well that afternoon.


Here's a close-up of my breaded pork with apricot glaze. Good stuff though I'd like to try #19 next time or the fresh fish.


And before I knew it I was flying back to Kona on the last flight. That's Honolulu city lights down there.

Runways and Rice

Took-off from Kona International Airport (click on the image for a larger view) bound for Honolulu for an overnighter. Uneventful flight, though I did score a window seat in front of the port engine should something happen with it or if some alien being jumps on the wing.

Once on an Aloha flight to Honolulu a number of years ago the port engine was giving a bad vibration so they shut it down while we were just past Maui. We landed on one engine and I got a photo of the crash crew, which was out on the tarmac at Honolulu Inter, waiting for us and later poking their heads into the engine before we were allowed to taxi to the gate.


Here's my niece Alyssa packing rice into some plastic mold thingy to make a musubi (a triangular wad of sticky calrose rice). This ain't the SPAM™ variety, this is just plain rice and she wanted a snack.


They key is the stickiness of the rice and the compression in the mold. Here she is mashing the rice in the mold. I think she could have used a bit more compression as it started to fall apart as she ate it.

Predator Bait

A thermal infrared image of me thanks to the W.M. Keck Observatory team at their open house today in Waimea. Now I know how I would look to the Predator just before I'm skinned alive.

The L-Word, no...not that word, the other L-Word

The World's Smallest Political Quiz marks me as a liberal. What are you? So much for joining the GOP.



Or if you want to carry the quiz around in a free Palm OS version click here.

Running on Empty

Turned on my iPod and after five seconds I got this message.

Then five seconds after that I got this.


Crap, I've got to remember to recharge the darn thing if I'm going to be out and away from power for awhile.

I've got a 20GB iPod and yesterday it was full! Of course my first reaction was, I should buy the 60GB iPod Photo so I have more room but then I came to my senses. I had vowed not to buy a new iPod unless they came out with one with a memory card slot on it so I can use it as a digital wallet to store photographs on from my digital camera. Yeah, I know they have cables and card readers that attach to the current iPods but those transfer at super slow speeds and are just one more thing to carry around. So I decided to purge the iPod of excess stuff. I had a ton of Podcasts on it so I went ahead and deleted a number of them and freed up almost two gigabytes. Hurry up Apple, I need a new iPod.

New Hair

Andrea at work.

Lunchtime Exploration

Shooting the tube (the lava tube) during lunch.


Melinda shooting me.

Mongoose Monkey Mishap

Had lunch down by the beach today and saw this mongoose climbing around in the trees like a monkey. Click on the freeze-frame above to watch the video. Once again it's a H.264 codec video so you'll need at least Apple's QuickTime 7 loaded to view it.

At sea

WHT Reporter Travis on assignment with NOAA. I was also along for the ride aboard the ship off the Kona coast along with a bunch of high school and middle school kids doing experiments.

HHGTTG

For those who can't make it to the movie Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy or are too cheap to buy the book or audiobook (I got my audiobook for free via an Audible.com promotion a couple of years ago). You can read it online here.

Cinco de Mayo Splash

Before the start of the race at Anaehoomalu Bay. Trying something new and posting via cellphone so this update is near realtime.