Dude, where's my car? Armadale, Victoria, Australia
By Alan-san on 24-Jul-03. Waypoint GCGGVH

The caches seems to be suffering a case of the muggles and so I've decided to archive it. A good number of cachers have found the cache and it's been great watching your comments come in. To all the cachers who found it... well done and thank you for participating. [^]

Couldn't find cache according to hints. Thought that perhaps we had the wrong location. Widened search area and saw what looked like some rubbish scattered around - it was the cache. Put it all back together (log book, about 3 or 4 swaps etc) and hid it deeper ...

Checked cache - everything seems to be in order. Anyway I added some more swaps and put a new log book in as the old one was almost full.

Found by Mr Schnoobley on the 23rd of January 2006 at 4:26

This cache seems to have been muggled or attacked by an animal
The log book is missing and the swaps were scattered everywhere.

I put it back into the obvious hiding spot.
TNLN

Found at 16:10. Day four of my youth conference at the Voda phone arena and another break, so I ducked out and managed to get three quick caches before heading back for tea and my next secession. This was my first of three history lessons for the day and I enjoyed the learning experience. It sure was hard work getting the youth group mini bus down these back streets. I was glad that no one was in the office close to GZ. Thanks Alan.

Hi Alan-San
Had a day caching today and this one was on the list and now its not. ie we found it. Had some trouble working out how long it takes to drive to Bathurst but some help from phone a friend saved the day. We went into the office where the plaque is but the girl there didn't know there was even a plaque on the wall out front, so we left without telling her that her pants were on fire. She wouldnt have known!!!! At GZ there is a dead critter in the tree which is not helping the air quality. Next finder--I suggest you just follow your nose!!! We left a Dolphin and took a ring.
Many thanks for another enjoyable cache

Found at 11:03am. Accompanied by Chewinprickles.
2nd find out of 13 for the day.
In:-Dolphin, Out:-Ring, Signed Log.
Thanks Alan-San...

couper 1 People playing cricket in the park.Not a problem!Found quite easily after working clues out.Took bangle left high bouncing ball.Thanks alan-san

This was only a short walk from where I was staying, so I managed to sneak out in the morning to get it! My maths must be really bad because I had GZ to be 1.16km away. Took a walk around the park looking at likely spots and found quite quickly. Cache seems to be missing a lid. Left Captain Rum TB. SIgned log

Easy walk in the park, nice dogs, pity they don't have hands to pick up the footballs. Took the travel bug and replaced it with a yellow dinosaur.

Found by Bob at 10:40

I just love these hidden little sports fields - surrounded by houses - they have a warm, cosy sort of ambience about them. The cache was a pretty easy find, even 'though my GZ at the 1st two wps was quite a bit out. I was a bit surprised to find myself looking into someone's office at a distance of just a few metres, but fortunately there was noone there at the time and I did my logging very quickly.

TNLN

Thanks Alan-san

Found finally after spending an hour walking to, and searching at the wrong coordinates (Forgot the last number in the sum Was great weather, and a fun find..
Took picture frame, left mouse stamp.. (Only a few pages of the log left by the way..)
Cheers!

Thanks for a fun cache! Watcha found this on her first geocache experience. It was a bit tricky to get out as we found it during business hours!
I mis-dated the log entry 22/9 too. [8)]

Found this one this morning during a lull in muggle traffic. Had some initial problems with decoding, thought I had to start with the first word AND continue! Coincidently I found two other parks with the same southings while I recalculated the eastings. I make too much work for myself!!

Took awesome car, left Eros Travel Bug

R - B

Found this one this morning after a short serch, it has been one of thoose ones I have never got around to doing, it was great fun

TNLN

Thanks Alan-san

Glad it was not a school day. A few kicking the footy but easy find.

Took car
Left water balloons.

I find it hard to imagine what it would have been like to do the drive at 8.7mph. It was bad enough doing the long division.
Got to GZ and there was no one around to be seen anywhere, what a nice change.
Took: Nothing, Left: Another Car.
Thanks for another Federation, Robmc.

We were directed to some skinny little alley nearby which seemed odd. So a check on the PDA, which for some reason had the font of the cache sheet in miniature writing, found that EEE was incorrectly calculated - an 8 can look like a 3 when it is just 1mm high! So at 12.55pm we found GZ on a lovely clear still autumn day. Took: Ring, Left: Battery.
Thanks Alan-san for a very enjoyable and informative cache.

Well more than a year later I just happened to be in the park with my dogs, sans GPS, and managed to find it! Now I'll finally be able to get some sleep. Took nothing, left nothing.

While out on a shopping trip, I thought a nice quick diversion on a beautiful Sunday afternoon might be the go. With this one relatively close (well, sort of anyway ), off I set and had the cache very quickly in hand at 16:10.

A great little history of the area. TNLNSL. Thanks Alan-san.

TNLN | Grabbed this earlier this afternoon while waiting to pick up Samantha from work.

Nice to see a history series similar to the (MMM) series I've put together. Will have to look at more of your caches to see more of the Federation markers.

Thanks Alan-San for keeping me occupied this evening.

Opertaion Thursday Madness 4th of 6 found today

A great find. Some great clues to follow and in the end made an easy find. Thganks from M.B for an excellent cache..
TNLN

We found this cache after a nice short walk to the GZ. Originally we mixed up one number of the puzzle, but after a quick recalc we were at the GZ soon after.
Thanks again Alan-san we were lucky as no close muggles around. Could see this cache could be a problem on certain weekdays and could be dangerous if I was on my own.
TN left gliiter glue.
Regards Mr.Coffee and the Coffee Clan.

[This entry was edited by Mr.Coffee and the Coffee Clan on Monday, February 07, 2005 at 1:19:38 AM.]

[Found on 21/01/05 at 21:01:05
I took way to long to get this one done.

I know how to spell but for some reason I didn't get the last clue correct and ended up looking at ]trees[ a long way from the cache.

I resolved at the end to stop trying to drive Alan-san multis and just park and walk from now on.

TNLNSL

TFTC Alan-san]

Nice & easy multi. Had to wait some time until the man with lawn mover went away. Fortunately he had a large lawn to attend

Out today with my teacher friend Viv..who just loves caching. We decided to find a couple on the way home, after a hospital visit in the City.
This one was fun. Had no trouble with the final co-ords after we found the sign. Seeing that it was Sunday, it was easy locating the cache. I can imagine that it would be difficult between the hours of 9 am-3:30pm though. The lads playing sport nearby were too busy. There was a piece of fencing wire and some Sushi soy sauce in the cache...I took them out.
Thanks Alan-san, I have been keen to do this one for a while.

IN: Silver picture frame for a special car photo
OUT: Toy Manta Ray

After finding the first two locations quickly enough, I then headed for the cache. Strange.. seemed a bit far away.. but anyway I started walking. Later I realised that I must have calculated it wrong, so I went back to my printout.. but couldn't find it anywhere!! I remember taking my cap out of my backpack, so the only thing that I could think of was that I must have dropped it. So I retraced my steps in the vague hope that I could find my lost piece of A4. Fortunately I did!! On a main street it was just sitting in the gutter ! Waahey. Did my maths again, realised that I completely stuffed it up, and then went and found it pretty quickly! What an idiot.

IN: Sig Card
OUT: Nothing

There was a petting zoo nearby - how wierd. So here's a photo.

Found 17/7/04 at 15:50

Second Alan-san cache for today as well as being the Facit-Family's second solo cache with new GPSr . Nice walk on a very cold Melbourne day, minimal problems retrieving cache as the smallest Facit found it within seconds of arriving at GZ.

Out : Red Car
In : Toy Manta Ray and Water Balloons.

Thanks Alan-san for today's caches.

2nd Alan-san cache for the day.
Finding the information was easy enough and I found parking right outside the 1st waypoint, so no walking for me on this one.
Finding the 2nd waypoint was a little bit trickier, but nonetheless onwards I pressed.
Retrieving the cache was easy too what with it being school holidays, no on was watching.
Took nothing and left another car.
Thanks Alan-san.

found laong with BeccaJ and Em_Eagle.
Took a texas GeoCoin TB.
after deciding on which side of the fence we should be it was a straight forward find.

Thanks for the history lesson AlanSan

Another set of nocturnal caches for the members of Team Uneven Distribution.

When we got the co-ords for GZ, we allowed evil_hitman to lead the way. Unfortunately, the GPS suggested the wrong side of the fence and once we had exhaused all of the available options on one side, we realised our mistake. evil_hitman then climbed the offending fence, which was a remarkable feat of athleticism. Em_Eagle and I more sensibly watched and suggested as he found the cache.

TNLN as I was looking at the fence through a chain link fence.

Thanks Alan-san!

Found with Evil_Hitman and BeccaJ.
Have i mentioned that im not going to listen to Evil's directions again?? The cheeky one put us on the wrong side of the fence, and im sure he did it on purpose!!
Its a nice area here, i once lived only a couple of hundread metres away.
Thanks Alansan.

Found on 13/06/04 at 1200 AEST. It is rather windy today but that did not dampen my enjoyment of finding this cache - and a history lesson along the way.
TNLN

Found at 1:25pm, the third cache of an Alan-San triple for the day. I would love to be able to step back in time to travel around this area during the times of the first cars. You would never guess to look at these buildings what their original uses were.

Still the satellite reception would have been a bit ordinary back then...

Thanks Alan-San from D&H B-A.

Left a Cops are Tops badge. (Wear this when next pulled over for speeding) Took a Mini Tiger Car.

Rated: for Overall Experience

Found this on the way back home after getting a data cable at Johnny Appleseed (finally - no more hours of entering waypoints by hand, hoorah). Straightfoward and interesting - especially the history of the final location, even if it wasn't mentioned in the cache. Was hoping to drop off Geoffrey TB, but he'll have to wait until a bigger cache comes along.

Another nice little history lesson from Alan-san today. This is a great we cache and at the time we found it there were plenty of dogs and owners playing in the area.
TNLN
Thanks Alan San

Found in fadind light after following the other clues. This is not a cache you should attempt with a trailer as we did. Number 3 found this one easy even though there was not enough light left for me to see any thing properly. Very enjoyable and informative cache.
Took Very small coupe
Left Car Key ring holder
Thanks Alan-san, keep up the good work.

Found the clues to this one fairly easily, and even found the right spot for the cache to within 2-3 metres but after digging around for 20 minutes amongst all the mosquitos, I decided "Enough!" and resorted to the Additional Hint. Found the cache immediately with this hint. My son Stuart removed "Frog the Fridge Magnet" who is now sitting on the door of our fridge. He replaced it with a red sports matchbox car from his collection. This hunt was a bit of fun with the scattered clues. We found the cache when it was getting dark and I took some flash photos from behind some bushes. The guy walking his dog nearby gave me a very strange look. It did not help when Stuart, my 9yo son, came out from behind the bushes. Memo to Self: "Make sure all cache hunts finish before dark"

Had a little trouble with the first location, as I was looking for the number of hours, then I realised you had to calculate it. Used my new $300 PDA as a $5 calculator and then had no trouble. Walked straight up to the cache and got some strange looks from the people in the office on the other side of the fence. Good thing I didn't have to search for long! Left another matchbox car to continue the automotive theme. Thanks Alan-San.

After Mummy Frogger had completed the maths, Daddy Frogger over-estimated the distance to the cache and took the team to the wrong side of the fence. It's getting to the stage where we are considering changing our team name to "Always on the wrong side" . The 2 tadpoles quickly raced to the other side and found the cache without any trouble at all. Tadpole took small "pull back" car and left froggy fridge magnet, as we had no car themed goodies with us.
Thanx for the cache

Our second (and last) cache for the night. We underestimated the time it would take to ferret out the final co-ordinates, so it was almost dark when we arrived at the GZ. We had no torch, and the GPSr was playing up, so after a fruitless search, we thought we'd have to come back another time.

Neither of us really wanted to give up, and Emu-M suggested having another fossick. This time the GPSr indicated a spot a further eight metres along, and Emu-M pounced at 21:07! It was a battle to see enough of the log book to write. We'll be adding a torch to the caching arsenal.

We took a small compass, and in keeping with the theme of the cache, we left a toy car.

We (ectizen, phantom & sloth) weren't looking for this at first, but after a slightly disappointing failed attampt at another cache, the keen-eyed first-timer phantom spotted the waypoint as we drove past. We decided to try it, and found the cache at 1:30am
This was a first find for both phantom and sloth, and my seventh. The clues/directions were good, the hiding spot was easy enough to find for a pack of beginnners like us, and we all enjoyed the extra historical info. We took an orange car, and left a toy compass (unfortunately, we didn't have a car themed swap...)
Thanks Alan-san for another great cache!

The second of 3 caches I found with Will (geoquack3) on a caching afternoon before I’m banished to Shepparton and surrounds for four weeks. I had visited here a week ago and had no luck because I was stumped by the absence of a stump and an old caching sheet. With Will’s trusty support, and the updated sheet, we completed gathering the remaining info and found the cache.

We made no exchange and headed onto look for ‘Puzzlemania #1’. Thanks Alan-san.

GeoQuacks were stumped too. Will have to call back and look at the sign. We were sure a stump couldn't be hidden that well...

We were stumped, the stump is gone [XX(]

I've visited the cache to find it is still there , but the tree stump has been removed. This would make finding the cache much more difficult. To fix this I've updated the clues to use the sign on the fence instead of the tree stump. Happy caching.

Well I looked and looked and couldn't find it. Noticed a few empty beer cans around the area so possibly it has been discovered by someone else?

Matt & Janis

Found at 4.45pm, just before Ducks Guts.
We found co-ords to be spot on and an easy find.
No swap made and another slice of Melbourne history.
Nice to meet other geocachers.
Thanks Alan-san
K&M

Really nice to finally meet Derringer and terribly excited to meet other Geocachers, (who, incidentally, dobbed in the Smithereens whereabouts at another cache). Beaten to the punch due to the (tandem-less) Stokers inept calculations. Took a little grey car and left a futuristic orange one.

We managed to find it even though we suspect we made an error in the calculations as we were 70 meteres out according to our gps. Thanks for another interesting history lesson. Nothing exchanged. Greg and Bev

Thanks for the history lesson. Its amazing how it doesn't take us long to get anywhere these days and back then ...
Found the clues quiet quickly. The last one I circled the area in my car then realised I was in the area I should have been. Wasted about 20 mins.
Oh well I'll learn.
Found the cache at 0847 swapped a small car for a bigger car. No prying eyes today.

Thanks Alan-san another wonderful multi.

Enjoyed our taste of Melbourne history and glad to see the cache has adopted the theme.
A quick retreat from the rain to log our find. Hope the tree stump stays put as it doesn't seem too permanent.
Took orange flame racer and left small vintage car photo frame. Picked up New Mexico TB.

Found by Mary & David at 1640. Wouldn't Herbert and Edward be horrified at the traffic in High Street now? After gathering all the data, found the cache soon after. Glad we didn't have an audience today in the nearby building, though. Might have made access difficult. Took small red and grey car, left two micro cars. Many thanks to Alan-san.

Found 11:15, after a little head scratching, and a brief search. Very well done Took mini car and left TB Sun Dog. Thanks Alan San for another infomative and interesting cache.

I saw this cache appear on the net whilst at work. Without my GPS with me, I plotted the first two locations on a map, and visited them on the way home to collect the answers. Later in the evening, armed with my GPS, I headed for GZ (or so I thought).

After looking around for a while, I headed back to the car to recalculate GZ. I thought I might double check my co-ordinates on the Alan-san helpline. Whilst being told one was wrong, I discovered I had substituted the wrong letter (doh!) and all made sense. Thanks Alan-san.

Armed with the correct co-ordinates, I headed off into the dark to discover the cache at around 9:20 pm. I don't know if it is meant to be a theme cache, but it seemed all the swaps were small cars. Luckily, I had a yellow Ford Mustang in my bag which I swapped for a dark blue Corvette.

Thanks for the cache, Alan-san. It was very enjoyable and informative. I look forward to the next in the 'Dude' series.