This is my first puzzle cache. The inspiration came after I attended my first Event Cache in December 2012. It brought back memories of my younger days, when I would occasionally attend GTs (“Get Togethers”) to meet online friends.
Those were the days before anybody knew of the internet, and before the invention of the World Wide Web. Those were the days of DOS, Hyper Terminal, BBSs, FTP, IRC, Fidonet and other message boards.
I remember spending hours in front of my father's computer, waiting for the busy signal to stop so the 14,400bps modem could finally connect. It was so wonderful to finally be able to see the 80x40 welcome page in ANSI art start to display, one line at a time, until I was allowed to enter my logon and password.
You see, most BBSs only had one phone line, sometimes two, so we had to wait for our turn when we wanted to play games or check our emails. If another user was online, you couldn't get in. And if you left and came back later, another user could be on. So you had to keep dialing every minute or so to make sure you snuck in as soon as the line became free!
It would take minimum 2 days to get a reply to an email sent to a friend. The BBSs would only call their hubs at night to exchange the emails of the day.
What was really cool were the flash and expensive BBSs with multiple phone lines. There, locals could all log in at the same time and talk LIVE on chat rooms, instead of the delay of message boards. And that's how we generally organised GTs. And it was always strange to see for the first time people we had been talking to for months online.
You see, the means have changed a lot since then, but the end is still the same. I think geocaching is a natural progression for the Old School Geek... And Events are just another name for a GT...
Those were the days when we dreamed of having 50Mb of hard drive and 1Mb RAM. Computers were fragile. Parts often fried and were expensive to buy. Files were always corrupted, and it was part of life to have to format C: drive and reinstall Windows every month or two. Oh how often have I inserted the next disk!
Oh, I forget myself! You are looking for a geocache!
Well, it is here:
And please bring your old school swaps along!
I am not intending on providing hints on solving the puzzle, but feel free to check your answer on Geochecker.