sadecki.com

My in-laws have a lake house on Keuka Lake in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. I have been lucky enough to spend a couple weeks or so a year here for the past 8 years now. I have come to love this place as if it were my own and look for any excuse to make the 6 hour drive out there from Massachusetts.

This past weekend, Nancy went down to D.C. to visit her sister. Her parents were going to be at the lake and invited me to spend the weekend there rather than at the house by myself. After a Friday morning business meeting in Connecticut, I drove West out to the lake instead of returning back home. They have been working on a major addition to the lake house for the past 6 months now, and I was dying to see the progress. In addition to that, Dr. Cutler (my father in-law) wanted me to help plan out the Network and audio cabling they were adding to the new addition.

Now, for a hobby I had been so obsessed about when I first started doing it, Geocaching has taken a back seat to Home Improvements, and my wife’s pregnancy. Having never geocached at Keuka Lake, I was excited to see what the area had to offer. Before I left, I uploaded the coordinates to over 100 cache locations in and around the lake. It rained most of Saturday, but that didn’t stop me from exploring the region and hunting for some caches.

So, this is so much fun. After bagging my first cache on South Peak, Sean and I headed over to the summit of Moosilauke for cache number 2: Rusty’s Bivouac

I’m addicted. Cache 2 was quite a challenge as well. However, after decrypting the clue Sean and I successfully found Rusty’s Bivouac, only after finding someone else’s lavatory of convenience. Here, Sean and I found more travel bugs. After vowing to become an avid GeoCacher, sean took a travel bug from this cache with intentions of finding a new home for it in his home state of Connecticut.

Sean and I had a blast on this trip and here are the photos to prove it. CAUTION to fellow GeoCachers, there are spoilers in these photos.

OK, so 4 days after receiving my GPS receiver and 3 days after becoming a member of Geocaching.com I have found my first GeoCache: South Peek

As expected, I absolutely love this “sport” already. Long time backpacking partner, Sean Lawless and I planned an overnight trip up and down and around Mt. Moosilauke in New Hampshire. I found that there were at least two caches hidden along our proposed path. The first was somewhere atop our first summit of South Peak. The cache was not easy to find. However, I believe that had as much to do with my unfamiliarity with the new GPS receiver as the craftyness of the cache hiders. Inside this cache, we found what is known as a Travel Bug. After returning home I tracked the origin of this bug all the way from Oregon.

Sean and I had a blast on this trip and here are the photos to prove it. CAUTION to fellow GeoCachers, there are spoilers in these photos.

This year has been marked by a great return of interest in some long time and long lost hobbies of mine: Mountain Biking and Backpacking/Hiking. Having spent a majority of the last ten years of my life glued to a computer screen, I started to become repulsed by all things technology (exaggeration) and found myself craving the great outdoors like I did during my carefree college days. Working from home and living in an area loaded with state parks and recreation areas allowed me to get out into the woods at least a few times a week.

But lets face it, sadecki is synonymous with technology, gadgets, computers, and geek. A strong desire to understand the bigger picture of my adventures, to control nature and to somehow pollute all that is pure and good with technology of somekind, I began finding myself sitting at my computer late at night drawing crude maps based on bike odometer readings, compass headings, foot-paces, and satellite photos (I know it sounds ridiculous, but I actually ended up with some pretty accurate maps). After watching this maddening obsession start to turn the tides of technology back against the calming effects nature had on her husband, my wife thought it was time to get me a GPS receiver. Nancy got together with my brother Jim and my mom to purchase the Garmin eTrex Vista C (pictured above) for my birthday this year.

Not 1 day later and I had a new obsession: Geocaching. An obsession so large it deserves its own section on this website…