The Dems had a choice between a media favorite and an annoying phony back in 2000. They went with Big AL, and how did that work out? Now, in a bizarre replay they have a choice between a charismatic chap the media could learn to love, and an annoying phony. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, I'm a registered Dem.--- Tom Maguire.

There was a cachers' party in Oroville today, so we thought we'd go give it a whirl. Rich slept in a bit, but we were still on the road before 9. Our first was on the outskirts of Roseville. I wondered why he walked off when I said I'd found it, but it seems he hadn't heard me and was still looking. Then we drove through Lincoln, ignoring the two multis we're stuck on there, and onwards to one in downtown Marysville. Here we discovered cachers "G&V" were ahead of us. They'd found the cache empty and left a new log. I went ahead and left a couple of goodies, too. Rich looked right at this one and didn't see it. I also enjoyed the Chinese Temple area it was in. I'd heard about it, but we hadn't seen it before.

We passed the bat houses we'd admired before when we were caching in this area, and drove on up to Oroville. We've only been in this town one time before, so there was a lot to explore.

First was an attempt at a cache near the River, but we couldn't find the parking area. In fact, now that I look at a map, I still can't figure how they gave us the parking coordinates they did. Oh, well, maybe another day. Then we went to a cemetery cache.

We crossed the freeway and went to "Superman's closet" at the airport. There's a sign that says pilots will report all suspicious activity, and as we walked up a guy came out of the door and looked at us, so we felt very conspicuous. This got even worse at our next cache, which was in a neighborhood. We were relieved to get back in the downtown area. We went to look for one in a park called "Between Two Trains." The big deal would have been to find the other train, which turned up to be up the hill at the other end of the park. We looked for this one, (the cache), all over the area, focusing on this one tree, but nothing. Must have wasted a half hour there.

Across the tracks there's Maggie's Depot, which is now a restaurant. They were busy, but no one watched us lurk in the olive trees and get a cache. Then we went to Liberty Park where Ishi (the last of the Yahi) spent some time in jail (ironic, that) and found a cache. We looked at the Liberty Pole they'd erected, and some grinding rocks, and then went back to the Taco Bell across the street from the cemetery.

We still had a good chance of beating our 18-cache-in-a-day record. Up on the levee there's a picnic area and a cache near the bike trail. Unfortunately, we didn't see the recommended beginning of this trail which is the Oroville Chinese Temple. It's another good excuse to come back. We looked at the fish hatchery. This cache is cleverly hidden in the information brochure box. We looked at the underwater viewing platform, though since no fish were in the fish ladder, there wasn't much to see. Beautiful area!

Across the Feather River is an old bath-house which is a nature center now. It was supposed to be open, but it wasn't. Oh, well, we found the cache, anyway.

Then things started to go to pot. We drove to one called Ishi's Corner, but couldn't find it. Rich started ranting about 1 caches, which he's decided are badly marked. He hates micros, he hates locationless, he hates 1s, he hates hard terrain, he hates virtuals, he hates puzzles... at which point I completely forgot to decode the clue so we wasted 20 minutes in this location.

OK, there's an abandoned train tunnel with two caches on the other side of it. (It bends inside the rock, too: sounds fascinating.) I said this might well be the last two caches, but let's go, so we walked about three-quarters of a mile along the trail only to discover that the tunnel floor was one huge puddle. Now, *I* had brought a complete change of footwear, but Rich had not, so we abandoned this idea and trekked back to the car.

Then we went to Mediterranean Mama, the first orange tree in Butte County. It was planted in 1856 and has survived hard frosts, some fires, and being transplanted. There was a cop car in the area but we couldn't see the cop. We were poking around in the juniper bushes and they were returning the favor, but no cache. It turns out to have been found broken earlier and taken to the party.

OK, it began to look like we'd never find cache #11. I quote from my log of the next one: (smily icons in square brackets.)

#11 of 16 today and therein hangs a tale. We had totally blown it at Ishi's Corner and then went to try for the two on the other side of the tunnel. We walked to the tunnel mouth and discovered it was full of water, so we wimped out and came back. Then we went to Mediterranean Mama, which it turns out was also missing. It was beginning to look like we weren't going to actually find #11 today!

Mr. Codger tends to outrun his GPSr, and it's also got the trait of telling us ''it's here! By this rock!'' ''It's there! In the tree!'' ''Look over there under that log!'' till you find it, at which point it points right to the cache and says ''See? I TOLD you it was there!''

There's going to come a time when this machine will find itself in a shredder.... [wink]

Mr. Codger got up the hill and stood in the middle of the concrete and found that's where the GPSr was zeroing out. So he asked Mrs. C. for the numbers to verify that we'd put them into the machine right. The numbers were the same, so he said (BIG mistake, this!) ''well, you must have copied them down wrong.''

Mrs. C. stormed off to look at the view. It's spectacular! We could wish to live in that house up there. Wow.

When she finally, reluctantly, returned to Mr. C., she decoded the hint. At this point, the evil GPS and Mr. Codger were heading toward the actual cache area. Mrs. C. was incredulous. ''You claimed it was up there!'' ''Yeah, but....'' So again he outran the machine, but Mrs. Codger spied a suspicious looking area, stalked over, retrieved the cache, and logged in, with somewhat of a black cloud over her head.

Mr. Codger had spent so much time staring at the arrow he never saw the view. [big grin]

Suffice it to say my Lent is off to a rocky start. At the base of the hill we ran into, finally, other geocachers. I'd been expecting this all day.

We drove across the dam to see if we could get close to the virtual. That parking lot is closed, and we saw some young people under arrest (sitting along the fence while rangers stood there) and so we were not about to chance an illegal parking! I suppose that's terrorism related, but at least unlike Folsom Dam, you CAN drive across it. We'll have to come back and walk to this one. Since we're definitely coming back when the tunnel has dried out, this will work.

Rich found the cache at the Visitor's Center. We took a quick run through the museum, and I almost signed the guest book as "sailorscodgers." Oops. Then we climbed the tower and looked out. It was a beautiful clear day and to my astonishment, we could see Mt. Diablo way to the south! That's at least 100 miles as the crow flies.

We drove back toward town and crossed the River, and went to a cemetery, where we found some Sacramento cachers leaving, and two more cachers from Redding in the cemetery. "Everyone has family here?" Rich asked. Further down the road we saw a man and his daughter reading a plaque about an old school. They didn't have a GPS but they did recognize us. They hadn't known there was a cache there, so back to the car he went for his GPS and the rest of his family. We all looked, and Rich finally zeroed out at the right area and found the cache.

This man told us exactly where the "Between Two Trains" cache was. We figured we had time before we got to the party. Rich was annoyed when there were people there, right at the tree. I had to explain that they were cachers, as sure enough, they were... from Pleasanton! These folks have 1600+ caches. Rich knew right where the cache was and got it out of the niche, so we were chuffed when we got to the party.

This was a lot of fun. I traded travel bugs, introduced the two guys from Redding, met a lot of folks whose caches we'd found before, ate too much, and generally had a great time. We didn't leave at 8 as we'd planned, but at 8:30 and we were home by 10. Nice day, even with the irritants.