Lucky Lunchtime Letterbox

Yesterday, I had an unexpected break at work over lunch and given the gorgeous blue skies I knew I had to get out of the office.   And so I nabbed a letterbox on my lunch break - what luck!

The moons of Jupiter pretty much have to align in order for this type of thing to happen:
-there has to be a letterbox planted close enough to find
-there has to be sufficiently good weather to risk trails in my work clothes
-I have to have a solved clue that has a trail short enough to get there and back in my lunch break
-I have to have letterboxing gear with me

As I said, luck was on my side and even after a long time since the last finder and, ya know, winter, I had a successful find.

The clue in question was for three.trail.mice's Twin Tree Letterbox.  It's clue lists it fairly close to my office.  I didn't have a printed clue, but I did have my iPhone and two letterboxing apps, so good to go.  The weather was perfect and I did have some boots to wear... and I had my "emergency" letterboxing kit with me in my glove box.  It was on.

Clue in hand... er, in phone, I made off! Luckily, I was semi-familiar with the trail as this was the same one as my very first letterbox.  What nostalgia.

The clue was clear and concise, and though I got more mud on my pant leg that I would have liked, I found the box.  Nice and clean and dry, hand-carved stamp from a junior trail mouse, and hand-made logbook.  What more can you ask for really?

Covered up better than I found it and then made my way back to the office.  This would be a lovely lunchtime pasttime, except now the nearest letterbox is a 45 minute drive away, 1.5 hour round trip.  Don't think that would work for a lunch break.  Oh well.

Happy trails!

Spring is definitely coming...

The letterbox! You can tell what a nice day it was by how strong that shadow is - the sun was really shining!

 

Numbers Station Redux

Ever since I learned about them, I have been fascinated by numbers stations.  My first exposure to one was on my favourite show of all time, LOST, where a numbers station was programmed 16 years earlier to air with a french plea for help.

I mostly forgot about them until the first LOST alternative reality game where there was a kind of numbers station set up as the next clue to unlock the next part of the game.  Creepy as all get out.  To solve it, you actually had to figure out how to reverse the video/audio to hear ciphertext being read (see the reversed version here). But it was then that I really started looking at where this idea came from and whether numbers stations are still airing (they are).

I even went so far as to get a short wave radio in order to hear them.  Creeped me out so bad, I didn't sleep for two nights, haven't listened on my own again since.

Anyways, after letterboxing for a while, I thought that a numbers-station-esque clue might be kind of cool, so I set about trying to figure out how to make a fake recording of a numbers station.

GarageBand and my first Numbers Station clue.

In the end, I used Rock Band which is preinstalled in my Macbook to take a number of recordings of static, a copy of me playing Yankee Doodle, as well as me reading off a phonetic alphabet set of clues.  I decided to use a melody intro and conclusion to be more like the well-known Lincolnshire Poacher numbers station, but I didn't have access to a child to read off the cipher, so I just read it myself while putting on a voice.

Then, mixed the sound levels a bit, save and export, send to Jackbear, and voila my first audio clue.

...

But then comes the waiting.  The worst part of a new letterbox.  Will anyone ever find it? Is the clue too hard? Can people even hear the recording properly? Should I make it easier? Is the clue too creepy to listen to? Should I just leave it?

After two weeks, there was a first finder, eight months after that, another finder. None since.

Then it occurred to me that I could easily just make another one and put it somewhere else for an entirely different group of boxers to potentially find. There are plenty of different numbers stations, after all.  A series of boxes perhaps.  Really, who's stopping me? Only me.  And since I had a lovely vacation planned for the near future, I set the gears in motion.

Actually, the location was perfect - and I even named this second box after the actual nearby numbers station.  You can hear some of the real station in the video below.  Stamp was easy, very similar to the original Numbers Station stamp, but unique.  Also, location, check. Planted, check. Then came the clue.  Second time around, easy peasy.

Jackbear was kind enough to host the last Numbers Station clue on the Letterpod, and agreed to host again...

And so, for your listening enjoyment: Numbers Station: Atención. My original box: Numbers Station.

I enjoyed doing it again, so I'll probably do another if I end up with a good location for one...

Happy trails!

Blazing trails... sorta.

So this past weekend, I neither found any letterboxes nor planted any letterboxes.  I did, however, do quite a bit of hiking in some beautiful unexplored-by-me areas of my hometown.  The reason I was doing this exploring was to get some scouting done for letterbox placements for the upcoming Box ON plantathon that I will be undertaking, but I had a wonderful day out nonetheless.

Tracking me while I walked.

I also wanted to share something I use my all-purpose letterboxing tool (read: iPhone) for - tracking trails and making maps.

The area I was investigating is actually a park with trails that have either been created or historically used, but are not marked on any map I can find.  Because of how the park is shaped and how densely forested it is, it's hard to know where the trails are going - even as you're walking them - and where they might pop you out at the end.

And so, one of the apps that I've taken to using when trekking along these unmarked trails is Cyclemeter - although there are lots of other apps that will do the same thing.  Ostensibly, the app is meant to track your cycling so that you can determine distance, altitude change, calories burned, etc, and this app is also set up to track your walks as well. However, I find mine much more useful for my letterboxing trails.  I have mine set so that after my tracked hike, it emails me a Google Maps link with the GPS tracked path I took, along with the speed, speed, calories, etc.

So as I went out on this walk to try to find letterbox planting spots, I was able to come home to a mapped trail that I could potentially use to make clues.  I also found out today that if I switch to one of my cinemagraph apps, it stops the GPS tracking and I lose some of the data.  Lesson learned.

For your viewing pleasure, you can see my trail here. Where it says my start, it is not actually my start - I started at the place marked end because that's where I parked my car.  If you look at my walk time, it was actually a lot longer than that because I found a beautiful sitting spot by the Rouge River where I stopped to take a carving break.

If I wanted to do the same path again, I could name the route in the program and see if I could beat my time.  Pretty nifty program; I used it a lot about a year ago to time myself and check my speeds while I was commuting by bike into Hamilton from Burlington. Now that I'm not doing that anymore, I found out that you can actually change the default activity (this was meant specifically for cycling) and in this case changed it to walking.  Crazy.  It would be great for plotting out a map... hint, hint.

As I said, I did pause for quite a while when I found this beautiful spot - I felt completely alone, almost surrounded by water and its bubbly sounds.  I had brought carving stuff with me in my bag for some later carving, but decided that one of the only places I had never carved before was on the trail, so I sat down and set up shop.

On the way to the perfect carving spot.

I had put some material together for a box that I plan to plant while I'm in Saskatoon later this month.  Talk about letterboxing desert!  Poor folks have been relying mostly on passing through letterboxers, but now that it looks like there may be a few who actually inhabit the area, I want to make sure I can contribute to their area.

I've got a picture of some of the carve that I did down by the water that day.  I didn't list this post as a spoiler, mostly because the folks that read this are unlikely to be out to Saskatchewan to find this box anyhow... although, to be fair, perhaps this will entice you to do just that!

Anyways, off to get some more Box ON work done... Happy trails!

Carving in my carving spot...

The perfect carving spot.

Technology & Letterboxing

So I've planned lots of letterboxing for this weekend.  Today, I'll be letterboxing out west with the hilarious Ms. Viking and tomorrow I'll be letterboxing with a friend who likes to tag along. (Yeah, I know, I'm trying.)

But as I'm sitting here, printing out my clues, I'm wondering why.  Why am I using paper when pretty much all other aspects of my letterboxing experience involve technology?  In fact, once I'm on the trail, I use my iPhone quite extensively:

• I can access AtlasQuest and LbNA and their full sites;
• I can access clues through BoxFinder;
• I have GPS as well as built in compass;
• I have an excellent camera and video camera;
• I have my Geocaching app, for double checking my plant locations;
• I have hike tracking to map out my routes;
• I have amazing photo and video editing available;
• I have an emergency resouce otherwise known as a "telephone" at my fingertips;
• I have some tunes for the car - podcasts to boot;
• I have up-to-the-minute weather information;
• I have a whole slew of generally useful apps; and
• I have clues in disguise - rather than weirdly hiking with paper in my hand.

Hmm.  So, since I won't be back home to print my Sunday clues, I've decided to go the tech route and not print them at all. I'm sure there's argument to be made that somehow the use of technology is not really congruent with the whole letterboxing experience, but really to each their own.  So high tech letterboxing it is.  C'mon, a compass used to be the height of technology.  I'm sure someday someone reflecting on my use of a smartphone for my letterboxing journies will think, "that's quaint". I'm sure of it.

I'll check in tomorrow with my travelogue... and let you know how how I feel in the high tech vs. low tech experience treats me.

Happy trails!