Don't Look Now, but I Think We're Being Followed

We had a very interesting day. Cool Daddy-O and I participated in a geocaching event with several other participants. We arrived at our favorite coffee house and listened to the rules of the day. The first part of the event was not unlike The Amazing Race. We were given a piece of paper with the name of a local business with a question to ask when we arrived.

Before we started our journey, I ordered a cup of java to go. As I was waiting, the organizer of the event came up to me (Cool Daddy-O was sitting outside waiting on me) and asked if I minded being on TV. He then asked if our local TV station reporter could accompany us on our adventure. Before I knew it, I was wearing a microphone and telling Cool Daddy-O what was happening.

Our first clue took us to the library where we posed the question, "Where are your bookworms?". We had to sign in that we were there and then we received our next clue. Each of the ten clues we collected contained parts of the coordinates that were needed to find the hidden caches at one of the county recreation areas.

At the carpet store, we asked where the shag was. At a jewelry store, we asked for a green jewel. At a grocery store, we asked if they had sardine ice cream (it was on back order). At a local cosmetic store, we asked if they painted frogs. We looked for elbow grease at the hardware store. We learned that the local shoe store doesn't carry size 24 ballet slippers.

Yes, all of this was videotaped. In a small to medium sized Iowa town on a Saturday morning. The customers in each of these businesses gave us very odd stares when we walked in with a camera man in tow. They were also quick to get out of the way so they wouldn't be filmed.

We didn't even try to explain what was going on. First of all, so few people know what geocaching is and secondly, not everyone knows about our local TV station. Hopefully, they'll all learn a bit more after the show airs later this summer. For those of you who are curious about this, just leave a comment and I'll let you know when the show will be on. It may also be available to watch on the station's website.

Once we had our coordinates collected, we fought a tremendous number of bugs to find the five hidden caches along the hiking trails. I only fell once...I was tripped by some weeds that "grabbed both my feet" and I went down on all fours. I thought I was unscathed as my hands and knees were fine. When I arrived home, I discovered that the 2 spots on my legs that felt hard and swollen (I though they were bug bites) were actually giant bruises. Apparently, I was attacked by some branches during my fall. I've always bruised very easily...so it looks a lot worse than it feels.

We also met some new people and got to see what some of central Iowa's geocaching celebrities look like. There are some people who view this hobby as an addiction of sorts and some are quite competitive. So far, we're just in the hobby for the fun and exercise. I think we're going to continue to meet some pretty cool people too.

This weekend we attained our 50th find (although we haven't figured out how to log the most recent 5). For more information on geocaching, you can check out the link under "fun stuff" on the right side of the blog.