The Girls came down from L-Town for the weekend, so Saturday we went to get a cache. We ended up grabbing one in East Austin. From a caching perspective, that is specifically where I was talking about when I discussed the idea of the disadvantaged side of the socioeconomic divide in cache placement. From a personal perspective, it was especially full of memories for me since we drove past the house I grew up in on the way there. We parked down the street from the house, next to the Texas State Cemetery, and took a short walk to the cache. I cannot begin to describe to you how much the area has gentrified over the years. I almost hit a few hipsters on the way there, crossing streets with little mind of the oncoming traffic, expecting (and, truthfully, knowing) that traffic will slow for their sakes. The old working class bars catering to Hispanic workers have long since closed and turned into the hip music venues of today. The barbershop where I got my first haircut was torn down and is now a farm-to-table eatery. It is place that I only barely recognize and the locations of my memories are a different country. You can’t go home again.
We were led to an alley between bars. They were not in full swing (it was late morning, after all) but the pierced and tattooed day drinkers had begun to congregate, to enjoy one of the last worm days before winter begins in earnest. All we knew was that we needed to look in the grass, but not the tall grass. That hint elicited an eyebrow raise from me, but we followed it and found a turtle with a hollow, removable belly containing a log. We all signed it and our work was done.
The day before was a little different. The Girls had not arrived yet and I had to run an errand late in the day. As I found myself waiting for something, I idly began flipping through emails to see if anything new had dropped that afternoon. A few caches had and one of them was five minutes away from my location. I jumped in the car for a quick little drive around the corner and parked across from a local upscale burger joint. A quick poke into bushes lining the street revealed a cap-n-cap with a clean log, unsullied by the ink of others. I claimed the FTF happily; I haven’t been chasing them lately, so I’m happy for one to fall in my lap.
That’s it. Nothing high speed or low drag. And no tromping around northeast Texas like the folks I saw Thursday evening. You can’t have everything.
Geocaching While Black 