While waiting to meet up with a friend of mine after her various appointments, I was geocaching around her (and what used to be my) neighbourhood of Marpole. Wandering over the cyclist-tolerant-but-intended-for-cars bridge to Sea Island, I found a cache with a peculiar prefix in its title - CoRGQ - and that evening I checked online to find it was part of a series planted around our neighbouring city of Richmond:
Each cache container has a secret word, collect all 30 words from the 30 caches around the city in a passport that can be turned into the Nature Center for a limited edition geocoin! While supplies last!
Now those that know me know that even silly little tokens can be a great motivation for me to try, with all my drive and stubbornness and dedication and effort. I really don't need another awarded _thing_ in my life, to clean or keep or lose, nor even the bragging rights that I've completed a task however great or small. I suppose it's just a knee-jerk compulsion to rise to a challenge. A quest! Worse yet was that I'd found out about it about two weeks after these caches were published, and hardcore cachers had likely been on this same quest for MY geocoin with a two week headstart! I emailed the organizer and asked how many had been minted and how many were still available. Overnight came the response; 150 made, 30 remained. Hence the added element of urgency!
Good thing I didn't have much else planned that weekend. Friday found me up in the wee hours and on a Skytrain around dawn with a small bicycle, kicking myself for not getting up even earlier. I quickly found two in the center of town and got back to the Skytrain to use the same fare transfer back to the start of the western dyke trail, and was cycling from 8am to 6pm - haven't cycled in awhile, my ass was still sore a day or two later. Sat
morning I got a ride to a few remote ones in the east and we searched
again a few I didn't find the day before. Then I
kept walking, getting the central urban ones alone. Sunday was finishing up
the last 6 on foot, spread out and thus less searching and more
walking. Most were easy, some were clever/tricky, and I found my first
floating cache: a piece of vertical pipe sealed off on one end with a
slow drip hole, you have to BYO water and fill it faster than it can
drain, and grab the watertight cache quick before it disappears again.
Plenty of opportunity to be resourceful - I had no water or vessel to
carry it, but found a used Slurpee cup on the side of the highway, and a
plastic baggie+hair elastic in my purse to temporarily seal the drain
and buy more time. Worked fine, yay!
Beautifully clear but cold, it was okay as long as I kept moving but
waiting for bus I noticed the cold more. I enjoyed the frosty parks
most of which I've never been to, found a few I'd like to revisit in the
spring or summer growing season. Saw the great congregation of snow
geese in a grass field. People along the trails were friendly.
My phone finally ran out of the prepaid account I purchased in June - of course while I was
in a forest at dusk, wearing a furry hat which the young barred owls would love to swoop at - so I know now that with conservative use $25 will last
from Jun till Nov. Now I put $50 on it, good till Nov next year.
When I turned in my completed passport at the nature center I chat with
the guy who started the project, and I watched the songbirds and squirrels at the seed feeding station in the cold evening. They all knew to leave with the light, before the owls start hunting. I was the last to leave the park. Got my Geocoin... now I'm hesitant to release it to travel because I know I spent so much time and effort to get it.
Amidst all this was my friend's goodbye party(s) and the civic elections.
Now I can resume real life, and on with Christmas preparations.
