Last week my wife invited some guests over to our house, and introduced me to her friend’s husband. “Mike, here, is into geocaching,” she bubbled. Latte seems to take great joy in widening my social horizons.

“That’s great,” I nodded approvingly. “International finance is a challenging field, but I’ll bet it pays for itself, eh?” I chuckled into my Diet Coke. Mike looked blankly nervous, and I mentally revised my impression of him downward. Some of these financial-type guys don’t have very good social skills.

Mike and I pose for an obligatory ‘husbands’ shot

Later, for no apparent reason, Mike led me around the yard, with some kind of compass that looked like a walkie-talkie. “I’ve hidden items at coordinates around your property; now you try to find them,” he confided, raising his eyebrows conspiratorially.

“Really?” I was somewhat surprised. I didn’t know Mike very well – heck, I hadn’t yet worked up to asking him for a loan, let alone a gift. “I guess our wives ARE pretty good friends,” I mused. “What kind of items, Krugeraands or precious gems?”

Mike tried to conceal his embarrassment beneath a veneer of bafflement. “Look, just try to find the cache, will you?”

“Better and better,” I thought. Cash is so much easier to handle — I wouldn’t know how to sell the Krugeraands, anyway.

We stopped to take a group-family-picture. We and another family graciously loaned Mike and De’Etta some of our children, since they have such a small family.

I wandered aimlessly around the back yard, peering under likely bushes, until Mike was overcome by impatience. “Look,” he growled, tapping his finger peremptorily on the screen of the walkie-talkie device he had given me. “You head toward wherever the compass arrow points, and you stop and search when it says you’re within 20 feet.”

I was offended. “You act as though I’ve never done this before,” I scolded. “Now, remind me: why, exactly, does this long line come together with these other two angled shorter lines? And what does ‘N’ stand for, anyway?” I indicated the small screen on the walkie-talkie, filled with incomprehensible numbers and symbols.

I wasn’t the only one who had trouble reading the GPS device.

By dint of elimination of all possible concealment, I eventually found the first ‘hidden item’, a plastic dinosaur tucked under the deck of my hot tub. I shook it hopefully, but no gems spilled out of its toothy mouth. “Heh, heh. One of the kids must’ve left this here,” I said, hopefully.

“No, that’s it — now on to the next one!” enthused Mike. He pushed a few buttons on the yellow device and handed it back to me. “Try to find the second one — I had a lot of fun hiding it. Har, har, har.”

Not our actual back yard.

As the sun went behind the trees, I sadly concluded that Mike was a raving lunatic. How else could a grown man take such delight in ‘finding’ so-called ‘treasures’ he had hidden himself only a few hours before, with the help of a mechanical device of dubious utility?

I tried to tactfully extricate myself, well aware that any remark, seeming to challenge his delusion, might cause him to turn violent. “You know,” I wheedled, “we could save quite a bit of time if you would just tell me where the last one is hidden, heh, heh.” I grinned nervously, while frantically signaling to my wife behind my back.

Latte was maliciously oblivious to my plight. “Would you like to stay for dinner?” she asked Mike’s family, sweetly. Mike seemed to be doing something frantic with his hands, behind his back, but I was too polite to notice.

Thistle opens a cache …

Coincidentally, Mike and his family were not able to stay for dinner, but were seized with an urgent need to decamp. We were left standing on the front lawn with the squeal of their 15-passenger van tires ringing in our ears. That evening I spent some research time on the internet, mainly to determine whether mental conditions (like those exhibited by Mike) were in any way contagious.

As I later deduced, Mike was trying to introduce me to a new outdoor ‘sport’ combining the least enjoyable parts of hiking and orienteering with treasure-hunting, only without the treasure (or the pirates). Using devices attuned to Global Positioning satellites, it is apparently possible to arrive within 15 or 20 feet of a predefined hide-site, or ‘cache’, given a set of coordinates and one of those fancy-schmancy GPS ‘navigator’ devices.

Rhubarb hones his mystical eastern martial art skillz, to assist in locating a cache.

“Humph,” I humphed. “I’ll bet that GPS thingy he tried to pass off on me was defective. I’d better buy my own.” Furtively, I ordered the cheapest one I could find that looked cooler than Mike’s. “Mine has a high-resolution color screen,” I gloated, quickly closing the Amazon order-confirmation page in my browser before Latte could catch me in the act.

“What did you just order?” she intoned, suspiciously. Latte is always jumping to conclusions; one of these days she’ll jump to the wrong one, and then I’ll show no mercy.

“Just a little GPS thingy,” I told her airily, as an adept of deep mysteries addresses a novice. “I’ve decided to take up geostashing. The brochure says it will promote health and family bonding and what-not.” I showed her the glowing picture of a stalwart, muscular father, boldly leading a passel of clear-eyed, smiling children up a precipitous mountain ridge, GPS thingy in-hand. “I’ll bet I can geobash better than any old international finance guy,” I told her, confidently.

My actual GPS thingy

“You could definitely use the exercise,” Latte chortled, slapping my belly off-handedly, producing a sound like a carpet-cleaner beating out a rug with one of those big wooden paddles. “But where can you rent kids like that?”

Although we rarely agree in such matters, Latte had a point. I mentally compared my own children with those in the brochure. My three boys (Faramir, Weasel and Rhubarb), though physically impressive enough, were better-known for being squint-eyed and surly, at least whenever their fingers were pried away from their computer game controllers. My girls (Foxglove and Thistle) are outwardly attractive enough, but both take after their mother in sniggering and snide remarks. I could just imagine how harried the Dad in the brochure picture would look, if he was constantly badgered the way that I am:

“Say, Dad,” one of them would sneer,” since when does the sun set in the East?”

I turned my attention back to Latte. “Maybe I could train ‘em, you know, build some character into the little rascals, like you’re always saying I should.” Latte looked doubtful, but I crushed my misgivings. After all, I’d already ordered the GPS thingy, so there was no going back.

Eventually, my Garmin eTrex Venture HC GPS Navigator ™ came in the mail, and it was every bit as wonderful as I had hoped. I tried to distract my wife from the price tag. “Notice how mine has a high-resolution color screen, and is substantially nicer than Mike’s?”

Latte squinted hopefully. “Does it have the locations of all 16,120 Starbucks stores world-wide, pre-programmed?”

Once we established that the device did not, in fact, have any coffee bistros pre-loaded (not even a Forza), my wife concealed her breathless excitement by carelessly tossing it over her shoulder onto the couch. “Whatever,” she fleered.

The following Saturday dawned bright and clear, and I gathered the kids to form a geognashing party. “Now, look,” I told them sternly, hitching up my shorts. “We’re doing this as a family, and I expect everyone to be kind, take turns, share the GPS thingy, and not rush to be first all the time. It will probably involve a good bit of walking around in the woods, so bring some water and wear solid shoes and long pants.” I adjusted my flip-flops self-consciously.

The mighty hunters boldly set forth …

We drove around for quite a while, trying to get near the coordinates I had painstakingly entered into the GPS thingy. People having rudely built their houses in our way, we were forced to circle the neighborhood, seeking an access path. As always, the kids admired my driving and navigational skills.

“Say, Dad, that’s the fourth time we’ve turned down this street. Maybe you could try a left at this next road, before we stop for lunch?”

We eventually found a path into the park, and descended into a green, leafy ravine; an unsuspected natural haven lurking behind rows of suburban houses.

You would think that a treasure hunt with a technological twist would be fun for the whole family, but we were plagued with such incessant whining and unbridled selfishness, that it threatened to spoil the entire outing for everyone. One person, in particular, was a veritable fountain of complaints.

“I’m hot, I’m thirsty, I got a scratch from some blackberries, and my feet are tired.”

“I think it is my turn to hold the GPS thingy, and I’m tired of carrying this plastic toy!”

“How much farther does it say it is?”

“Only 482 feet, Dad,” Foxglove tried to reassure me. “We’ve come so far, more than 100 feet from the car already, isn’t that encouraging?”

See, I did let others hold the GPS at least some of the time.

I decided to keep a stiff upper lip, as a good example to the children. Calling for them to assemble around me, I gave a stirring and inspirational lecture on the merits of bearing hardship with patience and stoic courage.

“Thanks, Dad — that was very stirring and inspirational.” Weasel soothed. “How ‘bout you keep a stiff upper lip in the car, while we hike over to the cache?”

Eventually we located and opened four such caches in succession; in a spurt of generosity, I even let the kids find one of them. We swapped the worthless plastic trinkets we had brought in our pockets for worthless plastic trinkets left by other geocache enthusiasts. I began to suspect that the entire ‘sport’ had originated as a clever ploy to dispose of unwanted Happy Meal ™ toys.

One cache was reptile themed, so we brought tiny plastic dinosaurs to leave for the next ‘lucky’ group.

As I sat at home that evening, pouring hydrogen peroxide on my bramble-wounds, I realized that I had actually enjoyed myself, and burned a few calories to boot. The children proudly showed off their ‘prizes’ to Latte, and I spent some time online, bragging about the caches we had found. No longer did our user name on the geocaching.com website have that shameful “(0 found)” label beside it – we had begun to be ‘players’ in the international community of geohashing.

Some of the caches (like this one that Weasel tracked down) were very small and consisted only of a rolled-up log …

I went over to my friend’s house and hammered on the front door. It opened, warily. “Hey, Dave, guess what? I’ve become a geotrasher!” I brandished my GPS thingy.

Dave tried to slam the door in my face, but I deftly blocked it with my foot, causing it to rebound painfully into his chest. Dave always enjoys my visits, but sometimes his clowning is a bit tiresome. Pressing the GPS device into his hand, I pushed past him and settled comfortably into his recliner, grabbing the remote. “I’ve hidden items at coordinates around your property, now you try to find them!”

Special thanks to Pat McManus, whose memorable style inspired this story.

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While we were in Texas with Kathy’s relatives, we were careful to observe all the Traditions. We spent time each day at the pool, and covered dozens of miles in golf cart rides. We ate large quantities of Mexican food, or at least American food made up to look Mexican. We played games and read books and even made a pilgrimage to Alamo Village.

Kathy’s brother and his children were often to be found behind the wheel of a golf cart.

And then there was Pico’s. An otherwise unremarkable gas station chain, Pico’s has the rare distinction to offer the world’s largest (at least in my experience) ‘Single Scoop Ice Cream’ for $1.19.

Pico’s. Now the secret is out.

You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so I’ll have to provide a picture; each ‘Single Scoop’ is really a compacted mass of ice cream requiring more than a dozen individual scoops on the part of the server.

Sarah already ate quite a bit off the top.

Kathy’s Dad and I are not very alike (he’s well-educated, urbane and handy, while I am, er, not) but we share at least one passion: neither of us can pass up a bargain. For this reason, as the last dishes were washed after dinner each evening, a quiet refrain would begin to buzz on the lips of the children:

“Pico’s. Pico’s. Pico’s.”

Clearly, I was standing in a low spot in the parking lot, which allowed Kathy’s brother, her Dad, and my own son to tower over me.

Grand-Dad would look up from his book with a twinkle in his eye. “Did someone say ‘Pico’s’?”

I would wander in from the porch, licking my lips. “Did someone say, ‘Pico’s’?”

And so we would drive the mile or so into ‘town’ and pile out of our minivans to stand in front of the ice cream case.

“What are your flavors today,” we’d ask. “We’ll need eleven, no, twelve ‘Single Scoops’,” we would confide to the server.

“Rosalita,” the girl at the cash register would yell, “you come serve these customers while I check the stock-room.” Rosalita had a strong arm from all that scooping.

Mint Chocolate Chip and Banana Split were two of the favorites, although Butter Pecan and Rocky Road were well-favored as well. One night (gasp!) they had nothing but Vanilla, and we all suffered with home-made brownies.

Everybody got Mint Chocolate Chip that day … everyone, except me, that is.

We had a great time with Kathy’s brother, his children, and Kathy’s parents; but when the stories are told about this vacation, I’ll bet Pico’s will have a prominent place.

These girls were later arrested for loitering, which really livened up the worship service.

Yesterday I attended a follow-up visit with my physician, to discuss the results of my recent physical and lab testing. Now that I’m firmly in my 40’s, I have begun to hesitantly grapple with the idea that I might not be immortal and invulnerable, no matter how many times I watched Stallone or Schwarzenegger movies as a young man.

I told my doctor about Pico’s, my eyes sparkling as a reminiscent smile wreathed my face. “I figure I gained a few pounds,” I chortled unrepentantly. (People with a double chin have an advantage when it comes to chortling, and I made the best of that competitive edge.)

“Yep. Looks like you’re up six pounds since I saw you last, less than two months ago.” My doctor didn’t seem to think it was quite so funny.

I mentally reviewed my options:

1. Find a fat doctor
2. Never get another physical for the rest of my (probably short) life
3. Break into my doctor’s office (each time I have an appointment) and inflate the previous visit’s weight, so it always looks like I’m losing.
4. Investigate my doctor for some vice and ruthlessly blackmail him into silence
5. Attempt to intimidate my physician so that he’s afraid to bring up the subject of weight
6. Change my lifestyle and lose some weight

Doctor’s don’t tend to be fat. Oh, you’ll find a plump one from time to time, but I’ve been cursed with skinny ones the last 10 years or so. They have to learn to live without food or sleep during their time as an intern and resident, and the habits tend to stick, from what I can tell.

Not my actual doctor.

My doctor doesn’t seem to be the kind I could easily intimidate, and I’m not sure he has any easily exploitable vices. Kathy won’t let me avoid annual physicals, and I think it is too late to build my marriage on a pattern of lies, having been pretty forthright up to this point.

The possibilities having narrowed, my course is clear: I must find a way to falsify my weight records each time I visit. On the way out, I carefully cased the office for windows wide enough to allow ingress. It would be poetically embarrassing if I became wedged in a window while engaged in this enterprise.

In the unlikely event that this crafty scheme fails me, and just to give our readers something on which to comment, I’ll throw out this question:

What is the single best lifestyle change you have made to lose weight?

Maybe I’ll do some sit-ups while I wait for your answers.

Tim

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