Injuries/accidents/other memorable caching happenings

[gotta run]

Ok, now that I see THREE people including me have gotten stuck in snow I don’t feel so bad!

Oh, did I forget to mention that I did not have my wallet that day too?

I learned that the hard way at the end of the day AFTER filling up the car, the ONLY time in the past 5 years I have NOT used pay at the pump because I wanted to buy something inside, so there I am standing at the counter going…”Uh…I lost my wallet.” So I call Mrs. gotta run who is on the road herself…she pulls over and reads my card number and I give it to the clerk, who manually does the payment.

So that’s cool, but now where’s my wallet? I assume it’s lost in the woods somewhere, perhaps when I pulled out the Palm to check cachemate. So I’m strategizing how to make another 2-mile roundtrip hike after having already put on more than 10 miles since the early a.m. misadventure. Decide to hang out for a bit and wait for her to get home and check…thankfully I just forgot the wallet on the counter.

In retrospect…that would have made for a very interesting tow experience…

A guy.
Stuck in the woods with a car registered to a woman.
At about 6am.
With NO ID.

Naw, that wouldn’t have looked suspicious at all…

On the Left Side of the Road...

[RSplash40]

Thanks TE’s – reminded me of the attempted ftf on giz’s houdini cache. Not sure what happened but I grabbed all the numbers and ran for the final with the kids staying in the truck. Looked like a pretty sweet spot for a hide and looked legal.

So off I went, and I saw the first wasp….didn’t think much of it then there were dozens, after the 2nd sting I was running as fast as my gravity challenged frame could go up the hill and across the street to the truck. I was up to 8 hits then, getting out of there as fast as I could. On the way to walgreens for meds I got stung two more times under my shirt. I left the kids in truck and ran in. While I was in there the kids came in with no shoes on, one of them had gotten stung, it was his first so got him some meds too.

Had them stand far away by a tree in the drizzle while I opened every door and window and smashed 3 more inside the truck. On the drive home, I happened at my slightly accelerated speed to catch up to the professor him self on hwy 41 who confirmed I was not in the right area.

[Team Hemisphere Dancer]

@RSplash40 wrote:

Thanks TE’s – reminded me of the attempted ftf on giz’s houdini cache. Not sure what happened but I grabbed all the numbers and ran for the final with the kids staying in the truck. Looked like a pretty sweet spot for a hide and looked legal.

So off I went, and I saw the first wasp….didn’t think much of it then there were dozens, after the 2nd sting I was running as fast as my gravity challenged frame could go up the hill and across the street to the truck. I was up to 8 hits then, getting out of there as fast as I could. On the way to walgreens for meds I got stung two more times under my shirt. I left the kids in truck and ran in. While I was in there the kids came in with no shoes on, one of them had gotten stung, it was his first so got him some meds too.

Had them stand far away by a tree in the drizzle while I opened every door and window and smashed 3 more inside the truck. On the drive home, I happened at my slightly accelerated speed to catch up to the professor him self on hwy 41 who confirmed I was not in the right area.

Mike, Why do I have cartoon images of you and the kids swatting at wasps in the truck while cruisin’ down the road. Of course I cannot stop at just Mike. This could all be turned into a rather fun filmstrip.

[RSplash40]

probably very reminiscent of the three stooges 😛

[Team Hemisphere Dancer]

I was actually thinking Brutus, Goofy and the boys.

[furfool]

My experience was similar to RSplash40’s. I was looking for The Edge by Gr8Eyes about a mile from home.

It was hot and humid late in the afternoon. The sky was getting dark to the west because of a storm coming in. I was really trying to make this a quick find as it was getting dark very fast. I’m swatting mosquitoes, wiping sweat, and tripping a lot on the sticks and vines. Of course I’m in heavy tree cover so I am having a tough time finding GZ. At last count there were 50,001 hiding places. I felt a couple of drops of rain, so now I’m really trying to hurry. I tripped and went down. I grabbed a branch to help pull myself up with, and it broke, tearing open a bees nest in the other end. What did I do once I got up? I stood there like an idiot trying to see what was flying around. They were a little bigger than a house fly and I thought that they were some kind of fly. Big mistake. I seem to get in more trouble when I think. I got smacked once on my back by what I figured was a bee that I just POed so I still thought they were flies. I go to rub my back on a tree a bit were I got stung and that was when those little buggers really started nailing me. I pulled my shirt off and started swinging it around as I ran the 200 feet through thorns, raspberry canes, vines, and three different types of burrs. I hit the road and ran right past my truck as I ran down the center line. I still can’t believe I wasn’t hit by a car because I never looked for traffic. I started slowing down about a hundred yards down the road and thought I should be safe now. I threw my shirt in the ditch. I didn’t know if there were any bees wrapped up in it and I didn’t want to find out. I don’t remember how many stings, but I remember my back feeling like it was on fire. I never want to go through that again.

I got my shirt the next day, and the cache. I went very slowly while looking for it.

[RJ McKenzie]

I fell in between some boulders doing an Earthcache at 11pm. The opening was well over my head when I landed at the bottom. I scrapped myself pretty good and still have some marks left from that cache.

And I sliced my hand open earlier in the year, didn’t stop me from looking for the cache. Left a good blood trail in the snow while I was looking for it.

[grcarlson]

The worst geocaching accident I had was in Texas last summer geocaching with my parents and my daughter Emily , we were seeking “Emily’s birthday cache” and there was a small amount of barbed wire which I tried to jump over which caught the back of my leg and I ended up going to urgent care and getting a tetanus shot also. I’ve been questioned by the police many times, one of my favorites was at Geocoinfest in Temecula CA under a train caboose with four or five other cachers just after dark searching for a nano. The officer drove by at first slowly then came speeding across the field with lights flashing coming toward the caboose. The officers didn’t know about geocaching which I thought was funny that a small town would host a large event and the authorities had no clue what it was all about. Another strange geocaching experience was that same night in Temecula with an older woman in an early 70’s Buick trying to run us off the road several times, we ended up driving over a curb and getting on the Interstate for a few exits to lose her. And now for my worst injury since geocaching but not geocaching related was a motorcycle accident and getting my leg broken in two places plates and screws in my leg that happened on Thursday evening just before I was planning on heading to TN for all the Geowoodstock festivities. I’ll be out of work for several weeks at least, depending what my doctor says about working as a youth counselor. For a while I guess I get to read all the posts of everyone else having fun.

[kansas64]

Does a run in with Homeland Security count?

[RSplash40]

@grcarlson wrote:

And now for my worst injury since geocaching but not geocaching related was a motorcycle accident and getting my leg broken in two places plates and screws in my leg that happened on Thursday evening just before I was planning on heading to TN for all the Geowoodstock festivities. I’ll be out of work for several weeks at least, depending what my doctor says about working as a youth counselor. For a while I guess I get to read all the posts of everyone else having fun.

YEEOWCH! Sorry to hear about that, I now understand your pain for sure. I hope you heal quick!

–rsplash40

[LDove]

😳 😳 😳 This is why I have the words above my avatar picture on the left:

😀 January 9, 2007 by LDove (1342 found)
I have to edit this log. When this originally happened, I was too embarrassed to print it. Now that a little time has gone by and I can laugh about it and since I have been printing my logs, I will share my adventure. So I get to your cache and decide that in the cold .25 is too far to walk in. The weather has frozen everything so I will just drive the car up the side of the field. Get to what LOOKS like a cute, very small brook with a little ice. Car can make that – NOT!!! Car got massively stuck and in the cold had to call a 30 ton wrecker to get me out! If I would have sunk another 2 inches, car would have had creek running through it! MY NEW CAR! Tow truck driver got there and found me cold, with a runny nose and a bit teary. I think he felt sorry for me but told me, “when you are out hikin’, yer supposed ta walk!” doh… After a he told me he hauled someone else outa there for 250 bucks I started to get a few more frozen ice cubes outa my eyes and I think he felt sorry for me and said “aw just give me 90 bucks.” So 90 bucks later I had a new, old Star Wars VCR tape from the cache and another adventure to chalk up for lonesumdove’s misadventures in geocaching.

Oh and I got “lost” along with my husband in the Jackson swamp, stuck my face right into a hornet’s nest and then ran screaming backwards into a patch of briars in Menomonee Falls, AND had some freak come after me with a hammer because I wandered onto private property… 😮 😯 amazing that I still do this. 🙄 😆

[Frizz]

@grcarlson wrote:

. And now for my worst injury since geocaching but not geocaching related was a motorcycle accident and getting my leg broken in two places plates and screws in my leg that happened on Thursday evening just before I was planning on heading to TN for all the Geowoodstock festivities. I’ll be out of work for several weeks at least, depending what my doctor says about working as a youth counselor. For a while I guess I get to read all the posts of everyone else having fun.

That sounds alltogether too familiar. Two years ago, I broke my leg just 11 days before a planned GW V trip. I wish you a very speedy recovery. Remember, geocaching can be rationalized as “rehab activity”.

[thepharmgirl]

I lost my car key somewhere at a rural cemetery cache near Jackson and had to call my dad to come get me. I never did find it, and it was one of those darn $300 smart keys. I’m just glad I was only 10 miles from my house and not 100 miles. I lost my blackberry phone while caching and had to retrace my steps from cache to cache until I found it (and I did! WHEW!). Things like to jump out of my pocket. 😕

But the biggest mishap was when I fell down a cliff (cliff might be an exaggeration…but it was quite high) along Lake Michigan at USS RASHER – Manitowoc. I don’t think I accurately conveyed how completely ridiculous and embarrassing the situation was in my log. But I was a new cacher at the time. I had taken a young cousin with me because I thought he’d enjoy caching. As we bushwhacked on non-existent trails, he was getting more and more worried. I assured him, “Don’t worry; this is normal!” 😆 We finally got to GZ, and couldn’t find it, but my GPSr was pointing slightly down the steep bank, so I thought maybe it was a “tough one” down the side. I took a step or two down a “trail” which was actually a water run-off which was slippery because of the snow/rain mix that day, slipped, and fell on my butt down to the shore. I had trouble climbing up, and kept slipping back down because there was nothing really to hang on to and my feet would just slide down the mud. I had to grab clumps of tall grass and hoist myself on my stomach using what little arm strength I possess. Meanwhile, my young cousin was atop, completely scared out of his mind, not sure what to do. I eventually got back to the top, coated from head to toe in mud. My cousin did NOT want to continue looking for the cache, so we headed back. And I hadn’t marked my car so of course we got a little lost, and my young cousin started crying because he was convinced we’d be “stuck in the woods forever.”

After I dropped him off at his parents’ house, and they had to give me clean clothes to wear back home, and he’s telling them about how I “fell off a cliff,” I’m surprised they let him geocache with me ever again. And I’m surprised he WANTED to! 😯 😀

[jenhen1]

Jen and I were a mere quarter mile from the summit of Maine’s Mt. Katahdin, a 7,000 foot granite monolith that juts commandingly from the vast North Maine Woods and also marks the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, when the fog rolled in. By the time we reached the summit and the cache ‘A Sight to Behole’ (GC93F0) we saw the first flashes of lightning from a freak unexpected thunderstorm, a deadly scenario when you are above treeline and your head is the highest point on earth between Katahdin and Mt Washington in New Hampshire. Couple that with the metal trekking poles (aka lightning rods) that we held it all added up to imminent disaster.

With thunder rolling and lightning touching down all around the mountain in a matter of seconds, Jen and I raced as quickly as we could down a bit to a spot where we ditched our poles and positioned ourselves behind the leeward side of a not-so-prominent granite boulder. Donned in our raingear yet still getting soaked, we sat and prayed in silence, as the storm raged all around us, lightning touching down, thunder getting closer. We held each other tight for warmth, after all it was September and at this altitude it was a mere 45-50 degrees. I assured her it would all be ok, but in the back of my mind I kept thinking of the Ranger who had mentioned that just last week there had been a lightning fatality on the mountain.

An hour or two of cold, wet and fear passed before it was time to make a decision. It was getting late. Do we risk it and make it down off the “technical” parts before dark all the while dodging lightning, or
risk spending the night on the mountain risking hypothermia and who knows what? The storm began to ease so we started the mad scramble down the boulder fields of the mountain. Just then the clouds cleared and blue sky appeared giving us a grand panorama of the Maine wilderness! But, it was shortlived because just as we got to treeline the next wave of storms ravaged us and the mountain. Buckets of rain, thunder and lightning but we were much more comfortable in the protection of the trees and easier hiking. Well after dark we stumbled into camp, wet, cold, exhausted yet thankful that God had given us that short window of clear weather that allowed us to get off the peak and down below treeline. But, in the end we got the smiley so it was all worth it! An experience and a hike/climb that we will never forget.

[greyhounder]

On my first cache I slid down an ice covered slope, doing the splits. Not significant, but I was a little sore from that.

My “favorite” injury” was when I bent over to look for a cache and got thwapped in the eye by a branch. Try explaining that you got a black eye from geocaching and have people believe you.

Bec

[Author]

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