Blog posts

Patrick McGovern's - January 18th, 2003

The Cooler Crew has gathered at Patrick McGovern's to celebrate the beginning of the new Winter Carnival Medallion Hunt for each of the last five years. The celebration is always filled with the gathering of seasoned and newbie hunters, many laughs, reminisces of previous hunts, predictions of where the medallion might be hidden, who will find it, when the prized medallion will be found, and as the evening comes to an end, the reading of the first clue.

The evening of January 18th brought medallion finder hopefuls together with a few previous finders in the basement level of Patrick McGovern's. We were about forty in number. Some came and spent the entire evening. Others came early and had to leave. There were also hunters that arrived later and stayed until after Me2, Ares and Those Medalling Kids brought the paper back from the Pioneer Press. Me2 read the first clue for the crowd of hunters and the Crew slowly dissipated and went home to noodle that clue.

Mom and Dad had this year's version of the Cooler Crew commemorative buttons ready in a choice of six colors. Marley King and Artemis the Huntress had coordinating bumper stickers. Ares brought business cards with the site URLs for the People's Forum message boards and the Cooler Crew site. Me2 brought a guest book for everyone to sign. So much talent and great ideas!

It's always heart-warming to see old friends and meet new Cooler Crew members who share the same obsession of hunting for a little blue puck in the middle of winter - snow or no snow. There can be no better way to begin this yearly obsession than to share the laughter, the whooping, the din of conversation and the joy of greeting hunters as they arrive.

The 2003 Winter Carnival Medallion Hunt has begun.

Coolerheads will Prevail!!!!

Me2 and the Coolerheads

(all right Cooler Crew! Ready to read the clue? ) 
-I'll say we are! 
-Yeah! 
-Let's read it now! 
Okay, TMK? 
-Okay! 
Okay, THX? 
-Okay! 
Okay,ARES? ARES? AREEEEEEEEZ! 
-YES DEAR!!!) 

Treasure Hunting time is here 
Just got the 1st clue from the Pioneer 
We've got our shovels in our car 
The pre-dig gig was at the bar 
Want a clue thats fun to noodle 
Me2, I want the kit & caboodle! 
We could hardly stand the wait 
To find the coin, it's our fate 

(Okay Crew get ready) 
That was scooberific, TMK. 
-rooby rooby rooo. 
Very 'ordinary', THX. 
-Ahhh. 
Ah, Ares, you wern't noodling, watch it. 
Ah, Ares. Ares. AREEEEEEZ! 
-YES DEAR.) 

Want a clue thats fun to noodle 
Me2, I still want the kit & caboodle! 
We could hardly stand the wait 
To find the coin, it's our fate 
We could hardly stand the wait 
To find the coin, it's our fate 

(Very good, coolerheads) 
-Lets read the clue again! Yeah, lets read the clue again! 
No, That's enough, lets not overanalyze it 
-What do you mean overanalyze? 
-We want to read the clue again! 
Now wait a minute, coolerheads 
-Why can't we read the clue again? 
-[Cooler Crew chatter] 
Ares, dig over there...THX, just a minute. 
TMK will you dig over there? Crew...

1st day-7/30/02

As soon as it was decided we would do the hunt, Marley started planning- coming up with clue ideas and bringing home different things to hide the coin in. We made a list of 12 parks that we liked, to check out the next night, and he made the coin.

2nd day-7/31/02

I got called in to work for a few hours, so Marley, Scot, and their dad Ed went to check out the parks. They started at Swede Hollow, which they said looked good, lots of possibilities. Next they went to Mears, Scot said "this is it" and Marley said, "no its way too small". But then a light bulb went off -if he thought that so would other hunters, so he said "yea, this is it". It was just after dark so they decided to only stop at one more park and head home. They stopped at Cass Gilbert Overlook, and ruled it out immediately.

Later that night they told me about where they went, and what they came up with, liking the Mears idea, but not ruling Swede out yet. We decided to go back the next night and see if it was feasible , if there would be enough hiding spots or things to work with for clues.

3rd day-8/01/02

The four of us went back to Mears the next night, armed with camera, notebook, and the coin ready to be hidden in case we found a hiding spot we liked. After walking around the park, taking pics and notes, finding several possible hiding places, we were walking back to the car and I pointed at the clock and asked if it could be hidden in or under it. Marley investigated first and found the hole in one corner. We checked it out and agreed it would be OK there, it was a little hard to get out, but doable. So we left it there, took a few more pics and notes and left. We started tossing around ideas for clues on the way home, and doing research and writing them in earnest that night.

4th day-8/02/02

Marley went to Marthaler that morning to get the pink brush, the Nascar Hat, and the Pooh shoe, but only found the pink brush. We met everyone at Marthaler that evening, and then went to Buggs to celebrate the Medallionator hunt.

5th day-8/03/02

Marley made a second coin to take pictures of and wrapped it up like the first. We went up north, brought all our clue-in resources and worked on the clues. Finished some thoughts/ideas, changed wordings, and messed with the layout of the clues.

6th day-8/04/02

Came home in the early evening and decided we needed to check on the coin, make sure it was still there and hadn't been affected by the rain. The three of us walked around the park, and Marley put the little pink brush up in a pine tree(we had planned on using it in a clue but didn't), then sat on a rock until we got kicked out by the park police. The coin was still there and had been unaffected, so we decided we were OK to leave it there (we were still considering moving it to Swede Hollow).

7th - 10th days- 8/05/02 to 8/08/02

We continued to write new alternate clues, tweak the clues, and work on the order. We'd each take them to work and work on them, then talk about it later. Steve would (with my final approval) change, add, and subtract words, or rearrange phrases, to make them hopefully less obvious or misleading. And we must have changed the order a dozen times, trying out different combinations with alternate clues.

11th day- 8/09/02

We made a last change to the clue order after Me2 said on the board that she hoped the first clue wouldn't be the same ol park in St Paul clue. We took the 2nd part off the 3rd clue and added it to the bottom of the 1st clue, and at 9pm, with hands shaking from adrenaline, I typed in the first clue and hit post.

The rollercoaster ride started,

and what a ride it was! I thought the most challenging parts about writing the clues were the ordering of the clues- trying not to give away too much too early, while still giving out enough to get people out looking, and trying to figure out what people will think and read into the clues-what will get them where. There were many thoughts, twists and turns we didn't anticipate -such as Jake going to COMO on CLUE 10 : )

But I have to say I don't think it would have worked for a hunt as large as the PP, and if it had been just me writing the clues it probably would have been easier and not lasted as long as it did. In our case 2 (or 3) heads was definitely better than 1.

It was a tough year to be a hardcore digger. A lack of snow, cryptic clues, and an amazingly early find left most of us out of the proper park. Several folks let it be known that they were disappointed with the imagination of the hunt clues and hiding spot this year. Perhaps the hiders were trying to throw us for a loop by picking a new and small park. After all, Conway worked until the ho-hum happenstance finding.

Complaints were also made about the slipshod monitoring of the message board this year. Several folks spammed the crap out of the board with inane jibber jabber. It's not as if we haven't had to deal with this before, but the past few years have been particularly difficult to enjoy on the board. But it's better to have than to not have. We'll have to hope the potty mouths and space wasters dull out as our blue puck shines on.

And when all's said and done, the only spam we'd like to see is of the canned variety from treasure hunt sponsor, Hormel. It's yummerific!

Grin.

Proof that the Treasure Hunt medallion is almost always placed where it's just too easy to find—or the clues are rarely written with enough cleverness to baffle anyone:

1. Cooler Crew site (best clue-hunters, people who use the clues and don't randomly dig, read this site) has analyzed and posted only 6 clues; not even had time to post their analysis of the 7th clue—and therefore, the medallion is found by a lucky guess, before clues can lead to a specific location.
2. Mediallion is usually placed directly in a park; instead of along the outer edge of a park where it would not be so obvious—and therefore, the medallion is found by a lucky guess, before clues can lead to a specific location.
3. Many clues still remain to be published—and therefore, the medallion is found by a lucky guess, before clues can lead to a specific location.
4. People who hide the medallion are afraid the hunters are going to destroy too much property—that shouldn't be THEIR concern, because it should be the HUNTERS' concern (with violating the law)—hunters will learn to respect private property; so they very rarely hide the medallion along any old street sidewalk away from a park—and therefore, the medallion is found by a lucky guess, before clues can lead to a specific location.
5. Many clue-readers are looking for cryptic cleverness such as transposed words/letters, re-arrangement of letters/words/sentences or hidden meanings to words/phrases—well, that's so rare, the dinosaurs gave up long ago—and therefore, the medallion is found by a lucky guess, before clues can lead to a specific location.
6. The clue-interpretations posted on Cooler Crew, prior to the actual find of the medallion, are far too clever in comparison to the actual Pioneer Press interpretations posted after the medallion is found—and therefore, the medallion is found by a lucky guess, before clues can lead to a specific location.

Summary:

The Pioneer Press needs a clever clue writer who concentrates on trying to hide the medallion where it won't be easily found; instead of concentrating on a nice centrally public large open area where people won't destroy property—let the hunters be responsible for not destroying property, instead of assuming they will destroy property if you make the medallion too hard too find.

Joe Gervais

This years clues ( some of them) were a little misleading...

1. light a spark?
2. knit your brows?
3. time and tide?
4. far from the woods? (what woods. those are trees, not woods)
5. lots of space... it is a tiny park.
6. trip over the goods?

I think that this should've been done just a little differently, maybe a little more realistic. I mean, where is the clue with the potato chip container? Nowhere. There is nothing in the clues that pointed to this.

Kelly Kirkpatrick

Usually the Water Cooler site has been pretty good with this, but this year, especially on Thursday (Jan. 24) night, I (read) some very inappropriate language in the Cooler site and then today after the medallion was found, some inappropriate bashing towards both clue writers and finders. I think it's very rude, disrespectful, and inappropriate. So, I am wondering if for next year, someone could just monitor that site from time to time and possibly delete any mean messages.

I really dislike winter in Minnesota but you should know that one of my highlights is this excellent medallion hunt!

Michelle Romano

Man, I sure hate people that spam the boards—this is supposed to be fun. I bet one-third of the posts are complete junk.

Dan Vogtman

The Medallion Hunt of 2002 is now but a memory as we stand here on the doorstep of the 2003 hunt. For a few it may be a pleasant memory, but for most, even today, almost a year later, there's still a bitterness lingering on the edge of what should otherwise have been a pleasant recollection. Of course every hunt ends with a certain disappointment for everyone but the lucky finder, but in 2002 it seemed something else was lost as well.

The hunt started out as most do, with the annual gathering at Patrick McGovern's in what has been dubbed the "Pre-Dig Gig". I remember just a couple of years ago we were feeling pretty proud to have had 40 people pass through at one time or another. This time around we had a whole room of the upper bar packed with probably at least 100 people. Certainly enthusiasm was running high.

And why shouldn't it have been? The prize was still running at $10,000. There was snow on the ground. Old faces had returned and new ones were joining them as the ranks of the Cooler Crew continued to swell. Everything was looking good.

At midnight the first clue came out. As usual it didn't tell us a whole lot, although it's rather clunky writing ("Let the medallion search in you light a spark") did hint that we were dealing with a new writer from the previous years. Well, all we could hope for was that what they lacked in poetry skills they would make up for in puzzle-writing skills.

Of course not much can be done with just one clue so we waited for the next day. The second clue alluded to a park with hills. Of course it was only natural at this point in the hunt that a whole host of other meanings would be attributed to it's mere four lines. But when it's still that early in the hunt and there isn't a lot to think about just yet, turning brainstorms into hurricanes is fairly expected.

By Clue 3 however, things were starting to happen. The weather was turning warmer and the modest snowcover we had was starting to disappear. I'm not one who often went downtown for the clues, but for some reason I did this night and I was actually pretty surprised at the size of the crowd that was there for just the third clue. It was then that I first got the feeling that this hunt was going to be operating on an accelerated schedule.

When the clue came out it referred to a hill again, and sliding down the hill away from the woods. It wasn't a lot to go on, but it was starting to narrow things down for people and some people were starting to go out and check for the hilly parks.

When Clue 4 came out, it referred to something "in and on the air" as well as making reference to what sounded like some sort of sport, maybe baseball. Most people picked up pretty quickly that it meant a radio tower was in view, but which one?

I myself had gone downtown once again, only to find an even bigger crowd from the night before. I got the clue, thought about it a bit and then decided to go home and ponder it. But when I got in my car, instead of going home I pulled out my Treasure Hunter's Guide. I saw a park in there called Merriam Park that I had never been to, or even heard of before, but it looked hilly and had a radio tower in view according to the guide. I decided to go check it out.

I got there and parked on the street. Indeed there was a large hill there in the middle of the park. I climbed the hill and when I got to the top, I saw a large radio tower prominently in view. I also saw where the trees on the top of the hill parted to make way for a sledding hill that ended on the baseball fields down below. It was in that moment I felt I had found the right park. Of course I had thought that before and been wrong, but if I was right, it was definitely not going to be a long hunt unless the cluewriter had done something really clever.

The next day was Wednesday and it was only the fourth day of what could possibly be a 12 day hunt. Normally people are still scouting out parks at this point if even going out at all, but not this year. People were out digging already, each with a theory as to which park the coin was in. The melting snow made hunting pretty easy. A single person could practically search a small park alone in half a day.

That night, I found myself at the Pioneer Press yet again and the crowd there was what you might expect much closer to the end of a hunt than the beginning. Clue 5 when it came out, gave us a surprising amount of information. It basically told us we were looking for a park and rec center, a place with a parking lot, and a place with a playground. Many ran out to their favorite possibility that night to do some midnight digging already.

By now, I myself was convinced it was at Merriam and I wasn't even seriously considering anything else. Others were equally convinced it was at some other park. And of course others were still going from park to park to check out all the possibilities. But wherever people were, they were out in numbers. The next night at the Pioneer Press the line was already around the block and the traffic on Cedar was jammed as people waited for the clue to come out. Things had already grown to a fever pitch on Clue 6 and it seemed something would give soon, especially as the snow was continuing to melt.

Clue 6 did give us some hope though as it bragged about how the cluewriter(s?) had "devised ways to make it tough". It also made reference to diamonds. I had decided to take that day off of work as I really wanted to get out and hunt in the daylight. I passed people in Newell on the way. I talked on the phone to people in St. Anthony. And when I got to Merriam there were plenty of people there as well.

I had been there about an hour or so poking around when I decided to take a walk around the park to see if there was anything I had been missing. I came around the rec center to the parking lot and started talking to a woman who was checking out Merriam, but was pretty sure it wasn't there. She said she had a pretty good idea about another park. We debated a bit and then I kept going towards the hockey rink. It was at that point someone asked if I knew the number to call to find out if the medallion had been found yet. They had heard a rumor that it had. I had a cell phone, and someone else nearby had the number. I called and indeed the recording said it had been found in Merriam Park about an hour before. I looked around and there was a group of people standing in the middle of the baseball fields. I decided to head over and see if they had heard.

When I got there, it turned out they had indeed heard and they were discussing what happened. I had only been there a few minutes when the people who found the medallion returned to the park, medallion still in hand, for a mini-press conference. They showed us where they found it and told us the story.

It was a mother and son, both longtime hunters, who had come to the park to check it out as a possibility. They hadn't even planned on digging. But as they were looking around the kid stumbled on something in the snow. He kicked it to see what it was and the medallion popped up in the air. It had been sitting right there on one of the baseball diamonds near 2nd base. It was attached to the foil cover one finds on a canister of chips to keep the freshness seal intact. There was probably less than an inch of snow covering it, and had it not been found on Friday, with the weather the way it was, by Sunday one could have simply walked up to it and said, "Oh, there it is." Anyway, I got to hear the story and even see the actual medallion which was pretty exciting, but after the excitement waned, different feelings set in.

It was Friday afternoon. The weekend hadn't even started yet. As I lingered in the park talking with people, more people would show up. Some came to hunt, only to be greeted with the news it was already over. Others came already knowing it was over, just to see "the spot". The spot they never got to. The spot that they never even got to contemplate as a possibility because for so many the hunt was over before it had really even gotten a chance to start.

"Conserve your energy for the end," was a maxim that failed many who had no idea the end was so near so soon. People who had cleared their schedules for the weekend or even taken time off work suddenly found themselves with nothing to do. People who look forward to this all year had shovels and hoes that were never even exposed to the winter air.

There's always disappointment when a hunt ends and you're not the one who finds it, but generally, even if you don't win the game, you still get the chance to play. That wasn't the case for many this time. And it wasn't just a matter of someone getting lucky. There were some legitimate questions to be asked such as why was it put in the middle of a field when there was so little snow? The snow was already melting when the hunt started, with warm temperatures forecasted. Why didn't they move it? They claimed they had "devised ways to make it tough" and yet it was just sitting in the open where anyone could (and did) trip over it. Was it any wonder that people not only felt cheated out of the experience of the hunt, but practically lied to as well?

But in the end, what was there to do? The hunt was over and there wouldn't be another for a year. So we did what we always do. We had a Pity Party and our Rehash Bash, shared our stories and our pain, then wished each other well and parted ways until 2003. Because no matter who finds it in any given year, the hope of "there's always next year" keeps us going.