The event will NOT be at the posted coordinates, although they are within a short distance. Read below to determine where the event will be held. Despite the attributes, the terrain is totally wheelchair accessible. The difficulty is artificially increased by one-half star because you have to figure out the location.
Having trouble with puzzle caches? There are a lot of them out there. These pesky little devils seem to get filed in one of two places by most cachers. There are them that loves 'em and them that hates 'em. If you are in the latter category (or in the former and just want to practice), this may be the event for you.
.
This event will be geared toward beginning puzzlers. There will be a session later in the year geared toward more advanced stuff, but for today we want to get folks started. We welcome more advanced folks but don't want you to be bored.
Feel free to bring along some of the real-life puzzles that have been bothering you all along. I cannot guarantee that you will get them solved, but based on what you should be learning here, it can't hurt. And there could easily be someone attending who can help you on that particular one.
Really Important stuff:
This will be a paperless event (OK, other than the log). You are going to need some sort of laptop (PC, MAC or Linux) that can read info from a thumb drive and display pdf files and/or Powerpoint (or OpenOffice) presentations. I will bring a thumb drive with all of the information you need. There may or may not be overheads and a projector (I am still working on one), so that whole laptop thing is going to be important. Or you can get very friendly with the folks sitting near you. Your call entirely. Having a small pad of scratch paper might be useful, but that all depends on your learning style.
There is free wifi at the library if you need it. I will also bring some homegrown tools that people might find useful. Having a perl interpreter would be a big help but not required. And I will accept other tools if folks have them and want to contribute.
As for where specifically this event is going to be, keep in mind that it is a puzzle event. So it needs to be a puzzle. The location is given in at least ten (10) places on the page. There might be more. Some will be obvious, some less so. But all are reasonable beginner puzzles. If something needs a key to be decrypted, use "NoVAGO Puzzle Class". And if you really cannot figure out any of them, please just send me a private message and we can walk you through them.
1. N 38 47.225' W 77 31.215' white text
2. oigl xic fhacetj eayuh uexc ucud zrg lszlbb vvk aphzrdeu vigenere
3. yfoo ifm oryizib vrtsg avil urev lmv zhsglm zev nzmzhhzh atbash
4. ngxx dgz xundmdk qustf lqda ruhq azq metfaz mhq ymzmeeme rot-something
5. sz da px po um cw nx gf qo ir lp tn sq gz vo lg ci ou og gz xl og dt do dt playfair
6. create.plan.region what three words
7. S 38 47.225 E 102 28.790 is about as far away as you can be. antipodes
8. From N 39 47.225' W 78 31.215' go one complete degree E then go one half degree S twice. projection
9. (On this date) in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings, the Normans gave the Saxons quite a pasting. This is a red herring.
If anyone wants copies of the presentation, send me a PM AFTER the event. Include your email so I can attach the presentation.