In this issue we have a Cacher Profile and a BGT post. Also events and the answers to the failed trivia contest. Remember there is a Photo section on the website and you can have your photos put up there by sending them to “photos at iowageocachers.org”. The Des Moines Geo-breakfast is going on its third month. Stop by and fuel up before a big day of caching. There is also a Breakfast at Bonanza event in Cedar Rapids that same weekend. So if not Des Moines, stop by there and fuel up for Sunday caching.

There has been some interest in getting The GPS Adventures Maze to come to Iowa. In that effort, if you would like to help click this link http://www.gpsmaze.com/location_request.html and enter the zip code of whatever city you would like to see it come to. We this effort, we might see it come to one of the museums or science center.

There were no takers on the request for a new editor for the newsletter. So you may see it become a little less regular on the publication times. At anytime, if you would like to take over and have your own fun with the newsletter, just let me know.

Finally, as always, my ever present plea for profiles and amusing stories and cache highlights and whatever else you would like to see in this little newsletter. Just send them all to “newsletter at iowageocachers.org”.

Well, with only 2 entries, I would say the trivia contest was a bust. But thanks to the two people who entered and you both win a fabulous prize. I will email you to let you know what it is (when that is figured out) and how it will get to you. Thanks for participating and here are the answers.

1. How many caches has Fishpounder found (milestone wise) since the first newsletter? 1000
2. On what day did Shadow Cachers reach the 300 find milestone? 9/4/06
3. What will IowaBeaver pass up for a regular cache? A Micro
4. What game is listed in the cache highlight in Issue #7 for 2007? Clue
5. On what day did Shadow Cachers reach the 1200 find milestone? 6/16/07
6. How many Favorite Caches does Goobers5 have? 5
7. Finally, how many events are listed in Issue #9 in 2006? 0

GC.Com Username: AZRAG

Number of Finds/Hides: 288 / 19

Occupation? I work for IFMC in West Des Moines as a project manager and moonlight as a West Des Moines Paid-on-call fire fighter. My wife works at Farm Bureau in compliance. We don’t travel much for business although I did get to attend the National Fire Academy in Maryland last fall.

How you got your username? “AZRAG” is our last name spelled backwards. We have a website but it is terribly old and out of date. It suffers from 3NO – no time, no talent & no desire. We also have the Polk county license plate.

How long have you been caching and how did you get started? A fellow DMACC student introduced me to Geocaching in the summer of 2003. She had found a few and thought it was a blast. I partnered up with her for our first find on May 2nd in Brown’s Woods in West Des Moines (Brown’s Woods Adventure II). In retrospect it probably wasn’t the best one to be my first find, the hike was long and the cache was well hid. At the time I wasn’t very familiar with difficulty and terrain. After a couple of other finds I was hooked (so I thought) and I introduced GC to the family. Version II was only 2 years old so he didn’t quite catch on, although he was happy to find toys. We finished the 2003 season with 11 finds and I thought things couldn’t get any worse than the 2004 season when we registered just one find – but it did as 2005 came and went and my trusty Magellan Meridian didn’t see the light of day. That is when things changed for the better, in 2006 my best bud (TEAM SLACK) joined the fun in his home state of Maryland and a friendly competition was born. We fought each other monthly to see who could find the most and it was SLACK who introduced me to the Travel Bug. SLACK and AZRAG have kept up the competition, they have since visited Iowa and we have toured the east coast and we are now locked into a battle over the most states.

Today we are still armed with that same Magellan but I have since added GPXSonar to my PocketPC phone and now we go completely paperless. Hopefully in a couple years I can go with the GPS\phone and be down to one device.

Favorite cache/why? Our favorite cache is a virtual cache in Washington DC the Capital Building. We love the area, the buildings and the history.

Team Azrag also has a few caches hidden out there with Johnny Cash as their theme.

Least Favorite/why? I don’t know if I have ever found a bad cache but there are two things I like the least 1) Caches that report coins or TB that aren’t there. It really is up to us cachers to report when we move things along or when things are simply missing. 2) When caches are in need of maintenance and are left as active.

Current caching goals? Our current goal is to hit the variety of caches to round out our stats: difficulty, terrain and states. We would also like to attend some of the GC events and maybe even help host one. I would also like to hide a large cache where big items could be exchanged but I just haven’t come up with a good hiding idea.

One of our early goals was to log 100 finds and be FTF. As luck would have it we did both on “Whatcha Feel Like? A Girl Scout, or a Skateboarder”. We had always found ourselves as a STF behind NVG (as I am sure a lot of people have) and I finally got to meet NVG at my 99th find. We exchange pleasantries and I discovered he was a really nice person (not just the competition). After #99 we both headed off to #100 where he gave me a slight friendly head start, since he had already looked early in the day and wasn’t able to find it. So there we stood AZRAG (w\ version II) and NVG and low and behold we found it first. It was a great day!

I would never have imagined that it would take 1282 days to go from 1 to 50 and then just another 64 days to get to 100. I hope the passion never dies.

We were in the heat of the hunt at a recent event cache in Mahaska County, when we stopped for a moment to reconsider our situation – surely the coordinates were off, because otherwise we would have found the cache by now, right? Well, anyhow, while we’re talking, another two cachers pop out of the woods and tell us they had trouble also. He was wearing shorts and she had Capri pants on. He waded through the knee-high greenery to a stand of tall bushes to tell us that’s where he thought the cache should be. My response: “Are you familiar with what poison ivy looks like?” He replied, “No.” I replied, “Well, if you look all around you for about a six-foot radius, that’s it!” They were nice people, and I hope that he was one of the 20% or so of the general population that is not affected by poison ivy contact. We parted company and went on to other finds, but throughout the day, I saw similar scenes with dads, moms, and lots of kids charging through the great green foliage that contains the source of much itching.

So, here’s your riddle: what do cashew shells, mango skin and poison ivy all have in common? They all contain urushiol oil. (Save that one in your memory bank in case you ever get on Jeopardy.) Urushiol oil is the stuff that makes you itch from poison ivy, and it’s called an allergen. Technically, by itself it is not a problem. When it touches your skin, some chemistry takes place in the bonding to your skin cells, and you get those blisters that keep on giving for a couple of weeks. There are a number of related plants with this allergen, the chief one in the Midwest being poison ivy. Every now and then, I see someone make reference to poison oak in a log, and while I’m not sure about that, I have read many times that poison oak makes its home on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Another family member is poison sumac, which is more rare.

And, did you know you have the opportunity to come in contact with urushiol oil the year-round? My son, HawkeyeLaw, and I went after a new cache in Iowa City (I won’t mention the name – Scott Park Micro – oops!) in February one year, and while roaming everywhere except where the cache was, I managed to touch something that poison ivy touched, or perhaps a dry, brown poison ivy vine. I didn’t really believe that had happened, so I visited with my doctor to find out what it was that I had, and he said, “Yup, that’s poison ivy!” Or if you want to sound real intelligent, it’s called urushiol contact dermatitis. He told me that it was fairly common to see people throughout winter with the same symptoms as they placed logs in a fireplace that they had cut in summer or fall and which had contacted a poisonous plant. Anyway, I actually had it bad enough that I got a cortisone shot, which fixed a lot of things, but made the itch retreat rather rapidly.

Well, the main thing is how to avoid it, in my book. Poison ivy is really looking good this summer everywhere I’ve cached from the Quad-Cities to Dubuque, Dyersville and Delhi (lots there!), Cedar Rapids, Marengo, Iowa City, Oskaloosa, and Galesburg and Peoria, Illinois, and more. It’s all got three leaves, but I’ve seen shiny leaves, dull leaves and those ones that look like someone dropped some thick powdered sugar on them that’s kind of reddish-brownish in color. Long pants and long sleeves are obviously the first line of defense. I also carry a bottle of that alcohol-based antibacterial stuff which I hopes works. At least it makes me feel better! But, looking out for the plants and just walking around them is the best, although not always possible, way to stay clear of contact. A couple times this summer, I thought I would just drop my clothes straight off to the ground when I got home and just light ‘em up, because I was sure they ivy-infused beyond recovery!

Last year was a bumper year for BGT and that contact dermatitis thing, so I did a little internet cruising for a way to prevent it. In the course of my research, I learned that there is only one FDA approved lotion for pre-contact use, and it is called Ivy Block. They have a web site (www.ivyblock.com) which is nice, but I found by using one of those price-comparison web sites, I was able to purchase a few bottles at half the retail price (about $9 instead of $20). A bottle will outlast the summer, so the price is worth it I believe. If you have long pants and long sleeves, you’re basically just lotioning up your hands and forearms.

Now, I will tell you something cool that I found while doing all this looking around – there is a much-cheaper alternative. The U.S. Forest Service conducted a study to find the least expensive way to deal with poison ivy problems for their personnel. (I read today on wikipedia.com, which gave me some material for today’s column, that 10% of all missed time for Forest Service people is due to poison ivy problems!) They wanted something effective yet low-priced, which is something that is hard to get in other areas of life – a used car once purchased by BGT in his youth comes to mind. But, they achieved their goal! And, the answer was (drum roll) spray deodorant! Yes, it’s true. Common, everyday spray deodorant is supposed to provide a layer on top of your skin that prevents the urushiol oil – harmless by itself – from forming that bond mentioned earlier with your skin cells. I got myself a $1.75 huge can of HyVee spray and used it quite a bit last summer and fall. I noticed 3 results: a) I never got poison ivy problems after using it; b) I smelled real nice on the trails; and c) it definitely smells better than most insect repellents, so it cancels out that lingering odor of eau de bug that can haunt your hiking and caching day.

Summing up, learn what poison ivy looks like and don’t come in contact with it, and spray up before you enter the green geocaching arena in case you fail at the first part. That said, we will never have a poison ivy-free summer, and we will always have new geocaches to find, so boldly and confidently plunge forward, armed with your newfound poison ivy knowledge. Good caching in 2007!