Flashes of Panic

I discovered, as I was getting ready for a little geocaching expedition yesterday, that I hadn’t used this particular GPSr since 2006—the Mt. Washington expedition, specifically. Unsurprisingly, the batteries had leaked, leaving a white film of corrosion around the battery compartment.

Four years ago I might have given up on the unit—sent it in for repair or just pitched it and bought a new one. Yesterday I brought up the small-size screwdrivers and got the back off. A few minutes with some fine-grit sandpaper and some canned air cleared most of the grunge out and allowed it to power up with a new set of batteries.

It took the better part of half an hour for it to find all its satellites and figure out where it was, but it was functioning fine… except for the buttons. Some of them worked, some didn’t, and those which did, didn’t work all the time. (The last time I turned it off, I had to do so by popping one of the batteries out; the power button had failed.) The most frustrating part was that without the “Menu” button, I was unable to load the waypoints I had carefully stored on the SD card, which meant I could only hunt caches where I had printouts showing the coordinates.

So this morning I opened up the unit again, and this time I went at the other side of the pressed circuit card. I took apart the button assembly and dusted all the pieces carefully, sometimes employing a damp paper towel, and dried them all in a sunny spot on the table. Back together, voila! It works!

Now I just need to make the two-hour one-way bike ride up to the Wendell State Forest again to go after this big blob of caches. Again.