The Second Best Happening

Yesterday morning, the Girls, visiting from L-Town, and I went out to grab a cache. Since my car is still in the shop, we were going to have a bus-based adventure, but I wimped out and decided to use one of the ridesharing services we have all come to know and loathe. They were the kind of cheap that I could barely pass up so how could I say no? Especially when it involved my little girls? We went downtown to the walking trails along Town Lake and went for a short walk up the trail to a pet water fountain. After a few minutes of dodging muggles and their dogs, we managed to spot a post cap that was much shinier that the rest of the pole and beneath it was our cache. Invenimus, inscripsimus, reposuimus.

Once our work there was done, we walked back down the trial into downtown proper and grabbed lunch. Since the rideshare genie had already been let out of the bottle, I decided we might as well kick it up a notch. We were on the edge of downtown and the Capitol nearby had a couple of Adventure Labs I hadn’t gotten yet, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone. Even though it was walkable (it was only a mile and change), I summoned another ride and this time my wish was granted: we got an autonomous vehicle for the ride. It’s quite a feeling to get into a car and go for a ride with nobody behind the wheel. It wasn’t my first time doing it: I had ridden in one the weekend before for a short distance. But it was for the Girls. I know the technology is going to get better than it is now, but I felt that it was at least good enough for a short trip. I’m not quite ready for one to cart us all the way across town, but for a short jaunt, it was good enough. Fun fact: the vehicle sensors provide a map showing what it’s detecting and they were fine, except for a woman with a bag that it identified as a woman carrying a dog. And as we all debarked in front of the Capitol, I know that the cache had gone down to number two on our list of fun things for the day. I picked up my Labs and then we walked around downtown for a while. For a second we contemplated the possibilities of scooter-based caching (the same rideshare app also accesses scooters), but that got tabled for another day. That said, I may experiment with it myself at some time in the foreseeable future. The possibilities seem endless!