Wednesday, August 12, 2009

The Noid Retoins! ..and 100 reasons why I'm wearing the "dunce cap"

I’m fired. In the process of digging up my old geocaching gear and getting everything back up to snuff, I found something.. and now I feel about 2” tall.

I found the Noid Retoins. A few years ago I visited my first event cache—Farewell Blig—a fellow who was known in the local area for placing some of the most challenging caches known. He was moving off to Texas, so the local geocachers and I got together and celebrated over pizza and a couple of beers.

To celebrate the event, we all brought our favorite trackables to trade and log . I dropped off a bunch of the wooden nickels that I’d helped manufacture and picked up a travel bug. Well, between then and now the travel bug had disappeared and I was feeling sheepish as the responsible cacher who irresponsibly lost it.

Good news! I still feel 2” tall, but the Noid Retoins and will be placed in a cache as quickly as possible to get going again. To the owner “chaosmanor” I sincerely apologize. The next time we meet, the round is on me. Count on it.

Lesson to myself and others? If you loose a travel bug it’s generally considered good etiquette to replace the bug and apologize to the owner personally. I did non of these things, and for that I deserve the dunce cap of the month and the shame that comes with it. Chaosmanor had a ton of patience—more than I would have exhibited under the circumstances.

2 comments:

chaosmanor said...

Hilarious story! Really enjoyed reading this, particularly as we've lost a Bug or two, ourselves (shamefaced, we admit to being Human, more's the pity :-P ), and while we actually found one of them in one of our own caches (!), the other one never did turn up :-(

In any event, take off the dunce cap! All's well that ends well, and all that jazz :-) We are just thrilled that The Noid is back on the trail, and are interested to see where you leave him. Your offer of a round is gratefully accepted, with the condition that you let us reciprocate as we trade tales of caching derring-do (and don't) ;-)

Jim, the other half of chaosmanor

Paul Myers said...

I've had travel bugs do the same thing. One, in particular, made it from California all the way to Ohio and then promptly disappeared.

It showed up 16 months later in Texas. Where had it been? In the toy box of the cachers who found it in Ohio. After coming home from a day of caching, their toddler happened upon their stash and saw the travel bug and decided that it was a good play toy, so he wandered off with it.

16 months later, the Ohio geocachers, now recently moved to Texas found it while unpacking. Unfortunately, it's since disappeared again, but it makes for a great story, which is what has happened to the Chaosmanor's bug.

Happy trails.

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