Morton Fox's journal

What a weekend! I went to Central and Northern New Jersey and attended four events. Those were "This little cacher wants a burger" at The Burger Shop in Matawan on Thursday, the "Pre-Metro Gathering Mega Meet and Greet" at the Mt. Allamuchy Scout Reservation on Friday, "2017 Metro Gathering ~ The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" on Saturday, and Small Town Stanhope, NJ later that Saturday. All those were geocaching events, except for the last one, which was a Munzee event.

In years past, there have been Thursday evening events in Central Jersey before the mega event. I just haven't been going out of my way for those. This year though, I decided to go a bit east to Matawan to meet up with those folks, even though that meant I'd be late getting to the hotel. The Bacon Royal Burger at The Burger Shop wasn't really that spectacular, but the chance to meet up with a few Central Jersey geocachers, who I hadn't seen in years since I stopped going to the Central Jersey events regularly, was priceless.

On Friday, I puttered around the Budd Lake, Netcong, and Flanders area, getting some Munzees and geocaches. A big plus to only coming to this area once a year is I had a lot to choose from in the various GPS games. Well, except for Flagstack, which hardly anyone seems to play over there, but its time will come. In the evening, I headed over to the scout camp for the Pre-Metro Gathering event. It was a pot luck dinner in a rustic dining hall, featuring spooky food such as a meat corpse. Signal, the geocaching mascot, made an appearance.

Saturday was the big event: Metro Gathering in historic Waterloo Village, which had been decorated with all kinds of Halloween stuff, including a mock graveyard, the Headless Horseman, and a spider skeleton. The entrance to the village was like a fair with exhibitors and vendors, and even a pumpkin carving contest. Mostly though, I went for a hike with other geocachers through the village for the 20 special lab caches and the themed Wherigo cache, and spent a lot of time talking to the North Jersey and Long Island geocachers on various things that have happened in the area while I was away. There was a fair amount of gossip and griping, which I'm not going to detail here. Suffice to say there are two sides to every issue. (Unless you're in the Octagon Society. Then there are eight sides to every issue.)

After Metro Gathering, I went down the road to Riverside Park to meet up with a smaller group for the "Small Town Stanhope, NJ" Munzee event. We had some event munzees placed around the park and adjacent trail. Couldn't stay too long though because the event started pretty close to sundown. I found out the reason that there had to be a separate Munzee event was Space Coast Geo Store was forbidden from vending Munzee-related goods at Metro Gathering. It's a new rule imposed by Groundspeak, the company running the geocaching website. If they find any Munzee stuff at a mega event, they'll yank the "mega" status. I spoke to a number of people about this and everyone thought it was a stupid rule and would hurt geocaching in the long run. A lot of people play both Munzee and geocaching so this kind of separation makes no sense. Munzee and Flagstack, on the other hand, don't mind if we mix games and even encourage it by offering "co-exist" badges for multi-game events.

( The caches... )

This past weekend was Metro Gathering 2015 in Northern New Jersey. By coincidence, it was also the weekend for FA United 2015 in the same general area. That was really convenient because I could stay at the Hanover Marriott (shared a room with jbadger) on FAU's group rate and hit Metro Gathering at the same time. If the two events had been on different weekends, I'd have incurred additional travel and hotel expenses to attend both, so that saved money too.

There were actually 3 geocaching events for Metro Gathering. On Friday evening, there was the "Pre~Metro Gathering Mega Meet and Greet" at Brundage Park in Randolph. It was a casual meet at the park pavillion with an opportunity to hike around the park for geocaches. Signal the Frog made an appearance too.

Saturday was the main event, "The 2015 Metro Gathering Event", at Waterloo Village in Byram. There were tents set up by the event itself, and various geocaching clubs and vendors. There were some games, raffles, and trading areas for pathtags and trackables. MacGyver the Coatimundi was present, and we also had a surprise visitor, a red fox who wandered into the village. Most of the fun of the event though was walking around the area in groups to find lab caches, letterboxes, geocaches, and the Wherigo cache. There was also a series of geocaches along the Morris Canal Trail, although by that time, the rain had started so we got caught in the downpour getting to the last few caches.

On Sunday morning, there was a follow-up event, "Join Chinster for a Mega Breakfast", at Panera Bread in Flanders. Signal the Frog was in attendance there too. That was a comparatively small gathering since most geocachers left after the main event, but there was good conversation.

As for FAU, well I actually spent more time at the geocaching events than at the con. However, I did get the chance to fursuit a bit and hang out a bit. I went to the dances each night and played in the Fursuit Games. The fursuit games this time had no teams, or just one big team, depending on how you look at it because everyone got a prize. There were three games: the limbo, charades, and musical chairs. I didn't do that well in the limbo but got an easy word for charades. In musical chairs, it was down to only 3 fursuiters before I got eliminated, which is a lot better than I usually do at that game.

( The caches... )

So this weekend, I went to the Hanover Marriott in Northern NJ for FA United. I stayed in New Jersey until Tuesday to combine this trip with the "Triple Tuesday Pints & Patties - 2014" geocaching event. These two events seem to always come one right after the other, so I thought I'd inquire as to whether the Marriott could extend the con group rate until Monday night. Alas, they never got back to me so I just booked a hotel room in the South Brunswick area. (As an aside, it's very hard to find an inexpensive hotel without bad customer reviews and without bed bug reports. I run into this issue every time I try to plan a trip on my own. The Red Carpet Inn is relatively new, so it could be that they just haven't run into problems or nitpickers yet.)

Anyway, just like in previous years, FAU didn't have much programming this year, or at least not too much of interest to me. So it was a chance to relax and meet up with friends, both old and new. And oh yeah, we crashed a wedding or perhaps a wedding crashed us. This weekend, there was a wedding party at the hotel and Miss New Jersey was one of the bridesmaids! They were actually pretty cool with the furries. On Saturday, they did a wedding photoshoot in the lobby. We were trying to stay out of their way but they called us over to join in! That was pretty awesome.

In the fursuit games, I was on the yellow team. What's amazing is we won every single game! (and therefore got first place) I wasn't even sure how that happened. Maybe we just had the right combination of skills or a lot of luck. The games were the scooter race, balloon popping, clothes pegs, and musical chairs. My roomie, Argon Darksteel, was the balloon expert, so that probably helped in the second game. For the clothes pegs game, I knew from experience to just sit next to the bucket and focus on clipping all the pegs on our poor captain's lower parts. >.> And finally, I was the one who won musical chairs for the team. I was worried initially because the team was too close together (in musical chairs, the team should try to spread out a bit initially to try to eliminate others instead of ourselves) but we moved as a block and I was lucky to not be eliminated during the early rounds. Then finally, it was just me and one other player going around a single chair. I was getting a bit dizzy by that time, both from exertion and from circling that chair, but I flopped onto the chair at just the right time and that was that!

On Sunday, since there wasn't much going on in the afternoon, I went to a sewing panel and sewed a cupcake. I already knew a bit about sewing but working with patterns and fleece material was interesting, and I learnt a few little tricks too. Definitely will have to see if upcoming cons have sewing/craft panels too.

Triple Tuesday is a continuation of a long-running monthly Central Jersey geocaching event, which used to be held at Fuddruckers in New Brunswick until that restaurant shut down, then at Fuddruckers in Bridgewater until that too shut down. This month, it was at Red Tower III, another burger and sandwich place, in Somerville. Because I now live farther away from Central Jersey, I only get to attend this event once or twice a year. But it was good to get back together with the Central Jersey group for a few hours.

( The caches... )

I was at the Hanover Marriott in Northern New Jersey from Friday to Monday for FA United 5. Shared a hotel room with jbadger again, just like last year. Now because I've heard a few complaints about this con, I have to say that we ought to set our expectations a bit lower since it's a smaller con than Anthrocon and Furfright and it has less programming. Given that, I thought I had a pretty good time overall. Not every con needs to be a rush of activity and I liked having the time to do what I wanted to do, to talk to people, and to let spontaneous things happen. It was slow at times but never actually dull.

The new hotel had more than enough space for our group. The common areas never seemed packed or congested at any time during the con, so it could probably accommodate a con two or three times the size. The only space that seemed a bit small was the con suite (especially at dinner time, when the line spilled out into the hallway) but the room is the size it is, so I don't think we can do much about that. Housekeeping was probably a bit understaffed that weekend; I noticed they weren't done with the rooms until the evening on Saturday.

As I mentioned earlier, there wasn't a lot of programming but I enjoyed the events that I did attend. The Sock Hop (oldies music dance) on Friday evening was fun and actually quite danceable in fursuit. The Miracle Fruit Tasting Party was the most unusual panel I've ever been to. Miracle fruit is a berry containing a chemical that makes sour foods taste sweet. So in this panel, we ate miracle fruit in pill form and then tried various kinds of food and juices. That was certainly a different experience! On Saturday night, we made our own spontaneous event, tearing around the lobby doing various funny stuff in fursuit. (Hope we didn't annoy the hotel folks too much!)

The day after the con, I returned to Bridgewater for the Triple Tuesday Pints & Patties - 2012 geocaching event. This monthly Central Jersey geocaching event has been going on for quite a number of years. It's the third Tuesday of every month. It used to be in New Brunswick but switched around to a few other places and then moved to Fuddruckers in Bridgewater after the New Brunswick Fuddruckers went out of business. I can't attend as often as I used to because I'm now further away but I figured I might as well extend my vacation by one day and do it this month. It was a comparatively small gathering this time, but I got to meet up with some of the regulars plus a few folks I haven't seen before. I noticed that the next Third Tuesday falls on my birthday, which makes attending this event again a tempting proposition if I take that day off from work.

( The caches... )

Cloudy and very windy. 57°F. Went geocaching in Central Jersey but I was just all over the place. I actually started in Northern New Jersey (Secaucus), went south and across Central Jersey, and finished in East Hanover, which is also North Jersey. Did some interesting hikes in Losen Slote, Eagle Rock Reservation, and Chimney Rock / Washington Valley, which is more than I thought I'd do given my low energy level today.

Actually ate twice for dinner. The 15th cache of the day, "Teenie Weenie", was just outside Genie's Weenies, a hot dog place. So I went in and had a chili dog. Then I went for the 16th cache of the day, "Joseph Bono, Jr. Memorial Cache", up in East Hanover. It was dark (8pm) by then but the wooded area, which is next to an industrial complex, reminded me of some geocache sites in Northern Delaware. Over there, they seem to like placing geocaches in wooded areas by office complexes, industrial complexes, medical complexes, etc, and yes, I've been to those at night too, sometimes as part of a group hunt after a geocaching meetup.

So tonight, I was using a flashlight and looking around in the dark woods not very successfully. As I was wondering if I should give up and leave it for another time, I happened to see the cache. Great! After that, I had dinner #2, which was at the nearby Baja Fresh in East Hanover. I had pork nachos.

( The caches... )

Saturday was a cold day with temperatures between 26°F and 34°F. It was windy too, which didn't help matters. So it probably wasn't a good idea to take a walk out on an exposed trail across a swamp. It wasn't too bad once I got going though. After I was done with De Korte Park, I continued to Eagle Rock, and then West Essex Park, where I ran into KBer, another diehard cold-weather geocacher. There, the cold weather worked to my advantage. All the mud and puddles in that swamp were frozen so I could walk straight to the cache site without getting muddy. Finished the day with a quick cache a few miles west of Morristown.

No out-of-pocket expenses today because I used reward points for everything. I used the gas reward to fill the tank and I used the Shoppers' Hotline reward to get dinner and groceries at the Chinese Supermarket in River Edge.

( The caches... )

This morning, Damian K. and I did a mascot gig for Walk Now For Autism at Bergen Community College in Paramus. At under 10 miles, it's the closest one to home that I've ever done. After registering at the volunteer table, I was presented with a t-shirt. I wasn't presented with a bagel but I picked that up on my own. :) Thanks to the event organizers for providing bagels and coffee. Our changing room was a room in the Technology building. We shared it with Geoffrey (from Toys R Us) and some stormtroopers. (a Star Wars costuming group)

At a bit over 80°F, it was a hot day to be outside in fursuit. I did a walk around and meet and greet on my first round. Then on my second round, I hung out for some time behind the stormtrooper table, where it was shady. Then I changed out of fursuit and did a bit of escort/photography work. I thought it was a good crowd. Although our crew was small, it was fun doing this gig with the other mascots/costumers.

At the end of the gig, we were surprised to see that the event organizers had brought pizza to the break room. That's very good of them and it's something we don't often see at volunteer gigs.

After that, I went home, washed the fursuit, and took care of a few other things. It was still early in the afternoon, so I headed out for some geocaches in the 20 to 30-mile range that I'd been saving for a half-day like this. Dinner was at Wendy's in Parsippany because that's where I stopped to use the restroom on my way home from the last geocache. Instead of choosing a value meal, I just ordered item by item from the dollar menu because I wanted to try dipping fries in a chocolate frosty. (Geocachers in Northeast Pennsylvania will know where that came from.)

( Some photos from the mascot gig... )

( The caches... )