Some Friends of Ours Rubicon, Victoria, Australia
By Biggles Bear on 26-Sep-07. Waypoint GC167K8

The cache has been burned beyond all recognition. Was able to retrieve "dak's Monopoly Geocoin" and a TB tag from "Bald Mountain (CO)" Green Jeep Travel Bug. There was no trace of any other of the items logged into this cache.

Attempted to visit the cache today to see how if it weathered the fire. The park is still closed so it's status will remain a mystery for some time longer.

Is this cache still viable? My bug is stuck in anther cache close by, and I would like to ask a favor from a fellow "Family" member. I'm dying to know if "Don't Feed the Wallabies" is safe and sound? My bug, The Sak, has been stuck in that flea bitten cache for way too long. Can you do a drive-by and check if it's still in business? I'd appreciate it, and will reward you for your efforts. hehehe

I don't know how I agreed to help big Tony on this one as I'm well past the first flushes of youth but I know a cry for help when I hear one so I was only too happy to lend Tony a hand. Of course I've known Paulie since way before his Dad was mowed down in a hail of bullets outside a local trattoria with his mouth stuffed with the Sicilian Special pizza but that's another story and yet another closed coffin I'm afraid. Anyway I said I would look out for young Paulie and I was prepared to cut him some slack when he failed to turn up at the arranged rendeaveaux. Anyway I had some business to attend to higher up and thought I would let the little punk stew for a while. Business to my jaw attended to I returned to the scene and duly set out on the hunt. Of course to cut a long story short I was successful and decided to take half and give Big Tony half as that is the only way I've found these days to keep me out of a pair of cement shoes. No other trades or correspondnece entered into thankyou.

So I gets this call from a little fella over in the bronx. Hea says hea has it all worked out. So ias say OK, lets go take a look.

We'a gets to the spot and I says areya sure it's a here and he say yeah im a sure. So anyways after a few minutes we head off elsewhere and a little later we are back on the Laptopz to takre another look because hehaza got it alla stuffed up.

With a little pressure froma my gun and he is back on track, I waitz in the car for awhile and hten we headed off to crack the case. I tooka some money and left the guns for Tony. Better than the pnukz I was with heya wanted to take the lot.

Tankz for the fun.

"So I was thinking of heading down your way tomorrow, want to go and find this cache with me? I've got the puzzle sorted, I double checked the numbers and everything!"

Famous last words.

What was to be a leisurely day out caching with Rally had more dramas than...well, an episode of The Sopranos! After turning up nothing after a half hour of caching we walked all the way back to the car, got the puzzle out again, went through it and found more errors than Lynne Spears' book on raising children.

It appears I either suffer from some sort of dyslexic point-of-interest marking or my fingers are too fat for typing. After finally correcting the errors we laughed off the time consuming delays as adding to the adventure of caching (I was trying to put on a brave face!) and made our way to the cache. I spotted a camera shy echidna on the way. After Steve handed me the cache I noticed all the weapons had been taken and only the cash was left, so I passed it all on to Tony so as to redirect any blame.

Thanks BB for the challenging puzzle and another reason to re-visit one of my favourite caching spots.

R + S - B

[This entry was edited by Team Rubik on Sunday, February 10, 2008 at 1:01:41 AM.]

Found at 1.40pm GAFF2. We were able to work out the code very quickly being expert outdoorspeople, however at first a segment was not quite right. Left it for a day or two, came back and low and behold - it had changed! For the better at least. Some little gremlin must have interfered with the code and Tony's people on realising the gaff secretly fixed it. We worked through the hints and clues, finding blood stains all over the place (or was that just sap from the trees?) we even made a small detour and found this blessed jaw bone that had eluded us 6 months ago, so all systems were go. We found the stash, but didn't realise we were also looking for another party. Anyway we had a short discussion and felt that there were too many shady characters who knew how much was in the stash, so as p-pprass is fond of the family jewels, we decided to play it straight and tell Tony where it is. (if we were to take it to Tony, then it wouldn't be there for others to find!) Thanks Biggles Bear for a perfect opportunity to go after STOD, otherwise that little fellow was going to be stranded for us for a long long time!

Project 51 and myself have been trying to impress Tony for a while. Finally, thanks to the blundering efforts of Paulie and Chris, and Valery slipping out of their hands, we took the opportunity to track Sil's cash. Paulie was quite agreeable and handed over a clue or two, yet it took us a while to get anything out of Chris. Eventually he came up with the goods, and we were in hot pursuit. We found the hiding spot after a decent 25 minute search, and after a long conversation with Project 51, decided to hand back the money to Tony. Upon leaving, we went out separate ways, and when Project 51 was clearly out of sight, I raced back, grabbed the stash and made off with the lot! Now....to think of a plan to let Tony know that it was really Project 51 who took all the cash!! I've been looking for a way to bump up my position in the family for quite some time.

Thanks Biggles Bear. This has been the best cache I've done...and my 60th find!! The decoding was brilliant and nearly had us stumped. A first to find for us both. Very rewarding. Thanks a lot for a clever cache in a beautiful part of the state.

We tracked down Paulie and Chris without too much trouble, with The Unfamiliars tracking abilities being much more finely tuned than mine today. Playing up the "good cop, bad cop" routine, we extracted all the information we needed from those two before taking off on our own in pursuit of Valery.
With so much space between us and him, we knew our chances were slim. Thanks again to the Unfamiliars brilliant tracking abilities we were, however, able to find Valery's hidden stash of currency and weapons.
After much deliberation and disagreement with the Unfamiliars, I thought it best to hand over the entire stash to Tony, rather than keep any for ourselves, so the money is safely put away for now, where only the Unfamiliars and I are aware of it.
I may even slip in a bad word to Tony about the Unfamiliars, ensuring my place within The Family.

(in a totally unrelated story....The Unfamiliars and Project 51 are happily able to claim FTF on this cache! Both of our first FTF. Beautiful day for it. Got three in total today, all very enjoyable and scenic. Thanks to Biggles Bear for this great cache)

Caching. Redefined.