Our Gossipy Sewing Circle

Last night was a gathering. Our host was going to be in the area for something unrelated to geocaching and decided to make an evening out of it. So on a random Thursday in December, make something of it we did. It actually started as a divided affair. One group found seating in one place, and another group found something while waiting for another party to wrap up their dinner and leave (they never did). The latter group acquired a greater mass, so the former group decided to eat (their food had already arrived) and then merge after. Talk swirled around on many different subjects. There was a little discussion of a brand new cacher with fewer than thirty finds who had placed a Multi-cache that nobody had found in the month since he placed it. This is of note because he originally placed it as a Traditional before being told by our local reviewer that it needed to be a Multi, a cache type our newbie hadn’t heard of yet. It’s also apparently hidden in a bamboo stalk in a bamboo grove. Considering that bamboo can grow two to three feet per day, who knows what that might mean for the cache’s location now! There was some talk of another new cacher who had DNF’d a particularly evil cache. One of us had reached out to her to let her know that not only should she not feel embarrassed (the previous DNF was from someone with over 100,000 finds), but that the CO was known for taking cantankerous joy in his crazy hide difficulty. This was especially funny as said CO was seated at the table with us, taking cantankerous joy in some of his most recent hides. Once a few more cachers arrived, one of them asked us if we recognized a photo. While scoping out caches to find on an upcoming cruise he was taking, he noticed that one of the recent finders of a certain cache said she was visiting from Austin. He didn’t recognize her (she only had a couple hundred finds), so he asked if any of us had encountered her. We were all stumped.

The evening highlighted something I’ve long known but have been flummoxed as to how to address: there are a lot of newer cachers around the city, but I don’t know how to get them to come out and show themselves. To an extent, I get it. I attended my first Event for about five minutes, long enough to hand a trackable to the CO and get a cookie (it was on National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, after all). My second Event, a couple of weeks later, was incredibly intimidating. Had a very kind lady not greeted me and started introducing me to people, I would have quietly hovered around the edges, and I don’t know how the rest of the evening would have gone. It may be hard to believe, but in real life, I’m a bit of an introvert (even more so back then). I probably would have skipped my third Event if it had not been walking distance from home. With my tendency to do things on my own, I don’t know if I would have been the social butterfly I have seemingly become. So I get that some new cachers might not be into joining things. At the same time, meeting people was one of the things that expanded my horizons as a cacher. Events were where I first learned about the Texas County Challenge and heard people talking about some place called Mingo. They’re where I started learning about how some of the standard local hides worked and how to start on some of the harder local caches. And, of course, they’re how I started meeting the people I’d be having future adventures with.

If we want to keep some of these new folks caching, we’ve got to get them to either come out to Events or hold them themselves. How do we get that to happen? Who knows? There’s already someone who messages new cachers when he sees new names pop up, but I fear the answer will be a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. I just hope it’s not smothered in secret sauce.