New Year, New Log

Only a few days into the new year, I picked up my first FTF, a small tube hidden in the crack of a stone wall. I know there are some places where something like this would be extremely frowned upon, but it doesn’t look like it will harm the wall any further than nature has already done. This is the first hide of a very new cacher (ten days old, ten caches found), so I know they were really excited to get one out there. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt excited to make a hide. Heck, it’s been a long time since I’ve even made an actual hide. I made a single one last year, and I have a few containers I’ve had ready for almost two years that I just haven’t dropped the hammer on. I consider it one of the downsides of urban caching: it’s hard to find good places in the city to make interesting hides that won’t get muggled. That makes it a little harder to even put in the effort, knowing that the odds are good that some rando will come along and mess it up or take it because there’s nobody around to tell them they can’t. I’d love better caches in urban environments, but I’ve also found that all the places I’ve ever asked about hosting one have been wary of possible liability. 

Otherwise, I’m trying to decide where I want to go this year. I want to pick up more counties this year (I got so comparatively few in 2023), but I’m not sure when, where, or how that will happen. The only things definitely on my caching agenda thus far are in places I’ve already been. There’s another possibility, but I don’t know if I’ll have the time or resources when it comes around, and even if I do, my county acquisition possibilities will probably be limited. All I know is that I don’t want to be sitting around home for another year because I just can’t make the right things happen. I really miss the heady days of 2018 when I could play hooky from work and go out and get a mess of counties. Maybe I need to spend a year in Nashville or Salt Lake City for caching purposes? That would admittedly be nice, but no. That’s not where I’m at. Where I am, I’ve been to all the easy places. I just have to plan harder. 

Yes, the start of a new year makes one a little pensive. Or some kind of crap like that.