Today marks my 18th Geo-anniversary, I found my first cache, The Lake Wheeler Cache in this park on 8/7/02, but did not create my account until the following day. That cache has since been archived, so I hid a cache nearby A Cache for Wimsey to give me an excuse to return to that park. I thought I would celebrate the occasion by hiding 8 9 new caches.
Lake Wheeler Park is closed on Mondays from October-March.
Quite a few people had found that first cache before I did, but only four are still active today and one of them, Nittany Dave is still one of my regular caching pals. I wonder what the first generation of cachers who only found a few back in those early days would think about the game we play today. It’s still finding containers hidden all over the world, but it is a different game. Back then they were all out in the woods or in parks, they all had room for swag and some of it was pretty good, and people wrote logs.
The Number 18 is an interesting one. In most countries, 18 is the age of majority (adulthood) and also the voting age. In mathematics it is considered a semiperfect number as three of its divisors (3, 6, and 9) add up to 18. It is the atomic number of argon. The Hebrew word for "life" is חי (chai), which has a numerical value of 18. Consequently, the custom has arisen in Jewish circles to give donations and monetary gifts in multiples of 18 as an expression of blessing for long life. In Chinese tradition, 18 pronounced 十八 (shí bā) and is considered a lucky number due to similarity with 實發 (shì fā) 'definitely get rich', 'to get rich for sure'. There are 18 chapters in the Bhagavad Gita, which is contained in the Mahabharata, which has 18 books. 18 is the number of wheels on the most common type of North American tractor-trailer truck, which are hence often called 18-wheelers. 18 is the number of chapters into which James Joyce's epic novel Ulysses is divided. And finally, "I'm Eighteen" was Alice Cooper's first Top Ten hit single.
After placing the previous seven caches in the park I was really hoping to find room for just one more. I was fixated on the idea of hiding eight new caches for my 18th, and I managed to find space between the existing cache nearby and my new placements by doing some reverse triangulation. You are NOT looking for another gelato container, this time it is a camo'd Bison tube. You are still out in the woods even though it's near the parking lot, so be aware of the creeping and flying critters that live here.