Eventful weekend!
Good things certainly happen in threes!
1) Geocaching.
Many thanks to Kel for putting me onto the concept of geocaching - essentially a hi-tech GPS-based scavenger hunt, where people hide little caches with stuff to swap, and riddles to solve, and you use a GPS plus some clever mental gymnastics to find the treasure!
When I first looked at the website, I was amazed to find myself surrounded by a dozen different caches, including one just outside our backyard! So we ran off to borrow a GPS and I found my first cache the next day – hidden under a sculpture right in the middle of the city, which I’d worked across the road from for 5 years! I was thrilled, and that’s led to a long family bike-ride Saturday where we tracked down a number of these (and got frustrated at trying to unsuccesfully find a couple more!).
Our little girl is still learning the concept of ’sharing’ 
but it’s all good fun. The next thing will be to plant a few of our own caches and to give the kids each a ‘travel bug’ which they can watch move around the country (and maybe globe!) over the years.
What I have fallen in love with this concept over is that it adds an exciting, adventurous, mysterious overlay to a world and city I’ve known for years… And now everywhere I go I wonder what might be hidden there. I’ve already been amazed at the number of places I frequent almost every day which have caches hidden somewhere, just waiting to be found.
2) Close combat
On Sunday we skipped church to go and be examined for progressing a couple more levels in Krav Maga, a form of fighting and self-defence which we’ve been quietly doing every week for almost a year now, and we came away rather pleased (albeit sore, cut and bruised) – Not only because we passed and are now nicely progressing up the levels, but also because we finally feel like it’s all making sense and becoming usable… A nice feeling, especially when we’re generally fairly humble, timid folks who would always avoid confrontation and give in to any physical threat. Nice to know that now we don’t have to if it comes to it….
3) Car hunt
All going well, the car hunt will be over this week – as over the weekend we located an awesome choice, which just has the catch of being in another state! So I’ll be probably flying over in a couple of weeks to check it out and, if it’s all good, drive it back to Melbourne.
I’m not going to say which one it is yet, but I hope you’ll all be pleasantly surprised!
September 17, 2007 at 3:20 pm |
glad you’re having so much fun with geocaching
that is a cute photo, and yes, she looks like she’s not too happy about having to leave all those goodies behind
and if you come across a muggler [:)] on the way to a cache, it looks like you have the skills to KM them if they get aggresive in their non-understanding
as for the car, it must be a good deal if an airfare is involved and it is still appealing
we await with baited breath
oh, and does the new car come with a GPS?
September 18, 2007 at 2:51 pm |
cute way of putting all the interests together Kel.
“aggressive in their non-understanding”… i like that phrase.
Yes, the car is a ripper. It’s not exactly rare or expensive, but it’s ‘unique’. Fingers crossed it makes the trip back ok! And no, no GPS inbuilt I’m afraid – but given that most geocaching is done out of the vehicle (as you know!), it’s all good.