I Almost Forgot!

I was sitting at home, getting ready to go to bed, when I realized something very important: I had almost forgotten to write an entry for today! I apologize for my near oversight. It’s been a long day. I have had to take some trips out to Fredericksburg this week, and yesterday was one of them. I was up crazy early to get there crazy early to do some things (and grab a few caches), and then came back to Austin a bit later than I intended. After tending to another bit of real-world business near home, I went to an Event. It was the tenth in a series devoted to various dessert-serving places, and I am amazed to say that I’ve attended each and every one. Afterward, I returned home and vegetated for a bit before heading bedward. You can’t tell me that you’ve never spent a long day, and kicked off your shoes before remembering you have to put them on again to go outside or something. Well, I’m just as normal as the next guy (if the next guy is a geeky and sometimes overly-focused weirdo).

On the other hand, Fredericksburg has been less like my first visit there to cache. Not so much because it’s changed I think, but because I’m not spending time in the historic downtown but in the real town, dare I call it Fredericksburg Babylon. It’s funny, but you don’t know how many towns I’ve been to that just seemed like Potemkin villages because all I did was get off a highway, take some pictures, find a cache, and then go back down the highway again. It’s no way to get a feel for a place. There was a time when I once spent a little time walking around getting to know somewhere before I left it behind, but that fell to the wayside as I got more efficient and county-fixated. The loss of not getting to know a place was replaced by the sheer number of courthouses I could fit into a day. A little part of me mourns that I didn’t have the time to linger in so many places (Lamesa, I should have hung out for a while). The rest of me is fine with that because there were no doubt some places that weren’t worth my time (sorry, but I wasn’t going to hang around in Gail next door). All I can do is decide to do better in the future. That said, my eventual future is will involve Mississippi and Alabama and Tennessee. Will I really want to hang out that much? Signs point to no. I have to go back out to Gillespie County over the weekend. I guess I’ll just have to spend a little time walking its real streets to make up for all the places I can’t (because I didn’t before) and won’t (because I’ sure not going back).