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Printed as appeared in the New York Post,
August 11, 2001
CACHE -N CARRY
TREASURE HUNTS
By
Todd Levin
August 11, 2001
New Yorks street may not exactly be paved with gold, but it doesnt
mean there arent treasures to be discovered.
High-tech
adventures are hiding and seeking booty all over New York. The sport,
if you can call it that, is known as Geocaching. Someone hides
stuff, a.k.a. a cache, and posts clues online on how to find it.
A
reformed Boy Scout names Lionel, who operates under the alias Cache Ninja,
has stashed caches in Highbridge Park, Pelham Bay Park, Fulton Park and
the Queensboro Bridge, among other New York locales.
To follow
the clues to his and others caches, you need a device called a personal
GPS unit. It costs about $100 and receives signals form the GPS or
Global Positioning System, a group of 24 satellites that can pinpoint
your exact location anywhere on the planet, accurate within a few feet.
http://essaysreasy.com/ Geocaching
in New York, however, comes with an extra challenge. This city of skyscrapers
can interfere with signals, says Lionel. You need to deal with reception
problems caused by building, says the twenty-something geocacher, who
would give no clues to his last name. That hasnt stopped him from stashing
treasures in some of the citys most unlikely hiding places, including
the hollow of a burned-out automobile somewhere in Williamsburg.
GPS was originally
established as part of the National Security concern during the Cold War.
Last May, the Clinton administration removed encryption for GPS signals,
making an extraordinary level of navigational precision available to anyone
with a GPS device. Almost immediately, this freedom was seized upon by
technophiles and turned into a modern-day treasure hunt.
Since its
inception (the first cache was placed just a few days after Clinton Banned
GPS encryption) geocaching has grown from a tiny blip on the cultural
radar to something closer to a phenomenon. Geocaching.com, one of the
most popular geocaching sites, now tracks more than 4,400 caches hidden
in 60 countries.
When I found
my first cache a stash of toy dinosaurs I was hooked, says Julia
Tenney, 32, of Somerville, Mass., who went on her first hunt last April.
Since then, she has been on 21 successful hunts, including several around
New York.
Of course,
toy dinosaurs are not everyones idea of a reward for an afternoon hike.
Last Memorial Day weekend, the Faxhall equestrian farm in Atlanta held
the first publicized cash-reward hunt. Geocachers came from as far away
as Texas to compete for the $6,000 cache.
Geocaching is a great excuse to pack up the family and go hiking
in the great outdoors, and it provides an excellent opportunity to learn
and practice navigational skills, says Jack W. Peters, publisher of GPS
Navigator Magaine.com
And
the chance to score toy dinosaurs.
Text from NY POST.COM
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2001 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
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