Saturday, January 5, 2008

The start of a great adventure


Waiting in the airport for KG's flight to take off and ours to arrive.


Well, after the storm last night and a hearty breakfast of pancakes - we headed out into a beautiful sunlit winter wonderland. The drive to Reno was uneventful - though, once we got to the airport we discovered the line from Hell - and managed to make it to the plane with them holding it for a mere five minutes for KG to board.

Then it was our turn to wait. As you can see in the pic above - our weather was great. We meandered around the airport, got a call from Broncocacher on our status, and settled down to wait. Hurm, plane now delayed by 30 minutes... ok. It arrived at 1:30ish and we boarded just about 1:45p. As we backed away from the gate, the pilot came on and announced we'd be waiting for awhile as the crews came over to de-ice the plane. b0neZ and I watched as they sprayed pink goo all over the plane to clear the snow and ice and then sprayed green goo to do something. It seriously looked as if the plane was slimed!

Takeoff was bumpy, and the topper was when the pilot again came over the speakers to announce Reno Airport was now CLOSED!! We were the last plane out. Heading down,we got to watch our GPS units track us and I marvelled at a Nevada under a fresh blanket of snow. Getting to Vegas was bumpy again and the airport moderately busy. Called BC again and he told us they were waiting for us at the end of the baggage claim. Making our way over there - me scanning for BC or whtwolfden - we saw the one sight that we did not expect.

Signal the Frog was waiting for us.

NGA had a frog mascot costume made up for the arrival of the Groundspeak Lackey's and they were test running it. Even the Garmin reps in town wanted their picture with Signal.

BC, however, reminded us that caching time was burning and we were off. First stop, a quick cache in town that took my Delorme forever to find a lock on us. Great little quick cache to warm up with and we were off to Charleston. Up there, we focused on three of Patron and Mrs. caches. Plus one that was a mere 200 ft from where we'd parked. All of them were quite silly and as BC pointed out, not your standard ammo can cache in the desert. I loved the trip!

Back into Vegas towards the Moose Mob Motel. There were a ton of cars in the street and driveway. Once we got in the living room, dining room, and kitchen were packed. Mostly S. Californian cachers I didn't know (save for jahoadi and john and habu!) plus a lot of out of town reviewers. I went from knowing RoadRunner and Hemlock to meeting Krypton, Dot Plotter (from VA), RocketMan, and one other who I forget at the moment. Dot Plotter (who I met as his real caching identity) was kind enough to take all my trackables from me.

Time for bed - and I had the most killer headache that kept me awake all night. Hopefully in the morning I feel good enough to enjoy the excitment that awaits.

1/5/2008
You found GRIDLOCK!, New Year's Day "Surprise" Cache, GERONIM-OW!!, FUNTASTIC, BUILD A BETTER GEOCACHE

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