Picked up geocache number 5,000 today, plus a few extra for good measure. The big one was a particularly enjoyable hide — "Dr. Evil Visits Mebane" (GC2B9TZ) — which leads one into places that at least some sensible persons of my acquaintance simply won't venture. I never claimed to be all that sensible, but I sure enjoyed this little underground adventure with Ms. Bridget, a.k.a. Suntigres, who accompanied me to make sure I came back out. Figuring out the best way to access the beast took some doing; I will say that I found a novel use for a light stick to guide us once we got down there.
Spiders? Oh, yes, quite a few. Happily, most were not of the gigantic, hairy variety that give old Rodan the shudders, and they were readily dealt with. Reaching the cache actually proved a bit less physically taxing than I expected, for which my back thanks the very considerate cache owner (some of those tight pipes have given me lingering backaches that I haven't much appreciated).
A very decent Mexican lunch followed, and then we got humiliated. Yep. We visited "Humiliation" (GC32J40) at a nearby playground, which required a couple of full-grown adults to undertake an adventure on the kiddie slide. More challenging than Dr. Evil? Well, I dunno, but we both felt horrible, shamed, low, and even downright dirty as we claimed our smileys on this one.
Caching completed, we met up with Ms. Kimberly to visit GlenMarie and Irongate Vineyards, which involved the hideous suffering of sitting and relaxing with some excellent wine. Topping it off, an excellent Thai dinner at Simply Thai in Elon, which has become one of my favorite Asian restaurants.
No telling whether I'll find another 5,000 caches in this lifetime — quite a few geocachers of my acquaintance have numbers up in the 10,000–30,000+ range — but as long as there are plenty of smileys to be had, I figure I'll traipse out after them. The activity has sure done wonders for conquering a few phobias. Now, if only there were a cache to fix my deep dread of politicians....
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| Old Rodan at the access point. |
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| Suntigres conquers her fear of humiliation! (GC32J40) |
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| One of GlenMarie Vineyards' resident alpacas |
