THEY'RE HERE!! THEY'RE HERE!!

My Pathtags, I mean.

Pathtags are yet another way to spend your money when Geocaching. Actually they are little iron disks about the size of a quarter, maybe a little smaller, and are a handy way of saying "I was here" by simply leaving one at the desired location or cache. They are one of those items you never heard of before and then find out there is an entire subculture of Pathtag enthusiasts busy designing, buying and trading them around the world. The little round white circle represents a hole in the Pathtag so that they can be hung on a display of some sort.

I had my tag professionally designed, yes there are even professional designers for these things--who knew. The design price was not at all expensive ($25.00) and the results much more pleasing than I could ever have done.

My trailname for Geocaching and a lot of other activities is "woodhick803", a name that harks back to the early days of logging & logging railroads in WV. A woodhick was a common, ordinary, everyday lumberjack. The 803 is used because many woodhicks came from countries like Poland, Russia, and Italy and therefore bore names largely unpronounceable to the average West Virginian. These foreign workers were simply issued numbered brass tags in order for the company time and record keepers to be able to record the work hours and days of each individual. Thus "woodhick803" to honor both the lumberjacks from an earlier day and my Russian grandfather, who, while not a woodhick but rather a coal miner, was probably issued more than one brass check tag during his life.

Pathtags, another way to enrich Geocaching, who knew.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING--SOMETIMES

Our neighbor, Pat R____ had entered the Geocaching world in late November 2010. She placed a cache (her first) at about the same time but because of various bureaucratic red tape (thou shalt place no cache without this sticker) the cache was not available until mid-December. Then it snowed...and, like some relatives I've had, it stayed, and stayed, and... you get the idea. Long story short, the cache was not accessible until the first of January.

Pat had asked that she accompany me on my hunt for her cache so that she could witness my antics, uhhh hunting methodology.

Finally, yesterday afternoon we set out for the big find. This would be one of those FTF's (first time finds) that Geocachers in general seem to enjoy--and truthfully I do too. Pat was excited, I was happy to be out, the dogs (Pat brought two) were excited because Pat was excited. Everybody was having a good time.

We followed the trail of breadcrumbs (the magic magenta line in my GPS) to the area where I began my search. I sent Pat and dogs away so that she would not betray the location and I began my usual careful and scientific examination of the suspected hide area. Pat said I looked like a bear digging for grubs.

Finally, after much overturning of frozen leaves and a prod or two by Pat I found the cache!! I was having trouble with the GPS updating properly so needed the very general hints Pat provided. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. You can't prove anything else.

But that's not the main point of my story. This is: On the way back to the car we passed a couple and small child heading down the trail. Like GC'ers everywhere Pat remarked that they were probably Geocachers too. We laughed and went home.

Imagine my laugh when a few hours later Pat forwarded a cache log report from Geocaching Central that her cache had been located just a very short time after I had found it. And then the kicker occurred, and Pat doesn't know this yet. I received a cache log report about the same time as Pat had received hers, from the same finder, reporting finding one of my caches. And the finder reported that he and wife were out with their daughter hoping to get the FTF on Pat's cache.

Sometimes timing really is everything.