GC2B068: Eureka!

Found on 2010-07-01
Placed by: Physics.org
Size: Micro (Difficulty: 1 / Terrain: 1)
Location: London, United Kingdom
Geocaching.com: GC2B068

Well I was going to attempt a FTF on this one but technology failed me completely, here's my story...

Saw this cache get published this afternoon with a bunch of others and pondered over whether I should go for it after work. About 5pm I decided why not, so I fired up my work laptop with the intent of grabbing my latest PQ and also downloading the gpx file. This is where my problems began.

My month's usage of PAYG mobile broadband had finished yesterday - So when I plugged in the dongle I could not retrieve any email. I had to log onto vodafone site and order online, after retrieving my password I had forgotten.

Once I had it ordered, I logged onto email and downloaded the PQ as well as the gpx file for the new cache. Then I ran my script that uses gpsbabel to send to my Garmin - only my work laptop doesn't have gpsbabel isntalled!

Not a problem I thought, go into software centre and install, but Vodafone just didn't wasn't working well with the package manager, so I decided to resort to McDonalds free wifi. By now it was 6pm and I walked to the nearest McDoos and ordered a diet coke.

Sat down and opened the lappy, instantly noticed my old battery was showing only an hour to live- not a problem I thought, just plug into the wall socket. Trouble is McDoos seem to have turned off their wall sockets so I had no external power. I then logged onto McDoos wifi but it kept dropping the signal.

Finally I got a stable but slow signal and was able to download and install gpsbabel. I then loaded up the cache page to discover it had already been found, but since I'd already committed I thought may as well follow through. GPX loaded onto the Garmin, I shut down my laptop with 0% of battery to spare. What I did discover at least, is Ubuntu and Windows is under-reporting my battery life - it was on 0% for a good 20 minutes.

Now all that was left was to wait for the satellites to register whilst on the street. Which they did after about 30 minutes (I continued walking during that time). All in all I didn't get to the park till about 7.30pm.

I was in this area during winter-time and it's incredible how I didn't recognise it at first - all covered in green. Got to GZ and there just happened to be a bloke with a fag sitting right on top of the cache! So I sat down on the other side of the bench and waited whilst he finished his phone call to his girlfriend or whatever.

He finally got up after about 10 minutes and I was able to grab the cache and noted 2x signatures. I'm pretty sure I could have been a contender for this one, but I just wasn't prepared - just a few more days waiting for my Android phone then there'll be no more of this searching for signal and waiting for software to work.

TFTC!