A local geocacher who goes by the name Valpin mentioned a really neat thing to look at in Google Earth.

If you go to N50° 0’38.20" W110° 6’48.32" and zoom out a bit, I think you’ll be impressed. I’ve created a KMZ file you can open in Google Earth if you’d rather not have to cut and paste.

Go And Get ‘Em 9, the most recent of the Go And Get ‘Em geocaching events held every six months or so in Ottawa, took place last weekend (October 20-21, 2006). Starting at 18:00 Friday evening, it consisted of 24 hours of geocaching, followed by a dinner that started at 18:00 Saturday. Friday night, Darin and I headed out and found our first cache shortly after 6pm. We completed seven caches Friday night before calling it a night.

Saturday morning, Darin and I met up at my place, swapped vehicles. The only hitch, other than being up before 0700, occured when I fumbled I was holding while getting out of the elevator and watching my car keys go sliding across the floor and down the crack between the elevator car and floor. Retrieving my backup set of keys, we headed off for breakfast with the geomob at the Newport. After feeding, we headed out to find the first cache in the small Maplelawn park on Richmond Road. From there, we did another 9 caches before calling it a day.

Dinner started around 6pm at a restaurant called Stan’s. The food, while good, took a long time to arrive, probably because they just weren’t ready for about 200 people to order simultaneously.

Tick and Nammie, a local geocaching couple, organized yet another great event and deserve a round of applause. Everyone I talked to had a great time caching and socializing afterwards.

(Oh, and if you’re wondering about my car keys, the elevator engineers happened to be on-site a couple of days later and retrieved them from the bottom of the elevator shaft for me.)

I caught the tail end of a segment on The Weather Network that made me do a double take, so I checked the aviation weather observations for Buffalo, NY:

KBUF 130154Z 25008KT 1/4SM +TSSN FG OVC001 01/M01 A2973 RMK OCNL LTGIC OHD TS OHD MOV NE SNINCR 2/4
KBUF 130054Z 27010G19KT 1/2SM TSSN BR OVC003 01/M01 A2971 RMK OCNL LTGIC OHD TS OHD MOV NE TSB51
KBUF 130045Z 28014G19KT 3/4SM -SN BR BKN003 OVC007 01/M01 A2970

(more…)

We received pictures of one of the Go And Get ‘Em 9 geocoins today…

We’re very happy with how it looks in the picture and can’t wait to see the real things when they arrive next week. 🙂

Edit: We received a picture of the satin silver version of the geocoin today. 🙂

Darin (aka geoSquid) and I have produced a special, limited edition trackable geocoin for the Go And Get ‘Em 9 event taking place in Ottawa near the end of October. If you’d like to buy one (or two or six), please visit our online store at http://geocoins.pinetree.org.