Missed It By That Much!

Saturday afternoon, the Girls and I were doing our thing around the house (in this case, a whole lot of nothing) when I just happened to check my emails as I am wont to do from time to time. I noticed that a new cache had just published an hour before up north in the wilds of Pflugerville so I turned to them and asked of they wanted to go after an FTF. After receiving a semi-enthusiastic sure from both of them, we stopped for a bit to eat a little food since lunch time was looming and then jump in my recently returned vehicle and headed off north. The cache was at the former location of a beacon for the Transcontinental Airmail System, specifically for the leg running from Fort Worth to Brownsville. Nothing remained of the beacon; there was only the back side of a health clinic. There was also a lone, dare I say incredibly convenient lamp post at GZ as we pulled into the parking lot. The description had warned us to watch out for muggles (it being a clinic and all), but there was nothing to even suggest a human presence other than a car parked on the other side of the parking lot. We all piled out, the Girls lifted the lamp post skirt to reveal a small plastic container. My younger daughter popped open and our hopes were dashed to the ground as we saw there was a signature on the log occupying the coveted FTF position. But how? It hadn’t been logged yet. We must have missed them by a hair! We noted the written time of the find. It wasn’t even that time yet! It was close enough that it was probably an estimation anyway. Oh, poopy. No FTF for us. But as we were figuring all this out, we didn’t notice the car sneak up on us. That car at the other end of the parking lot? It was jcox, the swift soul who beat us to the find! I had forgotten that I had met him before at a couple of Events, but I had slept a few times since then. I introduced the Girls to him (it’s still a little weird for me to introduce them by their caching names) and we all spent a few minutes chatting before he headed out. The Girls and I signed our names and then headed out ourselves. Of all the possible FTF opportunities that appeared that day, why’d this one have to be gotten so quickly by someone other than us?

Oh, the humanity!