Get In, Loser!

We’re going to suck at geocaching!

Yesterday, I ran out to Elgin to find my daily cache. I had several options to choose from, but I decided to get one in the back of a cemetery I had visited before (there always is one, after all). There’s a cache at the front gate, but I hadn’t found it after three visits even though others (one of whom was a four-year-old) had. When I arrived, I remembered something I hadn’t thought about for a while but had noticed on many occasions: the cemetery was next door to a school. One of these days, I’m going to ask someone who knows more (and by more, I mean anything) about urban planning to explain to me why they seem to be together in so many places, especially in small towns. That aside, I drove to the back of the cemetery to an older section and began my search. At ground zero, there was nothing except divots in the ground that looked as if a stump had once been there, but grass had overgrown them, meaning it was an old wound. The only hint provided was “green.” Did that mean in the bushes on the fence? Or a fake plant at a grave? Or (and this is where my stomach made a small contortion) the prominent green embellishment on that handmade grave marker? It wouldn’t be the first time I’d found such a cache on a marker, either real or fake. So, I perused the marker without touching it any more than I felt I had to, but it turned out to be a bust. I checked out the other, more obvious, spots and similarly came up with nothing. Oh, well, there were other options, including the one at the front of the cemetery. I mean, I was already there, so I might as well give it another shot, right? That one turned out to be my second failure of the day.

Another cemetery in town that I hadn’t visited before had two caches. The last person to look for them couldn’t find either of them, but they only had ten finds, so what did they know? More than I gave them credit for, I guess. I also found neither of them. So I decided to try one from a series along a road passing through town. I drove to an outer neighborhood and attempted one that had last been found a couple of months before. I was a little uncomfortable looking for it because it seemed close to a person’s yard, but I was able to pass myself off as examining a phone junction relay at GZ. It was all for naught because I couldn’t find that one, either! What the heck? I was zero for five over here! In a fit of desperation, I opted to cherchez la easy and go for an LPC in a hotel parking lot. I pulled up to the lamppost to see that there was a cable installed on it that prevented me from lifting the skirt! Are you kidding me? Except the back could be lifted, leaving enough room to slip in my fingers, and voilà! There was a pill bottle just within reach!

I only expected to be in town for about thirty minutes, long enough to find a cache, fill up the car with some cheap gas, and head back to Austin. An hour and a half after I arrived, I began heading out of town, having found one out of six for the day. ISAG, indeed.