The weekend consisted of a couple of peaks, all attained without travel, based around gatherings of people. That’s a strange thing for me: Success usually comes from some kind of planning and execution, but it seems to have fallen into my lap, thanks to being social and crap.
Friday, I held my biannual solstice Event. We had a good number of the usual suspects show up, including friends of the site Godot and Razorbackgirl. We had a few faces we hadn’t seen in a while, such as Suchmann and Balde Runner. But the big guests of the evening were a couple of cachers visiting from Japan, LARCjpn! They come back every year to visit family in the area and managed to make it out to our Event! Though our visitors from afar ended up getting saddled with the responsibility of taking some trackables back home with them, a good time was had by all. Taco diplomacy is a cure for all things, especially when there is no malady to be found. And we all got souvenirs out of the deal, so woot for us!
The next day, I went to a friend’s birthday party. It was an interestingly themed affair, a children’s birthday party for adults. There were cupcakes, candies of many kinds, sugary snacks, various drinks, and childhood games. Believe you me, red light green light is an activity for the young. Perhaps I might have had a chance in the “old and fat” category of the game. However, I dominated Simon says. Having been in the Army, I had an advantage. Basic training is basically an extended, more physically stressful game of Simon says with firearms and occasionally CS gas. After the shenanigans were over, I began to head home before I realized I was near a cache I had DNFed a number of times. Since I was already there, I decided to give it another shot. I looked up, seeking what I knew to be a cap-and-cap in a tree, far above, in ladder or pole range. It’s hard enough for me to find a micro in a tree, but far above the ground? Even more difficult. But I looked, my neck tilted back as I turned in a slow circle to examine the branches. And, for the first time, I spotted it! It was about twenty feet up, painted a chipping olive green, on a protruding limb. Once I had spotted it, though, there was no way I could lose it again. I went back to my car to grab my pole and hook and then, this time prepared, set eyes back on the container. I extended the pole as far as it would go (fourteen feet) and reached out as far as I could, barely hooking it and bringing it down. Putting ink on that logbook was a victory I relished. That cache had been taunting me for so long, and finally it was mine. Getting it back up was more difficult, so much so that I had to place it back about a foot lower than I had found it. Yeah, I didn’t put it back exactly as I found it, but based on the previous logs, I knew it had been found at various heights by various finders, sometimes out of reach of any but the longest poles, and sometimes on the ground. I have no idea where it actually started, so getting it close enough to where I found it was enough for me.
I’ll take a good time and a victory any day!
Geocaching While Black 