The FTF Party

We love the FTF chase, but what we love most about it was the FTF Party. An FTF Party is our term for that meeting of all the Cachers who have come out to find the newly published cache. Whether we share the FTF credit or not, we love the opportunity to run into a few more Cachers and possibly grab a meal or coffee to carry on the conversation. Well today's was an interesting one.

Drie had just risen from bed about ten minutes prior to two new cache publication notices coming through on the phone. I was at the computer at the time, quickly checked, discovered they were only about six miles from home, and that they were in the same park that had two new caches published the day before. Being that close and near enough to the Roseville area (home to a few of the local FTF hounds), we knew we had to go (plus, its four more finds!). So I quickly emptied and reloaded both the 60CSx and the Colorado while Drie changed, then we hit the road. We called our buddies TeamLegend4 to check if they were on their way, and sure enough they were – FTF Party pending! We got to the park first and began our search for Downward Spiral (GC1D0M6). Within a minute TL4 pulled into a different lot within that same park and called us back. Being that they were parked right by Foul Cache (GC1D0MC) they headed for that one first. After making quick work of that one, they swung by to help us find the cache we were still working on. So with five of us looking, we finally found the cache. Yippee! Another successful shared FTF! Now it was time to hit the other two caches.

So the five of us began walking and talking toward the caches in the woods. As we passed a woman with two children sitting on the lawn, she asked "did you find it?" Uh, yes? It turns out that she was Comm from cuffs&comm who had placed the caches. They live just around the corner from the park and decided to steak-out the caches to see Cachers in action hunting their new finds. I was glad to finally have a face and voice to put with the name as we had e-mailed back and forth a couple times on some of their first hides. After a couple minutes though, it was time to hit the trail and find those other caches.

After finding all four caches in the park it was time to head back to the cars and off to lunch. As I arrived at my car another vehicle pulled in looking remarkably like Cachers. Sure enough they were since as soon as the family of four got out of the car, they asked if we'd already found the caches. scomanny is new to caching, not yet Premium Members, but got lucky having checked the listings on Geocaching.com to find the pair of newly published caches without finds staring at them. So off they went to find the four caches and we had the opportunity to meet three caching teams before lunch.