Life's Ambition Du Jour

Someone (probably not Mark Twain, though, according to The Google) once said “golf is a good walk spoiled”.  I imagine that goes double for Geocaching.  I was having no luck finding anything along the five-mile Noland Trail this morning and I got tired of dealing with my maybe-jumpy GPS so I just decided to simply enjoy the hike in the crisp early-morning autumn air instead.  

Isn’t that a great view?

For someone who has never actually been camping in his life, I am starting to get a pretty good collection of intro-level stuff as a side-effect of this new hobby.  The way I see it, the things you see in the pic on the left can be divided into four categories 1) stuff I already owned and knew I needed with me 2) stuff I wish I had with me at one point or another during a Geocache outing 3) stuff I hope to never have to use but really should have with me just in case and 4) stuff that is probably unnecessary but was cheap and small enough that I couldn’t resist impulse buying them when confronted with all the cool camping junk that is out there.

Category 1 things: water bottle, food, Geocache trinkets, and a notebook.  

Category 2 things: the daypack itself, leather gloves, Purell, knives, multitool, flashlight, rainhat, towels, baggies, trashbags, extra pens, extra paper, duct tape, insect repellant, sunscreen, and the Invisibility Cloak

Category 3 things: first aid kit, camping matches, emergency blanket, hand warmers, biodegradable Biowipes, DayGlo marking tape

Category 4 things: whistle/compass/thermometer/magnifier combo, extra carabiners, magnesium fire starter (I’ll admit, I saw the last one on Survivorman  - I figured they were, like, $100.  They are closer to $3.  They rock.)

I am sure that there is a fifth category of things that includes items I can’t think of now but will probably be mentioned during my eulogy: “If only our dear friend had simply thought to carry a [insert inexpensive, tiny, extremely obvious doohickey here], he probably would not have needed to pass on so prematurely... Or at least so slowly and horribly... Well, certainly, there would not have been the need for the dozens and dozens of small, oddly shaped caskets you see before you...”

What?  Oh, the Invisibility Cloak?  That’s just what I call the orange and yellow reflective vest there on the left. My wife thought I bought it for safety reasons, too.  Nope.  Let me explain.

A lot of these caches are in cities, you understand.  I guess if I was the type that simply didn’t care to “play the game” properly I wouldn’t bother with the whole stealth thing.  But, since I do want to play right, at least half a dozen cache finds have been thwarted by the fact that, say, a dude looking for fake sprinkler heads at lunchtime in the parking lot of the Red Lobster attracts unwanted “help” from passers-by.  

“What are you doing?” they ask.  “My dog lost his ball” I answer.  “Oh, what kind of dog?” they eagerly say, and, lacking a follow-up response based mostly on the fact I know very little about dogs and the person I am talking to clearly does, out comes the chloroform again and... Well, perhaps I’ve said too much...

I suppose I could answer the “What are you doing?” question with “Why, I’m minding my own [expletive deleted] business.  What the [expletive deleted] are you doing?”  then give them the “Whassup? Whassup?” hands, but that seems like that might result in “help” from uniformed officials of some kind.

Meh.  Best just to play the game right and be stealthy.  

Much like a orange and black bestriped tiger is somehow invisible in the middle of a grassy plain, a notebook-carrying person in a plain white cotton t-shirt, grubby jeans, mud-covered boots, and a vest you can see from space is likewise utterly transparent.  Think about it. Do you care what the guys on the side of the road are digging up or burying or whatever?  Me neither.

This getup was especially helpful for my last two finds today, both in the middle of well-trafficked parking lots, and both dealing with mucking about with light poles (one about thirty yards from where the GPS said it should be).  Even if the vest is overkill, it does give me the confidence to go after ones I would normally have to retrieve at night or start a dumpster fire nearby to serve as a distraction.  

The same stealth rule goes for the Noland Trial. I have walked it before but I had never appreciated (or even noticed) the huge number of people out there at all times - jogging, taking a stroll, or walking their dogs.  In that case, the “Invisibility Cloak” is the daypack itself (the vest inside, of course).  No one is going to notice a guy with a backpack suddenly departing the main path and striking out through the brush over the hill - he clearly knows what he is doing and where he is going.  A guy dressed as a jogger doing the same thing is probably going to be pegged as some dude going off to take a whiz. 

Anyway, about a quarter mile after I made the decision to give up searching for today and just walk the trail with my pleasantly heavy daypack strapped to my back I stopped near a bench to tie my bootlace. I stood up and looked into the woods and noticed an almost comically-straight 18-inch-wide Nazca line of trampled ivy leading into the forest “for some reason”.  I decided to check my Geocaching app on a hunch and, sure enough, I was fifty yards from a cache - an almost completely wedged shut (thanks, multi-tool!) ammo box under a rotten log right at the end of the beeline of squashed undergrowth.

Since I now knew that my GPS was operating properly I resumed the hunt.  I didn’t find all of them along the trail during my four-hour outing this morning but I found enough to be satisfied.   The two city ones I found after my hike that brought my total up to twenty were just icing on the cake.

What?!  It’s almost midnight?! Maaannn... Sorry to end this article all “Deus ex machina” on you and junk but I gotta get me some sleep.  The end.  More later.