M*A*T*T C*A*C*H*E #1
One of the great things about geocaching is the people that you meet along the way. Sometimes you meet at events. Sometimes you meet out on the trails. I met Matt for the first time on the Bethpage Bike Trail looking for a cache. It's not usually all that hard to spot another geocacher. Like I usually am, he was wandering around (off the trail) looking at his phone. We would wind up finding a pair of caches together that day and have found numerous others together since.
While many of my "themed" caches are in tribute to Married With Children, Matt has themed some of his caches to another one of my favorite shows of all time, M*A*S*H. I have enjoyed all of them so far and look forward to the ones that he has planned for the future.
Two things that Matt likes about geocaching are benchmarks and puzzles. He has logged 191 benchmarks (including the starting point for this cache) and 100 unknown cache finds as of the listing of this cache.
To find this cache you will need to start at a benchmark and then solve a simple field puzzle to get the final coordinates for this cache. The posted coordinates will bring you to a triangulation station disk (Matt's favorite type of benchmark). Since only one other cacher besides myself and Matt have logged this one as of 2-2-14, feel free to log it yourself when you find it. Once you find the triangulation disk, which you should not confuse with the nearby reference marks, plot a course at 301 degrees NW and walk a very short distance to the type of blue and yellow sign that New Yorkers should be very familiar with.
Update as of July 2018: One year after the blue and yellow sign had gone missing, a new one has been put in its place. So now the field puzzle portion of this cache has returned!
To find the cache, use the information on the blue and yellow sign to complete the coordinates:
N 40 AB.CDE W 073 FG.HIJ
A = The last number on the first line of the sign
B = Number of letters in the 4th word on the 4th line
C = Total number of lines of text on the sign
D = The number that appears on the first line the most times
E = The number that appears on the sixth line the most times
F = From top to bottom, the last number to appear on the sign
G = Number of letters in the first word on the seventh line
H = Number of letters in the last word on the second line
I = The number that appears on the fifth line the most times
J = The first number to appear on the sign
Please allow Matt to be the FTF (he gets so few of them! LOL.)