Mob Mentality

It's 6:20am on Saturday morning, and my alarm begins to blare obnoxiously. It blasts a monotone, beep-beep-BEEP-BEEP, getting louder and louder until finally I am awake enough to realize that I have a decision to make.

I could turn the alarm off, close my eyes, and go back to sleep. There's enough time for three more hours without feeling like I've wasted any part of the day.

Or, I could get up, get dressed, and drive into Westboro so I can have breakfast at 7:00am with other members of the Saturday Morning Caching Club, which we colloquially refer to as the "geomob". Then, after breakfast, participate in finding the geocaches listed on this morning's agenda.

On this particular morning, I hear the drip-drip-drip of fresh rainfall splashing onto my roof and deck. And the morning's agenda, emailed to our mailing list the day before, is a run through the suburbs of Gatineau looking for a series of tiny matchstick containers tied to spruce trees. Too small to actually trade any items - just a log scroll to sign. And you have to bring your own pen. Did I mention it was raining?

And yet, somehow, by 7:00am, I find myself walking through the doors of "Moe's" Newport Restaurant, home of the Elvis Sighting Society.

Sometimes I ask myself just what the allure of all this is. Today, it's not going to be about the "thrill of the hunt" or "taking you to cool and unknown places". Some days it is. Trips to Gatineau Park are usually worth the torture of getting up early -- the reward is an invigorating hike through beautiful scenery. Other days we do go places I wouldn't venture to by myself. Previous geomob outings have taken me as far away as Rochester, NY and the Eastern Townships of Quebec. I've explored abandoned underground subway tunnels, cached through 50km of trails by bike (in one day!) and spent mornings picking up garbage along the shoulders of the expressway while 18-wheelers roar by.

One common geocaching creed is, "It's not about the numbers". That's either a lie or hopeful self-deception. No, we don't always compare ourselves to each other. We all go at our own pace. But we do all go. I've had a busy summer, and haven't had very many chances to turn on the GPS. Meanwhile, friends are discovering caches I haven't seen yet (wasn't that one a neat hide, isn't this a clever camouflage). I do feel like I want to "catch up". If anything, today is about the numbers. A dozen easy park-and-grabs will bring me that much closer to my next "milestone". I don't watch the Ottawa leaderboard, but this will bump me up a notch.

Ultimately, for me, it's about the people. I walk into Moe's and the waitress brings out my coffee without even asking. She addresses me by name and asks if I'll have my usual ("Kiss Me Quick" -- the yogurt and fruit platter). Anyone is welcome at breakfast, so there's often someone new to meet, and there's a core group of people who I've come to expect to regularly be there. We share stories, trade hints, make jokes. There's usually a crack about my unkempt hair. We finish eating, get into cars, and venture off.

By noon, I am soaking wet from the rain, but I hardly notice. I have 15 more cache finds to log when I get home, but I haven't been keeping count. What I am thinking, as we part ways and I drive off, is that I really should get to bed earlier on Friday nights.

I've missed this.

New Toy: Hip Street FM Transmitter With MP3 Playback

Despite my reputation among my friends as being a bit of a gadget freak, it is actually quite rare for me to find something that I am truly impressed with. Here's something that I actually really like.

I found this at Staples, but it is also for sale at Wal-Mart. I paid $30 (on sale) for mine. It is simple: it's an FM transmitter powered by the car, and you can hook up any audio source (such as from an iPod) or play music off a USB storage device or SD card. But most importantly: it works.

I think all good inventions should solve a real problem -- too many gadgets out there contrive to sell you on some "need" that you really didn't have before. This one is simple: I want to play my music in my car. Over the past few years I've played with, and dismissed, several different FM transmitters designed for the iPod. The Griffin iTrip didn't allow the iPod to be charged while it was playing. The Griffin RoadTrip solved that problem, but it stuck out awkwardly in my car. The iTrip Auto was a mess of cables. And this Digipower unit from Canadian Tire worked, but only for a short while before it died, and it was limited in the frequencies you could select. All of those solutions had issues with low volume, interference from other radio stations, and the general awkwardness of having to turn things on and off whenever I wanted to listen to music. Not to mention, every time I got out of the car, I had to hide the iPod to avoid theft.

The Hip Street model solves all of those problems by doing away with the iPod altogether. Instead, I can copy music onto SD memory cards and keep the whole thing permanently plugged into my car. It starts playing music when the car is turned on, and stops when it is turned off. It's as simple as that. There's no worry about my iPod being stolen or running out of battery. I like this! There are playback controls on-board, as well as a hokey little remote (like I'm going to use that while I'm driving?)

The FM transmitter sounds great, too. Volume is decent, there's no obvious hissing or distortion, and it's even strong enough to hold its own against real FM radio stations. The only issue I've found is that the SD card slot is not SDHC-compatible, so it's limited to 2 GB cards (4 GB if you really look). But hey, that's still tons, and they're so cheap that I could keep a few cards in my car with different genres of music. No apparent limitation on the size of USB media it accepts. Oh, and the unit does keep track of what song it was playing when you last shut off the power, but when it resumes, it restarts the song.

Strangely, this product doesn't even show up on the Hip Street Online website, and I've only found one other review on the web. Too bad, because this is a keeper!

I think they're solving the wrong problem

As a veteran camp leader, I've learned to watch out for certain things, particularly when working with younger age groups. One unfortunate characteristic of campers younger than about 12, particularly boys, is that they still haven't fully learned proper personal hygiene. For instance, you need to pay attention to the clothing that the kids wear each day. If you start to see the same shirt being worn for two, three days in a row, alarm bells start to go off. This counts for double if you see the same pair of shorts: same shirt, same shorts, probably means... same underwear.

I had to deal with one such kid in my woodworking activity a few weeks ago. After about the third day I noticed he was always showing up in the same red shirt, red shorts, and green striped socks. When I asked him about this, I got this answer: "Yeah, I was planning to wear the same thing for the whole week, but the other people in my cabin are starting to complain..."

I sent him back up to his cabin to change immediately.

But not to worry, science has the answer: Japanese astronauts are hard at work testing underwear that can be worn for weeks at a time.

I can't wait for these to become available in our tuck shop.