Well... it had to happen. Another piece of artwork on San Mateo
just waiting for us to cache in on it! This one is by Pete Beeman,
an artist from Portland, Oregon. He is a "mechanical/kinetic
sculpture" artist. This work was commissioned for the
newly-renovated Erna Fergusson Library. The letters are meant to
"swirl" around the library like Alphabet soup!
You can park at the listed coordinates. As always, you must do a
little work to find the final coordinates.
You will be collecting information on the "letters" and other
notable objects in the area, as well as doing a little bit of
internet research before you head out (If you go during library
hours, you can do your research on site, but high muggle times).
Library hours are M-Th 10am-8pm, F-Sat 10am-6pm, closed Sun.
You may be asking yourself, "Who was Erna Fergusson?" Well, even
if you are not, you will need to find out to find the final cache
site! You can research the following questions from this website:
http://www.newmexicohistory.org/filedetails.php?fileID=546
* = The year of Erna's birth minus 1800
Was she:
a) A teacher
b) A southwest author
c) A journalist
d) A tour guide
e) A dude wrangler
f) A Red Cross member
g) Earned a degree in Pedagogy
h) a, b, and c
i) All of the above
? = The letter of the answer.
Now, start in front of the library main doors on the east side
of the building. You will need to work your way around the building
in a counter-clockwise fashion and make note of the following:
@ = The highest letter on the "letter-fall" cascading down the
front (east side) of the library building.
! = The last number in the year the art was placed (according to
the silver plaque).
& = The letter furthest out (east) on the sidewalk
peninsula.
# = The letter on the pavement closest to the drive-up book
drops.
$ = The highest letter on the letter tower in the median on San
Mateo (as viewed from the safe sidewalk next to the library...
please do not cross the street!)
{} = The letter closest to the flagpole.
For answers with letters, you will assign their corresponding
numeric value in the alphabet (A=1, B=2, etc). You should now have
a number assigned to each symbol.
Now walk to the concrete courtyard on the south side of the
building and stand on one of the 7 clustered rocks and look around.
From this spot, you should be able to see the five closest letters.
Use all five letters to spell out a word (use each letter only
once). Add together the numeric values for the 3rd and 4th letters
in this word and have this = %
Now go to the cache coordinates:
N 35 07._ _ _ = "$" to the power of "?"
W 106 35. _ _ _ = "*" + "@" + "!" + "&" + "#" + "{}" +
"%"
Please bring your own writing instrument. PLEASE watch for
muggles and replace exactly where you found it. Please also note,
this would be difficult to do in the dark... open all hours, but
suggested for daylight.
FTF prize. Good Luck!!!
(Please be careful of busy nearby streets and arroyo if you
bring children.)
Click here to check your answer