Logs for ZQX 

I hadn't come across the Phaistos Disc in my travels until this cache was published. Once I got into researching it, I really got into it. Big time. It's a fascinating object. Unfortunately, all of my investigations were fruitless for the purposes of working out the field puzzle (but excellent for learning about the history of the disc). Because I had hit a lot of dead ends with one avenue of attack, I settled on a certain alternative hypothesis, and started chipping away at trying to make it work. I accessed some old data stored deep in the catacombs of my pre-1990 memories, and tried a number of things. As it turned out, none of my ideas were getting me closer to a solution, but I persisted because (at that point) I hadn't been able to rule anything out. Then the FTFers came along and found the cache. They had mercy on me and my co-conspirators, providing a vital piece of information. It led us to something that looked a bit sketchy IMO, but it was obviously the right thing for the next step. We all worked on the next step independently and compared results. Two of us had the same answer, and we persuaded the others that we were right. And, at GZ today, we received confirmation that we were correct, when we found the cache at the coordinates that we had calculated. It took some finding though. I arrived early and looked for ten minutes without spotting it. Lots of possibilities. Then the others rocked up and pantspeople found it shortly after that.Thanks TE for the amazing work on making this cache. The object at WP1 is very well done. I have no idea how you pulled that off. 

Back again after a brief Sydney visit.This time I had a second pair of eyeballs. No expensive surgery required. The second set of eyes were not attached to me. They were attached to Fatoz. He used his eyes while I used mine. Systematically we eliminated possibility after possibility. Less than two hours later we saw the cache. Nice to avenge a DNF.Still heaps of room in the log. Log is dry. Cache is in good condition. Camo still in place.TFTC! 

Ar[gh], [it's] gon[e]!Actually, it was still there. It's just that I needed to get my eyes working properly.Thanks for the cache. Thanks also to Fatoz for holding the ladder. 

I solved this a week or two after it was published. I think I can recall a nice breadcrumb that basically told me what I needed to do.It was very warm today at GZ. It felt like mid-January, not early November. I'm sure glad I wasn't wearing a GC9QQHT.I haven't seen a hide exactly like this before, but I have seen some reasonably similar ones. So I knew what I was looking at. 

Interesting choice of four locations for this cache.Found on a very hot day with Fatoz. Fatoz might be the shyest cacher ever, so he won't log the find.An interesting name for a puzzle which, for many people, will involve that anti-anti-social activity that some call communication.Thanks Laighside Legends for something a bit different. Loved all the banksias near GZ. 

Fixed a problem with the formula. Thanks to first-to-solve-r pantspeople for pointing out the error. 

Found on a sunny afternoon. I'd not paid much attention to numbering systems for post boxes before. I was surprised by the counter-intuitive nature of the system(s?) in use here. It took a while to get the numbers, and then it was time to find the cache. I overshot GZ, and suddenly, it was 10m behind me. After that, it was in the 2nd place I looked. A fun multi. TFTC! 

After a short search, I found the geocache.On the trail this morning, I came across a cyclist who was sitting by the trail. I asked if he was okay. He was fine. Just waiting for someone.I'm starting to memorise parts of this trail now. And I'll be back for more. Maybe as early as next week.TFTC! 

I had no issues with the tree climb. I was just super-careful because I was on my own.While out walking this morning, I came across a number of kangaroos and heaps of small birds.I'm starting to memorise parts of this trail now. And I'll be back for more, I imagine. Maybe as early as next week.TFTC! 

A crisp but sunny morning to visit the CCT again. Lots of birds around, sunny their lungs out. No MTBers this early, but I did come across two walkers and a runner.Nice to get some exercise and get out of the house.TFT wherigo C, DSD!CCT, I'll be back! 

Enough daylight in the day to head here and make the find.This is the fourth or fifth time I've been on this part of the CCT this month. It's a really nice part of the ACT. I'm really enjoying it.TFT multi C! 

Enough daylight in the day to head here and make the find.This is the fourth or fifth time I've been on this part of the CCT this month. It's a really nice part of the ACT. I'm really enjoying it.TFT letterbox C! 

Looked for a long time. No luck 

Found on a sunny afternoon.*FTF*That was a bit of fun on the ebike. A few other riders nearby. And some walkers.Almost ran over a shingleback.TFTC 

Got it*FTF*Silly me left my glasses next to the cache and rode off with out them. About 350 metres later, I wondered why my face felt a bit different. Oh well, nothing like an extra 700 metres of cycling to get your calories up.Very happy to score another ftf here. A rare event for me to get so many in one day.TFTC DSD 

Found after a nice long ride.*FTF*I was wondering what to do with my afternoon, when my phone went 'ping!'I slapped on some sunscreen, topped up my water bottle, donned the trusty helmet and jumped on my bike. Let's go! It was a long ride, just to get to the first cache. I wondered if I would get a ftf, and I ended up getting six. I think I was lucky that a significant proportion of the active cachers in Canberra were out on a road trip. But not everyone. There might still be some competition for ftf. But the only people I saw out and about were muggles on foot on on bike.I squeezed in a brief breather near here, then continued on.TFTC DSD 

Found after a fun bike ride. *FTF*It took a few minutes to spot the cache. It was not what I expected. It took a while to retrieve the cache and sign the log, but all good in the end.TFTC! 

Found during a bike ride in the area. A serene location indeed.Thanks DSD for all the geocaches. 

Lovely day for a MTB ride. Too hot almost.I overshot the cache due to my complex ineptitude, but realised my mistake after less than a minute. It didn't take long to backtrack to the cache's location.And so at 1424 hours I scored a nice little *FTF*The first of six ftfs on a reasonably busy Sunday.TFTC 

Found on a sunny spring arvo.*FTF* just before 4:00pm.Sneaky hide here that had me looking in all the wrong places. The question was easy to answer but the cache was hard to find. The terrain was relatively easy compared to some of the bumpy stuff further up the hill.By this stage of my ride, my e-bike's battery was getting low and my knee was starting to scream at me. Time to call it a day. I think I ended up with 6 ftfs, which is my second-best ever. My best of seven in a day was also in October. Must be a spring thing.Thanks DSD for all the caches. 

Found itNot sure if it was me or my phone, or maybe the planets were aligned incorrectly for a few minutes, but the cache's coordinates seemed to be 10 to 12 metres out. The friendly hint meant that I still had a chance of finding the container.Great views from up here.I had parked my bike down at the gate. I was a little nervous about it being nicked, so I hurried back down to it. All good.TFTC! 

Today I elected to go for a walk with friends to get a *FTF*The puzzle: With a GC code ending in "at AWM", I wondered if I need to spend some time at the AWM to solve this. I won't be giving too much away by saying that I didn't need to visit the venerable institution at all in the process of completing the puzzle. Fox in Jox and pantspeople led the charge on the journey to the solution. I have had some limited exposure to a related thing, but the old brain isn't as sharp as it used to be, and I find this type of thing a bit difficult these days. Maybe I should get back into training?The cache: FiJ had departed the capital and was not able to join the ftf party of pantspeople, TikvaNZ and myself. Fellow conspirator AngelG was also doing something else. It really is difficult to coordinate all the calendars. Before pp reached the container, we had indulged in a bit of speculation about what it would be. My guess was totally off, but when we saw what the CO had done, I let out a little chuckle. A phrase in the name of another cache by the same CO comes to mind.Thanks for the pun puzzle and hide, Brain. 

Sue Veneer called me here. I arrived at bang on 1400. Bags full of rubbish greeted me. Was I 2 l8?TFT CITO E pp What a lovely spring day this is. 

Need to restock the Buderim ginger cordial, so might drop by while I'm in the area. 

Found with morphcheese during a wander in the area. MC had never been to this part of the ACT before.Thanks for the cache, DSD. 

Found on a sunny morning while walking with morphcheese. Lovely to be out and about in perfect conditions. Saw some birdlife and heard a lot of other birds.Cache found after a short search.Somehow I have ended up with an ultra-rare second to find here. While it takes speed to get a first to find, it usually takes meticulous and careful timing to get STF.  

Found with TikvaNZ at about 4:10 on a sunny afternoon. This is one of those caches where it's really easy to accidentally give away hints about which WPs are of interest and which are not, so I'm going to be super careful here. It was a very enjoyable experience and reminded TikvaNZ and I a bit of rogaining in some respects.I got stuck in some blackberries part of the way through, so I got out the first aid kit and applied sticky plasters to various parts of my body. That was the least pleasant part of the experience. Most people should be able to avoid that section of the 'course' if they keep their wits about them.Thanks SilverPersian99 for another interesting multi. 

Found with Fatoz on a windy but sunny arvo.Fatoz was happy for me to write his name in the logbook, but I doubt he will log it online.We continued up to the top to soak up the views.TFTC! 

Found just before 0930 on an overcast Tuesday morning. I was hoping for a joint *FTF* with friends, but we couldn't get our times to overlap. I actually briefly parked outside TikvaNZ's house to pick him up, but then I noticed that he had left a message saying that he was busy. I was also thinking about picking up pantspeople from his work (hoping that he could get an early, extended morning tea break) but I didn't hear from him.The puzzle: I had a theory about GZ based on some information in the cache page, and it turned out I was exactly right. This came in handy later. I figured out what to do with the puzzle, I found a suitable tool, and then I trusted the hint too much. At one point last night I was looking at the coordinates on the screen in front of me, but because I was trusting the hint too much, I ignored what I saw. Possibly with exactly the right tool, the hint works, but with the tool I was using, the hint ended up being a little misleading. Inadvertently of course. Meanwhile some others were working on the puzzle, and this morning pantspeople saw the same thing that I had seen, and shared it. This time I thought the possible solution was worth plotting on the map. I saw that the coordinates lined up with one of my first thoughts, and I decided that it was worth taking a look at the possible GZ.The cache: Despite my desire to be at GZ with caching buddies, I was there alone. It took a minute to spot the cache, because I had forgotten some basic information that is freely available on the cache page. I realised that I had not brought the correct tools or the correct shoes. I messaged the team again, seeing if there was any chance some person or people could join me. Hmm. No reply. Right. Time to bite the bullet and get to the cache. That wasn't as difficult as I thought. I signed the log in the ftf position. I left the TB in the cache. (I had discovered that TB earlier in the year, so I just left it there. I have no plans to create RNG 6. Creativity levels are a bit low rn. Maybe I'll bounce back next year?)Thanks StarsAlign for a challenging puzzle and challenging set-up at GZ. Thanks to pantspeople for the assist. 

Found with friends (super-team FATZ on the prowl again) on a day when we thought we might be paddling on/near Lake Illawarra. That trip will have to wait for another day.I was an anchorperson while the Foxy one skipped up and collected the cache. He passed it to me for signing, but I was penless. So I passed it to AngelG who penned 'FATZ' into the log book.TFTC! 

I joined AngelG, Fuchs in Jochs and TikvaNZ for a Labour Day mission to the northwest. I paddled to the island and needed yelled encouragement and instructions to find the cache in an unexpected location. TFTC Aykayem.Nice to get a short paddle in on a sunny day. 

After a difficult few days, I needed a break. I didn't have a lot of time, and this cache wasn't too far from home. The walk to GZ was just right.The puzzle: I made some progress after about 40 minutes of faffing about but then got stuck. I had missed something, or possibly didn't realise that I had stumbled upon something and then moved away from it. After a fair bit of trying more and more ridiculous things, I stopped and downed tools for a bit.TikvaNZ gave me a nudge, and I was back on track. The last few little steps were not troublesome.Thanks for the hard puzzle and for the cache. 

Found with four friends - Fox in Jox, AngelG, TikvaNZ and pants people.I really liked Canberra Capers when I did it in June 2013. Later I completed similar one in Springwood, NSW: GC5B7MA - Springwood Post. I liked that one too. (I'm not the only one - currently it has 44 favourite points.) I suspect it was inspired by Canberra Capers (which has 112 FPs!).I think I like this one the best of the three, as it was more challenging. It required some trial and error. It required a higher level of fitness. I like the fact that, in several instances, you can't see location n+1 when you're at location n. There's a bit of intuition involved. And of course when working with friends, it's not necessary to go down every rabbit hole. Members of a group can take turns to investigate possibilities.Thanks for the super-enjoyable adventure, SilverPersian99. Definitely a favourite point from me. 

*FTF* with pants people at 0740I spent 20 or 30 minutes looking at this, and I couldn't get one clue out. It was a harrowang feeling. Because I couldn't get one out, I wasn't sure how the clues worked. I just needed one answer, I thought, and then I could make progress. I asked some friends if they wanted to team up. Pants people agreed to work on it with me, and promptly solved one. He explained to me how it worked, and that was enough for me to strip away a whole bunch of assumptions. I won't mention what those assumptions were, because that will give away too much.After we solved a few more, we noticed a few things, and that allowed us to accelerate. After about two hours, we had the coordinates, but it was a bit late. And dark. So we agreed that it could wait until morning. A bit of a risk due to the "you snooze you lose" factor, but we made a decision to accept that risk.Fast forward to this morning, and we met at GZ where we were met with neat, clean log. Lovely! We discovered the trackable and went our separate ways. We had plans to meet up later in the morning to attempt another cache. That's another story.Thanks Brain for a fun puzzle. Not what I expected at first, but it all came together nicely once I knew what I was doing. Kudos to pants people for making the initial breakthrough.For people wanting to learn cryptic clues one at a time, there's minutecryptic.com. The accompanying YouTube vids are very useful.TFT puzzle and TFTC. I estimate that it's about day 1976 of puzzle caching for me. 

I love the GC code for this cache. There's an Ace, a King, a Queen, and Jack, and a T for Ten. Maybe I could make a puzzle out of that somehow.The puzzle in the cache description made me think of pants people somehow. I can't think why.As many locals know, I have, over the past six years or so, made many puzzles for DSD's mystery caches (and some for LBHs and wherigo caches too come to think of it). The puzzle in this cache was made by someone else. As was the puzzle in Highest Mint Tin in Tidbinbilla. It's lovely to get thanks for people for puzzles that I've made, but I don't feel good getting appreciation for things that I haven't done.I found the cache after about five minutes of checking out a number of charred objects.TFTC 

It's interesting that two D1/T4 challenges appeared in the ACT at about the same time. I wonder if there's a challenge out there somewhere that involves finding multiple 1/4 challenges? Crazy thought. Second thought is that it's just a coincidence. Less crazy thought.I parked. I saw. I climbed. I signed while perched in the tree. I got back to ground level without injuring myself. Yay!Project-GC says that I qualify for this challenge, as the attached image will attest.Thanks Joolay for the challenge and the cache. 

When I parked at Dalsetta I felt like I had the whole of the reserve to myself. When I got back there was a busload of people and a few other cars.The loopy walk to Gibraltar Rocks was very nice. Great birdlife. I picked a sunny morning with little wind. The walk up was a test for the old ticker, and I'm here to say that the ticker passed. The walk down was a test for the knees. They'll have to resit the exam because they didn't do very well.Glad to get a rare 1.5/3.5 letterbox hybrid cache.Thanks GSC2000 

My smart phone took me to a location that didn't match the hint. So I did a bit of a circuit, being careful not to tread on any orchids, and eventually I found the cache.Thanks GSC2000 for the LBH cache!2nd cache on the walk up to Gibraltar Rocks. 

3 out of 3 so far this morning. Lovely to get a letterbox cache with an altitude of 1000+ metres.TFTC GSC2000. 

I saw the trackable in the cache. I considered taking it. But I'm hopeless with trackables, and have been known to forget about them for years, then come across them in a show box in the attic and feel very guilty for being such a bad geocacher. So I decided to discover it instead and leave the moving of the TB to a more responsible person.Nice views from GZ. I finished my first water bottle and started on the second. I didn't bring enough water for all thing Tidbinbilla things I wanted to achieve today, so I cut things short by three hours. The heat surprised me.TFTC GSC2000. 

I looked for 20 minutes or so. Some bulldozer thingy has come through here recently and I can't help wondering if it has nicked off with the cache. Naughty bulldozer.Or it was there and I didn't see it. 

There is a slim chance that I will attend this event. Just need a few things to line up. 

*FTF* with Flintstones, fitzy_1965 and StarsAlign at 2:54 pm.I raced out the door, leaving a freshly-made cup of tea on the kitchen table. I got to GZ as Flintstones was part way through the puzzle. A moment later fitzy showed up, then SA. It might be a spring thing to have so many cachers appear for a FTF during working hours?TFTC 

I chose a challenging path to GZ. It got my heart thumping. A good workout!Great clear views today.TFTC! 

Found on a magnificent spring day. I enjoyed the walk to the posted coordinates very much. I saw at least two species of orchid in bloom. I also saw some fairy wrens and some finches, and a host of other birds, some of which were quite chatty. I kept my eye out for snakes, just in case. No snakes seen on either of the bushy walky parts of this cache.I found this multi very challenging. Even when I had calculated the coordinates of GZ, I was doubting my working. One of the buildings was very hard to identify. Or rather, the building has changed so much that I wasn't sure I had the right building.I was very pleased to find the cache after all the physical and mental work. Great feature at GZ.TFTC 

Found after a short search. TFTC 

Found with Fox in Jox and AngelG on a nice spring morning.There might be a number of ways to accelerate the process, but I was not clever enough or sneaky enough to implement any of them. So I visited Canberra Park several times over a period. I got a bit nervous when the mid-70s came around. What if I miss it and have to start again? So I collaborated with a friend to make it more likely that neither of us would miss the magic century.My TOTT was not up to scratch, and with lots of muggles near GZ at many times of the day, I didn't want to try a multi-TOTT combo. Instead I went with friends who had equipment that was up for the job.Thanks Brain for something a bit different. Just enter a number between one and a gazillion googolplexes squared to collect your favourite point.After collecting a few more, we headed off for brunch, where we discussed some other caching plans. 

Found with AngelG.Art surprises me. That Ingvar Cronhammar could create *Ella* surprises me. A dome measuring 60m in diameter? 32m high columns? In a Danish field? Perhaps it's a waste of metal and arable land? Or perhaps it adds something to humanity in some way that I cannot understand? Surprising. For me. Very much so.I worked with a group to monitor for eruptions. Eventually fire spewed forth and the coordinates appeared.Thanks for the unique idea, Brain. Also, thanks for teaching me about *Ella*. 

Found with AngelG and Fox in Jox on an overcast morning. Lots of fun climbing here. I felt like a kid.At WP1 we tried a few numbers before working out the instructions. At GZ it took a while to spot the container. I took my time getting to it.TFTC! 

I'd like to come along to this one. A part of Black Mountain that I haven't explored yet.