Saturday, February 28, 2009

Okinawa Poker Run Event



Today was the Poker Run event here in Okinawa. The host and hostess put a lot of work into this event, and I had a great time. I think everyone in attendance had fun.

It was fun to meet new people, and see some familiar faces. The event was held near another Geocache, and the venue accommodated us with no problems.

There were five unpublished caches that I had to find prior to the event. I took a card from each container, and couldn't open the envelopes for the cards until the event. My poker hand ended up being Jacks and Threes, and I came in fourth place. The top three hands got to divvy up the pot of donated geocoins (the ante was an unactivated coin). First place got eight, second got five, and third place got three. Quite a haul!


We all voted on the best camouflaged cache container, and another local cacher that is quickly finding his way onto everyone's "naughty" list won that game easily. Is that carrot evil, or what?

We all voted on the "most intriguing cache listing," and I won with the Space Cache Experiement.

We played geocoin bingo, and I didn't win anything on that game. Pure luck of the draw!

There was a word search game, and I didn't play that one. I let the kids that were in attendance have at it.

There was a pop quiz regarding the names of the five unpublished geocaches, and I won that event with some accurate guesses. Well, I knew the location of the five famous casinos, but the other trivia questions were tough! How much do you know about these casinos: Atlantis, Metropol, Clermont Club, Golden Nugget, Monte Carlo.

Another geocacher has his own custom geocoins, and he was generous enough to give some of them out to those that attended. Pretty neat, huh? Now, if I can figure out what the Japanese characters represent, I'll be doing much better!


I had a great time, and a fellow cacher and I will be teaming up to tackle a 5/5 cache tomorrow morning. It has a difficulty and terrain rating of five out of a possible five. The cache listing suggests bringing rope and a machette. I'll let you know how THAT one goes, if I make it back in one piece! Early reports from those that have found the cache indicate that the trek to this seven part multi-cache is nothing to laugh at. The cache owner is the same gentleman that created that evil carrot! The puzzle that needed to be solved in order to come up with the coordinates required some luck, and some intense google searching. Very creative stuff!

8 comments:

Hi, My name is: Tim said...

I had not read the intriguing cache submissions... but after seeing the link to it on your post, I decided to check it out. I'll have to admit it is pretty darn neat.

The only thing I could come up with (and did not bother to submit) was THIS

Someone took the time and labor of placing caches so they create a "crop circle" of sorts in the shape of an "I found it" smiley.

"'Naughty' list"... I don't know if I should worry or relish in it.

I hope you enjoy the 5-5. I'm working on a harder one, as well as a series of caches called "Tipping the scales" which will either be 5-1's or 1-5's.

Just John said...

No worries, Tim. I think everyone is "cursing" your name out of a sense of morbid fascination and respect.

I've seen that smiley trail before on someone's blog! Very neat. I had forgotten about that one.

Anonymous said...

That Space Cache idea sounds like fun...perfect for a science teacher like me. Hmmm...maybe someday I'll have to get some info on how you did everything. Might be a fun experiment and cache to go after.

Just John said...

Trip: I guess I should have been more specific in my post. That was not my cache, but simply a cache listing that I found. A couple of us at the event brought in the most intriguing listings that we could find. I'd love to take credit for that cache, but I'm not that sophisticated (putting objects into space from here might get me into a bit of hot water, too).

Erika Jean said...

that Carrot is AWESOME! I wish I was that creative....

Just John said...

Erika: Yep; pretty neat container. It's very sturdy too. The owner is really earning a reputation for his creative containers and hides.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like one heck of a fun event. I still remember when you were prepping for your first event.

That coin is also very wild looking. Cool grab for sure!

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