Great Weekend!

What a great weekend!

Saturday was the day of the Foxhunt. I never actually explained what this is, so here goes:

The "Fox" is a car equipped with a GPS tracking device, and a means of communicating it's position to the "Hounds". The hounds must attempt to find the Fox, which will be variously driving around and stopping, by using these co-ordinates. In our case, the co-ordinates were published on a web-page and also via text message to anyone who requested them. My friend and ex-colleague, Bob, invented the geo-caching version of this, using GPS. Previous versions were done via radio-triangulation by ham radio-buffs. Bob was due to run one earlier this year but sadly died in a tragic motorbike accident in April. I then decided to run one in his memory, as I have all the relevant techie-stuff in the car.

That was until the car broke down in Devon and ruined the plans. Then along came Paul (an old friend of Bobs) who was due to be a hound, along with Bobs wife, Sarah. Paul has a unit in his car that transmits via radio to a publicly-accessible database and volunteered to be the fox, as long as I could make the techie bits work. I could, and I did, and so the day was saved!

With Pauls car, and with Sarah operating my laptop to send semi-automated replies to incoming text-messages, we were on, and quite a few caching buddies came to take part. Apart from a bit of a power problem (the laptop has a very dodgy battery and every now and then the AC-inverter in the car got a bit overworked, and combined with my laptop-rubbishness meant a few reboots along the way). Still, not major problems and the technology worked pretty well, much to my relief!

Amusingly, we were the first to find the fox, and as we had provided a prize for the first one to do so, we passed it on to the next in line.

Paul and Sarah made the final stop of the day at Bobs grave in Fawley Church. A very fitting and poignant end to the hunt. It was a little sad seeing his headstone, but I'm sure he would've appreciated it. There was even a cache in the churchyard, which we were able to grab as well!

After the event we all gathered at Wilverly Plain in the New Forest (the hunt took part in the New Forest and it was a lovely drive around) for a BBQ and some fun and games. A fantastic time was had by all. We'll certainly arrange another one.

On Sunday we went to Godstone Farm with our friends Caroline & Ian. Chris, Saffron and Anise came too. Joe loved looking at all the animals and had fun on the swings as well. It was a scorching day as well. There's a bit of a lack of food and drink on-site (limited to cheese toasties, cakes, bottled water, or fizzy drinks in styrofoam cups). Still, there was an indoor adventure playground, and an outdoor one as well, so Jessi also had a great time.

Today Jess is off on a 5-day school adventure trip to Hindleap Warren, so the house will be quiet again.

Oh, and a car update. They now know what's wrong with it, but even the factory doesn't have the part in stock so it'll be an 8-day wait just for that!

-Neil