Fancy Plans And Pants To Match

It’s been a minute since I’ve been live writing. What have I been doing since I got back from Atlanta? Other than Christmas/Holiday stuff? Well, the big thing is continuing with planning for Texas Challenge. Of course, the big things have been 95% taken care of, but this if the point where the details need to be worked on. A lot of them are small details, but as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. That said, I’ve got great people helping me out and a location that’s very much willing to help so I have high hopes that things will go off with a minimal number of hitches (even clockwork gets grit in the gears).

I threw a couple of Events, namely a Solstice one and a New Year’s Day one. The solstice one I inherited and the New Years one I just started doing and kept doing. I would have done a New Years Eve one, but someone had a Community Celebration they wanted to use before they would lose so I left that duty to them. Events are something I should be doing more of this year. Austin has Events, but San Marcos and especially San Antonio blow us away these days. My calendar is set to show all Events within a hundred miles and Those folks keep it lit up and full. Unfortunately, many of them are not an option for me because they have a lot of weekday morning ones and I’m not independently wealthy so I have to punch a proverbial timeclock. It is well within my power and ability to do something about that. I want to try to have one at least once a month which feels like a lot to me. A long time ago I bought an inexpensive blank book to serve as a log for Events and I’m not even a quarter of the way through it after all these years. Even more so, I need to move Events around town. They have a tendency to stay on the north side because many of the local cachers live north. I should do something for the southern contingent. And, of course, there’s east and west sides to explore so let’s see what we can get done in that regard.

A few weeks ago, I took a day trip towards West Texas. Razorbackgirl, Krissy4884, Kittydcota, and myself took a trip out to several counties for Texas 2-Step purposes. We hit some counties on the way to and from the Caverns of Sonora. Unfortunately, we didn’t take the cave tour because, based on the description, two of us might have made it through and two of us might not. But that wasn’t the most important realization I had there. I made a smashed penny while I was out there and realized that, with the US Mint no longer making pennies, penny smashers are going to go the way of the dodo in my lifetime. In a decade, I don’t think they’ll be around at all anymore. I’m a firm believer that, though it does have a legit function as an economic indicator, the penny has long since outlived its usefulness, but I’ll be sad to see penny smashers go. Most of them, that is. There’s one at the Space Needle that cost three dollars when I was there three years ago. That one can go far, far away back to the bowels of heck it came from.

Jasmer, unlike in the past, has been on my mind a lot lately. For those of you who have been living under a rock, Jasmer is a standing challenge to find a cache for each month since the beginning of Geocaching in May 2000. I’ve never been especially into it but I figured that if I kept finding caches, I would eventually complete it. Completing the year 2000 is already a problem (there are only 120 caches from that year) bu the real difficulty of completing Jasmer is August 2000. There are only four caches on Earth remaining from that month, three in the US and one outside of Stockholm, Sweden. Well, I have one of them now. That leaves me needing two months to fill. One of them has lots of caches all across the state, the other has a single one here in Denton County. I could take a day trip and finish it. At some point over the next few months, I’m going to take that trip and get the proverbial ‘er done. I’ll probably take care of some other challenge related finds while I’m up there.

Lastly, I’ve got Megas on the brain. I doubt I’m going to Yuma or Bamarama since they’re so close to Texas Challenge which I am contractually obligated to attend. I’m hoping to attend GeoWoodstock since it’s much closer this year in Kansas. I’ve missed the last couple so I’m looking forward to this one. I’m probably going to Land Run in Guthrie as well. I’ve got relatives down the road in OKC so I’ll probably use it as an excuse to visit them as well. If I can fit in another one this year, I might o that as well. I have more than enough counties to find so a Mega in a new place for me would be lovely.

And finally, I intend to get some new counties. I don’t know where yet, though I have some places in mind for various reasons. But my goal there is to hit county one thousand. I only need 31 more counties to pass the thirty percent mark, but there something so great about having that nice round number of 1000 counties. Can I visit eighty-seven counties this year? It’s been a while, but I’m sure going to try!