The update has been done, and I figure some of you would like to know what it included. It’s not the Next Big Update anymore, however. It’s in the past. It’s now the Last Big Update.

Most of the big changes are under the hood and not readily apparent. The most striking changes that are actually visible are when you try to add or edit a box, tracker, event, or group. The main one was to redesign the layout to be a bit more flexible and fluid so it works better on mobile devices. I got rid of the column on the right hand side of the page where it didn’t always fit on small screens or other people who used large fonts. Since I’m using floated DIV tags rather than tables, it’s also will use all of the horizontal screen space your browser allows that should reduce the amount of scrolling necessary to fill out all of the forms. Mostly minor stuff.

Since I was mucking around with that stuff, I made a couple of small improvements to those screens as well. You can now drag-and-drop the boxes in a series in the order you prefer rather than the convoluted drop down list for the order you want the boxes to be in. You can also delete boxes in a series directly from that page instead of having to using the Delete Box button. Again, pretty minor stuff.

Another small tweak that’s completely invisible is that most places that use radio buttons or checkboxes (such as the hike type and attributes respectively on the Advanced Search page)–you can now click directly on the text associated with the radio button or check box to select it. Previously, you had to aim your mouse at the relatively small target itself. Those who have trouble controlling the mouse or use the site on their iPhones or other mobile devices might find it easier to hit what you’re aiming at. =)

For the most part, though, there’s not much to write home about. The bulk of the chances are “under the hood” and completely invisible. I wrote a lot of new classes and improved a lot of previously existing classes to help speed future development. I refactored a lot of code to make it more reusable and idiot-proof it against myself.

Given the sheer size of the changes involved, you can pretty much count on there being bugs and glitches. I wanted to do this update in the middle of the day so I’d be around to monitor and check for bugs and get them fixed as quickly as possible. Usually I do them late at night then go to sleep soon after, and bugs don’t get fixed until I wake up again the next morning. =) (Not to mention that updating the live site is a LOT faster from this wi-fi connection I’m using at the library rather than a dial-up connection from home.)

Most of my testing has been done on FireFox. The last couple of days I’ve been using IE8 to look for formatting problems that might show up with that browser and caught the worst of offenders, but it’s not anywhere NEAR as well tested with IE as FireFox, so if something clearly doesn’t look like it’s supposed to, do let me know. I only tested with Chrome, Opera, and Safari for all about ten minutes each, so those are more likely to formatting issues.

Happy Trail!

– Ryan

PS. I did add a new icon option for your stats label with this update. =)

Five years ago today, I bought the domain name atlasquest.com and started setting up the account and copying files over, turning the site live. I remember the day well. It was the first time I ever bought a domain name, and it was rather exhilarating. I always thought it would be fun to have my own domain name to play with, but never had any compelling information to put on it so never did.

The site was “feature complete” for about a week or two before I bought the domain name. I spent the time testing the website, letting a handful of close friends take a peek at it before making it live, and debating what domain name to buy. At the time, I was happily unemployed and had absolutely no income, which was why I waited until June 24th to actually take action. That’s when a “new month” would start, and I could wait nearly two month to pay off the bill without incurring any interest or penalties. =) If I brought the site live just a day earlier, I’d have only had a one month grace period before the bill came due.

The 24th is burned into my brain for another reason. Since that was the date I started Atlas Quest, it was a convenient date to run monthly backups. There are some tables in the database that almost never change (such as the names of all the cities in the world), so it didn’t make sense to save those tables every night. What a waste of space and computing power. So I ran them monthly. Full backups, once each month. Atlas Quest would also check for certain inconsistencies in the database and fix them. And it would compress the data to fill in all those gaps when data was deleted. AQ was pretty busy every month on the night of the 24th doing all sorts of things that never happened at any other time of the month.

There still are some activities that AQ runs on the 24th of every month, but it’s a bit more spread out now. Full backups are now run weekly. Space for the database to run isn’t nearly as restricted now as it was in that first year when Atlas Quest ran on a shared hosting provider.

When Atlas Quest first went live, I never expected it to become what it has. I imagined a little site with a really cool location-based search, and since I absolutely loathed the Yahoo Groups, figured I might someday add some message boards. (AQ 1.0 had no message boards at all.) But I was running out money, living off of my live savings, and needed to think about getting a real job that paid real money. I wanted Atlas Quest to be my foot in the door. “Yes, I do have a sample of my work. Check it out!” Keep in mind, I had been unemployed for about 2 1/2 years at this point–a rather large hole in my otherwise flawless resume! ;o) I felt like I needed something to compensate for that and impress the pants off of a potential employer.

Later that same year, Atlas Quest continued to grow. Since the site was hosted on a shared server, e-mails from AQ bounced like crazy whenever the IP address was banned for being a source of spam. (I didn’t send any, but other websites on the same server apparently were.) So I created the AQ mail system to get away from the bouncing e-mail.

I also implemented the first, rather primitive version of the message boards. And finally, created the Trip Planner, another innovative method of searching for boxes to serve my own selfish needs: An easier way to find listings for boxes on some of my road trips. =)

And, just before the end of the year, I made a huge decision. I set up a system for premium membership. Atlas Quest was growing remarkably quickly, and I was scared my web hosting provider would eventually boot me off for ‘abusing’ resources. I could afford to run Atlas Quest out of my own pocket with a shared hosting provider, but I certainly couldn’t afford to run it on a dedicated server that looked like it would cost somewhere north of $100/month for even the cheapest plan. That’s a lot of money when you’re unemployed! Heck, even if I were employed, I didn’t really want to be spending that kind of money on a hobby website! =)

So I set up the premium membership as an option, hoping it would at least cover the cost of a dedicated server if it ever came to that. One of the main perks it had was the ability to record finds on unlisted boxes–something I never considered a critical feature for letterboxing, but something a lot of people were requesting.

Within an hour of uploading the premium membership option, two people had signed up for premium membership at $15/year. I called up my mom, telling her–she was skeptical anyone would ever sign up for a “premium” membership–and I told her, “Guess what?! I have two, count ‘em–TWO premium membership! Thirty bucks!” (I didn’t mention to deduct the PayPal fee from the $30.)

And my mom was shocked. SHOCKED! Her exact words were, “What IDIOT would give you money for your website?” =)

I still tease her about that, calling her up again when the 100th premium member signed up. “Guess what?! There are now one hundred IDIOTS who’ve given me money for my website!” =)

(I use the term “idiot” with the greatest of affection here. Honestly, I think the relatively cheap price of a premium membership is well-worth the amount of fun and enjoyment the site provides for regular visitors.)

And a wonderful thing happened–the site started earning enough money to pay for a dedicated server. So shortly before AQ’s first birthday, I started shopping around for an improved web hosting experience. There were two issues I wanted to focus on: One, getting AQ off of a shared server, and two, using a web host that had excellent support options.

I wanted to get AQ off of the shared server so e-mails would be more reliable, DOS attacks against other websites on the same server no longer affected AQ, improved security, and a whole bunch of other reasons.

And when I had a problem or something didn’t seem to be working as expected, my experiece with their customer support was terrible! If there was a problem, I wanted someone hosting my website that would hop on the problems in minutes and 24/7, not “within 24 hours” or during “normal office hours.”

And while looking for the ideal host, I discovered a magical thing called VPS. Virtual Private Servers. Not really a shared server in the traditional sense, but not quite a dedicated server either. It was sort of this middle ground, nearly as cheap as many shared hosting providers, but with all the benefits of a dedicated server. It was a “virtual” dedicated server.

To make a long story short, I upgraded to a VPS. The cost of running the website went from about $10/month up to $45/month overnight. Which was FAR less than I had been expecting of even the cheapest dedicated servers. (I’ve upgraded the VPS a couple of times since then, so it’s costing more now, but Atlas Quest to this day is still running on a VPS. Someday, I might have to upgrade to a dedicated server, but that could still be years away!)

So I found myself in an unexpected situation: Atlas Quest was profitable! =) I was planning on spending anywhere from $200-$300 per month on a quality dedicated server, set up a premium membership to pay for it, then it turns out I’m paying $45/month for a hosting service that precisely met my needs. Depending on the number of premium members signing up in any given month, I would be profiting anywhere from $150 to $250 in most months.

Okay, that’s not a lot of money, but when you’ve been unemployed for 3 1/2 years (at this point), it sounds like a fortune! Which was the first time I started wondering, “Could I actually make a living off of this website?” I was still living primarily off of my life savings, but at least my life savings wasn’t being depleated at the same rapid rate that it had been before.

The next couple of years, I kind of felt like I was somewhat in a race. Could I earn enough to live off of before I ran out of my live savings? I actually did apply for a couple of part time jobs, hoping to suppliment the earnings from Atlas Quest enough to make an actual liveable wage, but alas, nothing happened of them. (Even REI turned me down. ME?! After thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, they didn’t think I was up to snuff? The losers. *shaking head*)

It wasn’t until 2007 that Atlas Quest finally earned enough that, for the first time in 6 years, I was able to pay all my expenses without having to dip into my savings. My earnings were still below minimum wage given all the hours I put into the site, but I was happy. I no longer needed to worry about finding another job. I had somehow changed from being unemployed into being self-employed. I may not get paid much, but I felt like I more than made up for it in the joy of working at a job I loved to do. =)

Last year, I started funding my retirement accounts again. (Not sure why–now I don’t even want to retire!) And perhaps there’s a better, more-fullfilling job out there somewhere, but I’m not aware of it. I feel like I’m the luckiest person in the world to have somehow stumbled into this job.

Five years later, and it seems like I should do something particularly special for Atlas Quest on this birthday. I thought about having a “Free Listing WEEK!” Maybe keep up the balloons and confettii for several days instead of the usual one.

Except that I’m in the middle of a major upgrade (mostly under the hood type of stuff–you won’t be seeing major changes to the public interface), and I don’t really want to make any changes to the live site right now in fear I’ll break something. But then I remembered…..

I keep forgetting about Free Listing Day. There’s a small piece of code that lists which days of the year is Free Listing Day. I keep forgetting about it, and never update the file. For those who were on the ball, you would have noticed a Free Listing Day last May 8th, also known as Cranmere Day. But I forgot to announce it…. And today, AQ’s birthday is a Free Listing Day, but again, I forgot to announce it–until now. =) (A little late in the day for most people, I would image.)

Free Listing Day started as a way of saying thank you to all those people who support Atlas Quest in something other than monitary ways. I know there are times when money is tight–I’ve been there, done that. Given the economy of today, there are likely a number of folks who can no longer afford a premium membership even if they wanted to.

Perhaps you’ve help other members with their questions on the message boards, or suggested improvements that have made Atlas Quest website a better place to be, or have acted as a comic relief when things get tense. There are many ways to support Atlas Quest beyond becoming premium members, and the Free Listing Day was started as a way of saying thank you to those people.

But now, I keep forgetting to say thank you and have forgotten to announce the last two Free Listing Days completely. *slapping self* So, I’m tweaking the way Free Listing Day works in the future. From now on, they will be more often and predictable. There will be at least one Free Listing Day each month. And (for the time being, at least), it will be on the 24th of every month. I’m thinking it might be fun to make the day each month selected at random so it’s more of a surprise when you do see it, but for now it’s set up to run on the 24th of every month. (And remember, AQ runs on Pacific time, so remember about time zones if you aren’t in this timezone. It’s the 24th of each month, Pacific time.)

So enjoy some of the perks of premium membership one day each month, even if you can’t afford it. You deserve it. =)

Doublesaj says she invited us into her team because she knew we’d be competitive. We’d take the spy thing seriously. We’d play to win.

We didn’t want to disappoint. Given the nature of the event, sabotage was the first thought that came to my mind, but alas, the few rules that were established said we were not allowed to remove or move letterboxes to other locations. Just as well, I suppose, since otherwise other teams would have done that to us. But surely we could work out a couple of sneaky little tricks to put ourselves ahead and/or put other teams further behind. But how?

We came up with numerous scenarios, most of which my teammates blame on me. Hmm…. Okay, admittedly, I might have been the most intrigued with how to follow the letter of rules while enthusaisticly breaking the spirit of the rules. =) We were spies. It was expected.

The e-mails we got about the event included interesting pieces of information about Slick Kitty, who hosted the event. She likes the color purple. She likes Dr. Pepper. She likes diamonds, and chocolate-covered strawberries with almonds. So we found potential bribes. We had a purple visor, Dr. Pepper (both soda and Jelly Bellies). We had bribes. We weren’t sure what we would use them for, but we wanted to be prepared. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. We were spies. Bribes were not above us.

We also needed to know the lay of the land. We headed out to the park the day before, and scouted out the area. Learned the trails, identified likely landmarks that might be used in clues, and… hey, we were in the area…. we looked for boxes. We didn’t have any clues, but I never saw a rule that said we couldn’t try looking for them anyhow. We did find one of the boxes that afternoon, the codebook, giving us an official head start.

And despite looking for these boxes with an enemy combatent (Princess Lea was with us), we managed to keep the secret of the codebook from her. There were 18 boxes in total, but 4 were the critical ones we needed to win the game, and we already knew the location of one of them.

But our big idea, the one to really get us ahead of the game, was to create decoy boxes. We couldn’t do anything to the real boxes, but what if someone found what they thought was the real box? They’d log into that and move on, not knowing that they’d been had until it was too late.

So the night before, I secretely created a few extra boxes to use as decoys. I made logbooks, I carved stamps, and I created decoys.

The decoys actually served two purposes. The first and primary purpose was to get teams to overlook the real boxes hidden just behind the decoys. The second, in the event that the decoy did not fool a team, it would still slow down the other teams. As every letterboxer knows, when a letterboxer finds a letterbox, you HAVE to stamp in. It’s ingrained in our culture. It cannot be avoided, so in a worst-case scenario, at least the decoys would slow other teams down as they stopped long enough to stamp into both boxes, and perhaps cause a great deal of confusion when they found two boxes rather than one.

We also considered how to improve our stamp-in time. I carved a team stamp the night before so we could just stamp in with one stamp rather than each of our signature stamps, and we used an ink pad rather than our usual markers since we could stamp with an ink pad faster than markers.

The morning of the event, before the event started, we got there early enough to plant the first decoy for the codebook since we already knew where that box was. Then we had another hour before the event was officially to begin, so we continued looking for additional boxes early.

We found two more–Sherlock Holmes and the Disguise. The Disguise was one of the four that we needed to get to win. Sweet! Sherlock was nice to know about, but wasn’t critical to winning the game. At least that meant we didn’t have to waste time “finding” it later. We were incredibly lucky that of the three boxes we found before the event actually started, two of them were the critical ones we needed. We planted another decoy box with the Disguise.

We also had another incredibly lucky stroke of luck–there was a mole we needed to find, and as it turned out, John was the mole. He let us in on this secret that morning, and another diobolical plot was hatched. We didn’t want others to find the mole–he needed to be found to win the game as well. People were to tell John a phrase, and if they were correct, he would give them the last of the five stamps necessary to win the game. We needed to make sure nobody else got his stamp.

So we implemented a ‘defense.’ Whenever we saw another group, John would hang back so if someone tried to guess the secret phrase, they’d ask one of us first. And we’d give them a stamp! Once they thought they had the mole stamp, they’d stop asking around and never get around to John….

Some would say we cheated, but that seems a little extreme. We were spies, after all, expected to be “dishonorable.” Other teams should be doing the same, and we racked our brains trying to think of ways that other teams might trick us! We worried most about wassamatta_u. We knew that of everyone involved, he would be the most dishonorable lout of them all. But we were pretty pleased with our advanced preparations.

The event started. Slick Kitty interrogated most of the teams, including us, and she seemed to focus on John and myself as being most likely to be the mole. We pointed to Amanda, describing her recent travels to Amsterdam and Dublin, but Kitty would have none of it. Sweet little Amanda? (That’s what makes her such a good spy!) Yes, as spies, we’d even throw each other under the bus. =)

The game was now afoot, and we finally had the official clues to all of the boxes. We worked out the codes in them, then started off to find the ones we hadn’t already found. We were amazingly quick and efficient, and our incredible luck finding just the boxes that were necessary to win the game kept coming up surprisingly often. One of the needed stamps was held by Sherlock Holmes, a character walking around who quizzed us about the character. We couldn’t exactly hide a decoy on the person, we went went with plan B and planted the box with another nearby box that wasn’t necessary to find–just to slow down other teams who needed to log into two boxes instead of one.

After we got the last box, we thought we were home free. We just needed to check in and we had it bagged. Until we crossed paths with the Salad Tongs. They accused us of being Russian spies, and–most horribly–they were right. We were employed by the Russians and having been caught, we were to be branded traitors and hung. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

But we were spies. We wouldn’t go out without a struggle. We offered gifts, some people might call them bribes, but ‘gifts’ sounds nicer. Most of the gifts were the bribes we brought for Slick Kitty. Now we had more important things on mind–saving our necks. We bribed their kids. I offered some hand-carved Tortuga stamps. We squirmed. We begged. There may have even been tears.

They made out like bandits, but they finally agreed to let us go. We checked in, officially winning the game, at which point we admitted to our deceptive, nefarious ways to get so far ahead.

Because, quite literally, we could not have won without the clemency granted by the Salad Tongs, we gave them a trophy we won in appreciation. They helped us win, after all (though admittedly, if it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have been in such trouble in the first place!)

We ate, we laughed, I warned others about the decoys we had set out so people could find the real boxes now that time was no longer of the essence. Eventually, we headed out again to find the rest of the boxes that we hadn’t found yet–those that weren’t necessary to win the game, and we picked up the decoys we had planted earlier now that they were no longer necessary.

The decoys did work, too! The codebook decoy had two teams that stamped in, but did not stamp into the real codebook box. The disguise decoy had three teams that stamped in, but only one of them found the real box when we finally pulled the decoy. Several people logged into the key decoy, though one person wrote, “Ryan, you evil bastard!”–so I don’t think that decoy fooled him. ;o) I did see how many people logged into that decoy, but I didn’t check how many of them logged into the real box. Of the three, it was the least effective decoy given the hiding spot involved. The passport decoy wasn’t much of a decoy since we hid it with a different, unrelated box, but several people did sign in so we know it did work to slow other teams down at the very least. Mission accomplished! =)

Speaking of those decoy boxes…. I’ve listed them on AQ for those who found them and want to record the find. (They are real letterboxes, with stamps, a logbook, and even clues to follow–though admittedly, the clues were poached. Being spies, however, we felt it was okay in this particular instance.) If you aren’t sure if you found the decoy or real box, the decoy stamps didn’t actually fit into the box of the official stamp-in sheet since we didn’t know the correct sizes of the stamps ahead of time. If your stamp didn’t fit the space for them correctly (either too small, too large, or the wrong ratio for the dimensions), it’s a decoy.

There are some members of my team who would rather not have me reveal our diabolical methods to win the game. I’m telling you them for two reasons. One, I live in Seattle and there’s a good chance I wouldn’t make it to subsequent events. And two, the next time there is such an event, I wanted to encourage more subterfuge and deception among the teams. =) More paranoia. More backstabbing. More fun! To make it harder to fool people with decoys next time, and perhaps to get a few new rules added to the game next year. (It’s always cool when you know there’s a new rule–only because of your evil ideas.) Though I kind of hope that decoys aren’t forbidden in the future. That was fun, and it would have been very interesting to see how things would have played out if several teams were out planting decoys. I tell you–we were extra careful looking for additional boxes behind the first ones we found and making sure we found the real box… just in case another team was planting decoys as well, we didn’t want to fall for our own trick!

What a great time we had, though! Thanks Slick Kitty for putting the event on, even if we did stretch the rules to the fullest extent that we could get away with. But hey, we’re spies. We never claimed to be honorable. ;o)

I’d say of all the boxes listed, about half of them have used the first aid box incorrectly. The first aid option is meant to request help from finders of your box. Perhaps a full logbook needs to be replaced, or a cracked container needs to be replaced. Or maybe a stamp is missing and you hope someone can replace it for you.

It’s a request–a call for help. It’s not supposed to be used to write your clues, it’s not supposed to be used to tell others that the box has moved or that the box is missing. It’s not to warn that there is poison ivy in the area or that people should carry sunscreen or bug spray.

My favorite ‘first aid’ comment so far is the one in this title: “Same wet spot - new and improved box!” It sounds so…. well…. Taken out of context, it’s really quite hilarious. But, again, if that’s the kind of message you are leaving for first aid requests, it’s being misused.

Here are some other examples of how NOT to use the first aid:

* bring your swimming and snorkel gear!
* Bring Binoculars — Leave the Dogs at Home!
* May have been destroyed in a wild fire - unsure of it’s status. [Note: Change the status of the box to unknown.]
* missing [Note: Change the status of the box to unavailable]
* Box has been replaced. See updated clue.
* reported possibly missing 5/2007
* construction at the zoo might have eliminated this box
* Several reports of this box trying to swim to Europe…
* the recent torrential rains may have washed this letterbox down slope–wonder if it’s in the neighboring detritus? [Note: This is probably better mentioned in the clues itself.]
* CANNOT FIND THIS BOX.
* Mosquito repellant
* Probably washed away in recent rains
* Currently missing from the gathering. It’s not a cootie.
* Ok
* watch out for blackberry brambles.
* Gone baby gone
* theres a new clue at letterboxing.de !
* Box found in nearby garbage can. Will replant soon.
* HELP ME!!!! [Note: Okay, technically it is asking for help, but since it fails to describe what help is needed, it's not very useful.]
* none
* Stamp and logbook replaced
* MISSING & MURDERED BY A LAWN MOWER!
* Caution-Box fills with water. Please carefully rebag
* Beginning 01/05/08- this park will be closed on Sundays
* Reported missing after first finders. I have yet to verify. [Note: That's called an unknown status]
* Boxes to be replaced soon.
* Box pulled for the winter! Come back in the spring! Thanks! [Note: Change the status of the box, or at least mark it using the new seasonal attribute.]
* may be on the ground, at the base of the tree, or fell into the woods.
* Heard that the bench might be gone! [Note: This kind of stuff should be in the clue!]
* I’ve moved from the area…. so as time goes by this box might need maintnence….. thanks
* I’ve been told the area around this box is under construction and may not be available at this time…..

Here are real examples of the proper use of the first aid option:

* Needs rescue from new construction in area [Note: This is slightly different than the last example of what not to do. Here, the person is asking for help to rescue their box. In the example of what not to do, the person is telling you that the box may or may not be unavailable--therefore, the status is unknown. The person doing the finding is not being asked to help in any way.]
* Needs outside of box marked. Adoption requests welcome! [Note: The first part of this is okay. Adoption requests are best left directly in the clue itself.]
* A new logbook might be nice, maybe someone could help.
* I need a sandwich sized box RIGHT AWAY!
* Logbooks Full! [Note: I'm assuming, of course, that the person is requesting to have the logbooks replaced.]
* logbook is wet, so if you can replace it with a small, dry book, it would be much appreciated. [Note: Basically the same thing, but better worded. =)]
* Clues need to be verified!
* Stamp missing - if willing to help replace it, please email me

In related news….. As I find first aid comments about “box missing” or “possibly missing,” I’ve been changing the status of the boxes to reflect the comments, then removing the comments. It’s always better to change the status so people can better sort through active boxes from missing ones.

I’ve now gone through all of the first aid comments on boxes marked as active, unknown, or unavailable and removed the ones that were being misused. I still need to go through the retired boxes, but that’s probably not nearly as critical since most of you aren’t searching for retired boxes anyhow. But I need lunch, so the retired boxes will wait until later today!

The official results can be seen on the Plant-a-Letterbox Day page of Atlas Quest. I waited a bit for stragglers who had planted boxes but not yet listed them or their clues had a chance to list their boxes. I figure by now, most people should have, but the numbers could still change slightly as more time passes.

As of this minute, the final results are:

Total boxes listed	764
Total traditional listed	684
Total non-traditional listed	80
Total number of planters	306
Total for traditional planters	284
Total for non-traditional planters	47

A detailed breakdown isn’t available on Atlas Quest, so I’ll mention some of the more interesting details here.

Breakdown by Type
Traditionals: 684
Hitchhikers: 21
Virtuals: 6
Postals: 10
Personal Travelers: 5
Cooties: 10
LTCs: 13
Event Boxes: 9
Others: 6

Top Ten by State
New York: 142
Washington: 56
North Carolina: 55
Michigan: 43
Oregon: 37
Ohio: 34
California: 32
Ontario: 31 (okay, not a state, but close enough!)
Georgia: 25
Pennsylvania: 24

Top Ten Planters (traditional boxes only)
Scout: 37
Milagro: 16
Water Lily: 14
FourWaters: 11
Sahlie: 11
Eiryn: 11
turtlelove: 11
Pioneer Spirit: 10
Turtle Song: 9
Gischer Gryffindors: 9

Next year, Plant-a-Letterbox Day falls on a Monday. It’s Memorial Day Monday, but still, a Monday, so I figure there will likely be similar results next year. That’ll likely be the last good year for most people since subsequent years will be during the work week. In 2006 and 2007, the day fell on a work day, and the number of plants exploded last year when it finally fell on a Saturday. I suspect 2011 it’ll drop again accordingly. Next year, though…. next year will probably be similar to this year.

Until next year…. And you actually have 367 days (as of today) until the next Plant-A-Letterbox Day! Start preparing now! =)

I’ve been planning a few boxes for over a month now. Sunday itself isn’t an especially convenient day for me to plant boxes–I was planning to help my mom out with some wedding shenanigans that day. Friend of the family.

So I hoofed out to Poly Canyon here in San Luis where I found a letterbox, two geocaches, and planted two boxes. (I didn’t go to look for geocaches–I found them while looking for places to hide my own boxes!) I had three boxes to plant, so I’m still walking around with one. I’ll see about finding a good place for that a little more into town Saturday afternoon. I’d really like to plant one out near Stenner Bridge–an impressive railroad bridge just out beyond Cal Poly and near the California Men’s Colony (CMC). The stamp has a criminal holding a gun to someone’s head, and I thought it would be fun to make into a story about an escaped convict on the run from the CMC. I don’t really feel like hoofing it all the way out there a second time, though, so I might find a place closer in town to hide him.

But Poly Canyon is such the perfect place for it since that’s where *I* was once mistaken for an escaped convict. =) The criminal mastermind had escaped the CMC while I was out hiking in Poly Canyon, and an airplane searching for the convict spotted me instead. According to the cops, the clothes I was wearing matched the description of the escaped con, so they sent a platoon of cops out trying to track me down where the airplane spotted me.

Ah, good times…. =)

I might hang onto this stamp until I can make it out to Poly Canyon again. It really needs to be in Poly Canyon. Hmm….

The particular boxes I’m planting are rather elaborate by my usual standards. (My usual standards are “quick and easy,” however, so that’s not saying much.) Very unique clues, cute little logbooks, and a really neat place that always gets overlooked in all the local guidebooks. I doubt there will be a whole of finders (not a whole lot of letterboxers in these parts), but those that do should certainly find it enjoyable! These are probably the best boxes I’ve planted in YEARS!

In other news…. I’ve been playing with the street-level views on Google Maps, and I just know I can make that into a clue somehow. I haven’t figured out how–not yet–but the idea intrigues me…. Apparently the Google folks drove by my mom’s house last December since I can see all the Christmas decorations up on the house, including the new decorations from last year so I know it was last December and not some other December. (Actually, it could have been the first couple of weeks of Janaury. My mom isn’t always fast about taking down Christmas decorations, but I did notice them on several other houses as well which makes me think December is more likely.)

Alas, I couldn’t find any pictures of me walking around anywhere. Not in San Luis or in Seattle.

Next is one of the trail sections we help construct. The trail in the picture did not exist when we arrived–the original trail had collapsed into the adjacent river, so we needed to build a new segment. My job was to clear the trail by that enormous root ball on the left. There used to be another stump on the right side of the trail, but I took it out already. The trail the others are standing on is completely new.

A few days later, we headed out to see some tulips. Quite the festival they have going, and I took a few photos which I think look nice. =)

This is my ‘money shot.’ This first tulip photo was actually the very last one I took, and I worked really hard to get it. I had to find a place that wasn’t surrounded with people and where the sun wasn’t causing lots of glare. Got down with the dirt for this photo, but I think the results were with it. =)

Here’s the picture everyone at the tulip farm got. It’s pretty, but the picture really isn’t that special.

For Amanda’s birthday, we headed off to the little country known as the Netherlands, and this is Amanda’s birthday cake. It might be the ugliest birthday cake I’ve ever seen in my life, which is why I’m sharing it with you. It amuses me. =) Apparently, ordering birthday cakes in Dutch isn’t as easy as you may think.

For those of you who don’t know it, I do have family! This picture is my sister, Tierra, taken on New Years Day in Boston. I had my sister go out on this dock in the Charles River to give the picture more “shape.” It just felt like it needed a figure in the presence. I gotta say, though, it was freakin’ cold in Boston. Freakishly cold! We were in Boston visiting our cousin for a birthday party. Good times!

This is my mom. If you’ve read much of my adventures or blogs, you’ve probably heard about her. I took this photo last year when she came for a visit in Seattle the day pirates invaded Alki. The pirate look is quite becoming, don’t you think? =)

This photo was taken on New Years Eve in Boston. It’s the doors on a church, which I thought looked nice. I went out as soon as it started snowing–snow is so rare where I live!–finding pictures to take in the snow when I came across these doors.

These next photos are in a decidedly warmer climate: Bermuda. A bunch of us went on a letterboxing cruise, and when I saw this bike, I had to get a picture of it. I don’t see too many bikes like this anymore!

And here’s a sign on a beach. I’m a sucker for signs like these. =)

And finally, one last sign. This one I found in Florida while hiking around Lake Okeechobee last Thanksgiving. There are a lot of dangers while backpacking, but this was my first time I was warned about errant golf balls.

Oh, I’m so worried…. What do I do?!

This annual event started in 2006 when spring was in the air, and many people were finally venturing out after their winter of discontent. It was joked that so many boxes would be planted and listed, it could crash Atlas Quest. So May 24th was designated as the day to try to crash Atlas Quest by planting and listing as many boxes as possible.

The crash never happened, but it was still a lot of fun. New people who had never planted a box ventured out and created their first creations. Old time letterboxers who hadn’t planted in some while ventured out to plan anew.

I’ve already started working on the boxes I want to plant this year, involving ransom notes, databases, and code. Stamps have already been carved. Clues have been started. I also started working on a long-awaited update to my Creating Great Letterboxes tutorial that I hope to finish before the big date. (Speaking of which, if you know of some particularly noteworthy boxes that deserve a mention, let me know.)

Start thinking about it now–and raise the bar higher than ever for next year’s recruits!

As soon as I saw it, I knew what had happened. Last night, when I came into the house, I noticed a backhoe in the yard, and I asked my mom about that. “What the heck are you doing with a tracker?” She had some ideas for yard work, and I asked, “How do you know you won’t hit a water main or something?” And she assured me that she’s done this before.

Yeah, okay. So when I saw the geyser of water shooting up into the air–kind of at an angle into the garage door–with a backhoe sitting at the point of origin, I knew what had happened. She hit a water main.

My mom had already pulled up the cover for the water shutoff for the house and was trying frantically to shut the water off. The wrenches we had weren’t really ideal for the job, but in cases of emergency, you make do. We took turns trying to get it off, but it just wasn’t working. I wasn’t even really convinced that the part my mom was trying to turn would shut off the water. There were several nuts and bolts down there, none of which have been moved for years so far as I could tell, and none of them were conviniently labeled.

My mom tried calling a friend of the family–Terry, who works with CalTrans and knows a little about this sort of thing. Except Terry was at church. Terry would later tell us that she had forgotten to shut off her phone and embarrassingly turned it off during the service, not realizing the severity of the situation here.

That wasn’t going to stop my mom. No, she left me to continue trying to work to turn off the water while my mom started up the car and rushed off to church.

I decided to do a couple of quick Google searches, trying to find a diagram of one of these darned water thingys online and find out exactly which piece needed to be turned. I found something that somewhat resembled what we had, and it suggested turning a different piece than we had been working on.

I went to the garage to find a tool that would better fit the knob that needed turning. The wrenches we had been using were so large, it was hard to move them in the confined area. The smaller wrenches, though, didn’t seem to have enough leverage to get them to move. It was very frustrating.

While I was doing this, of course, my mom rushed to the church. It’s pretty close to the house and only took a couple of minutes to get to, and my mom goes barging in looking for Terry, not exactly dressed in her Sunday bests. Terry’s sitting near the front of the church, and my mom gets her attention. “Follow me. Now!” Nobody else knows what’s going on, but clearly there’s an emergency happening, and even the other members of the congregation were pushing Terry out to my mom. Terry left all her stuff there on the pew.

Outside, she stuffs Terry into the car and hitails it back to the house, explaning about the broken water main. I’m still meddling trying to get the water turned off, and Terry confirms at this point that I’m messing with the knob that I should be messing with, but we still have trouble getting it turned off. We aren’t even sure which is the correct way to turn it. But a couple of minutes later, we finally get the water off and can take time to admire the damage.

The pipe was remarkably small, I thought, given how much water was gushing out of it. Looked all of about half an inch. Must have been under a tremendous amount of pressure to make a geyser like that! It wasn’t even six inches underground–I always thought they were buried deeper than that, but what do I know?

At this point, there’s no running water for the house, but the immediate crisis was certainly over so my mom drove Terry back to church to finish the service and retrieve her possessions. Turns out, things really started hopping there at the church when Terry left.

It seems a couple of people who knew Terry assumed there was an emergency. Perhaps a family emergency. Maybe even her ailing dad took a turn for the worse. They tried calling Terry, to find out what was the problem, but she had turned her phone off when my mom first tried to call so there would be no more embarrassing interruptions during the service. So they assumed the worst.

So her friends told the paster about this, and they all started to pray for her and her dad, having no idea that the ‘emergency’ wasn’t really the kind that needed prayers, but hey, we’ll take what we can get!

When Terry returned to the church and found out what all had happened in her absense, she was kind of embarrassed over the matter, but how can you NOT laugh after all that? After the services were over and Terry explained that nobody was dead or near death, I guess a couple of the congregation were upset over the incident, and she came back to the house to help with figuring out how to fix the broken water line.

So that’s what’s been happening here in the normally sleepy town of San Luis Obispo. Broke a water main, crashed a church, and got a whole bunch of people praying for someone that didn’t really need it. Good times!

As of now, it doesn’t look like I’ll be taking a shower today. Maybe not tomorrow either?