spoiler alert

if you are a geocacher and you would not like to read any spoilers about a certain well-known puzzle cache in central new york, you should not read this post.

i would like to tell the story so it's not spoilery, but there's no way to tell you anything about this without giving WAY TOO much away, so i'm just going to tell the story.

then again, if you're here reading through my blog to try to find clues to this cache, you are doing WAY MORE WORK than you need to.

there's my disclaimer.

ok, so it was a nice afternoon and i'd spent my morning at the enfield harvest festival and i needed something to do for the afternoon and i thought: why not drive out to veteran and have a look at that puzzle cache?

i have only been beating my head against it since the previous MAY.  double spoiler: because nearly nobody who reads this blog is a geocacher, i'm going to link you to the cache and you can look it up if you want.

right, ok. you know where to look for it now, right?

five months.

five months i worked on that thing. i got nowhere. and i kept looking at that hint and thinking: so what? why do i care what honkin' time he put up a hint? it;s not like i'm in a rush to be the first one there or anything and it's a little late for people to be gloating about when they find it. this thing has been out for a while. it is famous.

but then all of a sudden i thought: wait a minute. there's no 1340 AM on the clock, but there is one on the radio dial. and i am coming up SO COMPLETELY BLANK that i think i will just drive out there and see what i can find.

so i get to the intersection and it looks totally useless. there's a house on one corner, a house a little down from another corner, and a town garage.

but LOOK! there's a little yellow cabinet where (presumably) the people from that house over there are selling honey from!

and i am out of honey at home! and i stop and i look at the cabinet and i'm like, hey, wait... that honey cabinet has coordinates printed on the side.

so now i'm excited. i tune my radio to 1340 and i hear ...something... it's staticky but there's something weird. so i drive all over that intersection, parking in all the available spots, trying to get the best reception.

and this is what i hear:




ok, so now all the little hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, because THIS IS A BIG DEAL.

i still do not, however, have the information i need to turn this into anything i can use to find the cache.

so i go over to the little cabinet because 1) there might be more clues and 2) i need honey.

and i open it up and it SO amazing!


because it is beautiful. and the honey is at a good price. and beautifully laid out.














and there's that thingy with the combination lock. is that the cash box only, or part of a puzzle?

and that thing? that is definitely a surveillance camera.

creeeeeepy. spy stuff, beautiful workmanship, and honey. i go to my car and i get my clipboard. i write on it:

FLASK SEZ:
I NEEDED HONEY ANYWAY.

and i hold it up in front of the camera. i put five dollars in the slot and i pick a jar of honey. but which one to take?

so i finally make up my mind and stow the jar in my bags and i'm standing there taking pictures of the beautiful garden and the beehives when a lady comes out of the hedgerow by the house and asks if i need help.

what i have not realized is that every time i have opened and shut the door of the little cabinet, an alarm has been going off in the house and with all mu poking around and picture taking that alarm is going off WAY more than the average honey purchase.

so i tell her who i am and exactly what i'm doing there and we make some lovely chitchat about geocaches and bees and things and she's about to give me a hint to help me find the cache because i CLEARLY have not gathered enough information to know where it is yet and i tell her, "no, no! just tell me where the nearest public library is!"

so i go into horseheads (which is kind of a famous town in my personal mythology) and i get a spot at the library computers and FINALLY i am able to figure out what i need to only i write down the numbers wrong and after a lot of flailing about mrs. cache hider sees me still out on the corner and comes over with her smartphone and the cache page loaded up and i realize my mistake but even with the proper coordinates i still don't find the cache and have to come back another day.