I don’t know about you but I’m resisting getting back into the school routine this year. The holidays have been and gone and as of today, we’re packing the kids off to bed at a ‘reasonable time’. How I wish for late night excursions to find a night cache and no worries that it’s a ’school night’!

Our very capable assistant Robyn has a new semester at college and a new timetable. Shipping Monday, Wednesday and Friday was great last semester, but we’ll see in a couple of days how this semester’s timetable will line up. Robyn is an awesome employee and we are very willing to ‘make things work’. With our type of business we have the ability to be flexible!

BC is gearing up for the 2010 Olympics happening across the ‘pond’ in Vancouver and Whistler. We’re a short scenic ferry ride from the mainland so I expect we’ll see quite a few tourists coming to check out the provincial capital and cache in cache-dense Victoria, BC. This is a really great opportunity to showcase some great cache hide locations like the ones in BC Parks and also our regional parks. If you have a cache that may be a tourist draw, now would be a good time to check on it, freshen up your log, sharpen the pencil and leave some cool BC or Canadian trade items. Check with your local politician’s offices for pins and other freebies that are there for the asking! Also, we have some pretty sweet Canadian Cacher items that tourists love to find in caches.

Our upcoming 2010 Canada Micro pays tribute to our Canadian Navy who are celebrating their 100th anniversary this year and our 2010 Micro Puck will be named the Canada Olympuck in honour of our province hosting the Olympic Games. Watch for more details and these cool coins coming up next month!

Best Wishes for 2010!
Helen

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Title: Strolling on the Verge of the Olympics
Location: N 48° 28.965 W 123° 23.628
Link out: Click here
Description: Lumbo-Tire’s Annual Strolling New Year Event at the Armouries Mess. This is the one that usually brings SNOW and a lot of brave attendees. Let’s see if this year is any different!

Kids are welcome, bring your out-of-town family, bring potluck food and bring something for the foodbank that probably needs re-stocking by now!

There will be door prizes and gifts so contributions are invited, but not necessary.

See you there!
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2010-01-02
End Time: 23:00

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The other day our daughter came running into the office after school and dragged me outside to put up Christmas lights. I have a reputation for doing this at the last minute, but she was insistent… AND the retired man across the road had not yet put his lights up, so (she explained) “we could actually be the first on the street this year”. Now, I’m not one to be “that guy” that puts the “Christmas light pressure” on all the neighbourhood fellows, but this year was to be different. So we pulled out the lights, laid them across the lawn and I clambered onto the roof… up went the lights. I’m pretty pleased to have this out of the way. Luckily I did it before our cold snap. The temperature dropped to a freezing -5deg C with big winds! Pretty cold for us west coasters. We still managed to get out and do some caching though.

On Saturday, we warmed up pretty quick as Helen and I hiked all over Scafe Hill, a local mini-mountain with a seven stage multi-cache called “Platoon—-the series“. We did it with a friend, magicman65, a professional comedy-magician… he was great company (and his magic helped us find a few of the stages!).

Besides being cold… it’s getting dark pretty early now, so to go out for an evening of caching, we are now packing headlamps and flashlights. We are going to be doing a highly rated night cache soon called CSI Victoria… looking forward to that.

Finally, on Saturday, Helen’s going to be at an event we’re helping host at the Knockanback Grill here in Victoria (just down the road from LSHQ), and then hosting an open-house here at our place for those that wish to share in some hot chocolate and goodies after the event (and do any last minute shopping). I’ve double booked myself and will be in Ladysmith that afternoon/evening, escorting my parents on the “Parade of Lights” on board HMCS Oriole that evening, with my friend (geocacher “ickster”) who is the captain of this fine vessel.

Quick business note – if you’re planning to do any last minute on-line shopping, best to have it complete by around the 15th in order to have delivery prior to Christmas. Local pick-up is available up until Christmas eve (but I’ll be out doing my Christmas shopping that afternoon). When you place your order, you can specify a separate mailing address so your gift goes right to your recipient (or to you at work if you don’t want that special someone seeing it first).

In case I don’t write any more before the holidays… Helen and I wish you and your family a wonderful and safe Christmas.

Cheers,
Chris

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Title: Christmas Meet n’ Greet
Location: N 48° 28.722 W 123° 24.678
Link out: Click here
Description:

A Christmas Get-Together for local Geocacher’s

Take a break from holiday shopping! Come by and have a chat with the local geocaching community.
This is a chance to discuss hints, puzzles, new technology, past events and maybe some ideas for the new year. Trade and discover travel bugs and geocoins. If you’re a new cacher, bring your GPS and questions. We have a very knowledgeable group.

Start Time: 14:30
Date: 2009-12-12
End Time: 16:30

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Wow… I think I’m going to try to get some sleep now 8-)… that was a wild week. Since our launch on Friday the 13th, we’ve had tons of new customers, our newsletter subscription list has grown by leaps and bounds, and we’ve introduced a whole bunch of new products. Of the coins, flashlights, cache containers, FireTacks etc. etc. by far the most popular new product has been the Trackable marbles… ideal for those of us who have lost ours. We have lots more coming in the near future too, like Christmas coins (stunning coinaments this year) and sunflower-star micros, and new cache containers. The 2010 BC geocoin is in the works also!

On top of all this we’ve had a little whirl of technical teething pains as we ironed out the things that seemed to be working properly before we went live. Of course, as people start placing orders and receiving e-mails and poking around the site, we hear about new little issues every day… rest assured, we’re working on them. I’d like to thank everyone who has visited us on-line so far and especially those who have taken the time to provide feedback. Please keep it coming. It looks like one of the special bonuses for us will be meeting new people. By offering “free shipping for Victoria Pick-up” we’ve had a number of locals order that never realized we were located here in Victoria… and they are going to drop by to pick up their orders… and we get to meet them! Yeah! That is one of the best parts of this job.

BTW, if you have a comment to share with us, you can do so by clicking on the comment button under this post. Thanks Robyn! for leaving a nice comment on my last post.

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Here is the first post on our new site… actually there were others that were tests but they were deleted. this one is full fo speeling mistakes and tyops, juts so Helen can read it and groan… and no, these ones don’t count for our coin giveaway for finding typos. So, this post is being written before the site is live, we’re busy working away on it right now. When you read this in fact, we’ll have completed hundreds of hours of my time, Helen’s time, Robyn’s time (our office assistant), and Branko’s time. Branko is from SurgeWorks and is our main web developer… formatting the site and getting it into technically-tip-top shape.

This new Landsharkz.ca site is developed on two platforms, Magento and Wordpress, configured to work together in an (almost) seamless manner. I hope you enjoy poking around the site. We are very interested in feedback about how the site is working for you. Can you find what you are looking for? Is the information of use to you? Are there any typos? On that note… we’ll give you a geocoin gift (no more than one per person) if you find a typo on the website. Only the first person that sees any one typo will be awarded a coin. It may take us a few hours to get to a typo, so if you see one please bear in mind that you may not be the first to report it… so go looking for others… there are bound to be lots for all. Please report typos to us through our contact-us link or at landsharkz@shaw.ca.

Or goal is to serve you with the products, services and information that you want. If you see any area where we can improve, please let us know so we can serve you better.

Thanks!
Chris

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