Snagged another geocache after work last night. Just one. It was a little less than a mile from the house, so we took advantage of the gorgeous weather to skip the gym and walk to the cache site instead. Of course, we were a fair ways from the house when I realized we’d forgotten to bring a pen, so we had to hoof it back home to grab one. Between that and the puppy that followed us a good eighth of a mile on our return walk — which meant that, creampuff animal lovers that we are, we turned around and walked him back home — we were chasing the sun to get back home before dark after finding the cache. All said and told we walked about two miles, so it was great exercise, too.
This cache, called Shiny New Bridge, popped up on our iPhone geocaching app. True to its word, the cache was easy to find, although, as usual, Chad spotted it before I did. That’s because we were walking on opposite sides of the bridge’s guardrail to make it easier to find the cache, and it happened to be on his side. Hey, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
The cache...
... and what was inside.
I was a little surprised, and a bit amused, to see the roll of dental floss in the cache. It seemed an odd thing to put in there. I had the clever thought that maybe it wasn’t actually floss, that maybe someone had stuck something inside an empty dental floss container, but, no, it was really dental floss. Chad suspects the cacher who put it there might be a dentist. Or at least a proponent of good dental hygiene.
We didn’t leave anything behind in the cache. Just signed the log and put it back where we found it. So far we haven’t left any tokens in caches, although I know what I’d use for mine: dip pen nibs. Probably Esties. In fact, I was trawling eBay the other day looking for some. I almost bid on a box of 100, but then I got to worrying about the nibs rusting and a future cacher getting hurt on it. I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. Maybe I could coat the nib with resin or make a Sculpy or plaster nib from one I have already. Then again, I’d kind of like someone to be able to take the nib and use it. Maybe I could find a small plastic vial to put them in. We’ll see.
No caching planned for tonight. We’ve got some errands to run, and I’d like to get home early enough to make the pasta we’ve been planning to have for dinner for the past week. Not to mention the cats are getting cranky about their dinner getting pushed back later and later from Chad and I being out so late geocaching. Then again, we know there are at least three park-and-grab caches in one of the shopping centers we’re heading to, so the temptation to check them out might be too much to resist…
On the writing front, I knocked out about 1000 words today on a short story inspired by a picture Mark Rainey showed me at StellarCon of a cache he snagged that weekend. A playground in a cemetery — how could I not write a story about that? I would have kept writing today, but my hand was starting to hurt. Out of practice from slacking off on writing lately, plus I was gripping my pen wrong. (The Lamy 2000 with the Binderized CI nib, for the fountain pen folks out there. And, yeah, I know Richard would chastise me yet again for holding my pen the way I did, but I still can’t write fast enough with the proper grip — and this story was flying out of my head!)
I’ve got a mental note to check out that cemetery playground cache sometime, but I want to wait until the story is done. At least the first draft. I know how it looks in my head, and I’m afraid if I see it in person it’ll change it somehow and make it harder to get the story down. But, fingers crossed I’ll have the story done sometime this week so I can track down that cache the next time I’m in High Point.
Okay, I’m off to run errands. Later, all!
Well, that’s just awesome. 🙂
M