Surprise Disoveries

Have you ever been browsing the grid and all of a sudden you remember a location that you can cross-post into an especially tough category? Or out of the blue remember a location that you drive by daily that would fit into one of those tough categories? This happened to me three times this week.

For my bingo I needed to find a WWII Site and a Railroad Disaster site. I knew of several WWII sites that I could use, but the railroad site eluded me. Then out of nowhere I remembered some info I had come across when doing research for some of my Seattle monorail waymarks. The monorail had crashed at the Seattle Center station back in the 1970's and I have that station waymarked in 5 or more categories - a happy discovery.

Another discovery was a forgotten shipwreck. I was looking through past summer photos and remembered a cool park that I had visited two summers ago on the Pacific coast. While there I waymarked the ruins of an old ship, the S.S. Catala. I hadn't thought about the category at the time - just waymarked the place so I could find it later on my next visit to the coast. So I loaded the info and photos up and at this point am waiting for it to be reviewed.

The final find is a place that I drive by every Saturday on my way to downtown Tacoma. There's a gated community with a faux lighthouse that's used as the guardhouse at the front entrance. I've always thought that it was so cheesy, especially for a development with only about 10 houses that have a water view (of the distant industrial Tacoma harbor). The gatehouse isn't one of those. As I drove by it today it finally clicked, "hey, a landlocked lighthouse!". I'll be finishing the submission of that waymark later today.

There are so many categories now that it's easy for me to forget about a few until I browse the grid trying to fill in holes. As new categories are created I forget about some of those older waymarks I have that can be cross-posted. It's my own version of being a dreaded armchair waymarker. So you waymarkers out there, don't forget to look back at some of those old waymarks. You never know what you'll find.

The above photo is of the S.S. Catala. It was taken the day before it was discovered that the ship was full of oil. A couple friends and I just happened to discover it on a girls weekend to the coast. We returned home to see it on the front page of the paper. The EPA is now excavating the vessel and removing the oil from this protected habitat of two birds on the endangered species list. So far 13,000 gallons have been removed from 2 of the 5 tanks.

BINGO!

So after months of focusing on trying to fill up my grid I finally have a bingo. We took a two hour drive up to the beautiful Port Townsend area to waymark Fort Worden in the "World War II Sites" category. It was pretty exciting, because believe it or not, I don't really focus on trying to get bingos (20 category icons in a row on the category grid.) My favorite thing is more of a "blackout" style of playing, that is, trying to grab as many icons as possible and fill out my grid, no matter where the icon might be located on the grid. When I notice that I have 17 or 18 in a row though, I sit up and take notice. This was one of the few rows that is possible to completely fill without having to do a lot of travelling out of the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S.

It was a great day and we had a lot more fun that we expected to have at Fort Worden. The weather was beautiful and the clear blue skies allowed views of the islands and Mt. Baker. The best part was climbing around in and on the old batteries built in the early part of the 20th century. 150 photos and a sunburn later we hopped in the car and headed for home, crossing our fingers that the waymark would be accepted. The only disappointment of the day was that there was a Wooden Boat Festival taking place in Port Townsend and it was so crazy we couldn't find parking to stop at our favorite ice cream parlor, "Elevated Ice Cream". It was rated as one of the seven best ice cream shops in the nation on the Food Channel and I can vouch for it. The ginger ice cream is to die for! Oh well, maybe my next bingo will bring me back to town. :)

The photo above is of the Point Wilson Lighthouse backdropped by Mt. Baker. The lighthouse is located on the grounds of Fort Worden. Rose Red has waymarked it in the Coastal Lighthouse and NRHP categories, and I have included it as a stop in my Fort Worden Waytour waymark.

A "Fast" Visit

I go on and on about how much I can't stand chain business categories, but I have to admit that as much as I hate them, I always try to post one waymark (or log one visit) to a category before I chuck the category over into my ignore list. A bit hypocritical, but I'm a slave to the grid. The thing is, I always assumed my fast food waymarks would sink into database oblivion, never to be heard from again. I was wrong.

Today I came home from a day full of sun, beach, and waymarking to see that I had visits to about 10 of my waymarks. I read through, and this guy really seemed to have enjoyed the waymarks - the fair, a BBQ restaurant, and a few more I can't remember. Then I see the last one - Wendy's. I was mortified. Someone actually logged a visit to my one and only Wendy's waymark. And here was the log - "Why?" I felt the need to email back and say thanks for visiting my waymarks and thanks for rating my Wendy's restaurant a 2, because I think it sucks too.

So the moral to this tale is - if you don't want to be associated with a waymark, don't post it folks. Will I learn my lesson and not post to the new KFC category if it's approved? Probably not. That could mess up a grid bingo! Hopefully you aren't as addicted to the grid as I am, though, and you can learn from my embarrassment. ;)

Category Crush

At the danger of angering some of the folks who read this blog, I'm going to go on a little rant here. What is with all of the lame categories lately? I understand people getting excited about waymarking and wanting to jump right in and create a category, but give me a break! Some of the things coming through peer review I find odd - boy scout created footbridges rather than just plain footbridges. I have to admit I wasn't especially fond of the footbridges category, but it's grown on me. However - is this really a category that needs to have other variations? And the Jeep trails category - who cares what club/vehicle type creates the trail? Isn't the off-roading category sufficient?

The recent flood of new categories can be seen as a good thing, though. It likely means that a lot of new people are starting to waymark. But it is bringing up a flaw in the system. Categories are getting approved that are duplicates of other categories and peer review isn't weeding these out. Take the recent "Exceptional Restaurants". This sounds very similar to the "Independent Diners" category (which is for all recommended restaurants, not just diners.) Do both of these need to be on the category list? Or Domino's pizza (seen in peer review - I don't know if it passed) - doesn't that fit in the "take-out food" category? Peer review works on some of these duplicate categories, but not all of them. As more people start waymarking, more of these categories will make it through peer review and the grid will be clogged with narrowly focused categories. And as BruceS noted in the forums, once a category is approved, it's on the grid for good.

Silverquill recently proposed a mandated submission of category ideas to the forums before they are allowed to go to peer review. Yes, this won't always work because people will list it in the forums and then not really look at the comments being made. It also will leave the evolution of waymarking in the hands of the small group of people who frequent the forums. But something needs to be done! And it seems like some type of category discussion prior to peer review is the answer. At the very least there should be some place where people can submit the category idea and people more familiar with the grid can let them know which categories are similar and if their idea duplicates another. I'd love to hear some opinions on this. Anyone? Or is it just me who is bothered by this.

Waymarking Town Hall

So, I just finished reading the chat log from Waymarking.com's first "town hall" meeting that took place a couple days ago. The whole time I was reading it I kept wanting to jump in and add my opinion and then would remember it was over. :) Wow! What a great tool for brainstorming about ways to improve the game.

For those of you who don't frequent the waymarking forums and missed out on the chat announcement, there was a live chat meeting this week to discuss the Website and also some new ideas of future upgrades, etc. The plan right now is that these live chat sessions will take place every two weeks or so, and each session would have a specific topic that would be focused on. It's a great opportunity to share your opinion with the folks at Groundspeak who are shaping the future of the game.

My only worry has to do with the fact that I am a technological moron. I have never in my life participated in a live chat session and will first have to set up the software etc. on my computer. On the off chance that I am able to muddle through this (or that my computer savvy sister comes up from Portland, Oregon before the next chat session) I will definitely be joining in the next chat. (I can't believe that I missed an opportunity to complain about GPS photo requirements!)

Waymarking Flickr Fun

As many of you know there's a Waymarking group on Flickr.com that's devoted to featuring waymarkers' photographs of their waymarks. The waymarker, Ambrosia, started the group and I moderate it with her. We are a pretty laid back group and don't really have the typical Flickr group list of rules. There is no photo limit - all we ask is that the photos are from waymarks that the user has posted or visited on Waymarking.com, and that you add the tag "waymarking" to the photo. Currently there's a thread going in the group about ways to add some fun and I wanted to post a few of the ideas we've come up with.

What I'm most excited about is the scavenger hunt idea that we're working on (the group is still working on the idea, so what I'm describing here isn't set in stone.) On the first of each month a thread would be started that announced the theme of the contest and then a list of 5 (maybe 10) categories that the members would need to find and waymark (waymark must be posted within the month of the contest.) Members would then post their best photo from each of the waymarks they posted and the photos would need to also fit the month's theme. At the end of the month the group would then vote on a favorite photo from each of the categories, and the thread would be closed with a list of the winning photographs and also the first person who was able to post a waymark in each category.

Themes might be seasonal (holidays seasons, weather, etc.,) or visual (vertical lines, curves, etc.) or even something else wild and wacky that I come up with. The challenge would then be to find something in the listed waymarking categories that also has a tie-in to the theme. The theme might be something totally unrelated to waymarking, for example - the color red. If one of the categories in the "red" month's contest was Abstract Public Sculpture I could post the above photo of my waymark for the very red "Eagle" sculpture by Alexander Calder in Seattle, Washington (assuming that it was a new waymark for me.)

Another idea for the Flickr group that isn't as fun, but will market Waymarking is "comment promotion." As a way to promote waymarking, we want to come up with a small block of html that people could copy & paste to the end of their comments about waymarking photos that would have a one sentence description of waymarking and links to the Flickr group and to Waymarking.com. How this works is that often one photo might be in the gallery of several different groups. Right now if the photo's description tells what category the location is waymarked in the people in those other groups might not know what that means. This way people who came across the photo in other groups - say the Flickr scavenger hunting groups - they could learn a bit about waymarking.

If you have more ideas for the group or are interested in joining you can use the group link or thread link above. Currently we have 24 members and close to 200 waymarking photos. We'd love to have you join us.

Kiss Hunting

I've been wanting to post a waymark in the Kissmobile Sitings category so about 6 months ago I checked the Kissmobile Website and discovered that it was going to be in the Seattle-Tacoma area in August. The problem is that although they are great about keeping a schedule on their Website, they only tell you when they will be in a region, but not where in the region they will be stopping. The Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area is a pretty large place for a Kissmobile (K.M.) to hide. It just wasn't worth the hassle so I gave up.

Then last week I spotted the Kissmobile on I-5 driving home from Seattle. I was tempted to turn around and follow the thing, but I was with a non-waymarking friend and I didn't think she would get it if I yelled "tail those giant Hershey Kisses!" I restrained myself, but it reignited my compulsion to post a waymark in this category. I did one last web search to see if anyone in the area had listed that the K.M. was showing up at their store or event. SUCCESS! In just 2 days time, their last stop before heading to Eastern Washington, they would be in a town about 20 miles from our home.

So today we drove out and at noon, just as they were setting up we took our pictures - 2 fun pics and the required pic with a waymarker and gps in it as well as a required pic of the license plate. It was fun to grab the waymark, and the new "Kissables" candies they were handing out were pretty good - think m & m (Smarties for those of you up in Canada) meets Hershey's Kiss.

Our Kissmobile waymark hasn't been approved yet so it might not be visible yet. Hopefully soon though.