A Day Of Firsts

Today I was scheduled for jury duty at 8:15 AM at the city municipal courts building. It was the first time I had been called for jury duty for our town, although I had been called for county duty a couple of years ago. I arrived early (imagine that...me early) and waited in a medium sized court room for 60 minutes with 36 other potentials when we were told that our services were not needed. The defendant pleaded out and we were free. So I got to go to work after all.

I had once case forwarded to me regarding an app I had not worked with before and after doing a bit of research I was able to guide the helpdesk person towards the answer. Everyone was happy.

I ate lunch at Wendy's (I rarely eat out during the week) and then went to Huffhines park and walked a lap. As I was walking I began to let my mind wander about geocaching and began to look for spots to hide caches. It was too hot to walk very far so after picking up a tennis ball for The Golden to play with (the tennis center never picks up the ones that go over the fence), I went back to work.

With Geocaching on my mine, I began to look online to see how many caches were close to work and home. I discovered (via geocaching.com) that there were three caches nearby...one a couple of blocks from work and two at Huffhines park. I told my TL about them and asked him if he wanted to go find one sometime. He said that it sounded like a good idea. I think we will look in the park for one soon. I am going to look for "the roundabout" at lunch tomorrow if it does not rain.

I also noticed that there were a couple near my house that I could possibly find if I looked hard enough, so I decided to give a go at one on my way home.

Now I must inform you that I do not have a GPS (yet!!) so need to I rely on clues and "spoilers" left by those who have already found the cache. So with that in mind, I figured out some basic info about the cache I was going to try first (across from Kroger's pharmacy, above head level, hidden in a tree) and then copied that data into my PDA. When I got to the location, I realized that there were 10+ trees in the area. Since it was in full view I needed to be quick and stealthy while I was looking for the microcache. Planning paid off...I found it quickly (the second tree I went to) and without a GPS. I updated my account on geocaching.com and then posted my good news to my buddies on pownce.com.

While the cache was just a log that needed to be signed, it was still exciting to find it. I cannot explain the feeling but it really is pleasant. My wife thinks I should work on a cache and hide it nearby. Personally I think it would be fun.