We're kind of a conspicuous group. I'm wearing a red T-shirt with a sullen-faced turquoise cupcake, and there are a couple of us in hunting vests and safari hats. And we're all carrying Global Positioning System units.
We could tell people that we're a group of technologically advanced tourists, I suppose: "Oh yeah, we're from Canada, everyone carries GPS receivers in Canada."
Except that story wouldn't work because at 2 p.m. Saturday afternoon, simmering in the June sun, we're standing outside Centro Ybor "phooning."
And there is just no way to explain your way out of that.
We are Geocachers: Bill Biggins; Kathi and Dennis Burgess; Kip and Mindy Kedersha; Marc, Mimi and their kids; Elayna and Philip Barrison; and Vu Cao. I found them on the web, and without ever meeting me before today, they've agreed to join me for a day of geocaching in Tampa and St. Pete.
Geocaching is part sport, part treasure hunt, part geek obsession and part social network — a way to befriend like-minded strangers by figuring out where they hide things. You start by going online to http://geocaching.com choosing a username and accessing a database of geocaches: hidden containers or places of interest. Each cache is placed at a particular GPS location, and that location is posted online on the website.
The sport is in its infancy. Prior to 2000, the federal government scrambled satellite signals, preventing store-bought GPS units from being too accurate. Concerns over homeland security were cited as the reason for this "selective availability," which made GPS technology pretty much useless for anyone hoping to find something smaller than, say, a gas station: the handheld units could only be accurate up to 300 feet.
When selective availability was removed on May 2, 2000, it was like granting vision to the almost-blind all over the world. GPS unit owners found they could be more precise than ever before. The clarity increased tenfold.
Six years later, geocaching is thriving, and getting bigger every year. Since its inception, http://geocaching.com has accumulated 288,910 active caches in 222 countries, and worldwide there are 33,756 users. There are more than 9,000 caches in Florida alone, with more than 2,280 in Tampa and 1,892 in St. Petersburg.
Geocaching isn't easy: caches can be out in the middle of nowhere or smaller than a fingernail. Containers range in size from hide-a-keys to ammo cans, from 35mm film canisters to Tupperware. (The smallest are called micro- or even nano-caches.) They hide a variety of trinkets: little toys, coins, stickers, anything of the doodad variety. Each cache must contain a log sheet, so that geocachers can sign in their find, and a sheet explaining the game, so that if an unknowing passerby finds it, he won't send a bomb squad out to deactivate the ammo can.
The prospect is not that far-fetched: Imagine driving by a parking lot and seeing someone walking around examining the light posts. It's a little disconcerting.
Bill Biggins tells me he was geocaching with a group once when a cop approached. The officer had received a call that there were suspicious people poking around a park.
"The cop had heard of geocaching before, so he just checked our IDs and let us off," Bill recalls. Had the officer not heard of the game, he would have officially been deemed a muggle, albeit a muggle with a gun. As in Harry Potter, muggles are defined by geocachers as people unaware of the magic. Geocachers avoid muggles, and get angry at them for lingering too long in front of a cache. An entire forum topic on the website is dedicated to muggle annoyances.
It's a weird little war.
Today's expedition starting point is muggle central, in front of the Adobe Gilas phoon cam, which we've chosen for the sole reason of making complete fools of ourselves. Getting credit for having found this "cache" is a two-step process. After finding the location (definitely the easiest part), the cacher must pose for a picture in the "phoon position." I think there actually may be a Kama Sutra position patterned after the phoon, but for geocaching purposes it's G-rated. The pose is a stop-action imitation of running, one foot in the air, arms frozen in the pumping motion. That's part of the geocaching allure: public humiliation.
We're all flailing for the first go-round. The second time we nail it, which consists of somehow managing to coordinate a group of 11 people into getting a picture taken by the security camera next to the bar. The camera capture can be accessed and downloaded online, and the information for how to do it is included on the cache's detail page.
We're off to a good start, and we've only known each other for about 20 minutes. Sweat is already staining our shirts (no wonder my cupcake's so sad), we've gotten one cache down, and the thunderclouds are rolling in. Perfect Florida caching.
Kathi is a relentless cacher, and I can tell she's not going to let us go astray. The second we're done trying to return ourselves to more respectable states — our clothing's gotten kind of twisted about from all the weird phooning — she's hustling the group to the next stop, near Centennial Park in Ybor. It's a multi-cache, which means that the cache is separated into several parts, and for this cache in particular it's so we can learn a little about Ybor's history by reading the statues and plaques scattered around the park. In order to add this as a find, we'll need to answer all five questions posed on the website correctly. What is Nick Nuccio holding in his right hand? A cigar. There's more, but I can't give up the cache.
We're supposed to head to Channelside next, but the troops are hot and sweaty and come up with a true Florida solution to escaping the elements: "Let's go to McDonald's!" Actually there is a cache there, so the trip is semi-legitimate. The air-conditioning revives us, and Bill takes a turn showing us his own super-stealthy cache containers — one is a bolt and nut made for park-and-grab caches in parking lots, the other a piece of metal similar to the kind used to anchor cement parking barriers. Each is smaller than my hand and has a hollowed-out center big enough for only a sign-in log. When he's not making cache containers from hell, Bill is a delivery driver in his geocaching mobile. It's emblazoned all over with geocaching stickers and pirate faces (his username is Capt. Biggins) and he's got a geocache hospital of sorts in his back seat. We make use of it when I accidentally drop the McDonald's cache and it breaks into smithereens. Bill replaces it with an exact replica.
The rain starts while we're trying to find "Up Channelside," the cache in Channelside. A couple of people already know where the cache is, like Vu and Bill, so they sit back looking smug. What makes it so hard to find? Mr. Magneto, Kip's very own creation, a black, magnetized cylinder, smaller than a pencil eraser. It's virtually undetectable, and I think he makes them because he secretly wants to ruin everyone's life, but he hasn't yet admitted to that. Most geocaches are not quite as evil.
We flit through the rest of the caches in downtown Tampa under sprinkles of rain. Under an awning in the abandoned downtown, we decide we'll finish up with two "wilderness" caches and forgo the trip to downtown St. Pete. We're sticky and smelly with sweat and rain grime. At the risk of being traitorous to the game, I'm beginning to think geocaching wasn't made for Florida weather after all.
The first wilderness cache is just over the Gandy Bridge on the Pinellas side, at the base of a tree. The GPS point leads to a monument near the tree, but the cache is 20 paces to the left of the monument. The ground is spongy and slick with mud water, and Vu and Kathi are the only ones brave enough to go near. Mimi and Elayna don't even get out of their car. I wish I had been as smart; the mosquitoes are taking advantage of our love of nature, and I'm desperately trying to make them pay, but they'd bite the palm I'm slapping them with if they could. Vu finds the cache, and we're off for the final find.
Kathi presses bug spray into my hand as we walk to the cars. This is not a good sign; she visited the same cache earlier this morning to make sure it would be manageable for us. If she's giving me bug spray the situation must merit it.
Wilderness caches are particularly tricky in Florida: the sporadic rain showers, the insects, the general geography, lakes, ocean, bays, the fact we're three centimeters above sea level. Marc tells me about one cache that he went looking for when the tide was out; he had to wade back through water up to his waist. I don't mind some muck, but water moccasins chilling near my belly button is a little too much.
Sure enough, caching is miserable in that late-afternoon, rainy Florida summer heat. Weedon Island is undeniably beautiful, but it's just a little disheartening when you get of your car and step into a cloud of mosquitoes — so many of them that the area they're flying in is a deep haze of gray.
Communing with nature is both the best and the worst thing about wilderness caches. The trail is dotted with muddy puddles four to five inches deep, and at times we walk single file, skirting the water and avoiding the cacti growing around the trail. There are some beautiful finds: green buds of new growth, shiny purple and black beetles scuttling, a gray-blue heron standing silently. The wilderness induces reverie, and a little insanity, too. It's so quiet and fragrant, you can't help but think about how long it's been since you breathed so easily. Then again, was that rustling sound a black panther?
As we walk, Dennis tells me about going out on into a nature cache on his own and encountering a boar and her piglets. The mother moved off and left the piglets behind, and Dennis tells me he stood there with them and told them the story of the three little pigs until they ran off after their mother. That's what nature does to you: makes you talk to boar babies.
We get to the first part of the cache and find a container with a tape player. The tape begins with the theme from Mission Impossible, followed by a serious male voice telling us the coordinates of the real cache, should we accept the mission.
The cache is farther into the woods, by a natural bee's nest. We can hear them buzzing from almost 20 feet away. Jeff, a first-time geocacher, makes the find. It's a faux rock, made of some weird foam, and under it is a space for a large Tupperware container, full of trinkets. We sign the log and head back. The sky is now shading gray and peach as the sun prepares to go down behind the rain clouds and we all say goodbye.
In the car, I'm bug-bitten, tired and dripping nature stuff. I'm asking myself why I like geocaching, why I do it, why it's fun. It's several things, I decide.
I like geocaching because it's about clash and compromise — between nature and man, between computer interface and personal connection. It's about humanity trying to strike a balance between technology and the earth.
I like geocaching because it seems like a microcosm of life on Earth right now.
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This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2006.
