CACHING WITH NANNCYAN

A normal day

Whenever we attend a Meet ‘n’ Greet I always hear the same thing.  “Your wife is so nice.  You are so lucky to have someone like her to cache with.”  I’m not saying my wife is not nice but lucky is not a word I would use to describe my caching experience.  First off the wife has the uncanny ability to make the simplest of chores into something quite complicated.  Combine that with her ever present klutziness and you have a routine that would tempt the patience of Job.  I guess I need to give an example of  one of our normal caching day.

First my wife is not a morning person.  The, so sweet  everyone loves , person you meet at an event is unrecognizable at 7:00AM.  I’m usually up first.  After I make the coffee I  retreat to the computer room.  If I happen to forget myself and speak to her, she looks at me like a bear being awakened during mid-hibernation.  After a couple of cups of the restorer, she goes to the bathroom to prepare herself to greet the world.  I still know not to disturb the waking giant.  From the safety of the kitchen I can hear her daily ritual. 

Wife:  “Oops, I touched my eyeball with the mascara.  I hate when that happens.”

I will hear numerous paraphernalia fall into the sink or on the floor.  Followed by “Darn it”.  Then of course at least once a week there is the problem with the diabolical curling iron.

Wife:  “Ouch, I burnt my forehead.  Come in here a minute.”

Me:  “What’s wrong?”

Wife:  “The iron is stuck to my hair.”

Me:  “How did that happen?”

Wife:  “I thought I was done so I used my hairspray.  Then I saw a spot I missed.  When I used the iron the spray must have melted.”

Remember we haven’t even left the house yet.  When she is finally ready, we load up the car and head on our way.  That sounded simple enough didn’t it?  I may have left out that after we had traveled a few blocks we had to go back and get the few things she forgot.  We have a system for caching.  I am the driver and the wife is the navigator.  I’m not sure how this assignment of duties came about but it should probably be reviewed.  I have to admit since we purchased the Nuvi, she has gotten much better.  At first she was confused by so many caches being loaded into the Nuvi.  Once she learned the closest would be listed first, she understood how to get where we were going. 

Wife:  “Where are we going?”

Me:  “4 over 4.”

Wife:  “I can’t find it.  Its not in here.”

Me:  “Its not the closest one.  You’ll have to scroll down to find it.”

She fumbles with the Nuvi for a while then says.  “I can’t find it.  You must not have loaded it right.  Wait, there it is.”

Me:  “Good, now load the cords into the GPS and put the Nuvi on go.  I‘m not sure how to get to it.”

Some of you might be wondering why the cords are not already loaded into the GPS.  There is a good reason that I don’t put caches into the GPS.  The wife doesn’t like it.  Any more stupid questions?  It is too much for her to sort through all the waypoints trying to find the one we are going to.  So, even though we have implemented an inefficient system, it is the one we have found bears the least amount of stress for me.

Wife:  “The Nuvi said to turn right on Plymouth.”

Me:  “The traffic is thick, so you look for signs while I drive.  Let me know where to turn.”

As we drive past Plymouth the wife says:  “There it is.”

Me:  “Now I have to turn around.  You need to pay better attention.”

Wife:  “Its not my fault.  This stupid Nuvi was slow.”

Eventually we arrived at our first cache.  The wife likes to carry the cache bag so she put it over her shoulder.  It was cool when we started out so she had put on a light jacket but now it was too warm.  She attempted to take the jacket off but something was wrong.  After a brief struggle she tried to get out of the car thinking it would be easier to remove her jacket once out on the sidewalk.  Too bad she had forgotten to unclasp the seat belt.

Wife:  “My jacket is tangled around the seat belt.  I can’t get out of the car.  Help me”

Me:  “I can’t help if you don’t get your hands out of the way.”

Wife:  “Well, excuse me.”

I unlatched the belt and she got out of the car.  I saw her still struggling with her jacket. 

Me:  “What’s wrong now?”

Wife:  “I can’t get my jacket off.  It seems to be hooked on something.”

When I investigate I found she had put the cache bag strap over her jacket.

Me:  “Your jacket is tangled around the strap of the cache bag.  Take off the bag first and you will be able to get your jacket off.”

Wife:  “I knew that.”

This process is repeated at every cache we go to on that day.  Confusion with the Nuvi, driving past where we need to turn, problems with seat belt or some other calamity.  Lord help me if I critique her navigating abilities.  I’ve tried that before and was showered with the wrath of nanncyan.  So as you can see, lucky is not the correct word to describe my normal caching experience.  But, as the wife points out….

Wife:  “Wasn’t that fun?”

By nanncyan

The wife and I have been geocaching about three years now.  We enjoy the exercise and great scenery.  We are surprised by the parks that we never knew exsisted right in our own back yard.  We live in Comstock Park Michigan.  We are fortunate to have thousands of caches within a short drive.  We are recently retired and plan to cache around the country.  Who knows maybe we will be in Washington next July for GW VIII!  Our goal is to keep geocaching fun.  I hope our stories relate that to others.

Marvin Altena