Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Journey to the Centre of the Earth



There's a nice new multi-cache in town called "Greensboro Underground," and guess where you get to hunt. Oh, yeah. So...went out after work, dressed for the occasion, with several flashlights (though I found halfway through that my brightest light was dimming rapidly, even with relatively new batteries). Met up with Night-Hawk and the Sneaky Bulldog, and we proceeded to hunt "Greensboro Underground."

At the first of the three stages, we snagged the coords for the next, held our tongues just right, and made our way into the earth's depths. Here, the diameter of our conduit was only about four feet, so it was t-i-g-h-t. And then what should our lights reveal but...spiders. BIG FAT HAIRY BLACK F-'ING SPIDERS—of the four-inch legspan variety—in mass profusion, hanging on every surface; up, down, and all around.

Night-Hawk and the Bulldog gently suggested that I go first.

All righty then. Only ever-so-slightly daunted, it was onward. (You should have heard the Bulldog scream when one of the spiders passed right under his legs.) At a junction, the Bulldog takes the lead and finds the requisite clue in short order. So we're quickly out of there and off to the next stage.

Lots of ground to cover, or rather, underground to cover. We discovered at several junctions that we had choices to make, and it paid to choose wisely. At first, we straddled the streams in the tunnels, figuring we might actually get out of this without getting soaking wet. Came a time we finally said the heck with it, and now my boots are drying out for the next couple of days.

At long last, and lord knows how far in, I spy the cache. But it was here I made a grave mistake! Night-Hawk had kept right on going, but in my enthusiasm, I blurted, "It's here!" Had I not, he might still be down there having scads of fun while I'm lounging around above-ground, enjoying a post-cache martini. I'm sure I'll do better next time.

Actually, I'm glad Night-Hawk is still with us because he documented the whole journey with pics. I was reluctant to take my camera with me because I am a devout klutz, and probably would have dunked it.

At least I am a wise klutz.

Wait, what...?


The Bulldog wanted to play ball, so we let him.


On and on it goes...


Success....

3 comments:

Beth Walton said...

Looks to me like you're just going through the motions and having no fun at all. Sigh . . . I'm sure glad Sneaky Bulldog and Nigh Hawk were willing to let you tag along. :-)

As for this area, it's the first time since I began caching that I can actually see the number of available caches go down each week. :-(


On the bright side, I've studied many of the masters back in GSO, including the Damned Rodan style of cache placement, and hope to bring some respectable copies to this area soon.

I really miss you guys.

Stewart Sternberg (half of L.P. Styles) said...

With my luck, someone's going to find my hiding spot and use it as a geocache site. Then there will be two bodies there.

Stephen Mark Rainey said...

Beth: Get 'em hidden, and maybe we'll just have to come hunt 'em. ;)

Stewart: Dammit, I -never- find any bodies when I'm on the hunt. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.