We’re thrilled to connect with Marcellus Cadd (atreides) from Geocaching While Black again, just in time for the new geocaching challenge, Cosmic Quest! Marcellus shares his strategy for maximizing fuel gathering, his geocaching zodiac sign, whether he believes in aliens, and more!

Geocaching HQ: What have you been up to since our last chat?

Quite a bit more than I expected, actually! In late 2023, some friends and I took a trip to the Northeast. We flew into Baltimore (which isn’t actually the Northeast unless you’re from Texas) and flew out of Boston, hitting fifty-four counties in thirteen states, Washington DC, and Quebec. We completed Connecticut and Delaware, and one of us finished Maryland as well!

In March, the TXGA put on another successful Texas Challenge in Wichita Falls and announced next year’s location. If you’re looking for something to do in March 2025, come join us in Floresville (GCAMM1H), just outside San Antonio!

Finally, I went to Denver for some family stuff and had time to hit twenty-four more counties in Colorado, Nebraska, Utah, and Wyoming! It was my first time in Utah. Salt Lake City was cooler, both culturally and temperature-wise than I expected. And while I was there, I also learned I have a strange relationship with mountains. Talk about educational!

Add in crossing paths with Magftplanner on his epic journey to finish the lower 48, an appearance on Caching in the NorthWest, meeting several more Lackeys (including Rock Chalk while he was here signing the Texas County Challenge), and completing my sixth year of both caching and my streak. You could say it’s been a good year from a caching perspective!

Geocaching HQ: HQ’s geocaching challenge this year, Cosmic Quest, is all about geocachers working together to find geocaches and fuel the spaceships of our outer space friends. We’re curious: what’s your unique strategy for this challenge?

I’ve traditionally been a bit of a lone wolf when it comes to caching, but I’ve developed a taste for caching with friends in the last couple of years. So how better to generate power than to hit the road with a bunch of them? There is a large, fairly new Geoart near Austin, a series of ducks. A few of us have been solving the puzzles for them, and soon, we’re going to pile up in one of our trucks (probably The Outlaws) and hit those back roads! Of course, we have to be careful. If Texas is known for anything, it’s for being hot in the summer. But we’ll have water, sunscreen, shady hats, and air conditioning galore to help with that!

Geocaching HQ: We heard you have a background in astronomy. What aspect of space interests you the most?

If you don’t mind me nerding out for a minute, I was really interested in super high-mass stars. Low-mass stars (like the Sun) shine for billions of years, stop fusing internally, and then continue to glow from their heat for billions more years. High-mass stars only last for a few million years (in some cases, only a few hundred thousand years) and then either explode or become black holes. Super high-mass stars don’t follow the standard evolution of stars, so we don’t exactly know what happens with them, and they’re rare, with “short” lives that are so long on the human time scale that we haven’t observed much that would tell us more about them. I’m sure the research has advanced since I followed it closely, so I would love to read more recent papers on the subject!

Geocaching HQ: What would you take to geocache in space?

A lot of pens and specifically no pencils. I’m sure you’ve heard the joke about NASA spending millions of dollars and many years developing a pen that can write in space while cosmonauts solved the problem by writing with pencils. Every time you write with a pencil, graphite particles come off the tip. On Earth, that’s no big deal. In an enclosed spaceship with no gravity, the particles float around in the air you breathe, which isn’t great. The real worry, though, is that if those floating particles get into your control panels, they might cause electrical relays to short out or otherwise malfunction. I don’t know about you, but I prefer the systems of my spaceship to operate properly!

Geocaching HQ: Where would you hide a geocache in space if you could?

If it could be done safely, I would love to put an EarthCache on Io, the volcanic moon of Jupiter. I can only imagine the volcanos and lava flows; they would be amazing to behold! Unfortunately, they also ionize the atmosphere, causing fatal levels of radiation each day.

Geocaching HQ: We have to know what your geocaching zodiac sign is!

Capricoordinates! And, oddly enough, it’s pretty accurate. I tend to have a route and be focused on the goal, sometimes to the exclusion of sights and general enjoyment of the journey. I’ve also found that, while I keep people on task, I also need people to keep me from trying to accomplish plans that are far too ambitious.

Geocaching HQ: Okay, with all this outer space talk, we have to know if you believe in aliens.

No, but kinda yes. Again, I’m sure you’ve heard the joke that if someone is a one-in-a-million person, there are eight thousand people out there just like them. Well, if there’s a one-in-a-million chance of life developing, and theoretically, there are billions of planets, then thousands of them should have some kind of life. So, statistically, there should be alien life out there. Of course, this all starts invoking the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter. In the end, xenobiology is just not my strong suit.

Geocaching HQ: What else are you looking forward to for the rest of 2024?

Oddly enough, I have another celestial item of note on my calendar. I plan to attend a TXGA Event in West Texas, the Lone Star Roundup (GCAQD1T), in October at Davis Mountain State Park. The park is only ten miles of winding mountain roads away from McDonald Observatory. I haven’t been to a Star Party out there in forever! People living in urban areas (and even some folks in rural areas) rarely get to see true dark skies. It’s an experience I cannot recommend more highly.

Just a reminder to everyone that no matter where you are or how hard you roll, every cache helps get our otherworldly friends back home! Ad astra per aspera … et terras! (To the stars through difficulties … and terrains!)