10 Years! Oakland, CA Community Celebration Event

This cache has been archived.

scpet: Time for this one to go into the history books. Please log any bugs you have back out of the event please. A big thanks to everybody for making this a great event. Hope to see you all at another East Bay event soon. Keep your eyes peeled for new events nearby, and for the new date of a CITO in Redwood (GC2372E) http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=016be216-3c5e-4e7e-8f39-fb204c97c9cb

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Hidden : Sunday, May 2, 2010
Difficulty:
1 out of 5
Terrain:
1 out of 5

Size: Size: not chosen (not chosen)

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UPDATE 5/2/10: Thanks to everybody that came and made the celebration super fun! What a blast! Please log your attendance asap, as we'll need to archive this soon.

Look at what Bill Clinton and Dave Ulmer hath wrought!

Come celebrate 10 years of Geocaching in Oakland's beautiful Redwood Regional Park! Attendees get this cool new icon for their profile:



The Global Positioning System was developed by the US Department of Defense. This satellite navigation system was intended for military use and therefore the signals were scrambled, limiting accuracy for civilian use to about 100 meters.

On May 1, 2000, President Bill Clinton made an announcement that this scrambling signal, known as Selective Availability (SA), would be turned off. No longer would the military have a monopoly on accurate satellite navigation.

On May 2, 2000 at midnight eastern time, the "great blue switch" controlling SA was turned off. At that moment, civilian GPSr's got an instantaneous upgrade, improving accuracy to about ten meters down from their previous 100 meters.

On May 3, computer engineer Dave Ulmer placed the first "stash" consisting of a five gallon bucket containing a logbook, four dollars, mapping software, a VHS tape, a book, a slingshot and a can of beans. He posted the coordinates on a Usenet newsgroup at sci.geo.satellite-nav and outlined the concept of "take something, leave something, sign the log". The game we now call Geocaching was born!



What: A 10 year anniversary party. Since a 10 year anniversary is traditionally commemorated by tin or aluminum, and a requirement for this event is a photo of our group being "festive", how about wearing something decorated with aluminum foil, such as a hat covered in foil maybe? Have an old Tin Man costume in the attic just gathering dust? Bust it out and lets have some fun!

Who: Everybody! Bring the dog, but keep Fido on a leash, at least while at the event site. Got horse? Trigger's invited, too. Got kids? A children's play area/structure is less than 500 feet away!

Where: The event is currently planned to be at the posted coordinates, in the Fern Dell group campsite which has a large building adjacent to protect us in the event of rain. Because we're cheapskates and don't want to pony up several hundred dollars just to reserve a few picnic tables, we could be forced to make alternate plans and move the location to one of the other nearby picnic areas if our preferred location is reserved by another group. We should know if the site gets reserved beforehand, so keep checking back for additional updates. As a final sanity check, after parking at the recommended waypoint and while walking the flat, quarter-mile paved path along the Stream Trail to the Fern Dell site, keep an eye out for 10 helium balloons, one for each year of geocaching, and a sign marking the location of our event just in case we get bumped.

When: Sunday, May 2, 2010 from 1pm til 5pm (or whenever the last geocacher decides to call it a day). The event kicks off with a geo-poker rally, so don't arrive too late or you may be left with no potential cards.

How: This will be sort of a potluck BBQ. Your hosts will be providing charcoal, a quantity of buns and condiments, picnic niceties such as cups, plates, napkins, flatware, as well as a limited selection of drinks. Please bring your own grillables, and hopefully something to share with the gang, including potentially dessert, fruit, additional drinks, etc.

Why: To celebrate 10 years of geocaching, to see old friends and meet new ones, of course! And there's currently 27 caches within the park's borders just waiting to be found, either before, during or after the event.

More: In addition to the geo-poker rally at the start of the event, there will definitely be a raffle towards the end of it, thanks in no small part to some early contributions from jellis. Please bring a quality trade item or two to donate. Cache containers, flashlights, first aid kits, and the like all make decent prizes. To sweeten the pot, one of the raffle prizes will be a special event coin from worldcaching.com. Just in case the parking booth is attended, be prepared to pay $5 per vehicle. If the ranger isn't present when you drive up, parking's free!

Also, there will be a production crew present filming for a video about Geocaching. According to the producer, "the finished video will be a positive, light-hearted, and fun glimpse about local geocachers and will include interviews, and possibly will follow a people to a local geocache. This video is being produced in collaboration with the Midpeninsula Community Media Center, a public, non-profit organization. This is not a commercial endeavor in any way, and will ultimately be broadcast as part of public-access TV by the Media Center." Be prepared to regale the camera with your best anecdotes about that one funny, tough or interesting hide you remember fondly. Who knows, this might be your chance to get your own "15 minutes of fame". Obviously, being interviewed is completely voluntary, so if you're camera-shy, you don't have to participate in the video.

See you there! And stay tuned for some new caches in the vicinity that may just come out the day of our event!
Sincerely,
cloversmom, Gealabhan, scpet and zuckermn

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