Dug From The Digital Mines

I was doing some website maintenance, specifically involving old pictures in old entries. As I was walking down memory lane, I saw a few that especially caught my eye or invoked other things, so I thought I’d take a few minutes to share some of them!

To begin with, as a parent, it’s hard to believe that the two cachers who went out with me this past weekend have been rolling around with me for so long! I know that if they were here, they’d be mocking me for my sentimentality or rolling their eyes at such ancient photos, but I dare you to tell me with a straight face that they weren’t a pair of cute protocachers when this all started so many years ago.

Almost as many years ago, I discovered the first cache of a Mystery Cache series that ranged all around downtown Austin. Unfortunately, the series was archived because of substantive changes to downtown, specifically at waypoints and cache locations during Covid. The other entry point into the series was also removed. My first one is still around, but its location has been closed for renovations, and the reopening has been delayed. That all makes me sad, especially because … well, look at it! The puzzles! The backstory! The discipline it had to take to handwrite all of that! I’m still in awe of it, and I barely got anywhere with the series!

And then, of course, there was this beast. At one point, I was CO for a large Multicache. Finding it was easy, but that wasn’t the original intention. I had planned for a giant Multi that started at one point, took you around to six redirectors, each containing one digit of a combination, and ended at this big old chonker. I named it after a book wherein the protagonist dreams about finding a treasure, goes on a long journey to get to it, and finds it back where he had the dream. I ended up turning the single Multi into a bunch of Traditionals plus the Multi, but I kept my start and end locations. Hence, the beginning was on the street and the final was beneath it in a floodway channel under the street. It was found a few times, but I ended up archiving it. It didn’t turn out to be as watertight as expected (which is essential when it’s sometimes completely submerged in water). After all these years, the bucket is still there. I know—that makes me a bad cacher, not picking up my container after archiving, but I used a lot of concrete to keep it in place, and I don’t own a jackhammer. I’m sure all the gems and gold coins are covered with layers of silt at this point.

On a final and completely unrelated note, remember when I mentioned that my chances of going to GeoWoodstock this year were fifty-fifty? Well, the 50 percent that represents staying in Texas has won out, unfortunately. Poopy. Why can’t I be independently wealthy and without normal human limits? The good news is I think I’ll be able to make at least two other Megas around the country later in the year, but as cool as they will likely be, it won’t be the same.