Holy crap! That is one heck of an edifice! Greeley obviously isn’t the suburb of some other more populous area, so its smaller size is a little bit surprising, especially when compared to the magnificence of the courthouse. This is most certainly not the courthouse of a small town. Of course, I’m obviously biased because the city has over a hundred thousand people, but I have to admit that I find pretty much anything with less than 250,000 to be a bit quaint. That probably makes me out to be a snob in some of your eyes. That is also an unavoidable consequence of being…me? As a sidenote, had I known about the history of the Union Colony, I probably would have made a point of having a beer or something while I was in town or something. But what I did know was that I needed to grab a cache. I had a couple of choices close at hand, but I opted to pass up the virtual down the street…
…for the traditional across it. In the shadow of the courthouse, a coffee shop kindly hosted a cache for passersby. Unfortunately, they weren’t open or I might have had a snack or something. I think they were having a serious plumbing emergency because I could hear industrial fans running inside. That didn’t confront me since the cache was outside. It was unfortunately missing a log, but I had one of those on hand so it was easy enough. That being done, and me running a little ahead on time (I budget 30 minutes for each town [with occasional exceptions]), I thought to myself why shouldn’t I go get that virtual?
The virtual was at the home of Nathan Meeker, journalist and founder of the Union Colony which would eventually become Greeley. I pulled into the alley behind the house, now museum, and pulled over onto a grassy patch. It took me a minute to figure out what I needed to do because the coords were off, but in that time, I got yelled and cursed at by a dude walking his dog. Apparently, by parking on the grass patch, I was an example of what #^$%@ people are. Resisting the reflex to start singing at the top of my lungs “#*@% You, I’m From Texas!” (yes, that was actually a song by long defunct local band Davy Crotchett and the Master Debaters [no, I not making that up]), I merely smiled and spiritually flipped him the bird, telling him “Yep, I’m the worst.” “You sure as %@^! are!” he replied as he kept on down the street. I chuckled as he walked away. What was he going to do? Drive me away from town? Whatever… I did the appropriate thing and sent the appropriate answers to the appropriate party and beat a hasty retreat to my car lest the dude return to taunt me a second time. Besides, my bizarre little visit to Greeley was finished at this point. Thinking this was the strangest thing that would happen to me all day, I continued on, not expecting the strangeness of…
Geocaching While Black 