Many, many moons ago, the House of PodCacher suggested the idea of holding flash mobs of geocachers. So in 2007, the first World-Wide Flash Mob (WWFM) was born, encompassing twenty events in two countries. People seemed to think it was a good idea because it kept happening, at first every six months, and eventually yearly. This past weekend was the twentieth WWFM. As some of you may know, Texas is undergoing a heat wave of epic proportions this summer. This is not usually a time that anyone would want to be outside in a group for any reason. That is why our host, Bigguy In Texas, made it something many could not refuse. We were invited to bring water balloons and water guns and drench each other in curiously cooling combat!
We filled balloons under the shade of park trees. Some thought this could be considered a waste of valuable water during a drought. I rationalized that since we would be doing it on earth and not on cement, the water would not be wasted but would circle back to plants, not evaporate beneath the blazing sun. Not that it was actually “blazing,” mind you. We were lucky to have a bit of cloud cover to make the day more comfortable. I also came prepared. I had recently acquired a motorized water gun for the occasion. It did not offer the deep drenching that something like a Super Soaker would, but it did offer distance and sustained fire (or water, as the case may be) that would barely be matched. Other cachers trickled to our location in various levels of comfortable and water-intended dress, some with weapons, others with balloons. I ended up as the first serious drenching victim. A balloon toss, meant to test the material’s ability to explode upon impact, managed to miss the ground and land perfectly in the hollow of my clavicle. I was soaked before we even began, but I had also acquired my first target. As the moment approached, I counted down the minutes and then the seconds, and at high noon, all heck broke loose!
It is hard to photograph people running around with water guns when you’re running around with a water gun, but somehow, I got a few action shots. Balloons flew. Water shot into faces and shirts. I came to play, but I did not come to play. I shot water at them all: the men, the women, the children … none were spared my aqueous wrath! For fifteen or twenty minutes, we chased each other in sprints and circles, laughing and taunting each other the entire time. And woe to those who arrived after the battle began! We “enemies” easily agreed that the fresh meat to the grinder were the targets to unite against!
But eventually, our munitions were spent, our panoplies soaked. Despite our fun, the heat sapped our energies. We looked upon the dampness we had wrought (The water! The water!) and assessed our water wounds. My only regret is that the girls were not here. We would have made a superior fire team (or water team) before I would doubtless come to curse their sudden but inevitable betrayal. The assembled even gathered for a final photo to commemorate the combat that had changed us in body and spirit not at all.
As I took the photo, I could not resist one last shot at my erstwhile foes, my once again friends. And then, as quickly as we had appeared, we went our separate ways. As I went to log my attendance, I realized there had been nothing to sign. That hardly mattered. They were all the log on this day, and my water gun served as my pen. If there is a God of Wetness, annuit coeptis.
Geocaching While Black 