Duffman

05/05/2012 By Kabutroid
This cache was found by sheer chance of being near it more than anything else for me today. Course, the same could be said of basically any caches I go after since it’s rare that I plan these things ahead of time. Today’s case was no different. Turns out today was a particularly beautiful day out, so my wife and I decided that it would be an excellent time to toss the bikes into the car, find our way to Assiniboine Park (I’d have just biked there from home myself, but she’s relatively new into biking, so that wouldn’t have gone over well with her). This would also let us figure out just how easy or difficult it would be to get two bikes into the car, since we don’t have a mount for them to attach to. As it turns out, it was very much towards the latter of the two options. But... we eventually managed, and made our way to the park.

After finding a parking spot, I figured I might as well find a geocache nearby and make my way towards that as an initial destination. Alas, none were immediately nearby, and I’ve always wondered why more don’t exist in the park. Although looking at the geocaching maps online, it seems there’s a fair number... I’ve just found them all already ToungeOut . Still, there’s plenty of room for more... but I digress.

Seeing this cache here, seemingly along a trail, I decided to make this my new destination. My wife was already aware that I was going towards geocaches, so this was all fine and good. However, we soon had to leave the paved trail, and I took her for her first ride on the monkey trails (or so I’ve always heard them called... not sure if the dirt trails have any other actual name). This area of the path wasn’t particularly difficult, so it worked out well. She needed to get used to the need to change gears every so often, instead of powering up a hill in a higher gear and killing all your energy. Nothing too crazy, so we soon enough found our way to the coordinates. Thankfully, there were no bikers going against us, except for when we just happened to have pulled to the side for a break, and when we actually got to ground zero.

So, putting my bike off the trail at ground zero, I soon began a quick hunt around for the cache. Under the circumstances of my wife directly there waiting for me (she’s an avid non-cacher, despite my best efforts ToungeOut ), I didn’t have all that much time to kill. On my own, I’d have pushed half an hour or more trying to find a single cache, but I figured she wouldn’t go for that. Thus, I had to move quickly. After about 5 or so minutes, I was turning up empty, and started to think about having to turn away. I checked out the description on my palm pilot, but that didn’t help, and the hint was a URL, which is about the most useless thing possible in the field for me. But since my wife had a smartphone... something I don’t have... we actually COULD check it out... at which point it still didn’t help even slightly ToungeOut . However, I happened to have expanded my search area in a different direction right after that (the GPS decided to bounce around here and there), and wouldn’t you know it, I spotted something that seemed juuuust enough ‘off’ to make me want to look a little closer. Seconds later, the cache was in hand BigSmile .

Quickly signing the logbook, I tossed in a micromail ball and replaced the cache as found. Whew... with my wife starting to get impatient with my seemingly blind wandering on either side of the trail back and forth, I was getting worried I’d have to throw in the towel in a few minutes. And only at one point during the search did someone go by, at which point I just stood and chilled with my wife while they passed.

So the container back in place, we headed on our way for the rest of a relaxing biking around Assiniboine Park. All in all, it was a great day all around Smile .

Thanks for the cache, and giving me an added destination in the park today.

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and micromail ball