Most of last week has been, on a personal level, a comedy of errors. Every day has been something, whether it’s been dead home internet (it’s still out, but I’ve been using other options), friends’ emergencies, or integral plans completely changing (altering my schedule and sucking up my time). Heck, if I listed them all one after another, you’d think I was making excuses to get out of writing or something. This has also hindered my caching efforts during the same period. Therefore, I’ve been leaning on challenges a lot more for a few days. I don’t want you to think I’m going off my rocker or anything when I say this, but there are more important things than geocaching. They are rare, but they exist.
Yesterday, though, I finally got a chance to get out and grab something substantive. Or so I thought. I went out yesterday morning intent on finding a cache. I found what I thought would be the perfect one, but it turned out to be on church property. As you know if you’ve been following me for a while (or have a lick of common sense), I don’t mess with a church on a Sunday. This was a harbinger of things to come. I chose a second, nearby cache and made an attempt at it. Under the intermittent gaze of a mobile mechanic of some variety, I began examining a giant bush with the most annoying pokey things. I walked around it and then gently pushed into it, making sure to keep the poking to a minimum. But then I got a phone call. Some caching friends needed a favor. I couldn’t complete the main part of it, but I was able to work out an alternative option for them that would do the job. That involved meeting them shortly, and I thought I should be able to get the cache and then meet them on time. I forgot to factor in an important note: my ability to find a cache is proportional to the amount of time I have to find it. For my less mathy readers, when I have all day to find a cache, it jumps out at me with abandon, but if I have any time constraint at all, I’ll never find it. Well, introducing a time constraint guaranteed I avoided pokey crap for naught. As I left the gaze of the mechanic, I thought to swing by a quick park-and-grab on my route. That hope was quickly dashed. You see, the park-and-grab I stopped at was hidden by one of the new acolytes of our most prolifically troublesome hider. I took more time than I really had to examine the hydrant, the fence, the tree, and the poles, but again, all came to naught. The sands of the hourglass falling fast, I sped away to my meeting. It was worth it; I was saving them about five hours of driving. But my will was sapped. I had already been about in the heat of the day and didn’t look forward to getting back out in it again. I decided to call it there. I needed to do a lot more things before bed. So I wimped out and claimed another challenge. I chose one that required finding at least ten caches in all nine Difficulties in Terrain 5. I more than qualified and logged it without hesitation. I know some people would look askance at that, but they play their game, and I play mine. Besides, hooking my friends up was more important. And if you disagree with that, I don’t even want to know you.
Geocaching While Black 