Smokestoner influence in Linköping

Have not been very active in GeoCaching during the last month. Was up to Grytgöl to clear the 3 PTs there, just to find one week later that 3 new PTS had been published. Ah....

Back home I have had good control of cache situation. In a triangle of Kappelån/E4, Linghem/E4 and Ullstämma (south of Linköping) at one time I had about 20 caches, of which 90% or so was Mysteries. Recently some more mysteries have popped up, of which only a few was suitable for me. So, mysteries keep piling up. Have to save them for the long, dark winter. At least RDun have not appeared with new mysteries in this area, although the new Mystery Master (m1m3r) seem to give us work enough.

So, multis, wherigos and other unusual caches have been few, and those I try to solve as soon as they appear, at least if they are less then T4... That leaves the Trads. Here a few difficult ones have appeared, like MMR-23: 128 (http://coord.info/GC32NGT) which a group of 7 geoCachers spent almost an hour looking for the FTF. And a devilish one near Tinnerö, which I went out 2:30 am to look for in the dark. So the trads are starting to pile up as well.

Today I took a trip to Nyköping, but not for caching. Although an excellent day for that activity I spent all day indoors, playing Bridge. But I managed to logg two caches, one before the play, and one during the lunch break: Agnes - Cecilia and Tvålfabriken, the later in a part of central Nyköping I had never visited (on the other side of the rail road, going as a bridge from the railway station). There are several difficult city caches in Nyköping, but these caused no problems at all.

I did check my e-mail and as expected several caches had been published! Why do this always happen when I am away from town! This time it was even a forrest power trail, inspired by Smokestoner's PT caches. And this near Glyttinge camping, which is between Ryd and Skäggetorp. Oh well, I will have some easy pickings to do the next couple of months.

Have had my own plans for a power trail of some kind, but I am thinking more in the line of Höögarna's style. We'll see if I ever get round to make such a trail...

Summary of my first year

In one of my first entries (http://lhcper-geocaching.blogspot.com/2010/12/presentation-of-lhcper.html) I wrote about my targets for 2011. The easiest (and not mentioned) was to be geoCacher for a year. July 10th I reached that. And now I try to summarize my first year as a geoCacher.

It has been a great hobby, but I seem to have been overhelmed by it. During the last months I struggled to complete the "Logg at least one cache every day for 100 days" challenge. As soon as I completed that (30th June) I did take a brake, and I have only done sparse caching since then. I also has some maintenance to to, but hopefully I will do some during the vacation that starts any week now ;-)

So, how did my first year go? Well, let's check the targets I set up for 2011 (in the entry above):

• "Today I have 340 finds. I expect to reach a total of 500 finds during Spring 2011, and I hope to reach a total of 1000 finds at end of year 2011." - Spring ment quite a lot of finds. Even though low scoring summer I have exceeded 1200.
• "Today I have logged in 2 countries (Sweden and Egypt). I hope to have logged in at least 3 more countries during 2011." - No abroad trips so far. It looks inlikely, but I hope to go to Tallin at least, if not Wales, Finland, Denmark or Germany.
• "At least 2 Mega Events during 2011." - Seems unlikely right now.
• "Currently my hide count in 11 but this Summer I should reach 25." - Well, I put out more caches than so during the 10 year celebration... My count has exceeded 70.
• "I will continue to add easier mysteries in my Games people play and expect to add a traditional series similar to Östgötapendeln." - Have not come round to this yet, but I still plan to do it. My "Östgötatorg" series is a series of semi-Multies in the same spirit as "Östgötapendeln".

So, besides the above I managed to reach 3 events hosted and 10 events visited (even in Östergötland), quite a few challenge caches placed, and some other.

Will not put up any new goals for the reminder of 2011. Probably I will use a more relaxed attitude to geoCaching in the future. But I still think this is a great hobby and a great way of getting out into the nature.

Statistics for caches in Östergötland

Today there is 1676 active caches in Östergötland. Of these one (http://coord.info/GC1TG25) is not placed in a Östgöta-county, but in Hallsberg...

The top list, caches per county, are:

Place	County	GeoCaches
1	Linköping	466
2	Norrköping	431
3	Motala	267
4	Ödeshög	168
5	Mjölby	81
6	Finspång	60
7	Kinda	48
8	Söderköping	29
8	Valdemarsvik	29
10	Vadstena	27
11	Åtvidaberg	25
12	Boxholm	24
13	Ydre	21

Count per cache type in the state:

Place	Type	Count	Ratio
1	Traditional	466	72.9%
2	Unknown	311	18.6%
3	Multi	112	7.3%

Traditionals per county:

Place	County	Trads
1	Norrköping	362
2	Linköping	256
3	Motala	165
4	Ödeshög	152
5	Mjölby	59
6	Finspång	52
7	Kinda	40
8	Valdemarsvik	27
9	Söderköping	25
10	Vadstena	23
11	Boxholm	20
11	Åtvidaberg	20
13	Ydre	18

Multis per county:

Place	County	Multis
1	Linköping	52
2	Motala	27
3	Mjölby	14
4	Norrköping	12
5	Kinda	3
5	Ödeshög	3
7	Boxholm	2
7	Finspång	2
7	Söderköping	2
7	Vadstena	2
11	Valdemarsvik	1
11	Ydre	1
11	Åtvidaberg	1

Unknown per county:

Place	County	Unknowns
1	Linköping	150
2	Motala	70
3	Norrköping	53
4	Ödeshög	10
5	Mjölby	8
6	Finspång	5
7	Kinda	4
7	Åtvidaberg	4
9	Boxholm	2
9	Söderköping	2
9	Vadstena	2
12	Valdemarsvik	1
1	Ydre	0

Top list, cache placement, are:

Place	Owner	Placed
1	The Smokestoners	140
2	Bo & Elisabeth	131
3	LHCper	62
4	Fjärderlös Tvåfoting	58
5	RDun_Swe	55
6	androsen	39
7	Team Fetchez La Cache	38
8	kejomot	36
9	Christer & Christina	33
10	LelleRos	31

Placement of traditionals:

Place	Owner	Trads
1	The Smokestoners	132
2	Bo & Elisabeth	87
3	Fjärderlös Tvåfoting	42
4	androsen	35
5	Christer & Christina	27
6	Helnot	25
6	LelleRos	25
8	torado	21
9	LHCper	18
9	Muslie	18

Placement of multis:

Place	Owner	Multis
1	Bo & Elisabeth	20
2	LHCper	17
3	BHJ	7
4	RDun_Swe	6
5	esso	4
6	ola&marie	3
7	Eisander	2
7	Fjäderlös Småfoting	2
7	LelleRos	2
7	Pelena	2
7	Team Flex	2
7	The wolftracker	2
7	lodola	2
7	megahallon	2
7	memmel	2
7	pinkunicorn	2

Placement of unknowns:

Place	Owner	Unknowns
1	RDun_Swe	43
2	kejomot	28
3	LHCper	26
4	Team Fetchez La Cache	21
5	Bo & Elisabeth	20
6	Fjäderlös Tvåfoting	12
6	TVMTech	8
8	Spacetravellers	6
9	BHJ	5
9	Christer & Christina	5
9	Druiderna/Lilla Kitty	5
9	Leonardo	5
9	megahallon	5
9	The Smokestoners	5
9	torado	5

So, that was quite a lot of statistics produced using GSAK + Script. Anything missing? Well, some statistics is not possible (I think), for example: Most logged caches, most found, ...

If you thinks this is a good idea, and/or if you want to see other forms of statistics let me know.

Urban exploration in Motala

A recent challenge (Challenge #043E Östergötland Top 10) got me to try for some of the harder caches around. At least the popular ones... Of the three I had unlogged, two were 5/5:s and the last one was a high difficulty rating (D4).

One of the 5/5 was Motala Underground which is under old Motala Verkstad. Jakob8h had this as the only one left to log, so when the challenge appeared there was some action... 

It turned out that it was only me and jakob8h going on this trip, so we used jakob8h's geoCar.

The cache place is among the older industrial buildings in Motala. As usual there are quite a lot of water in places like this.

We were prepared for darkness and some water, but did not bring any flexible ladder. It turned out that we did not need any as previous visitors had put some stuff we could use to get up to the next level. But ladder might still be a good idea.

I have no helmet; maybe something to acquire?

Here is the entrance. Looks inviting, does it not?

 After some time we did locate the cache and brought out the cameras to take some shots.

Jakob in action.

 Quite a lot of pipes in here.

Here is the cache container. I think it is my glove that is laying beside it, a glove I forgot in jakob's car. A tradition I have, forgetting stuff during caching.

 With the cache logged it was just getting outside again. The entrance far away looked even more inviting than the entrance here.

So, back outside again, with mission completed.

In all this is a suitable 5/5 for those of you that haven't done any before. This was my first, and I enjoyed it so it got a favorite point from me.

After this, I had two caches more to log before completing the challenge. More on that another time.