It’s Tahosa’s birthday today! I normally hide a cache for his milestone birthdays–those ending in 0 and in 5. This puzzle cache honors his 75th. From my age vantage, Joe’s a youngster... The puzzle deals with what turned out to be a race amongst several NOCO geocachers to get the FTF on a newly-placed hide. For some fortuitous reason, this new cache elicited a serious competition for the honor of being the first finder! Have fun in solving the puzzle and finding the cache. Can you beat Tahosa?
A NOCO FTF Race!
A new Traditional cache in the Fort Collins' area was published on Saturday, 9-18-22 at GMT 19. By coincidence, a number of local cachers were planning their activities for the day. When the “ding” sound for a new cache livened their devices, several immediately took a look at the new opportunity; the D/T star rating was an attractive one to a number of them. So was the cache’s owner, a local who was known for the creativity of her fascinating hides. So off these cachers went, eager to get the FTF! Each was unaware that other enthusiastic seekers were simultaneously starting in hot pursuit, so an unknown “race” was on!
siff was driving south on N County Road 40, after hiding an innovative, new Multi-cache, (her 11th cache hide) when the new cache beep sounded on her iPhone 14. She pulled over to take a look and immediately altered her route to a faster one: darting over to US 287 and eventually east on County Road 9. She drove well in excess of the 45 mph speed limit.
There was a telepathic muggle who was enjoying his morning walk while birdwatching along the Poudre River Trail. He frequently received directional signals from the 400 foot high 70kW WWVB towers (the towers emitting the continuous 60kHz carrier wave for Coordinated Universal Time). These pulses tingled the teleceptic filling in his 2nd right upper molar and sort of guided his pace and direction during walks. The muggle had had the trail completely to himself so was surprised when he heard a “on your left!” shout from a biker going far too fast for this section of the trail: it was OKW, in full race mode! He passed the bewildered muggle at trail mile post 3.5W, heading east.
After some early morning cache-finding in the Greeley area ArkF was returning to Fort Collins when he received notice of the new cache. He adjusted his route from County Road 70, to County Road 23 and then took a left on CO 14. He was fortunate that his high speed was not recorded by highway law enforcement personnel!!
egroeg38 was en route home from his condo in Steamboat Springs, where he had spent prior days doing maintenance on his 20 “Boat” caches. As he neared Walden he finally drove into Android 11 service range and heard the new cache prompt. He pulled over to check the deal out, got excited, and roared off. His frequent drives over the years through North Park between his home in Fort Collins and his Steamboat Springs condo had established friendly familiarity with the Colorado State Patrol and Jackson County traffic cops along CO 14 and he knew they would recognize his vehicle and that he’d receive only smiles and waves if he was staying less than 10-12 mph over the speed limit. On this day he took a chance by going “a bit quick”, but no flashing lights occurred as he pressed pedal to the metal. He was on a mission–he wanted FTF on this cache’s unusual D/T rating! He maintained his high speed as he cruised down CO 14 in Poudre Canyon, slowing only for the dangerous curves he was so familiar with.
Meanwhile, CoBiker had been finding caches in Altona when he learned of the new cache. He wanted to keep his long string of FTFs in consecutive months going, and had struck out on firsts so far in 9-22 and he had always wanted a FTF on a cache placed by this particular CO. So off he zoomed on the most expedient route: US 36 to Lyons, then east on CO 66 to US 87/I 25, and eventually getting onto CO 14 at Exit 269. It was a fast route, allowing him to keep in a race he was unaware of!
Dud&Plato was geocaching in Severance when his iPhone beeped. He launched westward on CR 74 to CO 257 to CO 14 and then farther west, becoming upset when a stop for refueling became necessary. It had been some time since he had scored a FTF, and he was sharply focused on the task at hand!
m, a gal from Melbourne, Australia visiting the CO and other geocaching friends in the NOCO area, was cache-finding in the LaSalle area when a message sent by a friend popped up on her smart phone – an exciting message about an available FTF. One of her key goals for her U.S. trip was to snag a first in this country, and here was an opportunity! She listened carefully as her friend gave directions for the optimal route: US 85 to Lucerne, then west on CO 392 to Windsor, then north on CR 15 to CO 14. As she reached the Mulberry crossing of the Poudre River Trail she noticed a strange man plodding along the trail, tilting his head as if to receive a stronger signal from somewhere. Yes, the conspicuous telepathic muggle had been encountered by a 2nd racing geocacher! Later, this would make for interesting discussions by the racers at their impromptu post-find gathering.
Well, by this point siff was exasperated due to a major delay by a traffic jam from a crash on County Road 9 just before her planned turn southward on N County Road 14. Attending police kept her in place for about 15 minutes. She used this time to check her phone geocaching app twice and was relieved to learn that a FTF had not yet been logged. And she was so close!!
In typical fashion, Pixel was drilling a series of holes in fenceposts and trees spaced a little more than 528 feet apart for new cache hides on CR 27 just south of Masonville when he got the message about the new cache. He checked and verified that it hadn’t been found yet and immediately headed north to CR 38E and then to 287 and on to CO 14. Even after having found more than 27,600 caches, he was still excited about this prospect for a FTF. Wow, unexpected, and certainly with that CO it would be a clever hide! He hoped it might actually be a gadget cache.
A bit before the cache publication time, BugRanger left Estes Park heading east on US 34 to run errands in Loveland; she reached her first planned destination soon after driving into cell phone service and heard the ding of the new cache announcement on her Android 3G. After reviewing the new cache details she thought “Heck with these errands – there’s a possible FTF!”, and at breakneck speed headed north on US 287 to 32nd Avenue in Fort Collins, using her Oregon 650 to provide auto directions to the new cache locality. As she got closer, a grinning Jamadad waved as he passed her, hurriedly progressing to GZ. It was then that she realized there was a competition; she picked up speed again to more than 15 mph faster than the speed limit! To her chagrin, Pixel also sped past her in the closing 280 yards to the cache location. He gave her a cute wave, believing he would be 1st to pocket the coveted FTF.
The soon-to-be-75-year-old Tahosa had just left work after preparing a sumptuous mid-day Sunday dinner for the 118 residents of the retirement facility where he is head chef. He stopped at his favorite grocery store en route home to get ingredients for his famous carrot cake, a savory dessert he planned for the forthcoming birthday celebration. As he approached his parked 2016 Toyota, many geocachers were all simultaneously converging on a lamp post just 17 feet from his parking place. He asked “What’s going on?!” and several replied there was a new geocache there! Until then, most had been unaware there had been an actual race going on. One lifted the lamp post sleeve with great anticipation. No cache container was present...a shudder of disappointment ran through the racers but then one reminded everyone of the D/T rating, resulting in a concerted search by all. 8 minutes later the prize was spied. Fortunately, one of the cachers had a long TOTT that worked – sighs of relief rippled through the group as everyone celebrated by signing the cache log as FTF.
So YOU do the math, the puzzling and/or all of the calculations to see if you can solve the A NOCO FTF Race!
Now, what about this crazy cache title–“Sahosa and Daughters”? Well, years ago I found a “liar’s cache” in Wyoming and needed to create a lie as part of my Found log. Details in my “lie” were actually the truth, but most folks would certainly dismiss the story as being a blatant lie. Tahosa and Sons was actually the catalyst for my having been in the area where what might have been a near-death-for-me circumstance arose; because I needed to have at least some minor facets of the log as untruthful, I referred to Tahosa and Sons as “Sahosa and Daughters”. Tahosa has probably never read my log account, so he can now as a birthday treat. For those of you who might be interested in reading some details of that adventure, refer to GC3JEGP, Liar, Liar. Patiently scroll way down to my Found log of 6/13/16 and enjoy the log. It’s the truth as to what happened that day. And I’m still alive!