Bored out of your mind at work? Wish you were accompanying me on my roadtrip but the fates didn't allow it? Now you can follow along at home! All the fun of sitting in a car for hours without the tedious scenery to look at!

Today I went Geocaching. I discovered the activity a few months ago, right around when I was moving up to Covington, but I was too busy to try it. This weekend I decided I'd give it a shot.

Geocaching is a sort of game or sport in which strangers will hide a small 'cache' (varying in size from a film canister to a large chest) somewhere inconspicuous, note the coordinates with a GPS unit, and then post the information on a website. Other 'players' will read about the cache, make a note of the coordinates, and set out with their own GPS unit to try and find it. Caches always contain a small notebook that serves as a log, and each player who finds the cache is supposed to sign the log to describe when they found it, and what they thought of the experience. Caches also often contain random trinkets (they can be anything from dollar-store toys to CDs to computer hardware to action figures), and you're encouraged to take some and leave others in trade.

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I made it back to Covington with no problem. I flew into Miami at 3pm, picked up the car at my grandfather's apartment, and started driving at 5pm. I had originally been planning on staying the night in Miami and setting off in the morning, but I was eager to get back. I figured it was unlikely that I'd manage the full 13-hour drive in one sitting, considering I was starting at 5pm and I had only gotten two hours of sleep the night before, but I decided any progress I could make that day would put me that much closer the next day. I'd just have to find a motel or something to stop at when I got tired.

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It's only 65.4 miles to El Conquistador, and that's going the long, roundabout way and includes getting lost and wandering around a lot. Coming from being in the US, that seems so puny. Going to El Conquistador is this big ordeal, comparable to driving to Atlanta or something, but it's just down the road. As the crow flies, it can't be more than 20 miles or so.

But man, I wish I'd had my GPS receiver on and tracking my path like a real-time version of Snake. I'm willing to bet I'd have lost all four lives many times over.