Urban Renewal

A few new features have opened up recently on the walking trails in Austin that run along Town (or Ladybird, for the newbies) Lake. As you can imagine, they weren’t left alone for very long from a caching perspective. A southern cacher (and by that I mean from south of the river [which means south of Town Lake because it’s actually a dammed river]) has been dropping new caches all along the trail and was the first to hit the new features with new caches. Saturday, my older daughter and I ran a couple of errands and when we were done, we decided to go after one of these new caches, an FTF no less. We took a ride down to the riverside and came to a stop near some baseball fields. I personally am not a fan of those fields because I went for a cache behind them and it turned into the most unexpected jungle adventure, but this luckily wasn’t in the deep back of the park. It was late in the day, about 20 minutes before sundown so I wanted something quick and easy, especially since it had been raining on and off all day, so everything was still wet. She and I jumped out of the car with my trusty umbrella and went for a short walk.

We walked through a brand new tunnel under the road we had taken to the fields. The walls were covered with freshly tiled mosaics that touched on the many peoples of Austin. They were lovely in their sparkling newness, but I knew that within a year they would begin to show age once tiles began to come off. It was sparkling now, but it’s also the East Side. The city will not maintain its beauty. I knew that I would one day in the foreseeable future walk through the tunnel again, but it would be shabby and gray, its colors gone and not replaced. I hoped I would be proven wrong, but I know which outcome I would put my money on. On the other side of the tunnel was some electrical metering equipment. I had checked the hint for the cache on the way through and it let me know that power was some how involved. It took only a moment to find a keybox that blended in with the equipment. I handed it off to my daughter for her to be the first person to open it. She slid the top to reveal stickers and ducks within. Invenimus, inscripsimus, reposuimus. And I made sure to add a big FTF after our signatures were made.

Last week, I had a handful of things go wrong, complicating my life. After such a crappy week, it was nice to get a cache with one of my favorite caching buddies.