It has been a year and a half since we moved down to Ladera Ranch and I have not placed a cache near our new home. Life has been busier than you can imagine and it still hasn't given me real time to contribute to Geocaching. However, a sweet and kind geocaching couple from the past reached out to me and told me they would like my cache would be their 1000th find. I had to place a new cache in their Honor! rpkeenan will be visiting the cache before noon on August 31st.
I love placing caches that are what I would like to find! I have several hides near my old home in downtown Long Beach, where I lived when I discovered geocaching. My attitude from the start was that a cache should be placed to last forever, and the owner should work hard to maintain its existence forever, or let someone adopt it. However, I soon learned that geocachers come in all sorts of shapes, colors, and sizes and they all think differently. I was shocked when I heard some people hide a cache and then immediately archive it when it is first muggled. But over time, I learned more about other cachers and their thoughts and came to understand their viewpoints. I think that is what is so difficult about geocaching; it is a very vulnerable hobby and you need to keep peace with people that think differently than you to keep the game fun. So I worked hard to accept different styles of geocaching. (Don’t even get me started on how my Dad caches – he has +60,000 finds at the time of this posting. It’s quite intense to say the least!)
Anyway, I then placed some copycat caches of my own designs near my work in Lake Forest/Foothill Ranch and something interesting happened. I learned that I was blessed with living in a tourist attraction in Downtown Long Beach. You see, people keep coming and coming, and the caches will be found many, many times for as long as it is maintained. But when you don’t live at a tourist attraction, you place a cache, it is found by all of the locals in the first two months or so, and then it is only found a couple of times a year after that. To me, all of the fun I was used to is gone in 60 days! So I completely understand people that don't hesitate to archive a cache when it has run its route. But it seemed kinda sad to me, the death of a good cache.
I got all philosophical about it and was going to name this cache after that feeling of the life and death of a cache. Like every day has a sunrise and a sunset; a beginning and an end. Every day should be cherished and appreciated. Live in the moment and don’t be worried the day will end – they all do, but there will be another day. I was going to create a series of caches that were called the Sunrise/Sunset series. The cache would go up, live a healthy life, and when the find rates got to low it would be archived to be replaced by another cache. So is the cycle of life.
But then my weird engineer/designer side came out and thought of something more scientific, steampunked, and mysterious. Why not call the series The Lab Experiment where I can think of a cache design, place it, see how people like it, and then remove it after the experiment is over. I would then create a new cache in its place that would be the next experiment in the study. Maybe even if a visitor from out of town wanted to revisit an old Lab Experiment from the past, I could pull from the archives and bring them back to life for a reanimated find! Bahwooooohah ha ha ha!! If the experiment was a bad idea, I would not have to worry about trying to maintain it - -I would just archive it and take note not to do that type of cache again. (Linus Pauling and Water Under the Bridge come to mind)
Here is Experiment #1. For this first one, the first days will be limited to Premium Members, and then opened up to others shortly afterwards. Drive around the posted coordinates and take note at each of the Stages and in the order they are listed in below.