Rainy Day Caches #12 & 35

Woohoo! The band is back together. Tserof's back with us this week so it's our usual crew of me, Fish, Tserof, Ashlynne, and Mad Mike. Unfortunately, the clouds overhead portend a wet day of geocaching ahead. Not to worry, Mike tells us. He's looked at the weather and the storm's going to blow through in an hour or so.

Give or take a couple of days...

This week, we're moving some of our bugs from Alabama last week North via the "TB Underground Railroad" to Smyrna. We've got several new caches to try and one, Notorious, that we had to DNF previously and are giving another go. Our soundtrack for the week is Tristania "Ashes".

On the drive up, we notice Tserof nodding off. We were pretty sure we knew the cause, but didn't ask, not wanting to risk an appearance by Tserof's alter ego "Too Much Information Man." Unfortunately, as you will see soon enough, we found out anyway. And none of us will ever be the same.

After a nice big lunch at Chef Wang's in Murfreesboro, we headed on to Smyrna. Tserof, now full and sleepy, nodded right over and was out for the entire drive. As we approached our first cache, To the Boat Ramp, Ashlynne reached over to shake Tserof awake. At that point he, to our horror, started mumbling "not now Cali. not now Cali."

At this point I should probably explain why this horrified us so much. Cali is Tserof's... Well, I don't know if girlfriend is the right word. Gal pal seems a bit flippant. Having discussed it over with the group, I think we've decided "Ghetto Princess" may be the appropriate term. Suffice it to say that, when we say Tserof is "Too Much Information Man", she's the person he's sharing too much information about. So, needless to say, his mumbling "not now Cali..." had a predictable effect. Ashlynne recoiled in horror, then began beating on Tserof harder, hoping to wake him up and stop the pain. Mad Mike, who was unfortunate enough to be sitting beside Tserof as he began this, didn't even wait for the van to come completely to a stop before leaping out and running from the van in panic (well, we don't run but he waddled at a much faster pace than normal), presumably willing to risk injury leaping from the van over the chance Tserof might move on to a different part of his dream and, instead of saying "not now Cali" (a phrase, as Mike pointed out, Tserof has never actually said in real life) and move on to "go for the whip!" or "bring out the hamster" or something equally awful.

Finally, Ashlynne pounds hard enough on Tserof's head to wake him, where he promptly denies saying any of it. Fish and I are nearly doubled over with laughter, Mad Mike is rocking and mumbling like Rain Man, and Ashlynne has gone on hitting Tserof in the head well longer than was technically necessary.

The cache was a pretty easy one to find. Tserof was still shaking off the effects of sleep and the rest of us were shaking off the bad mental images but Mike (who had a pretty good lead on us due to his panicked flight from the van) found the cache. Fish took the 50 state coin since he's planning to take a trip through three states in a couple of weeks.

We loaded back into the van and took shifts keeping Tserof (heretofore known as "Dormouse") awake to avoid another "Ghetto Princess Dreamland Interlude." By now, it was starting to rain pretty good. We were pretty sure the time had passed when the storm was supposed to "move on through" according to the weather Mike read, but it seemed to have no intention of moving anywhere.

Did we go home? Did we hole up somewhere and wait it out? You don't know us very well, do you?

Pressing on, we went to do John Wesley's Cache. We went to the area the GPS pointed, and it was an alleyway. Since the description promised a church, we were a bit puzzled. Mike got his GPS zeroed in and noticed that it pointed several hundred yards away from where Fish's was pointing. Since looking for Fish's location wasn't producing anything that looked capable of supporting a cache, we went to follow Mike. As we walked, Fish fiddled with the other GPS and noticed he had missed clicking on the cache and had somehow, instead, clicked on the geographic center of Smyrna. Oops....

Fish got the other GPSr fixed and, sure enough, it pointed to the same place where Mike's did. Now, remember a couple of things here. First, that this is several hundred yards from where we parked, second, that it's raining pretty hard by now, and third, that there's a parking lot like 3 feet from the cache. Honestly, a person with long arms could almost reach out of the car and grab it. So, in true Zen Bassmaster fashion, we walked a few hundred yards, in the rain, to get a park and grab... Figures.

The rain was starting to slack up as we moved on, this time to try and get Notorious. We headed for the Percy Priest trail and, as we got onto the trail, the bottom dropped out. We were soaked to the bone. Worse, yet, it was bloody dark under all those trees and we had two keychain flashlights to compensate. We made a good attempt to find the cache but the darkness, the rain, and the fact that all of us who wear glasses (read: all of us) could barely see, we had to once again DNF the cache.

We headed for one of the pavilions to wait out the worst of the storm and try to dry off. All you folks who always want to go with us on these things, be glad you weren't with us today as all the guys took off our shirts to wring them out. Man titties abounded and pasty white flesh was on display. Not a pretty thing. Ashlynne had already gone into the bathroom to wring her shirt out (pity, since her boobs are the only ones worth seeing in the lot) but got back in time to see the Zen Bassmaster Fatboy Burlesque Show. She didn't seem amused...

Once the rain subsided a bit, we headed for our next cache, Tennis Anyone? This is an old tennis court that has gotten grown over. Kind of a cool location, although pretty darn slippery in the rain. Cache was an extremely easy find. Inside was a travel bug with a guitar attached. Its mission is to visit music related venues. And I just happen to be going to an Alice Cooper concert at the Ryman next weekend so I figured I could get a picture there and maybe even bring the thing in with me if I can attach it to my keys well enough to make it look like a keychain.

Our next cache was Crown Castle TB Hotel. We definitely wanted to do this one as Fish was looking for a few bugs to collect and take to Kansas City with him on his trip. Additionally, several of us had bugs to drop somewhere and a TB Hotel seemed like a good place to do it. Easy find, and found several bugs inside. I took one called the "viral cache" which has you attach a sticker to a trade item to make a "virtual viral bug" with it. Pretty cool.

Next up is Rock Springs Hideaway. This is in the owner's back yard. Blake&Nettie placed the cache and own the house in front of it. Nice place and an easy enough find. We signed the log and waved toward the house. By now, it's getting pretty dark so we head to do one last cache that Fish has been trying to get for a while, the aptly titled "Muggles are all around." Sure enough, he's been foiled by muggles every time he's tried to get it. This time, the muggles weren't so prevalent and we found the cache. Not sure of the wisdom of the placement since it's someplace where it can come into pretty direct contact with water and, by the look of the log book, the container isn't nearly as waterproof as they apparently thought it was.

All in all, a decent day. Aside from the whole bad mental image thing with Tserof's "Ghetto Princess" dreams and the extremely wet day, we did alright. Didn't get as many caches as we'd have liked due to the weather.

Next week, Mad Mike will be out of town with his brother and Ash and I will be in Nashville going to the Alice Cooper concert so Fish, Tserof, Chri, and our friend Doc will cache without us. Their plan is to hit Huntsville and re-do some of the more creative caches we've seen recently that everyone but Fish had to miss. Doc has offered to write up next week's blog entry and you guys are in for a treat. Doc writes better in his sleep than I could ever think of at any time. Come back next week and I promise you won't be disappointed. You may be disappointed in my blog entries from there on out, but next week should be good.

Ash and I do plan on meeting up with Fish and Tserof Sunday to go to the "Finger Lickin' Chicken" event in Nashville, hosted by the legendary JoGPS. Stay tuned for that as well.

Until next week...

-Gryph