ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

I went geocaching this weekend with two women from my Weight Watchers group. We started out with a pretty easy virtual cache, then found a couple slightly more challenging caches, then spent probably over a half hour stumbling around in the freezing wind looking for the last one. I don’t want to give away too much information in case somebody wants to find this later, but there was a reason (aside from our general navigational incompetence) that we had so much trouble finding it.

The cache had been created as a memorial for someone’s son’s best friend who had been killed in a traffic accident near the site. Rather than honoring the location with flowers and a cross like many families do, they decided to commemorate his life by making a geocache in his honor. So we parked, found our starting point, and began navigating our way based on the instructions in the cache. But we kept second guessing ourselves because it seemed like if we followed the directions, we would have to jaywalk over an access road to a major thoroughfare, which was not really intended in the slightest for pedestrian traffic. Finally we realized we had to cross the ramp, so we did our best to follow the plotted course without being hit by a car in the process.

The actual item was wrapped in Realtree tape and was actually quite difficult to find. I think there is basically no way I would have found it if I had been on my own, since I walked right past it. We didn’t even locate the thing until we were ready to give up.

So as we trekked back to the car, we reflected on what seemed like an incredible irony. I mean, shame on us for thinking that a cache created to honor a boy killed in traffic wouldn’t ask us to walk into traffic! It was a little surprising. Still, we decided not to comment on this when we logged the find. It might seem insensitive, all things considered.