Despite it being a quiet Sunday morning, I felt very conspicuous looking for this one, clambering around parked cars, looking up in trees and street sign posts. 

After a good solid 20 minute search I gave up.

The three seekers before me also had no luck finding this, so I do wonder if the cache is still available.

Today I made my way over to Electric Harmony (GCZE72) and found this urban micro by Us Mob reasonably quickly. The key to these I guess is timing – early Sunday morning is a great time to go to those usually busy places to pick up cache and avoid the muggles.

TeamWolfie strikes again in inner Sydney

Thanks for the cache. I quite enjoy the challenge of these urban micros.

I’d actually been meaning for a while to have a go at this cache – it was just a case of waiting for a rare time where I was running a little early for work and had 5 or so minutes to spare.

The Stairway to Deafen (GCX5RE) micro geocache by zebrafive is in located in the backstreets of Sydney’s Darling Harbour precinct. I’d already used my iPhone and Google street view to “case” the general area in my spare time at work in recent days, so it was now time to put my research into action.

They all climbed the Stairway to Deafen

Turned out this was a very quick park and grab. The cache hint gave me a very good idea of where to sit and feel, and I’d located it in under 30 seconds.

Signed the log, and quickly returned to the car, and yes… I just made it to work on time. Thanks zebrafive for another good one in a sneaky spot!

Cache details on iPhone

Note: the above image has been modified to protect the location of this cache.

As you can see, we have full access to the cache information – including complete Description, recent Logs – and the all-important Hint. Inventory details are also normally available from this screen – but this cache has no inventory.

Let’s now press the Hint button and take a look at the clue for this cache…

The cryptic clue revealed.

Okay – so now lets go back to the cache screen, and we’ll tap on the Map button to see it’s location in Google maps on the iPhone.

Google Maps Pinpoint to the Location

Note: the above image has been modified to protect the location of this cache.

When I switched to Google Maps view I could see straight away – not only was this close, but it’s also right alongside a road I drive down most mornings (Harris Street) – thus making it a perfect early morning park-and-grab cache at 4am with a guaranteed absence of muggles.

Let’s now tap the little red “Person” icon on the pinpoint and see what Google Streetview shows me.

The location - can you find it?

Hmmm… first of six, last of nine… something about ventilation. Many cachers reading this now have probably picked the right spot already! All that’s left to do now is physically drop by the location – which I did at 4am today.

Except for the fact it was dark, I felt like I had been there in person already and had already “cased out” the area where the cache is, and put the clues together – which was true, but I had done it in a completely virtual environment using only my Apple iPhone, so when I got to the spot I already knew exactly where to park and what to grab, and where to grab it from.  

The only thing left to do now was take a picture – again, with the iPhone - 

Grabbed cache. Signed Log. Returned cache.

It was kind of a eerie feeling being so familiar with the place before I even got there, and shows what a powerful tool the iPhone can be for geocachers.  If I’d needed too I could have also written this blog entry with the iPhone using my WordPress App – but it’s keyboard makes it an impractical tool for typing long documents.

I can then use the iPhone to brag about my find on Twitter, using the Twitterrific application to instantly notify our friends who follow @teamwolfie on twitter, and even share pictures of the find with our followers.

The only thing missing from the Groundspeak iPhone App is the ability to log your find directly from within the application – but there is always the option to use Safari on the iPhone to visit geocaching.com and log the find using that method.

This is one case where the iPhone has proved very useful – being the ONLY tool needed to plan, seek, locate, and photograph this cache. Yes there are times when the GPS could be better – in fact, I didn’t even need to use the GPS function to locate this find, however, this device is primarily an iPod and a Phone – but it’s amazing you can actually do so much with the Apple iPhone and I’ve grown to find it to an indispensable tool for my geocaching, and in 90% of cases is the only tool I need for a successful find.

And when I’m not using my iPhone for geocaching, I’m using it to listen to geocaching podcasts! It is truly my all-in-one device.

A familiar spot for fans of The Matrix

Since my first attempt at this micro cache I’ve learned much about caches – the various shapes, sizes, and places where they are best hidden, and I am developing my “geosense”, or the ability to think like a geocacher – to think about the surroundings, and hiding places. I had been thinking one specific place in particular that I really wanted to try on my first attempt – but I just couldn’t because I hate looking too conspicuous in busy public places, but this time – breakfast time on a Sunday morning, seemed to be an ideal time to give this another go.

I went straight to the place where I thought it would be, sat down pretending to wait for somebody while feeling around behind and under me on the object I was sitting at, and sure enough, I was right on top of it. Yes!  Such bliss!

Mission Accomplished

It feels so good to get a previous DNF checked off the list – this being the second of successful “second attempt” DNF’s now found felt even better. We’re looking forward to hunting down the other Matrix caches in the series soon.

What is that Thing? is from a well recognised scene in the movie, located underneath an stone arched railway overpass which just happens to be a 3 minute walk from my work. I had some time this morning, so I couldn’t really resist the temptation to wander down there for a brief look and to see if I could locate this nearby micro cache.

One needs to practice the art of stealth here! Although it’s not a very high pedestrian activity area, there is a moderate and steady volume of slow-moving, stop-start vehicular traffic passing by, and a police centre nearby with a number of Federal Police cars parked on the street in the immediate area. It is also near the railway tunnel entrance to the city circle underground, and hence is a security hotspot.

Today I was armed only with my iPhone to get a fix on the coordinates. Unfortunately – it didn’t like the built up area and I couldn’t get a proper satellite fix. Despite this, however, I was still able to use the GeoCaching application on the iPhone to look up the cache and get a pinpoint on the Google satellite view which lead me to an area where the cache should be. 

I eventually located a small, sharpened pencil – only 4cm in length, resting quietly on a stone ledge – as if to indicate nearby geocaching activity, but sadly I did not find the actual geocache itself.

This one will need to wait another day.

It just so happened this week I was working on very early morning standby shifts – these are shifts where you have to be on-call just in case they need you (e.g. if another driver doesn’t show up for whatever reason). I had a midnight start – so it was the graveyard shift…. and an ideal muggle-free time to go looking for the elusive Central geocache.

I ventured out to GZ about 1:30am for a look.  Taking into consideration the GZ, the clues, the comments left by other cachers – I was fairly confident I knew exactly where this urban micro cache would be hiding.

Sadly – no luck.

A work colleague turned up a few hours later and we both had another look together at 4:30am.  Again, no luck. But something good came out of this – my work colleague is now into Geocaching and later that day he located his first cache close to his home!