24.

This has been a long day.

After work, I planned a hike to finally find a geocache. I chose a set of five caches along a trail called The Devil's Slide which used to be part of the stagecoach road into Los Angeles. The set of caches was designed to help keep you on the correct path coming up from Chatsworth Park in the San Fernando Valley.

I wasn't able to find the first cache. My coordinates may have been off, and a passing exerciser warned me that, the day before, he'd seen a rattlesnake in the spot where I was standing. I decided to move on.

Chatsworth Park is relatively close to my parents' house, and I used to drive there to relax and think and write, which is part of why I chose it. I also had to run cross-country meets there when I was in high school, and the initial part of the Devil's Slide trail was part of a course we had to run. I distinctly remember have to run up to the Water Plant to circle a small orange cone before heading down to the rest of the race. After tackling the hills to get up there, though, the rest of the course was a breeze.

So today, I made it up there a bit slower, since I am out of shape and older and I was wearing large hiking boots. But! After onle a minute or so of looking, I was able to find the cache! I'd checked it out, and it turned out that the last time I found a cache was 930 days ago, on August 29, 2004. My dry spell was over, but I wasn't done yet.

The next two caches were pretty simple, and I found both of them. After going above the water plant, the paths started to get really crazy, so having the guide of the waypoints was a huge help.

Then, between the fourth cache and the fifth, things got pretty bad. It was really steep, and I'd been walking for a while, and I was getting tired, and my body was starting to tell me that it would really like to go back down now. But really, I knew I couldn't turn back. I focused on where I thought the cache was, a historical plaque above me. I was falling back on my cross-country training—picking a point in front of me and focusing on it, instead of on how tired I was getting.

Unfortunately, I was also ignoring my GPSr, and I overshot the cache I was looking for by a hundred feet or so. I headed back and found the main cache. And in it, I found my first geocoin, Kodiak Dave's Mt. Rushmore Benchmark Geocoin. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to drop it off in New Jersey when I visit ojouchan next week.

I had planned on continuing on to Chatsworth Pond, and I walked up to the plaque, but I was too winded, and I started heading back down. At some point around the cache (I can't remember if it was above or below) I checked my GPSr for the elevation: 1460 feet. When I got back down to the car, it was more like 1000 feet. So that was a pretty good climb.

So then, exhausted and exhilarated, what would I do next? Go shopping of course! Since I was down by Devonshire, I stopped by the Game store down there and picked up a few things, then went to talk to my mom, who tipped me to a sale on luggage at Macy's. I picked up a pretty cheap set of luggage, including a carryon-sized piece that I hope to use for my upcoming trip. I just don't feel like waiting for the baggage claim if I don't have to.

So obviously, after all this, when I get home, after logging my new finds, what do I do then? Clearly I decide that, because I haven't eaten a large meal in a while, I should go out to eat at Simon's Cafe, which is something I've been meaning to do for a while. When I get there, I realize that they don't open for dinner until 5:30, fifteen minutes away, so I walk home, thinking that I have frozen fish I could heat up. (Remember, it's a Friday in Lent, so no chicken for me!) Then as I'm almost home, I realize that heating up the frozen fish will still take about a half an hour, and the walking I've done so far has taken about 8 minutes, so if I just turn around and try again, I can get good food without having to do any more effort. (At this point, apparently, walking required no actual effort, since inertia had taken hold and it was harder to stop walking than continue walking.)

And after eating, and coming home, I realize that it's almost time for the ohmygodneverbeforeinhistory Jeopardy!, so I plop down to watch that. And then, as I'm flipping around looking for something else, I see that the bad E! reality show about Hugh Hefner's "girlfriends" The Girls Next Door are taking a horseback ride at the same place I took ojouchan for her birthday. So clearly I have to watch that, since they go for the full horseback ride from Hollywood into Burbank that I was originally considering for Ojouchan and me.

And then, of course, it was important to watch House, even if I interrupted it to take a much-needed shower. And then, since Wife Swap is on, I need to tape that for Ojouchan.

But before going to bed, I need to write all of this down in my journal, because I need to keep you updated and because I've already let too many nonposting days slip by me.

Which is why, just now, the alarm that woke me up yesterday just went off.

So I think that's my cue to actually sleep.




FREEDOM FRIDAY!