I knew that doggy yoga position, alright. ‘Twas none other than “Canine Arching Back Skyward In Glorious Defecation”…
Probably the best thing to ever come from the wonderful technology that we know and love as ‘GPS’ would have to be Geocaching.1For more info on geocaching, check out www.geocaching.com.
“What is this ‘geocaching’ of which you speak?” you may be asking with unnaturally correct sentence syntax.
Well, as I like to sell it to my daughters: it’s basically “treasure hunting” with a smartphone (or any other GPS device). Someone will hide a ‘cache’–a stash of trinkets, pen, and a paper log–in some fun location, use their phone to note the precise latitude and longitude, and then post them online for others to go out and find.
If you’re looking for a hobby, I highly recommend it. In addition to feeding the urges of your inner pirate, you typically get to see new and interesting places along the way.
Recently I decided it was time to introduce our 2-year-old, aka The Younger, to this family pastime that the 7-year-old (The Elder) and I have partook in at least once or twice a year since she was 3. So on a beautiful-yet-fateful Saturday morning in early October, I loaded up the girls, some lunches, and a backpack full of unwanted toys, and we headed out on a great adventure.
In addition to a paper log found within cache, each one has a digital cache on the geocaching.com website. This is typically used for leaving a short note of with whom you found the cache, thanking the owner of the cache for hiding it in the first place, and any other random comments/hints for those who may follow in your footsteps.
Usually the contents found therein are pretty run-of-the-mill. For example, see Figure 1.
Well…after an experience we had with a certain cache, I felt it necessary to leave a slightly wordier log entry. Indeed, I was divinely called upon to leave a cautionary tale for those who might come after us; prithee, that the same fate that befell us may not befall them…
From My Official Geocaching Log (*Lightly edited for your reading pleasure. Also re-gendered the possibly male, possibly female antagonist in order to squeeze more humor out of the situation.*):
[
Didn’t find it] Saturday, 03 October 2020 by f***m******* (20 found)2Proof that I actually spent the time to write such a long-ass cautionary tale for future geocachers can be found here.
Well, this was an interesting one.
Cruising around with my 2 daughters, ages 7 & 2, introducing The Younger to “Treasure Hunting.” She had just fallen asleep, and for unrelated reasons, my phone had died at the previous Randolph-Boundary Hunter (the name of the series of geocaches we were hitting up) cache.
I actually didn’t know this one was here; I was just wandering southwardly, looking out for any county line signs.
Well, what do you know, I see this one and I’m thinking, “Hey, this might be another easy find. Let me try to find a place to pull over and check it out…”
Directly across from this cache, however, is a house. As I started to pull off the side of the road (and approximately in front of this house), I look over, and a kid of about 10 years is approaching our car…pointing a [toy] gun directly at us.
Okaaaaaaay…so maybe we won’t be checking this one out.
As I tried to pull back onto the road, I had to slam on my brakes as a big black lab bolted out in front of me–and I was shocked that I didn’t nail her.
So now my adrenaline level is jacked through the roof. I try to calm myself and scoot on down the road (remember, I still didn’t know where I was going–just knew I wanted to get away from 2A Boy).
Welp, that dog was a tenacious pup, she ’twas indeed. Friendly, but tenacious.
About a half mile down the road, she was still jollily jaunting beside us. Dang it.
I didn’t want to be responsible for this dog ending up in the next county over, so I slowly turned around and tried to “guide” the good little b*tch back towards her home. As I got to a fork in the road near where this whole debacle started, she raced a ways out in front of me so I slowed down and tried a stealthy U-turn.
I could see in the rear-view that she had figured out what was up, but I had a good enough lead on her that I figured I could gun the engine and leave her in the dust.
Nope. NOPE.
She was in front of me, in my blind spot, within 5 seconds flat. This canine had a death wish, but I wanted nothing to do with it.
This went on, back and forth–lead her home, roll down the window, tell her to “Go on, git!” sneak a U-turn, gun it, have her back IN FRONT OF ME in 10 seconds, yada yada ya…
There was a moment where I was like “have I somehow died and am now stuck in the weirdest f*cking form of purgatory?!?”
After about the 5th round trip, I was puttering along at about 10 mph with her beside me, when I noticed her pause and…shorten the length of her body?
Oh, wait.
I knew that doggy yoga position, alright. ‘Twas none other than “Canine Arching Back Skyward In Glorious Defecation.”
Could it be? Was this my serendipitous window of opportunity I had been longing for so desperately and deeply in my loins?
Yes. Yes, it was.
I turned to The Elder and imparted all the fatherly wisdom I had to offer: “A dog can’t chase you while she’s pinching off a turd!”
“Go for it, Daddy!” she hollered in encouragement from the back seat.
Reaching back, I grabbed her hand and slammed my foot on the gas pedal as hard as I could.
In beautiful unison, we did our best William Wallace impression, screaming “FREEEEEEDOM!” while tearing ass the ----- out of there.
A few minutes down the road, she piped up, “You’re going to write about this in your blog, right?”
Yes, my child. Yes indeed, I shall3Original ending from geocache log, instead of those last two lines: “And The Younger slept through it all…”…
Content created on: 3/4 &10 October 2020 (Sat/Sun/Sat)
Footnotes & References:
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