Colleague: “You should join me for the Off the Grid food truck event by Fort Mason.”
Another Colleague: “I’d love to see you at our karaoke party in JapanTown.”
Evite: “Host wanted to remind you about (insert friend’s name) birthday coming up.”
I hit the “unavailable” button on the Evite page.
My response: “I wish I could but I can’t.”
My reason: I’ll be sleeping at that time because I need to be back in the newsroom by midnight.
I live in a separate time stream from my friends, family and co-workers. Most people think Friday night is the perfect night to hang out, discover new food spots and catch-up.
It’s just another work day for me.
After working in Topeka, Sacramento and Newark, I’m happy to be producing morning shows in one of the biggest television markets in the country. It’s still a lonely life. My puppy sleeps on the couch at home, my hubby bar hops with our friends and I’m plugging away in my empty newsroom. I’m always tempted to bring Daisy into work but I know she won’t stop barking at the squawking police scanners.
I suppose that’s why I do geocaching.
My hubby and I chatted about diving into the game about ten years ago. Last month, I started searching for hidden caches around the Bay Area after I downloaded the app to my Droid. God bless our smartphones.
It’s a fun, challenging and at times, wacky scavenger hunt hidden in plain sight of “muggles.”
The goal for any geocacher:
- Track down the cache
- Grab it WITHOUT being detected
- Sign the log inside
- Return the cache to its hiding place WITHOUT being seen by muggles
There are caches hidden all over the world.
Geocachers can play along at any time. So, I may miss happy hour with my co-workers or dinner with my husband, but I have this game that fits easily into my schedule. I’ve found caches on my lunch break and on my way home from work. I can also go geocaching on my weekend runs.
Now I’m part of a quiet world of geocache players. From San Francisco to Santa Cruz, the cache coordinates have led me to some amazing views.
The game has introduced me to locations that I wouldn’t have found in guide books. While the rest of the world scurries off to work or school, I searching for my next cache.
