June 10, 2006: How Hard Can It Be?

It seemed like a good idea at the time... I'd been reading about this thing called geocaching and it looked simple and fun. Buy GPS, look up caches online, use GPS to locate coordinates, find hidden box, take treasure, leave treasure of your own, do another. Hunting for buried treasure with electronic toys. Any geek's dream. Easy right?

Unfortunately not... You see, our little group of geocachers has a common problem. We're fat. Really fat. Not just "I need to lose 20 pounds before class reunion" fat but more like "pulling small objects into orbit around you" fat. Three of our group goes 400 lbs and up. The other is my wife, our "skinny" person at over 200 lbs. We could stand to lose a couple...

And that's part of the plan. See, our geocaching group is also our daily walking group. We try to support each other in a diet and exercise plan and go walking every Monday through Friday. So far there's been over 300 lbs lost between the four of us and plenty left to do. We saw the geocaching thing as a chance to extend our exercise plan to go outdoors (every geek's fear) and have more fun than walking circles around the gym.

This is the first in what I hope will be a running log of many weekend geocaching trips for our group. Sometimes there'll be more of us, sometimes less. Speaking of which, let's meet the group.

Our group consisted of me (Gryphon), Tserof, Mad Mike, and Ash, my wife. We set out on June 10 full of excitement. A new toy! Look, it tells us how fast we're going! Oooh, I have 13 satellites! Wow! I can see the position of the sun!

We decided to hit caches down Huntsville, Alabama way since Ash and I needed to go there for groceries anyway. We noticed several in Hazel Green, just across the line but decided to skip these for today and save them for "short trip days" since we were going all the way into Huntsville anyway.

We noticed by far the highest concentration of caches was on Monte Santo mountain (they have mountains in Alabama?) so we trekked on up to grab a few. Beautiful country and I'd never been so it was already a worthwhile trip. We carried with us three baggies full of a D20, miniatures, and pre-made characters sheets for a fantasy role-playing game (did I mention we're geeks?) to put in the caches as "prizes" when we found them and removed the "prizes" already there.

First up, was a multi-cache that looked like it was pretty easy and right off the road. It was posted by a guy named Frodo (apparently geekdom runs strong among the geocachers) and was called Lord of the Bling: Return of the Bling. It was listed as Difficulty 1, Terrain 2. Not a problem, even for out of shape fat people. Besides, we reasoned, the gps pegged it as right off the road near a bridge. We sent Ash down to investigate since the bank was a little bit steeper than the 400 pounders felt comfortable doing.

Oooh, there it is!, we said. Nope. Beer bottle. Ooooh there! Nope. Coke can. Damn people in Alabama litter a lot. We looked all over. Under rocks, under logs, under leaves. We tried to get Ash convinced to look under the bridge but her lack of a flashlight and my ill-times "Watch out for snakes!" joke convinced her that she didn't want this cache as much as we thought. Geocaches 1, Geocachers 0.

No big deal. We'll just do part 2 of Frodo's quest. It's only 450 feet away, Jason tells us, looking at his handy GPS. And it's only Terrain 1, Difficulty 2. No problem...

So down we go. And I do mean down. Down steep terrain. Over rocks, under trees, once over and under a tree at the same time. It was steep. And I MEAN steep. Four fat people perched perilously on a tiny rock, balanced by a sapling... This may not turn out well, I thought. But we pressed on. As we got farther in, we began to feel that this 450 feet was a hell of a lot more in practice than it was in theory, what with winding around brambles, tripping over stones, etc. But we pressed on still. By now, we had begun jokingly cursing Frodo and his "Terrain 1" climb. "Fucking little hobbit!" we said. "Did you guys notice Frodo was always falling down in the movies?" Tserof asked. "How the hell did he ever get here?" But still we pressed. Partially because we'd come to far to quit and partially because gravity wanted us to go that way.

Down we go until the GPS beeps, telling us we were near our goal. It dutifully pointed us in the right direction... right into a cave. "I think it's in the cave", Mad Mike, Master of the Obvious, tells us. "Surely it's not IN the cave" we reasoned. Caving without the right equipment is dangerous. It must be AROUND the cave!

Around the cave we searched, poking and prodding our sticks into crannies and crevaces (all except Jason who had broken his on the way down and was left with a nub). No cache. We begin to suspect it's in the cave. "Surely it's just in the entrance though" we thought. We peer into the darkness... Nothing. "You know, we probably should have brought a flashlight with us for this" I say, officially becoming Mad Mike's sidekick "Kid Obvious".

This would become a recurring theme in our caching trip. "We should have brought..." Water, flashlights, water, band-aids, naproxen pills, water, our brains, water. We weren't terribly well prepared (my old Boy Scout leader would be ashamed), not knowing we were going spelunking today. Finally, we give up and agree to move to another cache. By now uttering Frodo's name is equal to spitting on Baby Jesus. There are many jokes about calling ourselves Sauron just so we can have a goal of killing Frodo (are you seeing the geek theme running here?).

Back up the trail we go. All those things we had a hard time climbing down were suddenly harder, since old man gravity was pushing against us. "Gravity. Always keeping the fat man down" Mike exclaims. I am pretty sure there's a T-shirt in that, but am too tired to ponder it right now. Up and Up we go, primarily because the only other avenue is down and down hurts. 400 ft sounds like so little when you walk 3 miles a day, but 400 ft vertical sucks, let me tell you. Up and out and back to the car, to partake of the 95 degree bottles of water in my cargo area. "Ice" we said, referencing yet another thing we need on a geocaching journey.

Geocaches 2, Geocachers 0

Next we drive up to the very top of Monte Santo, where Tserof's GPS tells us more prizes await. Ash wants a chance at the new toy and Tserof agrees to let her guide us to the next cache. My heart sinks. I love my wife more than life itself but I have ridden with her navigating enough times to know she is the worst, I mean worst, navigator in history. We have been to probably 10 concerts at 3rd and Lindsley since we started dating and probably as many more as friends before and it's always the same. We get near it, Ash swears she can get me there, I turn down a road that she say will get us there, we see our destination, we see the one-way street going the wrong way. We circle around. Wash, rinse, repeat 32 times...

This can't end well...

Sure enough, Ash takes us off down the lovely paved path merrily navigating. About halfway down she tells us "I like this one better. I'm switching to it!" and bounds off down the windy, sloping path, apparently intent on earning her Junior Pathfinder badge for the day. We all look at each other apprehensively and begin to follow. Fools we are. Silly people... Did I mention I love my wife? With every fiber of my being? It was a good thing because by the end of this trek, I was beginning to wonder aloud what the spousal abuse laws were like in Alabama...

The path meandered left. The path meandered right. We walked down and down for what seemed like hours. Every time we checked with Ash however, we were always approximately .2 miles from our cache. "We're not making any progress, something is not right here" Mad Mike said. He only has the one super power, but he's damn good at it.

Down and down and Mad Mike, who had apparently discovered a new power called "Voice of Reason" points out that it will be getting dark in an hour or so and we should probably give up and start moving out. Tserof wisely takes over the GPS navigating reins and begins to plot our course back to the car. "How are you doing that" Ash asks. Tserof tells her we started tracking when we left our van so the red line should lead back to it. "But I started a new track when I switched to this new cache!" Ash tells us. We all take a moment to ponder the fact that we now have no plot to our car and to ponder the penalties for aiding in spousal abuse in Alabama.

Geocaches 3, Geocachers 0

Up and up we climb. We are doing a lot of climbing but somehow don't seem to be getting any closer to the top. Not sure how that's possible. It probably isn't. I went into a bit of a Twilight Zone there from lack of water and a heart rate that is in the "red zone". Up and up and up. Farther and farther. Tserof and I, the least in shape of the four of us, begin to ponder how a team of EMTs will get down here to us when we have our heart attack and, more critically, how they plan to get two 400 lb men back out. We begin to suspect we're going to die on this mountain. I begin to ponder the embarassment of dying not on Mt. Everest or Mt. Kilamanjaro, but Monte Santo, which only qualifies as a mountain at all because it's in Alabama, where mountains are in short supply.

Mad Mike finally sees the top of a house and some power lines. We're almost out. Tserof chooses this time to begin hyperventilating, forcing me to become "Motivational Speaker of the Day" to encourage him to get up. This mostly consisted of pleading with him that, if he planned to die on me, please do it up there on the road where it would at least be easy to direct EMTs to his corpse. Surprisingly, this speech seemed to work on him as Tserof got the breathing under control and climbed to the top... right into a campsite nowhere near our car. We all groan. Ash, feeling at least slightly guilty at nearly murdering her husband and best friend offers to go get the car and come back for us.

We sit on logs and ponder the nature of women. Are there sane ones out there? We agree there probably are not.

Ash returns and we begin our journey down the mountain. I inform Ash that I am reporting her to the Junior Pathfinders and recommending that she does not get her badge.

On the way home, full finally of cold water and only slightly worse for the wear (are the spots supposed to be in front of your eyes half an hour later?) we decide we don't want to go home without seeing one cache, any cache. So we pick one of the Hazel Green ones that is near a baseball field. "Baseball fields are flat" we tell ourselves. This one should be easy.

I'm discovering that easy isn't a word for us... The GPS dutifully leads us past the baseball field, past the trees beside the baseball field, and right into the impassable tangle of brambles beside a creek. "The GPS says it's in there" Tserof tells us. "I think it's on the other side of the creek." We decide that the two members of the team wearing shorts would not appreciate the impassable brambles and move on.

Geocaches 4, Geocachers 0

Finally, in Fayetteville proper, we decide to hit the one in the middle of town, right by the library. How much more of a Park and Grab can you get than a library? Trusty GPS leads us past the library, past the dentist, and right into another patch of brambles... This one's not impassable but it's not easy either. Tser and Ash once again reference their shorts and decide this maybe isn't a good idea. We also once again remember we have no flashlight and it's getting dark.

Final Score:
Geocaches 5, Geocachers 0

Yikes... We play like the Milwaukee Brewers there... Oh well. We make a plan to scout out some more, easier, caches next weekend and go home, tired, smelly, and aching. Mad Mike mentions we've probably had a week's worth of workout today and the sweat on all our shirts says we probably did. We all agree that we'd better do well in our weigh-in on Monday...

So that's it folks. Our first Adventure in Geocaching. Check here every week or two and I'll try to keep up with posting. Hopefully they won't all be as eventful as this one (or as non-productive) but if nothing else, there's entertainment value in four overweight people attempting an athletic hobby. Kind of like a train wreck...

Until next time...

-Gryph