Happy Birthday Bob Hamilton

Skydive Space Center
Arthur Dunn Air Park
480 North Williams Avenue
Titusville, Florida 32796
GPS: 28.620514,-80.832372

Today we joined a group of folks gathered at Skydive Space Center at the Arthur Dunn Air Park to help Bob Hamilton celebrate his 85th birthday. He had decided today was a great day to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

The scene of the crime

Birthday Boy all harnessed up

He convinced nine other folks to join him. In this picture Bob is hiding in the back.

01. Wes Hyde	05. Joe Reus	08. Trish Hamilton
02. Linda Utz	06. Andy Hamilton	09. Loretta Anné
03. Shannon Rubin	07. Cody Schulman	10. Mark Clapsaddle
04. Bob Hamilton (hiding)

There was a lot of socializing while we waited for everyone to arrive and get prepared.

(l to r) Michelle Hazlett, Bob Hamilton, Mary Clapsaddle

(l to r) Trish Hamilton, Linda Utz, Loretta Anné, Michelle Hazlett

(l to r) Dave Murton, Bonnie Murton, Wes Hyde

Time to load up.

Please put your seats in their full upright and locked position

No, we don't have a jetway

Those also serve who only sit and watch.

What goes up must come down. The law of gravity remains in effect for another day.

Smooth landings are required for a successful jump.

The things I do for my father-in-law

OK Dad, Happy Birthday

Wow! Let's do it again

Messed up my hair

I did it! Yes I did!

Somewhere in here Bob Hamilton changed his shirt (was it just his shirt?)

Three proud amigos

From the Air Park, we went to Mary's house for a birthday party. Our hosts were the Clapsaddles and Hamiltons. Bob calls this his blended family.

(l to r) Erik Clapsaddle, Alan Clapsaddle, Tom Hamilton, Andy Hamilton, Bob Hamilton, Mary Clapsaddle

Folks enjoyed listening to Joe Reus tell stories from his book about his time as a POW in WWII.

Can't have a party without ...

a cake with "85" candles ...

... and some gag gifts for the Birthday Boy

Bob is already working on something spectacular for his 90th.

It was a great day. Thanks to all for making it happen and for inviting us.

It's an Annual Thing

The Tides
1001 North Highway A1A S Atlantic Ave
Patrick AFB, FL 32925‎
GPS: 28.231028, -80.600231

Main Entrance to Patrick AFB

Patrick Air Force Base is a United States Air Force Base located between Satellite Beach and Cocoa Beach, in Brevard County, Florida. An Air Force Space Command base, it is home to the 45th Space Wing which controls and operates Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) and the Eastern Range. The mission of the 45th Space Wing is to assure access to the high frontier and to support global operations. The wing currently operates a number of rockets and missiles, including the Delta IV and Atlas V, and provides support for the Department of Defense, NASA, and commercial manned and unmanned space programs.

Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) is the primary launch head of America's Eastern Range. Popularly known as "Cape Kennedy" from 1963 to 1973, and as "Cape Canaveral" from 1949 to 1963 and from 1973 to the present, the facility is south-southeast of NASA's Kennedy Space Center on adjacent Merritt Island. It was the site of all US space program launch activity before the creation of the Kennedy Space Center which took over manned launches in 1967.

A number of American space exploration "firsts" were launched from CCAFS, including the first U.S. Earth satellite (1958), first U.S. astronaut (1961), first U.S. astronaut in orbit (1962), first two-man U.S. spacecraft (1965), first U.S. unmanned lunar landing (1966), and first three-man U.S. spacecraft (1968). It was also the launch site for all of the first spacecraft to (separately) fly past each of the planets in the Solar System (1962–1977), the first spacecraft to orbit Mars (1971) and roam its surface (1996), the first American spacecraft to orbit and land on Venus (1978), the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn (2004), and to orbit Mercury (2011), and the first spacecraft to leave the Solar System (1977). (from Wikipedia)

So What?

Every year during March, a group of folks who were friends and neighbors in Ohio have a brief period when our schedules put us together at The Great Outdoors RV Park in Titusville, Florida. During that time we make one trip to Patrick AFB to 'The Tides' (base club) for Sunday Brunch. It is a simple affair where we eat too much good food, have a couple Mimosas (a cocktail of orange juice and champagne, usually in equal parts) and talk about the fact that winter is almost over and Hitch Itch is beginning to set in. We continued that tradition today. Of course those of us who choose to winter in California instead of Florida missed it.

Club Dining Room

Nobody looks at the camera while eating

After stuffing ourselves we walked outside through the Tiki Hut ...

... to the beach ...

... to take pictures to prove we all were here.

Jennifer and Dave Bennett

Tom and Judi Sierer

Carole and Nelson Hommel

Michelle and Bob Hazlett

It was a beautiful day on the Space Coast of Florida. Bright sun, cool breeze, and the sound of the surf crashing.

Until next year

Scram

Thanks to Ed Price and Boondocking USA.

A Geocaching, Letterboxing, Munzee Triple Play

Doyle Carlton Pavilion
Kiwanis Island Park
951 Kiwanis Island Park Rd
Merritt Island, FL 32952
GPS: 28.361102, -080.677363

Michelle and I had a nice day out and about running some errands and playing games. All of our activities were in the Merritt Island area and that minimized mileage. We started with a stop at Camping World. There we usually drop big bucks, but today we just picked up a cartridge for our fresh water filter. We had a coupon, so the filter which normally costs about $27 only set us back $2. Of course we spent time browsing the store looking for things we couldn't live without and didn't find a thing.

East under the highway to Sam's Club for a few grocery items and then continued east several miles to Kiwanis Island Park, interrupted by a lunch stop at a Five Guys burger joint.

Kawanis Island Park was our destination today to attend a geocaching event GC5HYBP -- Castaway Cachers Trivia Night on the Space Coast. We arrived quite a bit early so that we could capture the five letterboxes in the series AQ238337 – Kiwanis Island Park: Get Out There and Play placed by Three Flamigos. The five letterboxes were Baseball, Basketball, Racquetball, Kayaking, and Tennis – all carved by GypsyLadyBug. The sixth box in the series, Volleyball, went missing some time ago. Baseball had a logbook so we spent some time looking over the stamp images of previous letterboxers.

As we found each letterbox, we noticed a Munzee very close by, so we picked up Munzee points along with each letterbox. I used my smartphone App to see if there were any more Munzees in the area. Foolish me! Of course there were. Munzees are like mosquitos – they are everywhere. I grabbed a few nearby.

Continuing our exploration, we found GC3PPDA -- Kaelyn's Kache, a geocache placed by DalenBarb. There is a sad but very informative story described in this geocache. Even if you don't search for the cache, you should look this one up on the website and read the story. We did find the cache however. We were having a successful afternoon even before the main event started.

We still had some time to kill before the appointed dinner hour, so we returned to our truck to relax a spell and recharge our phone batteries. While sitting there, we noticed a growing group of people assembling near the pavilion. We later learned that these were the "Castaway Cachers". Geocachers who were arriving to leave tomorrow morning on a nine day geocaching cruise of the islands in the Caribbean. Tonight's trivia event was arranged for them by Dale and Barb Swinehart of Space Coast Geocaching Store as a pre–cruise event. What a neat idea.

Time for dinner and the main event.

Doyle Carlton Pavilion

Dinner was a pulled pork sandwich with baked beans, coleslaw, and a beverage. Simple but good and thanks to PsjKids for preparing it.

It's All Just Trivial: A Geocaching Trivia Event

The game was hosted by the team of Hoosiersunshine (+Chris Decker) and FailedApparatus. These two folks put on a very professional show. Learn about them at geocachingtrivia.com

hoosiersunshine was the MC for the evening

FailedApparatus ran the equipment and did the scoring

We formed into teams of 2-6 people. There were seven rounds of trivia questions, mostly geocaching related. Between each round hoosiersunshine gave out prizes for such things as "Who is the oldest geocacher here?". "Who has the shortest geocaching handle?" (RonC won that one) and many others. It was a lot of fun.

Golden Geopile Trophy
This is a traveling trophy. It appears at all events hosted by this dynamic duo. The winning team gets their name on the trophy and their picture on the Geocaching Trivia website. How cool is that? And of course the trophy is trackable (TB4ZX88). At the very beginning I got scared thinking that the winner was going to have to take this monster home.

Tonight's winner was Team Feeble Film Canisters. Congratulations to them. I do not know, but am curious to learn, how many years of geocaching and how many Finds are represented on that team. Maybe they can tell me.

Trivia Teams

My information on the teams is incomplete and probably contains errors. I would appreciate comments from anyone who can fill out or correct this data.

Team Feeble Film Canisters (Trivia Winner)
a2arnold, gatorman83

Team WJAR
All Hat, WLSnowbirds, jerann, RonC

Team TriWeiner
lisa22b, Wadonga, FloridaJim

Team Trouble
HTBob, ???

Team Geo Pups
RetiredGirl, RetiredGuy, CuteLilFuzzyMonkey, ???

Team TGO
flyfishercacher, wd4kaq

Other teams???

What is the lowest/smallest five digit prime number?

That was one of the trivia questions in the category What does that have to do with geocaching? That was a piece of cake for us math wonks. 10,001 of course. (Hear buzzer scream) What??? Then it has to be 10,003. (Hear buzzer scream loudly again). Sheepishly How about 10,005? (Hear buzzer scream louder and longer). Totally humbled, I crawled under a nearby rock.

First, the definition: a prime number is a positive integer that is not divisible without remainder by any integer except itself and 1.
Correct answer: Lowest 5 digit prime number is 10,007
What about 10,001? RetiredGuy found factors of 10,001 to be 73 and 137 (73x137=10,001). So it is not a prime number.
How about 10,003? No 7x1,429 = 10,003. Not a prime number either.
How about 10,005? Nope 3x5x23x29 = 10,005. No cigar here.
I don't know how Retired Guy (+Doug Macrae) found his answer. Maybe he will respond with a comment to this blog post.
I got the answer for 10,003 and 10,005 the old fashion way. I cheated. Check out this neat website Math Warehouse

I don't want to play anymore.

Here are a few pictures from the evening

This evening I met Julio (CuteLilFuzzyMonkey). He claims to have found 532 geocaches in one day (22 Feb 2015) and over 10,000 in less than one year of geocaching – and he has a full time job. I checked his profile and his current total of geocaches and trackables is 11,409. He joined on 23 Dec 2013. Congratulations to him and sympathies to his wife.

Julio (CuteLilFuzzyMonkey)

Our Score for The Day

Geocaches -- 2
GC3PPDA -- "Kaelyn's Kache"
GC5HYBP -- "Castaway Cachers Trivia Night on the Space Coast"

Letterboxes -- 5
AQ238337 "Kiwanis Island Park: Get Out There and Play"

Trackables we discovered -- 4
TB4ZX88 -- Trophy: The Golden Geopile - It's All Just Trivial Event Trophy. This trophy is awarded to the winner of It's All Just Trivial - Geocaching Trivia Events. As a perpetual trophy, the winning team's name is added with each event along with the event location and date. The trophy makes an appearance at every trivia event put on by these folks.
TB71D9W – RetiredGirl's Nametag
TB2QHJ9 – Madquilter-Sherwood Nametag
TB2QHNE – Madquilter-Dawn Nametag

Our trackables discovered by others
TB5TTXO – Michelle's Nametag – 4
TB5RDPR – Bob's Nametag – 4
TB66JKA – Ram Bug (the decal on our truck) – 4

Munzees -- 19

Attendees

Here is my count of those that attended. If you didn't log the event as "Attended", I didn't get you.

a2arnold	all hat	beemerdon	Betyboop1249
Bootscootin70	c&s 143	Caching NIC	Coolj72
Crescent Trekkers	CuteLilFuzzyMonkey	Dale n Barb	db3034
FailedApparatus	floridajim	FloridaPanther	FLtravelers
flyfishercacher	freebill	Fridge01	gabby0200
gatorman83	hoosiersunshine	HTBob	IsqubaAndNawty
jerann	kim--possible	Lighthouse Nut	lisa22b
Mike&Marcia	MommaDirtClod-MDC	monkeys4ever	Mr&MrsGrizz
Mr. & Mrs. Magic	normasgirl	PelicansArePelicans	RetiredGirl
RetiredGuy	RonC	rwillow	seastar255
Sequoia	ShabbyDo	thebige88	Tilbury Seekers
WaDonga	wd4kaq	WLSnowbird	Young Money Girl
pattytracker	altair1	resqgirl	MadQuilter
figgment	dfay1165

It was a great evening. What a way to start a carribean cruise. Thanks to all who made it happen. Your work is appreciated.

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