Yesterday I had to go run an errand after work. I found out after I got there that I didn’t need to go, so I headed home because, well, I like home sometimes. But I was already out on the other side of town in South Austin, so I thought it was a good time to grab a cache. I prepared to take a significant detour to go get it; the area I was in had long since been picked over by me. Imagine my surprise to find that there were new caches I hadn’t gotten yet. It was easy enough to pull off into a parking area for a nearby walking trail and take the harrowing five-hundred-foot hike to GZ. After a few minutes and an out-of-place stick, I was signing the log.
From a geocaching perspective, I’m very lucky. Austin has an active caching community and large numbers of caches in comparison to a lot of places. Further, there are a good handful of prolific hiders in the area so there’s never a lack of caches, especially to the north in neighboring Williamson County. Going south is a slightly different matter. There are hiders, but nowhere near as numerous or prolific. You have to go down the I-35 corridor to San Marcos and San Antonio to start getting more significant density of hides again. In my early days caching, I was all over the city making finds and, with a few exceptions (mostly related to insanely hard puzzles), picked South Austin clean of caches. As I continued on, I started going further afield for them, often to neighboring towns that were easy to get to from north, avoiding going south. I don’t have anything against South Austin, but I’d much rather drive up to Georgetown than drive through downtown. That said, I should start reconsidering that stance. In the time that I’ve been avoiding, it, new caches have been returning. Places I hadn’t been in years have new (to me) pins designating GZs I haven’t been to yet. Some of them are replacements at old locations, some of them are new hides entirely; some are placed by folks I know, some by new names I don’t recognize.
I think it’s past time for me to throw an Event down there. I’ve gone to other cities and towns to throw Events, but I haven’t had one south in quite a while. I am sometimes the victim of inertia; a lot of cachers live north so a lot more Events are north. But I have to remember that just as I avoid going south, there are no doubt cachers who avoid going north as well. If I lived in Buda or Kyle, would I want to go to Pflugerville or Round Rock? Signs point to no!
Geocaching While Black 