Aspirations And Disappointments

We all spend our time looking for…something. That is the one thing that every geocacher (and pretty much every human) has in common. In our cases, it’s direct: we are looking for cache after cache after cache. But if you’re like me (and I think maybe you are [to some extent]), you have spent a few minutes or a few hours thinking about the caches you’d like to get… That Jasmer filler in another state, that rare cache type that few others have, that one with so many favorites you can’t help but go for it. I find myself thinking about far away caches in special locales.

I’m sure there are a lot of earthcaches in lovely places, but the one I want the most is Earthquakes In Istanbul. Not only does it involve a trip to the ancient Constantinople, Queen of Cities, it is located at the Hagia Sophia. What I should do is research caches in and around Hisarlik. I have no doubt there are some great Trojan themed ones around there. That said, the current political situation in Turkey makes me worried. If it continues descending as it has, I worry that I might not be able to safely return in my lifetime. But that is a larger question than I can navigate.

Niger, on the other hand, is a bit more stable and that is where L’arbre du Tenere can be found. I’ve wanted to visit the loneliest tree on Earth for a long time. Of course there’s a cache there! The tree isn’t there anymore (it was hit and killed by a drunk driver in 1973, and replaced with a monument), but I can only hope the cache is. Ironically, though it was placed in 2006, it’s only been found once. I would love to be the second to find this one. But that involves some serious travel. Istanbul is a few international flights away. The tree, though? There’s only a couple of options to get there that don’t involve helicopters or something similar. This will probably be my lottery wining gift to myself.

But for the moment travel, even locally is but a dream. Even though it was my goal for the year, I’m not going to finish the Challenge in 2019. With job and family stuff upcoming, it is incredibly unlikely that I’m going to be able to travel in December. Even if I could travel, winter is going to slow me down since I need daylight for courthouses. More importantly, if you check the map you’ll see that most of my counties are in North Texas, meaning that I might be fighting snowy conditions at any time. Added together, I’m pretty sure the rest of this year is a loss from that perspective. I still have a project to work on, though. I’m not ready to talk about it openly, but it’s a side project worthy of the delay. I promise.