A Shared Shadow

2010-04-05T12:37:00.000+02:00

Back on track

2010-01-22T20:22:00.002+01:00

After some time with illness and my son being away from home we are now continuing our adventure. Tonight it is cloudfree and not so cold so we went for 3 caches placed strategically around our city and the view of Uppsala with all the lights was really nice.

We also went for a mystery that gave us a 40 minute walk that my son really enjoyed, to bad I didn't find the cache but I'm sure my son will enjoy that walk more than one time. There is a thing with mystery caches at wintertime, it's hard to know if the cahe is hidden by snow or if you didn't solve the puzzle. I'm quite sure I solved the puzzle on this one but you can never be sure before you find the cache.

This is the puzzle I think I solved:
Y = [ X + 3#1212 X <- "KSBXGPJXCQLU"].
{XXX,YYY} = lists:split(3, [7#344 bxor X X <- Y, X > 5#1002]).

Weekend

2010-01-11T17:37:00.004+01:00

This weekend my son stayed with his big sister so I didn't expect any adventures to happend this weekend. Atleast thats what I expected.

Saturday night big sister called and told us that my son had eaten a small canister of hair conditioner. Even if I didn't think he was in any danger it was still best to take him to the emergency ward. My son was in good mood and thought it was a fun little trip, he didn't even protest to much when we had to make him drink 2 dl of active carbon. In the end the doctor decided that the toxic substances in the conditioner was in such small quantities that it wouldn't do any harm to him and we got to go home. Or rather I drove son and big sister to her place before I turned around and went home. 4½ hour of pure adventure :)

A mystery solved

2010-01-06T16:52:00.002+01:00

In geocaching there is a few different kind of caches. Three of the most ocmmon caches are the common one, a multi that involves visiting multiple coordinates before finding the logbook, and finally a mysterycache that involves solving a puzzle that in turn gives you the coordinates for the cache.

For a few weeks ago I noticed that there was a mysterycache 15 km from home and I have checked the puzzle a few times but I haven't even been close to finding the solution for the puzzle untill today. When I was feeding my aquarium it suddenly stroke me how to solve the puzzle and 90 seconds later I had the coordinates in my hand. The picture shows the puzzle and that picture is all you get, no explanations or anything.

Needles to say that we after lunch left for a quick trip to a village called Vänge and back. This little village had 4 caches together with the mystery I solved so I decided to give them all a go. I'm thankfull that all caches was within 300 meters from a good parking as it was really biting cold today (-22°C)

Just the two of us

2010-01-05T20:21:00.003+01:00

For now close to 36 hours my wife and my daughter (also autistic) have been away from home. They went on a short cruise to Finland and left us guys home alone. It has been a bit cold to be out geocaching (-20°C) so I took a chanse and stayed home even if we got home from work and school early and it worked! After dinner we have been sitting in the sofa wathing TV and my soon has been right next to me under a blanket and laughing at things that he sees on the TV. Not many days a year when he is that easy to keep satisfied.

Road Trip

2010-01-03T19:07:00.002+01:00

No geocaching today. Instead another of my hobbies took most of the day. Right after lunch we left home to drive to the town Enköping to buy some corals from a guy with a marvelous reef aquarium. We got the followin corals with us home:

Montipora capricornis
Montipora digitata
Montipora hirsuta
Seriatopora hystrix

After that we went ot another town here around called Bro where a friend of mine has created a filter assembly to hold media like carbon and phosphate remover inside my refugium.

All in all my son got a good 2½ hours in the car and he doesn't complain :)

Preparations

2010-01-02T19:49:00.002+01:00

Today me and my son have taken it easy. No hiking, no long trips. All we did today was a short trip to my workplace to get some deionized water for my aquarium and when we were in town we also did some reconnaissance for a few urban caches.

Most of my day I have looked and planned for longer adventures later this year, and one thing that is keeping down the length of our trips is the food situation as my son is a bit picky with what he eats. At the moment I'm searching for food that is lightweigth, easy to cook (Preferably only add boiling water) and that my son will eat. I think I have figured out a working breakfast and eveningmeal with hot chocolate and crispbread. It's not much but atleast it's something.

Tranquility

2010-01-01T16:25:00.002+01:00

Today we left the warmth inside to finnish of a geocache consisting of multiple steps that we started yesterday evening but had to abandon the hunt when it got to dark to see without flashlights. Normally I could have continued with flashlights but not here as many steps involved collecting clues to the final location from tombstones on a large graveyard and new years eve is a time when a lot of people visits graves of relatives and friends.

The graveyard was a really tranquil place at dusk with a light snowfall, many hundreds candles lighting up the graves and people walking silently to and from the graves ... and then there was us. My son loved walking around on the ploughed paths between the tombstones and looking the candles and showed it by keeping laughing out loud where ever we walked :)

But that cache is now history.

After finnishing of the one at the graveyard I thought we should give a forrest cahe a go before we turned home. I know there is snow out and that I would need to look under a stone at the end but I thought it wouldn't be worse than I could push away the snow with my hands. It turned out to be a little more snow than I thought. I should have turned around when I saw that the last 1 km of the road wasn't ploughed. But I didn't. By maintining good speed I made it all the way to the end of the road which was the only place to turn around aswell as teh location of the cache. After turning car around and aligning it to my wheeltracks from the drive in I jumped out of the car and started walking the last 15 meters in ankle deeps snow, that will say ankle deep untill I stepped of the road. Of the road the snow was more than waist deep, thats when I decided to wait untill spring with that cache and went back to the car and drove back to the main road, still keeping good speed so I wouldn't get stuck in the snow on the road.

Only thing missing from that trip was that the military police should come and ask what I was doing between those two radar towers in the middle of nowhere.

Expectations

2009-12-31T11:09:00.002+01:00

We took a short trip to the local IKEA store this morning, well before they opened their doors just to log a cache hidden at the parking lot that has been evaiding my eyes for a while now. The goal for our trip wasn't that exciting but as always my son was in good mood, making "happy" sounds and looking around to see where we are going this time. Sometimes the trip itself is the biggest goal ...

Cold nose

2009-12-30T19:34:00.003+01:00

Today we went out for a short geocaching trip. 2 caches in semi-urban woods no more than 20 minute walk back and forth. The temperature was close to -15°C and we had to make use of flashlights so a short trip felt ok.

My son got the headlamp and it was fun to see what his attention was focused on and I can tell you that the path and where to put his next step was not on the list over prioritized object to look at. I also tried to make him carry mittens, which he thought was close to be imprisoned so of they went whenever I turned my back on him.

But apart from the regular stops for putting on the mittens we had a lovely walk with flashlights between high pines, the sound of the snow let me know when my son stoped, frost in the beard, lights and sound from the city a bit away. And then ofcourse it was nice to get back into the warm car after the short hike.

GC21RT2, GC1ZD8H

Where should we go next?

2009-12-28T17:13:00.003+01:00

This has been a goal for me and my son for a while now, maybee time to realize it?
GCGM19

Another day in paradise

2009-12-28T13:53:00.003+01:00

Today in another day without school and I don't have to go to work either so I planned for lunch outdoors today.

Our trip started of with a blocked road because of an accident so we had to reroute. When checking for alternative ways my GPS died because I have forgotten to charge the batteries so we had to go all the way back to town to get fresh batteries. After that we found our way to the starting point for my planned hike and once there it starts to rain and I realize that I forgot to load the map into the GPS.

But I wasn't in the mood to just give up so of we went into the woods and it all turned out to be a wonderfull hike. There was maps placed here and there along the paths and the rain didn't really bother us once we got into the woods.

5.1 km hike and 3 caches later we are back at home, a bit frozen and a bit tired and with a lot less energy to nurn before night comes.

GC1VWBV, GC1XGK0, GC211Q8

A few hours to spare

2009-12-27T14:48:00.000+01:00

After lunch today we decided to take a short trip and try to find a few caches. A quiet sunday at home is a bit of a recipie for making my son anxious as he needs help with burning some of his surplus energy. Our trip ended up as a 2 hour long trip including a 1 km long trip in the woods in -10°C. At the end of this trip my son thanked me in his own way by grabbing my arm, hugging it and laughin.

GC1X8HW, GC1X8HB, GC1ZXD3

Prologue

2009-12-27T09:06:00.000+01:00

Welcome to our adventure.

Me and my son share one shadow. We are inseparable. Why?
My son is soon 10 years old autistic and hyperactive child that needs me to provide new content in his life and I need him to provide new content into my life.

This will be a log over how we try to push the borders between what we can and can't do further away and geocaching has been the way for us to do that over the last 2 years so that will be a natural part of this web log.

I hope to somehow inspire other parents of autistic children to find the possibilities within their children instead of being locked down by their limitations. My son loves going for a car ride, sometimes to the extent that we have had to take him for a ride just to calm him down when he is a bit anxious and he also has a big need of being outdoors, no matter what the weather is. This boiled down to geocaching for us ....