Monday, October 15, 2007

Not Exactly Happy

Last night after placing my cache and sending the notice to the geocaching admins, my wife and I attended our small church's monthly evening service. Not a whole lot of people show up and tonight was no different. Nonetheless, it went very well and I am very glad I did not miss it.

I returned a phone call on the way home from the service and after that was done, I called mom. I love my mom but I cannot see how anyone can talk for almost 75 minutes non-stop. I was able to get in a "Yea", "Uh-huh", "Wow", now and then but for the most part the only thing I was able to tell her was that we just got out of service. I like to talk to her but lately her part of the conversation is mostly her repeating other conversations she has had with people I do not know...VERBATIM. If it is not a word for word rundown of previous conversations, then she will go on about church gossip (the worst kind) and it is all I can do to keep my mouth shut.

After mom talked to me for 1.25 hours, I checked my e-mail and was very disappointed to see that my application for hiding/posting a geocache was rejected. The rejection was two parts and while I understood both parts (and made the corrections to one of them) the other was more along the line of enforcing the letter of the law, rather than the intent. Let me explain.

There is a park near our house that has a great place to hide a cache. Now there is already a cache in the park, but many experienced cachers think it has been removed, although it is still listed. Since it appears to have been removed and the owner has not responded to any of the attempts to contact him, I decided to place a cache in the same park, but in the perfect location I found. Now the rules state that you cannot place a cache within 500 feet of an existing cache. This is done to keep an area from getting saturated with caches. I understand the INTENT of the rule, but following it to the LETTER seems (at least in the is case) a bit unfair. The original cache owner has a history of letting caches go unmaintained and does not answer requests to have caches repaired. In the past, the admins have waited 6 months or so then they archive the cache, allowing others to place one in the same area.

I contacted the admin and plead my case, but he/she would not budge. The told me to contact the cache owner (which I did) and if there was not contact for six months (we are at month 5 now), then the admin would archive. I guess waiting one more month would not kill me, but it really is a shame that people who put these things out just forget about them. If you are not interested in maintaining something like this, then please, retire it and give someone else a chance.

Well, since I was a bit deflated, I went to bed...it was already 10:00 PM and a serious storm was brewing. I kept dreaming that the admin would have a change of heart and see that the owner is not taking responsibility but I knew that it would not happen. I guess it is just best to wait the month.

I tossed and turned most of the night and woke up 30 minutes before the alarm went off. My wife has a full day ahead of her, so she got up the same time I did and oddly enough we did not get in each other's way. 1.25 hours after waking up, I was on the road to work. The drive in was very quiet and from the looks of the muni golf course, we received a lot of rain.

I wonder what today will bring?

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