A couple of years ago, someone mistook GC3ARXX “Ginger’s Walk #16” for a bomb! 

This was probably not the craziest idea a muggle could have had about geocaches, as many of the Ginger’s Walk series are made of camoed PVC pipe with endcaps and could, in the wrong light (and with a paucity of knowledge) be seen to resemble a pipe bomb.

But it was soon recognized for what it really was, the cache listing was re-enabled, and everyone went home happy.  Even I, still comparatively a newb, eventually made my way to it.

Today, however, history repeated itself.  A camouflaged, cylindrical object was found near the Jewish Community Centre on Shelbourne St. today.  Now, for whatever reason, there are a lot of people in this world who don’t like Jewish people.  It’s insanity; I will never understand anti-semites.  But crazy, hateful people are real and sometimes a real threat, so when something looking like a bomb turns up at the Jewish Community Centre, eyebrows get raised.  And whole city blocks get evacuated.  Can we panic now?

The road was closed for many hours, and although the bomb squad was called, the item was recognized as a geocache before the big water cannon arrived!

Huge sighs of relief all around.  No threat of racial violence in sleepy Saanich today!  Just someone who didn’t read the guidelines about appropriate hide locations.  I’m pretty sure that if this post is trying to say anything, it’s “HIDE RESPONSIBLY!“

Looking at the big map for the local area, no caches are seen within several blocks of the bomb scare site.  So it must have been the final for a puzzle or multi.

Here’s the Times-Colonist article:

Shelbourne Street in Saanich re-opens after bomb scare

When we discover which cache this was, we’ll update this article.  Yes, there may be a spoiler here – we’ll obfuscate it.

Meanwhile, here’s an interesting bookmark list of geocaches that were mistaken for bombs.