The next cache we needed to find had to be a good long ways down the highway if we were going to make any progress toward the event. The website allowed us to search for caches based on difficulty and terrain but a difficulty four, terrain four cache wasn’t exactly commonplace. The easiest one to get to on our route was ten miles off the highway and it was called Bird’s Eye View. The drive along the highway was fun. I’d never been away from my family, just doing things with a friend. All my activities while I was growing up were strictly monitored. Just going to a movie with friends was an ordeal for me. Half an hour after the movie ended my parents were checking up on me. It made me wonder why I hadn’t received at least a couple of calls since school ended. Were they actually trusting me for once?
We turned off the highway onto another paved road that seemed to lead to houses way off in the countryside. Ranches perhaps, or farms. The area was very rural and we occasionally saw cows grazing in amongst brushy trees. This wasn’t a forest, but it looked like it could become a forest with a little more water. The cows had plenty of room to graze. Every half mile or so we would pass a row of mailboxes posted all in a row. If the residents took the local paper there was also a yellow newspaper box nailed to the same post as the mailbox.
The road turned and followed a fence and when the fence ended the brush became thicker. Very soon after the private property ended we began seeing little piles of junk beside the road. The junk seemed to irritate Twiggy. He didn’t say anything but I could tell he disapproved of the careless dumping. The further we drove the bigger the piles became and we drove over boards and carpet remnants. We even saw a boat and a hot tub dumped back there. Why couldn’t people take their trash to the local dump?
The road deteriorated and as it got bumpier we found less trash. The van seemed to handle the rough road well, but we had to hang on to keep from getting jostled about.
“I hope the cache is not up there,” Twiggy said.
I couldn’t see where he was pointing but I hoped it wasn’t, too. If Twiggy didn’t want to go up there it might be a long climb.
Half a mile later the road ended. It had a loop on the end and it looked like people had camped nearby. Each tree that offered shade in the summer had a fire ring nearby. There were a lot of droppings from cattle or horses and this looked like a wonderful place to go for a trail ride. Twiggy stopped the van and looked again at the GPS.
“It’s over a mile away and this is as close as we can get,” he said.
“Well, it’s rated a four. I guess we have to work for this one, too,” I answered.
“We should dig through the boxes and find what food and water we can.”
All we found was three bottles of water, bought only because we learned a partial lesson on our hill climbing hike, and junk food. We couldn’t buy fruits, vegetables and meat because it wouldn’t keep, so everything we found was very processed, very salty and probably very bad for us, but it would fill our stomachs if we ended up on the trail longer than we expected.
“What about this?” I asked as I held up a half package of beef jerky.
“Did you buy it?”
“No.”
“I didn’t either. That means we don’t know how long it’s been sliding around on the floor of this van. I’m not eating it.”
I pinched the bag. The jerky felt hard as rocks.
“We need to trash it next time we find a garbage can so we won’t keep finding it over and over.”
We packed the junk food and water into the geocaching pack and took out most of the gear to lessen the weight. There was only one cache up there so there was no use bringing more gear than we needed to fix one cache.
“A little over a mile,” he said. “I suggest we read all we can about it before we leave. I don’t want to hike all the way up there unless I think we have all the resources we can get.”
“Okay.”
We read the description, which didn’t help much. The cache owner just said that he loved this trail and the view from the top. He did not recommend hiking it in the winter or right after a rain storm. The cache was a medium size “with plenty of goodies for the kids”. The logs said things like, “Wow, quite a hike! I sure got my exercise!” and “Great views all the way up. Thanks for bringing us here.” That didn’t help much either.
“Well, it sounds like we can just follow the trail most of the way there,” Twiggy said.
“What’s the hint say?”
I don’t know why I liked reading the hints. It was kind of like cheating a little but nobody ever knew if you used the hint or not. I liked decoding the hint on the web page but the GPS decoded them for us.
“Think like a bird,” is what the hint said.
“Well, it seems safe enough,” I said. “No indications of bears or crazy people. We shouldn’t get questioned by the police. I’m ready!”
“How’s your staminameter?”
“Full speed ahead!”
We should have paid more attention to the sky. We were not even a quarter mile up the trail when the sky became gray and ominous. When the mist started, the hike was actually pleasant. We sang, “I’m hiiiiiking in the rain, oh I’m hiiiking in the rain. I must be insane to be hiiiking in the rain.” We were not insane yet, but another quarter mile down the trail it was raining like crazy and we were soaked to the skin. We ran to the nearest tree and huddled underneath it. This was when the thunder and lightning started.
“You know, lightning hits trees,” Twiggy pointed out.
“And it hits high spots like mountains,” I added.
“So being under a tree on the highest point around might not be the smartest thing to do.”
“Right. So what do you suggest?”
Crash! RRRRRuuummmmbbbble, rumble, rumble, rumble.
“Make a run for it?”
“Which direction? Toward the cache or the van?”
“I don’t know!”
Crash! Ca….rash!
“Are you scared?” he asked.
“No! Just s-s-soaking wet.”
“I had to put the GPS in the pack.”
“It’s okay we can hike for a while without it. The trail’s plain.”
We hiked as quickly as we could, following the trail. When conditions allowed we even jogged a little with rain pounding down, lightning hitting the mountains around us and thunder shaking the ground beneath our feet.
“Okay, stop,” Twiggy finally said. “We better check our position.”
We found a little shelter under a scrubby tree. There were several tall trees around so we felt safer under the little tree even though it didn’t keep much rain off. At least we could see enough to read the screen and the GPS didn’t get soaked.
“Oh shoot!” he said. “We over shot the cache!”
“How far!”
“Four hundred feet.”
“How could we do that?”
“We were in a hurry.”
“Does the GPS work in a lightning storm?” I asked. We were practically shouting over the pounding of the rain and the booming, rumbling, grumbling clouds that felt as if they were just overhead.
“Look on the bright side,” he said. “No snakes!”
“Yeah, they’re all holed up under rocks and trees like us.”
“And to answer your question, not very well.”
“Oh, then how are we going to find the cache?”
“It should get us within a hundred feet or so.”
“And how many hiding places are there within a hundred feet of the cache?”
“Statistically speaking? Thousands.”
“What about geocachingly speaking?”
“Fifty? A hundred?”
“Oh, that’s all,” I said sarcastically.
“Technically any place could be a hiding place, but that’s not likely. Geocachers think out their hides and that helps narrow the choices down.”
“I wonder how long this storm might last.”
“You said you love rain,” he reminded me.
It is true. I do love rain. During the school year I was the student strolling to class in the rain while all the others rushed from place to place in raincoats and holding umbrellas.
“I do, as long as I can still function in it. This is borderline.”
“It’s freezing!”
“Yeah it’s a bit nippy.”
“Okay, judging by the GPS the cache should be over by that hollow tree.”
A bit nippy. I was trying very hard not to tense up and shiver. It might be summer but it felt like winter in those soaking wet clothes. I tromped toward the tree.
“If I was a bird I would like to sit up on that branch and survey the valley below,” Twiggy said.
“You mean that lightning rod?” I asked. “That tree has been hit before.”
“Lightning never hits the exact same spot twice.”
“Maybe not, but it might miss by a couple of centimeters.”
“I think that tree has got to be the beacon that the hint refers to.”
“I think so, too! But it’s pouring out there. They told us not to do this in the rain and the tree is on the side of a hill. It’s going to be slick!”
“I know. Wait here,” he said. He dashed out into the rain and he practically disappeared behind a wall of water. Oh shoot, I thought. I came along so he wouldn’t do stupid things and now what do I do when he decides to do stupid things? I sit under a tree and wait. A minute ticked by, or rather it flowed by. Everything seemed to be flowing. The rain. The mud. The common sense. They all seemed to be flowing down the mountainside. I dashed out into the rain determined to find the cache and end this foolishness. How could we even sign the log in this downpour? And once it was wet the whole cache would be damp.
It was easy to find Twiggy. I just headed for the suicide tree.
“I think we should be able to choose the emoticon for our finds,” I said when I caught up to him. “This one would have a shocked expression.”
“It’s not at the base of the tree,” he said. “It’s not in the bushes around it. It’s got to be up there! See that hole?”
“That one seven feet off the ground?” I asked.
“Yeah!”
“No, they wouldn’t put it there. No normal person could reach it and climbing this tree would be dangerous. One fall and you’d end up at the bottom of the mountain!”
“There was a log here,” he explained. “But it went over the side when I checked it for caches. I think it was left here to stand on and reach in the hole.”
“Oh great!”
“Let me boost you up. You can take a quick look.”
CaBASSHHHH! The lightning struck a hill nearby.
“You… are… insane!”
“Lightning isn’t going to strike in three seconds. On the count of three.” I put my foot into his hand. “One… Two…”
CRASSSHHHH ruuuummmmble rummmbbbble, rummmble.
“You were saying?”
“Three!” He lifted me up. I stuck my hand into the hole and… thank goodness the cache was there. He lowered me back down.
“Bingo!” He said triumphantly.
“How are we going to sign it?” I asked.
You might be an overly dedicated geocacher when you use your own body to shelter a simple piece of paper in an electrical storm just to keep the paper dry.
“I say we go pot luck on the swag,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Just grab one. I’ll toss in a keychain. We replace the cache and make a run for it!”
“Okay!”
I pulled out the first thing in the cache that my fingers felt. He tossed in a keychain and the log book, screwed the lid down tight, then we did the one, two, three, boost maneuver again and I replaced the container.
“Don’t run downhill!” Twiggy warned me. “Dang this is wet!”
The trail back was slick with mud and we ended up sliding as much as we hiked. While I was hiking I managed to stave off the cold but as soon as we got back to the van the icy rain seemed to chill me clear down to my bones.
“Dry clothes,” Twiggy said.
“We can’t even look for dry clothes without soaking the mattress.”
“Doesn’t matter. We need to get you as dry and we can.”
“One of the boxes has towels in it.”
I was so cold I didn’t even care about stripping down in the van and even submitted to a rough toweling off. When we were as dry as we thought we could get we burrowed under the covers and huddled together shivering.
“Relax,” Twiggy said. “Come here, conserve your warmth and try to relax.”
It took a long time for the shivering to stop, but after a while hunger overruled the urge to shiver.
“That’s better,” he said. “Look, the windows are all steamy. You’d think… uh, never mind what people would think.”
“I think the rain is letting up.”
“Looks like it. I almost wish it would start up again.”
It was beginning to feel comfy all snuggled up under the blankets. Too bad it smelled like an old van with damp mud smeared inside.
“We need to find some lunch. That granola bar just did not fill me up for some reason.”
“Okay, so… dry clothes. I’ll find them so you can stay warm. What box would they be in?”
“The one by the door so it would be easy to sort through at stops.”
“That’s smart.”
“There’s blue jeans that are lined with flannel,” I said. “My mom thought they’d be good for long winter treks across campus.”
“This is summer.”
“I know and I’ll probably roast once I get dry, but for now toasty sounds comfortable. And there’s a blue top I like. And socks. I don’t care what socks as long as they are dry.”
He shifted around trying to find my clothes in my box, trying to figure out my packing and my sense of organization without making a mess of things, and I was thinking, “Hey, he’s in pretty good shape. If he’d wear clothes that played up his strengths he’d be really handsome.”
“Twiggy, wait,” I said. “Choose what you want me to wear.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I might put on a jacket for a while, but I’m curious. I see you differently than you see yourself. Maybe you see me differently, too.”
It was funny watching his different expressions as he held up my clothes. It was a little embarrassing having him go through my boxes of personal belongings, but I learned a lot.
“I wish I could remember what this looks like on,” he said.
He put the flannel lined jeans back immediately and pulled out ones that were more fitted and had fancy stitching on the pockets. He pulled out a top that was made of lace and his eyebrows went up. He looked to me, then back at the top.
“I usually wear a spaghetti strapped top underneath that,” I said.
“Have I seen it?”
“I don’t know. I guess not. I usually save it for a night out on the town and that didn’t happen very often.”
“Did it happen ever?”
“Yeah, usually Sarah and I would go with the two girls in the next room down. They liked karaoke, so we’d all go to a bar and I’d order soda with a cherry in it so it would look like I was drinking and I’d watch the girls sing.”
“You didn’t go hard core and order a Shirley Temple?” he joked.
“No, that costs more. Plus I like the cola taste better than the lemon lime.”
“Have you ever been drunk?”
“Yes, and I never want to do it again.”
“Why?”
“I was six and I didn’t know what alcohol was and I downed a whole martini all at one time. I was so sick. A lot of fun for about an hour, but ugghh, no.”
“You’ve never been to a party?”
“Not the kind you’re referring to.”
“What if I wanted to take you to one?”
“Then you’d probably be disappointed because I would sip on a soda and eat finger food and talk. What do you do at parties?”
“Sip on anything liquid, eat junk food and talk louder and louder and yell at some game on the TV that I don’t even care about.”
“And that’s fun?”
“Eventually. Here, try this,” he said handing me the fitted jeans, the lace top and my summer pajama top. “What?”
“Nothing. I’ll wear that, if it’s really what you want me to wear. I just hardly ever mix my PJs and my day clothes.”
“Your… how was I supposed to know? You said spaghetti straps. I looked for spaghetti straps. It was better than a t-shirt or a blouse. Hey, a guy can hope, right? The lace is…”
“Yes?”
“I tell you what. If I don’t have to answer that question, you can pick mine, too.”
I couldn’t believe it. I was stuck in a smelly van in a rain storm while looking for silly boxes hidden in the woods and my… my friend wanted me to choose his clothes for him in some male/female communication of some kind. I wasn’t sure what kind, but, I could play along, since we didn’t have much choice about being stuck in the van. I already knew which of his shirts I liked. It was a simple shirt, made out of t-shirt material. The dark blue over the shoulders made his shoulders look broader and the main body of it was an outdoorsy brown. It made him look like a rugby player.
“Why that?” he asked. “I haven’t worn that in months.”
“Not since March. I know dark colors are supposed to be for winter but you look better in them.”
“I do?”
“It helps a girl… people see your eyes.”
“So?”
“Twiggy, trust me. Those white collared striped shirts make you look like…”
“A geek?”
“And the calculator can go into a backpack pocket.”
“I need that.”
“To walk across campus? To eat lunch? I’m not even going to start on the cell phone. Most guys have a cell phone in their pocket.”
“If I am working on an algorithm I might have to try a calculation or two. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. What would you think if I walked around with… paint brushes sticking out of my pocket and I had to paint a picture in line at the coffee shop? Would that be weird?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s the difference between me painting a picture in a coffee shop and you working on your algorithm?”
“So the white shirts have got to go?”
“No, of course not. I just like this shirt because you look better in it. More like a geocacher and less like a CS major who can’t stop programming.”
“Can I take that to mean you’d rather date a geocacher than a programmer?”
“Twiggy, no, sheesh! You’re reading too much into this. I like you just as much no matter what you wear. I like you, not your clothes, or hobby, or college major.”
I was saved from the topic for a while because the sun broke through the clouds prompting us to hurry and dress while we had time. We tried to change clothes in the van but everything was so wet that it did little good. We threw one of the floor mats into the mud and dressed standing on that. I tried not to think about Twiggy watching very move I made. Twiggy put an end to my embarrassment as soon as he took his turn on the mat.
“Uh, Gabby, we have problems,” he said.
I didn’t even need to ask what kind. If it was that obvious just from standing on the mat I thought I could figure it out so I stepped around the van and saw that we had a very flat tire on the passenger’s side of the van.
“Do you know what this means?” I asked.
“Yeah, we have a lot of hard work ahead of us.”
“No kidding. We have to empty the van.”
“Where are we going to put stuff? We’re surrounded by mud!”
“Well, there’s that rock,” I suggested.
“All right, sturdier boxes on the bottom, lighter boxes on top.”
“What about the mattress?”
“Climb up to the roof and see how wet it is. Use one of the used towels if it’s too puddly. Then we will slide the mattress on top.”
So there we were at the foot of a mountain, in a muddy turnaround, piling up boxes on a round rock. I eventually dried off the roof of the van enough to slide the mattress up there. Twiggy began looking for tools. He found a jack and he placed it under the van, then began pumping the handle until it was firmly in place. He was bent over, looking at the jack when he said, “Oh, shoot.”
“What?”
“No spare.”
“Who drives around without a spare tire?”
“Poor college students.”
“Now what are we going to do?”
Just then a gust of wind went by and our tower of boxes fell off the rock and into the mud with a slight splash. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Does your friend have roadside assistance?” I asked.
“If he doesn’t have a spare, do you think he can afford roadside assistance?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Neither can we.”
We stood there staring at the flat tire, willing it to self inflate. It didn’t do it.
“There’s an often used geocaching technique that we can put to use now,” Twiggy said.
“What’s that?”
“Phone a friend.”
“No matter who you call they are not going to have a spare tire for an outdated van.”
“No, but they might have something we don’t, a telephone book.”
You know you’re with a geek when they use their cell phone to call a friend; that friend uses their tablet computer to find a garage in another town; then he doesn’t just write the number in the dust on the van, he inputs the number into his address book on his cell phone, calls the garage, gives the operator our longitude and latitude off his GPS receiver, hires a guy to come out with a tow truck, and makes a note of the estimated time of arrival in his cell phone so he will be alerted when the mechanic is near.
“You’re not going to calculate the ETA on your scientific calculator?” I teased.
“Why would I do that? He told me when he’d be here.”
We began restacking boxes but it was soon obvious a trip to a Laundromat was the next task on the list, provided we had wheels.
“Insidious mud,” Twiggy grumbled.
“If we have to spend an afternoon in the Laundromat we can kiss this contest goodbye.”
“Not necessarily,” he said.
“Twiggy, we are not by any stretch of the imagination hard core geocachers. We might be going for some tough ones but there are geocachers willing to climb the highest mountain and swim the deepest ocean to win bragging rights at the next event. We cannot compete with those people.”
“So you want to give up?”
“No, I just want to continue without mishaps stalling us every time we turn around.”
“We could skip doing laundry and geocache naked,” he suggested.
“We’d get arrested,” I said.
“Would you?” he asked.
“No, or, at least, not yet. How am I supposed to know what I might be able to talk myself into in a few years? Two years ago I wouldn’t have even done this.”
It took the mechanic over an hour to figure out how to locate us. He had nothing to guide him except a highlighted dot on a map of the area.
“Wow, how’d you kids get way back here?” he greeted us on arrival.
“Our GPS led us here,” Twiggy said.
“Never trust ‘em,” the tow truck driver said.
“It did get us where we wanted to go. We just drove over trash to get here and something in the road punctured our tire.”
“And we haven’t got a spare,” I added.
The tow truck driver looked like he could push the van out of the woods by himself if he had to. His name patch said “Doug” and the shirt it hung on was grease stained and untucked. His Dickies were too long and the hems were frayed. He walked around the van with a grease stained clipboard.
“Uh huh… zebra stripes? Really?”
“The van’s not ours,” I added. “We borrowed it.”
“Nineteen eighty-three Chevy. Still runs?”
“Yeah,” said Twiggy.
“Uh huh… well, I hate to break it to you kids but you got a couple of nails in your tire and one through the side wall. What’d you do, take a nice scenic drive through the dump?”
“Almost,” Twiggy said.
“If it was just the two the tire would be fixable. As it is you’re going to have to replace it. I can take her in for you.”
“How much?” Twiggy asked.
“A hundred sixty dollars for the tow job. The tires… it depends on what you choose. I’d say a good pair will run you a couple hundred.”
“Dollars?” I asked.
“No, finger nail clippin’s. Yes, dollars.”
Three hundred sixty dollars, a trip to the Laundromat, another night in a motel. This was not looking good.
“How much have you got?” I asked Twiggy.
He opened up his wallet. “Do you take a card?” he asked.
“At the station,” the tow truck driver answered.
“All right, tow it in.”
“Are you insane?” I asked. “A hundred sixty dollars just to have the van towed to town?”
“What else are we going to do? Give us ten minutes to load it back up,” Twiggy said.
“You’ll want to call a friend to come get you,” the tow truck driver said.
“What?!”
“You got a problem with that?”
“Well… yeah! We’re from out of town. The semester just ended. All our friends are in Franklinburg or gone home for the summer.”
“Where are you from?”
“South Dakota,” said Twiggy.
“I’m not supposed to, but I’ll let you ride in the cab to the station. After that you’re on your own.”
The tow truck driver went to work lining up his truck and getting the chains arranged right while Twiggy and I figured out how to get the mattress off the roof and into the van without letting it touch the ground. We quickly loaded the muddy boxes. By the time we were finished the futon mattress was in a sorry state.
“What were you trying to do out here?”
“We were looking for a geocache,” Twiggy said.
“Did you find it?”
“Yeah, in the rain.”
“Damn overzealous kids. Did you know this is called Lightning Ridge?”
“No, but we could have guessed.”
“We were sitting in the office taking bets on whether it was too wet to start a fire up here.”
“I think it was too wet,” Twiggy said.
The cab of the truck smelled like cigar smoke. It was illegal for the tow truck driver to give us a ride because there was only one seat belt for the passenger’s seat, but Twiggy and I squished together and attempted to buckle the seatbelt over both of us.
“Now isn’t this cozy?” Twiggy asked as he put his arm around me. I had to admit it was more comfortable that way. I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking about the coziness of the ride. I was wondering if I had enough money in my pocket to wash all my clothes again. My finances didn’t improve when Twiggy used up the last of his savings on two tires. I never considered the fact that tires are bought in pairs.
The owner of the garage was just pulling down the doors and locking up when the tow truck driver pulled up. Doug’s boss folded his arms over his chest and glared at Doug in disapproval as we slid down from the cab.
“I couldn’t leave them up there and they’re from out of state,” Doug explained.
Since Doug’s boss had probably given an illegal ride or two to stranded motorists he relented but said, “My wife’s got dinner on. I can get to it first thing in the morning.”
“Can you point us toward the nearest motel with a vacancy?” Twiggy asked.
“There’s a nice bed and breakfast…” the tow truck driver began and quickly cut off. “Three lights down. Turn right. You’ll see it.”
“The bed and breakfast?” I asked.
“No, uh, your… other choice.”
It wasn’t as bad as I feared. It was actually better than the last place. I was beat by the time we packed up a few belongings into the geocaching pack and hiked to the hotel. We flopped with a tired, but relieved sigh on the bed. Another double. But at least we had a table and wifi and we could log our one find for the day.
“Is geocaching always like this?” I asked.
“No, hardly ever,” Twiggy said. “Usually we find a cache in a bush and we go on our way.”
“I wonder what we are doing wrong.”
“By the way,” he said. “What did you end up pulling out of that cache?”
“I don’t know. I stuffed it my pocket. It was too wet to worry about one piece of swag.”
“Well, what is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. My pants are with the dirty clothes in the van.”
I showered first, thankful for the little bottles of shampoo. I decided I should take whatever was left over so I could put off buying shampoo later. I crawled into bed before my hair was dry, knowing I’d wake up with a terrible case of bed head but I was too tired to care. Then when Twiggy came to bed I was too tired to think and snuggled into position, my head on his shoulder. I woke up in the night on the other side of the bed, but I could have sworn we had laid there cuddled up and comfortable for a while.
“Thank you,” he said in the morning when I got up to shower my weird hair into normalcy again.
“For what?” I asked.
“For trusting me. For being you. For being you and accepting me all at once.”
I went back and sat on the bed. “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”
“You have no idea,” he said.
I crawled back into bed to think. I tried to think about what I wanted in a guy and I came up blank. Oh sure, there were all the things my dad would ask. Do you have a job? What are your plans? But I knew the answers to those questions. Twiggy had a part time job, during school. He had plans to graduate and search for an engineering position on the ground floor of some company that needed a programmer. It all sounded well and good. But what did I really want? I wasn’t sure what my dad wanted and what I wanted were the same thing. I wanted… something more. I wanted to see the world. It didn’t matter if it was hitch hiking across the country or flying to Africa. I just wanted to get out there and experience a little slice of life and I felt like I was doing that. Despite all the setbacks, I really felt like I was finding a little slice of life that I wouldn’t have experienced if I had gone home to do my sister’s hair for a party.
I snuggled closer.
“Hold me,” I said. “Just hold me.”