Oh, NVRENUFCACHE!

It started the week of Memorial Day and it ended 2 days ago. It was wild. It was crazy. It made us travel at least 500 miles. (typed in a whisper: that's a lie!!) That's right, it was the first ever geocaching competition at work. (fun and games) 

Initially, my coworkers and I were not excited about this as it sounded lame and loser-ish.  We were not going to participate.  BUT then our frenemies made a team and signed up. It became our goal to beat them into submission.  This is how team NVRENUFCACHE was formed.  The rules: a new clue would be released every Friday.  At least 2 people from the team must take a picture of themselves at the location.  At the end of the million weeks, the top teams (the teams with the most correct locations found) were going to participate in THE AMAZING RACE!!.


I was hoping he'd be at the end...

 Each week could be a separate blog entry...but I'll quickly summarize what we had to go through to get to the finals.

1) The first week we didn't believe the GPS and we wouldn't listen to it.  We read the clue, became convinced of the location, and then were surprised, frustrated, and hungry when we still couldn't find it 2 hours later. It was a doozy of a lunch hour that day.

2) One week we ended up at a baseball diamond in Horace, ND.  Out of the cornfields came a grizzly man on a 4 wheeler (supplies loaded on the back included shovels, rakes, and duct tape) who shot straight for us and asked us if there was something wrong with the sign. Um, nope. A skiddish conversation regarding the rules of geocaching followed and we ran away.

3) The following week, we were led to the National Guard in North Fargo and were supposed to take a picture by the airplane. Anybody out there ever gotten close to that airplane??  We were approached by people with guns...one team member refused to get out of the car.  Another non-geocaching person was getting their car searched for bombs prior to entering the location.

4) The other 10,000 weeks were relatively calm,  but involved a lot of bitching about having to drive all over North America to get these missions accomplished. The Frenemies had already dropped out at this point...but a certain team-member had become obsessed with the challenge/fun/torture of this weekly activity and made us push on.  I have to admit, I was looking forward to meeting Phil at the end of the Amazing Race and having him give me a gnome and a round-trip journey to Fiji courtesy of Travelocity.

So... on Tuesday... the top 4 teams had to meet at 1 o'clock.  It was at this time that the first clue was going to be revealed and the Amazing Race would be ON.  I started to overdose on jalapeno chex mix at 11:45am and rock back and forth.  I started to realize that this game might not be for me. I soldiered on, thinking of the gnome.

At the meeting, we were simply given a sheet of paper with 4 sets of lat/long coordinates on them and told to GO!! (this really was not a legally sound thing to do...).  We had to race around town to 4 different bison statues.  Everybody raced out of the building -- I had 2 team members in high heels, one with ill fitting pants -- squeals and butt cheeks soon followed.

The first location turned out to be at the mall. We seriously ran to the bison. Yes, this was embarassing.


I'm trying to route out the next coordinates!




While we were running in to the mall, one patron yelled "Where's the fire?" After we took a picture with the bison.. another team came running in.  NVRENUFCACHE may or may not have punched somebody in the stomach. Just sayin'

I had to then open my car windows as the adrenaline and chex mix were not mingling well...




The next location brought us to downtown Fargo.  We pulled something similar to a chinese fire drill on the corner and snapped this beauty.

Too much chex mix?

I was told that it definitely looks like I was "squatting" in this picture.  The truth is that I was simply trying to ensure that my head wouldn't be cut out of the picture... which is quite logical given my stature. mmmhmmm.






Almost done...




The third and almost final location brought us to the Moorhead Center Mall.  We were very tired of running at this point and had not encountered another team since the alleged stomach-punching at the first location.  Part of me started to get excited. I'm coming home Phil!! I'm coming home!!

The final location was in an office building on 13th avenue.  All you Fargoans -- how would you get to a building by the Ground Round from the Moorhead Center Mall?? Should we listen to our GPS, should we rely upon our collective 110+ years of Fargo experience??? Oh the drama, and the bickering that soon followed this picture... (sidenote: those poor taxi drivers filled with cars of former spouses and childhood best friends!)

The END!!!!

Okay, so then we got here. To the END. Nobody was there with a prize.. but rather we now had to race back to work and email all of our pictures to the "geocache administrator" (aka "a freakin' awesome job").

We raced back to work.  We made the driver hop out in the middle of the parking lot as all the pictures were emailed to her desktop.  Kudos to her as she ran like Forrest Gump to get back into the building.

Whew, it was over.  And then we had to wait.  We saw other teams come in after us, but did not see anybody before us!!! Could it be?? Could it be??  And...nope.  We lost. BY. ONE. MINUTE. yes, 1 minute.  UNO MOMENTO. (sigh)  And then we learned our final fate: The prize is a trip to the ice cream store... and a company t-shirt.  Really?? we participated for 500 years and travelled to Mexico to get an ice cream cone?? REALLY?? 

oh gawd. we're out next year. Team NVRENUFCACHE is retired.