Defective Bingo

Yesterday, I got a call from a friend with a problem. He was at a state park and accidentally dropped his car keys in the river. After having gone down a list of obvious but unsuccessful remedies, he wanted to know if I might be able to get his spare key from home and bring it out to him. There was no way I would say no. I was once saved in a similar fashion, so the least I could do was pay it forward. I don’t have many skills, but the ability to drive long distances is one of them. So, I accepted the mission. That’s how I ended up driving a four-hundred-mile round trip to Uvalde yesterday. Believe me, that was not on my bingo card for the day.

I skirted or passed through a lot of places I’d been before, some more recently than others. It was strange driving to Johnson City from the opposite direction than I’m normally used to. Of course, I’ve been through Fredericksburg so many times that you might wonder if I have a girlfriend out there (I promise I don’t). The really interesting bit was when I was on the way to Leakey of all places. I ended up driving the same road into town I drove five years ago, but this time, it wasn’t shrouded in fog. I even took a moment to say hello to my old friend there before continuing to my eventual destination, Garner State Park.

Once the key was delivered, I set myself to my other task for the day: finding a cache. I could have stopped somewhere on the way, but my mission was more important than caching. Once it was accomplished, however, I might as well grab one far, far outside my normal hunting grounds! The park has a good bunch of caches, but the easiest involved a walk I wasn’t interested in making just after sunset. Real County wasn’t exactly chock-full of caches otherwise, so I drove down to nearby Uvalde for gas and a cache. A small part of me couldn’t ignore their recent history. Just like in Sandy Hook, there was a series of Adventure Labs (two, actually) devoted to the memories of the victims of Robb Elementary. Had there been daylight, I would have done at least some of them, but I wasn’t going to mess around near the appropriate murals at night. Besides, I knew I would be back in the near future with my older caching daughter (and probably the younger muggle one as well). The Labs could wait. Unfortunately, some of the other caches in town needed some TLC. I ended up with two DNFs before deciding to leave and find something along the road home. I didn’t have to go far. I stopped near a stone-crushing facility a few miles outside of Uvalde for a pill bottle at the base of a pole. A cache is a cache is a cache.

Once it was signed and returned, I continued on the road home, passing through Hondo on the way to the dreaded San Antonio. Luckily, it was late enough that the normally congested highways in the city were quite sparsely occupied. I flew through faster than I think I ever had before. Once I made it back to I-35, it was smooth sailing. It was approaching midnight, so I considered stopping in New Braunfels or San Marcos for another cache so today would be taken care of, but I opted against it. All I really wanted was home. Soon enough, I reached the outskirts of Austin and made good time despite a couple of inconvenient lane closings. I even slipped through downtown at a good clip. I knew I would soon be able to do my writing for the night and go to bed. Except I was wrong. Though I had made pretty great time driving all day, I had to endure a great indignity: I spent an hour stopped in traffic behind an accident a mile away from home! Luckily, the only fatality was the collective time all of us drivers spent stopped and waiting.

This is the other reason you need to rest when you feel the need. You never know when you might end up having to do something unexpected and time-consuming. Again, an eight-and-a-half-hour drive was not on my bingo card for today. Of course, it’s not the first time I’ve had to go on unexpected drives, either. I didn’t prepare in other ways, so powering down on Sunday definitely got me through yesterday.