Getting Pickled

I’ve been to a number of Events. Being in a cache- and cacher-rich environment like Travis/Williamson Counties, they’re common enough (though admittedly nowhere near as common as they are in San Antonio). Usually, we get together at restaurants or breweries (we’re lousy with them here). Parks are a given. Sometimes we hit a library and from time to time we do something really outside of the box like a musical performance at the Capitol or for a storytelling Event. But last night was a first for me. I wasn’t originally going to go the the Event, but I was gently prodded into it by another cacher. That’s how I attended my first…

…pickleball Event! I was originally going to merely attend for the company and the free smiley, but the host roped me in pretty quickly, despite the the fact that I wasn’t exactly attired for it. Had I known I would be sporting it up, I wouldn’t have worn slacks and boots (alright, I probably would have worn slacks. At least I left the ubiquitous cardigan in the car. Now I’m not one for racquet-based sports, and I find pickleball a little silly despite its obvious popularity, but I have played a bit of ping pong in my day so I wasn’t entirely a babe in the woods. Most racquet sports are basically ping pong played while standing on the table, right? After a quick rundown of the rules (I’m sure they were not professional game regulations), we hit the courts! I and my partner went down in the pit a couple of games and then, after a rousing training montage, went on to win a couple, putting me at completely even. After a break to rest (I was feeling a bit queasy from the unexpected physical activity) I managed to get into another match on the winning side, making it a generally victorious Event for me!

Once we got closer to the end, a clutch of us went out the parking lot for a cache. I didn’t claim it myself: the Event was my cache for the day, so the I’ll pop back for it another day, but there was some discussion about the fact that the county line ran through the parking lot so you could have ones in both counties within walking distance if one was inclined towards such things. However, I did end up getting another cache. One of the attendees noted that her new Multicache had dropped at the end of the Event, so we all mounted up for a quick jaunt to a nearby park for a group FTF!

I got the the park just in time to catch a group that had beat us, found the redirector, and were headed to the final. I turned around the car and followed them to GZ and then we made a quick search for the container. It turned out that the coords were off just enough that we were searching in the wrong place, but there was an obvious other possibility not far off. And when the other possibility was examined? Victory! An FTF for the Pickle Crew!

Every now and then, I see people discuss the idea of activity based Events doing something one wouldn’t normally equate with Geocaching. I usually gently brush them off because I don’t really think of, for example, miniature golf as something appropriate. But maybe I’m the grognard here. This wasn’t even remotely caching related but YES, we had fun. NO, I’m not about to become the prophet of pickleball. And YES, I’d consider doing something similar again. If something gets people together and they have fun, what does it matter? So what if it’s not even caching adjacent? And who am I to judge anyway?