Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground

Central Texas has been experiencing some odd (though not truly strange) winter weather for the last month or so. Just as it was warm enough to strip layers for hiking a few days ago (this isn’t Phoenix, people), a cold front hit that threatened to bring snow to Austin. The chemicals were spread on the bridges. Some schools decided to close for a couple of days just in case. We were getting ready for precipitation, not knowing if it would be liquid or icy. On the last evening before something was going to happen, I decided to go to a game night with friends I had not seen in a while. We laughed and played all through the evening and into the dark night. And when we parted, I realized something important: I hadn’t gotten a cache yet that day. I was familiar with the cache map of the general area and knew that most of the options nearby were either simple ones I just hadn’t managed to find in the daytime before or difficult ones I knew I could not find in the darkness. (A micro in a tree requiring a pole in the middle of the night? Nope). Luckily, a new cache had been recently placed in a nearby urban mixed-use shopping center and neighborhood. The CO wasn’t known for making especially difficult hides, so it seemed like the perfect choice as the minutes inched closer to the next day.

As I pulled up to ground zero, heat blowing out of the car’s vents, I despaired for a moment. A clutch of metal benches and tables was placed there to offer outdoor seating for an eatery. I was worried I was going to have to poke around in the nooks and crannies in the cold, aluminum and iron competing to suck the warmth from my body. I also worried that I couldn’t find a close parking spot. I was hardly worried about the hazards of night caching, but I hadn’t gone out after dark on my own in a while and didn’t look forward to doing it in such a public and oddly sterile place. I could have just hit the hazard lights and left my car in the street while I did what I needed to do (there was literally no traffic at that time of night), but I opted against it. It would be just my luck that some patrolling security would decide to poke their nose into things, and it’s not like I could begrudge them because, well, it’s their job. Luckily, I found a parking spot close enough across the street. My first instinct was to pull out my trusty Maglite, but it wasn’t immediately at hand. I can night cache anywhere with it by my side, but it’s been long enough that it wasn’t immediately at hand. No worries, though. It’s not like I was in the roughest area. Those don’t have Ikea outlets or crepe places. I got out of the car, sans Maglite, stepping into the cold.

Even in the middle of the night, there was life. I crossed to the other side of the street, and a woman in the puffiest jacket came up behind me and passed by, walking a dog. I moved toward the benches, and I heard a few drunken yells from a still-open bar. A couple of tech bros crossed the street in front of me and then passed by, speaking in arcane terms about some programming issue I could only understand the smallest snippets of. I’ve been in some of the poorest, most questionable neighborhoods in the country at equally questionable times of night. There was always human activity, usually engaging in questionable or downright illegal activities. This time, I was in a neighborhood I could never afford to live in (if I made twice my salary, I probably couldn’t afford an apartment there), and yet there were still people walking the streets. And who was I, walking sidewalks that weren’t even my own, to judge them? But once I arrived at my destination, relief washed over me. Across the sidewalk from the metal tables and chairs was a fire hydrant, partially obscured by the strictly tended landscaping. Feeling around the upper lip, I felt a fat nano, silver, matching the hydrant’s color. Inveni, inscripsi, reposui. I could finally return to the warmth of my still-running car. And I logged the cache with ten minutes to spare. My streak was maintained!