A laugh a day along the way...

Recently, I have been dabbling a bit into "geocaching." For those not in the know, this is where you buy one of these handheld "GPS" devices with which you can pinpoint your exact location anywhere on Earth to within a foot or two (I'm not kidding!). They are fantastic, but at least the one I got is such a techie marvel it has taken me more than two years to get the hang of it. (Yeah - I know...slow learner and all that, etc.) It's a Garmin "GPSmap60Cx" and has more bells and whistles than I'l ever know how to use.

My main interest in same was as adjunct to my archaeo/woods cruising/backpacking interests as with it you can absolutely pinpoint the locus of any interesting feature (or find) - to aid return at a later date, or to let others go to such loci with minimum of trouble and effort... Ideal for site survey and hunting...

But there's a whole slew of folks who buy these things for other than their scientific appeal,and then get into "geocaching" which is sort of a modern electronic version of the oldtime "Treasure Hunts" of yesteryear. They go out and "cache" small weatherproof containers (old pill bottles, baggies, etc.) containing at a minimum a "logbook" or paper and pencil for finders to "sign in" - and sometimes a miscellany of "cracker jack" trinkets and stuff - that you are supposed to take one and leave a replacement of some kind in return, etc. whenever you find and open their cache. It is a full-blown "cult" now with its own (many!) websites and followers (worldwide!) and a full-blown jargon to communicate in ("FTF"= first time finder - a distinction for those who locate a newly placed cache first, etc.... "TN/LN -SL" = took nothing/left nothing...signed log, etc.). Lotsa fun and keeps you "off the streets and outta the bars"... there are even night geochachers with headlamps wired to their foreheads and all that kind of macho thing... even remote caches which (posted intructions) require "...some swimming to reach" etc. etc.... So far I have eschewed nightime dips in the Florida swamps here - but heck - who knows what challenges the 'morrow may bring?

Anyhow, Carl - Naomi's son-in-law with whom we are staying, is incipient geocacher, too. And he put his first cache right out in front yard here beside a fence post at end of his property (It's name in case you want to look it up on the maps of geochaches is "Don't Fence Me In" - caches are given individual names you see as sort of hints for would be seekers.(My first one is about 5 miles away - at edge of deep woods marking start of Econoloxahatchee Forest - named appropriately, "Ultima Thule"...etc. So anyhow, yesterday evening Naomi looked out window and there was a guy and his wife and two kids bending over out front and they had just found Carl's cache. So I ran out to rap with them and meet them and all. Nice, clean-cut looking young guy in late 20's maybe, and his wife (who stayed in their car) and two little boys - all scrubbed and tubbed and nicely dressed and super polite (these days you notice kids like that).

He grinned and said it was his first day ever geocaching - and Carl's cache here was first one he ever found! So I greeted him and said I too, had just joined the fraternity and had even then just returned from my bike ride where I had found my second-ever such cache up 'near the Econ', etc. He went on it was in fact his birthday and his wife had just given him this GPS unit earlier...

I said, "What? Let me get this straight: you just got your GPS today and you already have mastered how to use it and gone out and found your first cache already?" Then I continued: "I've had mine over two years and still don't understand it all - and found my first two caches only in the past ten days. We shared a big laugh at that!

Meanwhile, his kid kept standing right at my feet and he was holding up what looked just like a hundred dollar bill or something - holding it out to me. I saw he had a plastic sack with big stash of same in it - so just assumed it was "play money," which it was - a million dollar bill or something but close enough to real ones to make you look twice. (Time was the Treasury Dept. frowned on this kind of thing).

Anyhow, the Father said, "He wants you to have it!" (It was the family "jimcrack" item they were leaving behind in the caches they found. I thanked the boy - and the father - and we shook hands and they left. I came in and handed the bill to Naomi - who began to scrutinize it. Then she began to read aloud about how God Had his Eye on Me and Jesus was Waiting and I was going to go to Hell and Sinners Repent and all stuff like that there - and I said "Wha? Let me see that bill!"

And sure enough, when you turn it over and begin to scrutinize around the edges there are dense-packed lines of "flyspeck condensed type" quoting Scripture and promising Armageddon and Trumpets in the Sky ... and all the usual Biblical literalist line... So I said "Well, I swan, (or something like that  ) - I said I been "took" - guy must have been a JW or Fundie or something out there and he managed to pass his literature along.. to me!"

So the laugh's on me!

Dang!

(But since right now I am on a Sam Harris, Chris Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett reading binge in the hot new Agnostic Literature - I'm gonna get a laugh right back: I'm gonna use his bill here for a bookmark in their pages!

Fallen From Grace in Florida

bernie