You can see a fair bit of swelling in my ankle.

Luckily we were not far from the car when it happened.  I was able to walk to the car under my own power but only barely.  I was surprised to realize that I was experiencing a little bit of shock.  I got the shivers and felt like being sick.   I haven’t been to the doctor yet so at this point I’m assuming it’s just a sprain.   In researching treatment for this kind of injury I found this great page on treating an sprained ankle.  It can take more than a year for a severe sprain to heal!

I’ll be doing two things as soon as I’m mobile:

1. buying hiking boots, not shoes
2. buying a folding splint and ice pack to carry in my backpack

There are a number of recognizable faces in the cast, Rachael Taylor (Transformers), Christopher McDonald, Lea Thompson and Dean Winters.  The supporting cast was probably funnier than the main characters. There is a dinner scene that had enough awkwardness to make it quite funny.  This movie is not for children.  There is a fair amount of profanity and a few sexually suggestive situations.

I wanted to see Splinterheads because of the geocaching connection.  There were a variety of cache containers found throughout the movie and they looked quite authentic.  The character’s use of the GPS was a little “hollywood” but what can you expect from a movie.  There is an underwater cache that I quite liked but you just need to watch a couple of trailers if you want to see it.    It would appear that GC.com paid to be a sponsor.  The website gets a prominent appearance on screen.

This would be a good movie to watch with some geocaching friends.  It might even be neat to create a series of caches similar to those discovered in the movie.

I knew I was going to have to send the unit in for warranty repair but I was hesitant.  It would take too long, it would be too much of a hassle, it would be an all around pain in the ass.   I was wrong on all counts.

I contacted Garmin support to start the return process.  I was informed that as a Canadian I had to send the unit to the Canadian repair depot.  This would save me having to ship cross-border, twice.  The Canadian repair company is Raytech Electronics.  The Raytech site was very easy to use and within minutes I had received authorization to ship the unit back for repair.  Their system even prepared the shipping label for me.   It cost me about $9 to ship the unit to Quebec.

About a week after sending the unit in I received an email stating the unit was being returned to me.  I was it afraid it was going to take upwards of 6 weeks and here I was getting my GPSr back within two weeks.  My unit was toast so I was sent a replacement Colorado.  The noted didn’t say for sure but I think it was a refurbished unit.  I didn’t mind as it was better than having no GPSr at all.  The total cost to me for the replacement was $9, the cost of postage, one-way.

The support people at Garmin provided even more help to me today.  The one downside to getting a replacement unit is that I would have to reload the unit with my information, including my maps.  Installing the maps was going to be a problem.  I’d somehow managed to render my original disk unreadable.  I could not install the maps without the disk.  I called Garmin software support to see what they could do.

I’d already been in touch with Garmin on this issue once before.  At that time I was told too bad, so sad but you’ll have to buy a new installation.  That communication was done over email and I had the feeling that email support was outsourced.   Today I actually spoke to Michael in Kansas.  It took us a while but he figured out that I could buy replacement media to solve my problem.  I immediately placed the order with Michael, it wasn’t Garmin’s fault I buggered up the disk.  For $15 plus shipping I was going to get a replacement disk.  I had to send proof that I actually owned the original disk.  The was a bit of a nuisance but manageable.

I recommend you reach out to Garmin support as soon as you have a problem.   I’m very happy to have my GPSr fixed and a replacement disk ordered all for less than $35.   That sure beats shelling out another $500 just to replace what I already owned.  Thank you Garmin Support!

1. Challenge Cacher
2. Puzzle Cacher
3. Numbers Cacher
4. Casual Cacher

This doesn’t mean that a player has only one method of playing.  There is certainly crossover.   This diagram does a better job of describing what I mean:

Casual Cacher:  This is someone that will make caching part of an activity but doesn’t really go out of their way to geocache.  Maybe they’ll take the GPSr on vacation or when they go on a road trip.  These folks are not a real discriminating cacher.  They are just looking to have a little fun without too much work.   Prefers 3/3 or less.

Numbers Cacher:  Anyone that has found more than a few hundred caches will from time-to-time find themselves in this category.  There are some people however that are just numbers mad.  These cachers don’t care how lame a cache is they just want the numbers.   Prefers 2/2 or less but they’ll do anything if they can.

Puzzle Cachers:  Don’t like to be stumped?  Then you are probably a puzzle cacher.  These cachers thrive on the intellectual challenge of a cache.   Maybe they like to solve the puzzle that holds the clue or maybe they like a good camouflaged container.   Either way these cachers will spend a lot of time planning their geocaching outings.   Lots of 4-5 difficulty but lower terrain.

Challenge Cachers:   It is with these kinds of cachers that you’ll find the most crossover from other pursuits.  You might find rock climbers, boaters, scuba divers or people that like some kind of physical challenge.   That challenge might just be geocaching at night.  That is a whole different experience.   A good day for this kind of cacher is a 5/5 or a 5/4.

Does it really matter how you play the game?  Not at all.  As long as you are having fun.  How do you play the game?