MOGA 2022

4 Lost Soles, MOGA 2022

 After our team win last year, we were all pretty sure that we would reunite this year and try to defend our title. The location for this year's MOGA was in rural Illinois, near the Indiana border by Terre Haute. The event actually spanned three little towns, Casey (pronounced Kay-Zee), Martinsville, and Marshall, and the theme was Big Things, Small Towns. The big things is an allusion to the jumbo sized sculptures of every day objects that can be found in these three towns. Things like a giant rocking chair, or over-sized pencil, or even a huge mailbox, big enough to climb up into and look out over the town. I never quite learned the story about why these towns started building sculptures, but it certainly sets them apart from most the other little towns you pass by in the vast agricultural lands that dominate middle America.

Unlike last, year, when the ongoing pandemic had me uncertain about whether even to attend, this year, I felt more comfortable committing to going. And yet, I still didn't really plan for the trip until very last minute. The location was only a 3 hour drive from Cincinnati, so I never felt any urgency to plan the trip, figuring I could just zip on over to compete without any real plans. As the date for the competition actually loomed, and I was faced with figuring out how and when to get over to Illinois, I belatedly realized that I had kids activities at home that I was committed too on the day before the races, and my wife had work obligations which prevented her from stepping up to take these on. So perhaps foolishly, I made plans to get up at 4:30 in the morning, the day of the competitions, and drive three hours to make it to the race start in time. Next time, I need to plan a little more in advance.

My drive actually went pretty smoothly, although I was pretty drowsy at times. I watched the sunrise in my rear-view mirror as I crossed into Illinois, and made my way to Lincoln Trails State Park, the location for the competitions. I was about an hour early, which was good because I wasn't sure where the race was actually supposed to start. I drove around the park, checking out boat ramps, a small restaurant on the lake, and a campground, but not seeing any signs of geocachers. I was starting to consider texting the rest of my team about the start location, when I spotted a few cars across the lake, parked near the dam, and decided to check them out. A few minutes later, I had picked up my competition card and was getting dressed for the race. A fun little thing that happened before the race, a local news reported was there and someone called me over to give an interview. Later, when I saw the news report, I got a chuckle out of being called, "an expert geocacher".

The individual competition course was set at the Southern end of a lake, and once I downloaded the coordinates and scoped them out, I knew it would be a very fast course. The 30 geocaches were densely packed, with about 15 placed in either direction from the course start. The furthest cache was only half a mile away, and some looked like they were only 200 ft apart. This year, again, would be about speed. The course looked easily doable in an hour time. But I was determined not to miss any caches like I had last year. Last year during the individual, there were a few geocaches which were taking a long time to find, and I opted to skip them and turn in my punchcard early, to try to get a good time, and hope that the geocaches I missed, would also be missed by everyone else. That strategy had worked for me during the 2017 MOGA, when I first won the individual competition, but had failed me last year, when the difficult geocaches were eventually found and my skipping them resulted in me not even placing. With that in mind, I picked my route and got ready to run hard.

Every year, it feels like I have a similar strategy, and run up against the same hurdle. It doesn't really matter how fast you run between the stages if you can't find the geocaches. Why does this ever surprise me? Maybe it's because I really have no way to prepare myself for finding difficult geocaches. The race kicked off, and I ran my best, getting my first two pretty quickly, but then getting stuck at geocache #5. I looked and looked... and more and more competitors showed up and started looking too. But no one was finding anything. After ten minutes in this one spot, I decided to run to the next geocache, and get all the geocaches out a small peninsula, before doubling back to this one to see if it had been found yet. I found most of these pretty quickly, but also had trouble at #13, which took me 7 minutes of searching. I arrived back at#5 to see several people still looking, and no reports that anyone had found it. Since most people were looking near GZ, which is where I had already searched pretty thoroughly, I decided to check the perimeter about 60-80 ft away the posted coordinates. As I made my way around, I spotted the cache. It was maybe 75' from the posted coordinates, and well buried under leaves, so not too surprising that no one had found it yet. I yelled out that it had been found, and then tried to pick up my pace to make up for lost time.

I made my way past the starting line and to the geocaches on the other side, which were mostly hidden beneath the dam. While doing these geocaches, I caught up to Mark (aka Troopbiz) who was on my 4-man team for the afternoon's comp. We found a couple geocaches together, and I let him know that #5 had been found, and where it was. He hadn't gotten that one yet. We found #26 together, the cache furthest west from the starting point, and then Mark took off to run all the way to #5, which was the furthest East. I still had to find 5 geocaches on the West side loop, but I thought I could probably find those and beat Mark back to the finish line, since he had much further to go. What I didn't count on though was getting held up for 10 minutes at #27, which was in a swamp surrounded by briers and honeysuckle. Someone else eventually showed up and found that one, which I happily punched, and then raced to complete the course. I was feeling pretty good, I had run hard and found all the punches. But as I approached the finish, I saw Mark there already, and then a couple other people standing around chatting, including CherrySpawn, and a guy named Joe, who competed back in 2016 and 2017, and was really fast. I finished in about 1 hour, 18  minutes, maybe 25 minutes slower than the fastest time. My track log showed distance run as a bit over 3 miles. 

Looking back now, I can delude myself into thinking that if I had just found #5, #13 and #26 right away, I would have been a contender for first place. But the reality is, this race is not just about how fast you go, but about how well you can find the geocaches when you get there. Losing all that time searching for the geocaches is simply part of the game. I can maybe convince myself, that the winners got luck, showing up at #5 after it had been found to be way off coordinates, and not having to waste time looking for it in the wrong places, but they must have also found all their other caches quickly, and that deserves plenty respect. And Mark beat me too, despite having to run an extra mile to get #5.

Between the individual and the team comp, we had 4 hours of down time. Mark, being a glutton for punishment, went off to compete in the Puzzle Comp, which I still have never done. I used the opportunity to explore the three little towns that the MOGA event was centered on. First I drove into Marshall, which has the claim to fame of having a courthouse where Lincoln practiced law. Outside the courthouse is the world's largest gavel, which was also a virtual cache. Next I made my way to the GPS Adventure Maze (tm), which is a unique icon on geocaching.com, which for me was the main draw to check it out. It only took a few minutes to walk through the exhibit, which started off with displays on GPS technology, but then quickly became all about geocaching. Since I've been deep into geocaching for years now, there wasn't really any new information to me, but I appreciated the opportunity to get a new icon. I then spent a bit of time walking around the small downtown area, trying to complete some Adventure Labs, but aside from the gavel, there were no "big" objects, just historical buildings and plaques commemorating veterans. So I hopped in my car and drove twenty minutes to the town pf Casey, which is where most of the "big things" were located. 

For such a small rural town, Casey has a modern and hip feel. The huge object sculptures are apparently having their intended effect, of drawing people from all the surrounding towns and counties, maybe even further. I snapped lots of pictures, and got myself a fruit smoothie from a trendy looking coffee shop. Everything on the main drag looked clean and well maintained, despite being as old as the Marshall. It just had a different feel. The feel of a place that gets a lot of visitors, and influx of money into the economy. My mother-in-law would love this town. Every time we went on a cross country move, she helped out with the driving because she loves road trips and seeing different parts of the country. And every time she plans itineraries which take her to places with the biggest ball of twine, or a real fire-breathing dragon sculpture.. or something along those lines. Casey is the perfect road trip stop, a town of intriguing sculptures, and loads of charm.

I started doing some of the Adventure Labs in Casey. There were 4-5 of them, and each had 5 or ten stops, often requiring doubling back to places you just came from. I quickly got annoyed with having to toggle between different adventure labs while walking down the street. I suppose I could have just picked one, and finished it, then tried another, but some of them actually required hopping in a car to drive to a spot further from downtown Casey, and I wasn't interested in that, I just want to walk the main drag. So I completed what I could, then, hopped in my car to go back to Lincoln Trails, for the team comp. I did make one more stop, at the Giant Pitchfork, so that I could log the Virtual cache in the town.

I made it back to the competition location with over an hour to spare, and for good reason. Fatigue was catching up with me. The early morning drive, and then running for an hour during the morning's race, those factors had me feeling drowsy. I popped up my little bug-tent and laid down, not really napping, but at least resting. As I rested, one of the other 4-man teams showed up, the one that I thought would be our biggest competition. The team was composed of Charryspawn, and Joe, who both beat me during the morning competition, and also the GeocachingVlogger and a woman who I didn't recognize. The three men on the team were also on the team that beat us back in 2017 in Manhattan Kansas. This would be the team to beat this year. Well, that's not entirely true. My team was the team to beat. We had won it last year. We had two "athletes" being myself and Mark. And Tom and Kim are among the best geocachers out there. We would not go down without a fight.

The coordinates for the team event were sent out, and teams started showing up and getting ready to compete. Mark, Kim and Tom, my team-mates from last year (and in Tom and Kim's case, team-mates going back to 2016, when we had an epic win), pulled up and we got into a huddle to figure out the course. At first glance, the course looked similar to the individual competition, with all the geocaches clustered pretty close to the starting location. But there were a few outliers. Two geocaches were placed pretty far out on the entrance road east of the park, about a mile from the start. And there was one lone geocache placed all by itself a half a mile north from all the other geocache clusters. Those few geocaches increased the distance needed to complete the course, and strategies would revolve around how your team incorporated these caches. Since our team had two strong runners, Mark and me, we divided up the furthest caches to us. But instead of dividing all 30 of the caches up evenly between the four of use, we opted for a strategy of having the two cachers who had the close geocaches get more than those who had to run far. The idea was that Kim and Tom would be able to get the majority of caches that were close, while Mark and I spent more of our time running to the far caches. But we also divided up the caches so that each runner would be paired with a geocacher who was doing the close caches, so that if one finished before the other, they would be able to help eachother out to complete the remaining. Mark was teamed up with Kim, and between the two of them they had 16 caches to get. Tom and I had the Northern set, and 14 caches.

Plan in hand, we gathered for the obligatory group photo, and then the starting time was called out and we were on our way. Mark and I took the lead running up the road and towards our distant caches. Behind us, I could see others following suit, but we were certainly building a small lead. We maintained a running pace of something under an 8 minute mile for the first half mile, and then Mark and I split up. I still had nearly a mile to run before my first cache, and was determined to get there first. But I also didn't want to be pushed into running beyond my capabilities. I was determined to run my own pace, and not look back, but couldn't help from glancing back every now and then to see if someone was behind me. I did catch a glimpse of Cherryspawn, the winner of the individual comp somewhere behind me, but then lost sight of him later. No matter, I had my own race to run. About a mile of road running led to a trailhead, where I found a nice gravel trail heading North to the one outlier cache. The trail zigged and zagged a little bit, and at one point, I broke from the nice new trail, and followed an old road cut, which was starting to get overgrown with thorns, but still looked passable and more direct. I made great time, and found this cache without a problem. Then started booking it back to the main cluster of caches, a half mile back south, that I would need to find before completing my team assignment. I kept expecting to see Cherryspawn coming up the trail, but instead saw no one. I made it to my next geocache, back in the main park, and ran into a woman looking for the geocache too. We looked together for a while. Then another geocacher showed up to joint the hunt. And another. I was losing time, and I saw from some group texts that the rest of my team was doing well. I sent out a quick text, "I need Help". It was likely that I would not finish my assignment before Tom.

And then Cherryspawn was there. Despite a bunch of us looking for a good long time, he showed up and practically walked right to the geocache, tied to the base of a small tree and buried under leaves, a place where I swear that I had looked already. All of the time I had gained on him from running hard had evaporated, he must have come back from the far geocache too, and now he had caught up to me. And he showed up right after I had texted for help. Unfortunately, I lost connectivity during the run for the next few caches, and was unsure about what Tom, or the rest of my team was doing. For the next 4 geocaches, Cherryspawn and I were right together. Some he found quickly, others I found quickly. At one, another geocacher caught up to us, Debbie, a geocacher from Columbus, OH that I had met at previous MOGAs and other Ohio events. All the while, I was trying to check my phone for texts, to see if Tom was starting any of my caches. I saw that he was heading to one, #34, and saw that I was almost there too. I texted that I was also heading to #34, but then shortly after saw he had already got it. By this point Cherryspawn had taken off down the road, and it became apparent that either he had already found #34, or someone else on his team had gotten it. At that moment, it felt like winning the competition was slipping away from us. Tom and I were running together down the road, behind our fiercest competition. And while I might have been able to keep pace, or catch Cherryspawn, Tom clearly couldn't. I considered briefly whether I could take Tom's punch card from him and turn it in for him, but that felt wrong, like it would be against the rules (I checked and indeed it was against the rules). So we just jogged and walked together, trying to go as fast as we could, and hoping for the best.

As if in answer to our prayers, as we trtted down the road, we heard someone call out from the woods, asking if we had already found a cache. There was Cerryspawn and Joe, down in the woods looking in a frantic search. It must have been cache #38 or #36, one of the caches among Tom's assignment, and Tom shot back that he had found it, and even generously called out a hint, telling team that another nearby cacher wearing a red shirt was the closest to it. I wanted to shoot Tom a dirty look, because those were our competitors he was helping, the guys that would most likely beat us if they found that geocache! But I couldn't do that. I too had given other competitors help and hints during the race day. Somehow, being sneaky or sly about helping out fellow racers just didn't feel right. I'd rather feel a sense of camaraderie. But... I still wanted our team to win... just to win fair and square. And now suddenly, it looked like we had a chance to do just that. Our biggest rivals were stuck at a cache, and Tom and I just had 3/4 of a mile to run back to the finish line to win.

Normally, running the final 3/4 of a mile back would be something that I would relish. I can push hard and run fast, and if it was just up to me to run that last stretch, I'm sure I could use it to our teams advantage. But there was no sense of me taking off and leaving Tom, because our team's completion time woul be whenever the last person turned up. So intead of picking up the pace to a sprint, I stayed right with Tom, and shifted into the role of cheerleader. "You got this Tom", 'd yell out. "Come on, let's run a bit more", I'd say again, after an an exhausted Tom took a walking break. All the while, I kept an eye over our shoulders for Cherryspawn and Joe, who at any moment could come tearing down the road to overtake us. The tension felt real. yes, we had a lead on them, but they had more combined speed than us and should they find their last caches, there was a real possibility for them to sprint past us to the finish line. I was checking my texts, and saw that Mark and Kim were already waiting for us at the finish. And also, the other team's two members were there too. We were urged to hurry, and I pushed Tom to run as hard as I dared push. Tom has amazing stamina and endurance. He can hike 10-15 miles and find dozens of geocaches in rugged terrain. He is a master at finding difficult hides, and a great climber. But speed is not his thing, and I could see he was giving it his all to keep trotting down the road and keep our team in front of the competition.

The final downhill to the finish line appeared in sight, and there was still no sign of our rivals behind us. As we crested the hill and started flying down it, Kim and Mark ran over to join us. Still running, I started calling out our punch cards, so we could confirm as a team that we had not missed a single cache. Without even missing a stride, we elatedly called out each number on our cards, confirming with growing excitement that we were positioned to win. And not a moment after verifying we had all the punches, we slapped our competition cards down on the table and clocked our time. I don't recall exactly what the time was, but it was well under an hour, perhaps 48 minutes. My track log showed 3.5 miles. And it looked like we had just won the MOGA cup!

MOGA 2022 Cup Winners!

We were stoked, and cheering. Tom collapsed on the ground, and I couldn't' stop chattering. I can't even remember what had said, but somehow we failed to even notice when the next team came in, since we had moved a ways away from the finish line. We did see the third team to finish, another team of Ohioans, that contained our friends Kyle and Deb, and we cheered them on, and any other teams that we saw coming in. Eventually, the surge of endorphins subsided, and we set about making dinner plans. I stopped by the camp host for he park's camping area and got myself a tent space for the night. After a long day already, I wasn't prepared to make the late night drive back to Cincy like i had done after lst year's MOGA. I then met up with Tom, Kim and another geocacher at the farmhouse restaurant located by the world's largest pitchfork, where we filled up on filling American fare, before making our way t MOGA central for the award ceremony.

As usual, the award ceremony seemed to drag on and on, but this year I was prepared with a sleeping pad to spread out and take a little nap while waiting for the emcees to announce the event winners. I ended up placing 2nd in my age category for he individual competition, with Cherryspawn taking first. The other three cachers who beat my time were either in the 30 and under category, or the 50 and older category. that was  pleasant surprise. and it was not a surprise at all when our 4-man team was called up as the winners of the MOGA Cup! Next year, MOGA will be in Michigan, near Flint, and I'm sure I'll be there again.

Sunrise from my camp spot, morning after MOGA