The Aftermath

On the final day after the Challenge, there is always a CITO. A local area is picked and everybody focuses their manpower on it. This is also when the winners are announced for the various competitions. I am sad to say that Team CenTex did not win this year. That honor went to Southeast so kudos to them (despite them being foul and most foreign interlopers)! At the breakfast event before the CITO, the location of the next Challenge is traditionally announced and this year was no different. Conroe 2022! I actually wasn’t informed beforehand and my guess on it was correct. It’s got a geotour and a bunch of geoarts around it. It’s a hop and a skip away from Houston, too. Not even far enough for jumping. Add in the Galveston webcams and you’ve got a lot of stuff within an hour’s drive. That was a subject as we picked up things.

There were awards for the winners of the individual competition, too. As I mentioned yesterday, I didn’t make it there, but a lot or people were still talking about all the blood they left behind from the cuts and scrapes and the cacti. I even heard some snakes were sighted. I ended up spending some time talking to one of the celebrity attendees, the one and only Action Trinity. We milled about and did all those final fun bits, but eventually, time caught up with us all. The crowd started to thin as people started drifting off to leave. Eventually, I had to do the same. I made my final goodbyes and got on the road but not before one last cache…

The highest favorited cache in the county had gone unfound by me so I hit it on the way out of town. A gnome themed cache, it lives in an old well. I pulled it out and did what needed to be done. A very impressive setup if I do say so myself. I did a little final trackable logging and then took to the road and began making my way home. I was tired, but happy. Everything had gone well and everyone had fun. Well, almost everyone… Just before everything kicked off, a cacher had a ladder fall on her and break her hip, requiring a hospital stay in nearby Abilene. And, just as importantly, everyone stayed healthy. We were not a superspreading event! Not only that, we showed that megas can go forward with caution in the time of cholera. Soon it will be far less of an issue as more people get vaccinated, but as of now we know it’s possible to gather safely.

I feel I have to apologize. You readers, unfortunately, got stuck with me as your guide. I feel I didn’t do as good a job of documenting things as I have in the past. I should have been photographing everything I saw in an attempt to get everything. Unfortunately I was quite busy with captaining, serving for stations, and my own personal caching goals. If you feel I’ve given you short shrift, I’m sorry. I’ll do better next year (I hope). Besides, I’m much better at reporting from the road. So it’s lucky for you all that I was able to hit the road a few weeks later! As I believe I have mentioned, I made my way to the closest county I didn’t have, starting me in Oklahoma. After grabbing my daily cache in Waco and skipping a Buc-ee’s I hadn’t been to yet, I started my new odyssey around midnight in…