Geocaching

It's a great time to be a kid. When I was a young whippersnapper, Saturday morning was the only time we could watch cartoons. If I were five years old nowadays and got scared by something in the closet that looked like a monster, I'd just go downstairs, turn on the television, nuke some popcorn, and watch a cartoon. That beats the Shake 'n Bake popcorn and color bars that I had to put up with back in the 60s. Of course, when I was a kid, I could go outside and play games with neighborhood children, but that kind of thing directly contradicts my train of thought. When I'm lamenting the fact that gasoline cost only 12 cents a gallon when I was a kid, I don't want to hear that the average income was $11,000 a year. I like to compartmentalize those ideas, so let's just stick to the fact that things are great for kids now, m'kay?

Like geocaching. It's a treasure hunting game in which you go out to a web site to get coordinates that indicate where treasures are buried. The canisters contain a bunch of little trinkets like yo-yos, hot wheels, and pen knives. Anyone with a GPS device can search for the buried canister, take something from it, and replace it with their own trinket. Andy and Minette have taken the boys geocaching a couple of times -- once in Lincoln Park and once near Green Lake. Luke and Max dress up as pirates and follow Andy around like he's the pied piper. When someone finds the canister and starts opening it, the boys hop around like they haven't peed in days.

Anyway, if you have a GPS and some kids, it's a fun way to spend an afternoon. Or not. I'm still bummed about the Colts losing to the Chargers.