Some days, I feel like I’ve done it all when it comes to caching. I’ve been to Mingo. I’ve done the Trifecta (HQ, the APE Cache, and the Stash Plaque). I’ve done some famous caches and been to some famous Megas. As of a couple of weekends ago, I’ve gotten every icon. I’ve done quite a bit and accomplished quite a lot. Aside from larger things like visiting states and countries I’ve not cached in, I don’t feel there’s much I haven’t done. I very much know this is not true (I have an entire list of incomplete challenges to put the lie to that assertion), but it feels that way. This is why I was a little surprised when my phone went off yesterday morning to remind me to “Find a micro.” Sometime last year, I was running through some challenges and various calendars on Project-GC when I noticed that several of my calendars were incomplete. One immediately caught my eye: I had not gotten a Traditional every day of the year. I found that odd because I’d logged a cache every day for over six years at that juncture, but I had one day where I had somehow managed to find anything other than a Traditional. I put a reminder in my phone to alert me on that day so I wouldn’t have to wait an entire year to do it. While I was at it, I put in a series of reminders for a bunch of dates to remind me of different deficiencies. Eventually, I got my Traditional (which also completed a challenge). Little by little, I’ve been getting other semi-specific caches. Yesterday, I got a micro, which means I’ve now gotten one on every day of the year (including Leap Day). Goody for me.
I know I’m nowhere near doing everything a cacher can do. I have too many friends with tens of thousands more finds than I to prove that. There are too many states I haven’t cached in yet and unfinished county challenges in the ones I have. There are a lot of things I care about that I haven’t finished and a lot of things I don’t care about that I could choose to take up. I’ve yet to cache in every Canadian province or Mexican state, much less outside North America. And even if I just stayed in the US, there are so, so many challenges to accomplish, many that I think I’ll never complete. A hundred Events in Bexar County? A hundred finds in each of thirty-five Texas counties? A thousand finds in two different states? Really? But every now and then, I finish something. Usually, it’s small or completely unexpected, but it’s something. And that makes the day just a little more worth it.
Geocaching While Black 