Birthday Geocache 2002

N 34° 09.276 W 118° 19.791

My birthday is July 28th. This year it was on a Sunday. We had a
party on Saturday and a quiet day on on Sunday. On Monday,
I went to work and people said Happy Birthday to me.

Around lunchtime, Pat came up and handed me an envelope.
I opened it and found these coordinates.
It appeared that some of my coworkers had arranged a birthday Geocache
for me to find.

I didn't bring a camera on the hunt, so the photos below
were taken after the hunt, back in my office.

Here are the coordinates.

They included a hint to put me in the general vicinity.

Since I didn't have my GPS with me, I was happy to learn that Brad had
left his unit for me to use. Too bad Brad was on vacation and couldn't come
along on the hunt. The Eagle Explorer is a vintage GPS unit.
It took me about a half hour to figure out how to work it.

I went out on the hunt with Dave and Mary. Once we were out of the car,
I was able to get a good lock on the GPS. After roaming around a bit
I realized that it would be hard to find the cache since the distance to waypoint
was shown on 0.1 mile increments only. We wandered all over looking for the cache.

Over my Nextel can the voice of Michael P. He was watching me from afar
and told me I was close to the cache, but hunting in the wrong spot.
I couldn't see him, but he was somewhere in the area watching.

He gave me a few hints, and I was able to find the cache, a nice big ammo can.
They had hidden it on a electrical power tower.

The box was full to the brim with goodies.

Having read my previous geocaching adventures,
they had stocked the cache with interesting things:

Two of my favorite candies, Dots and Red Vines,
Grecian Formula for my graying hair,
eye drops for my bad eyes,
band-aids and AAA batteries for putting in caches,
a home brewing book,
and some peppermint candies.

Thank you very much to Michael P., Brad, and Pat for hiding the cache.
Thanks to Dave & Mary for going on the hunt with me.

After I returned to the office, the rest of my coworkers had a
surprise cake for me. Here you can see what was left.

Thank you everyone for a good day at work.