DOWN WITH CACHING
Regular readers may be wondering why, after writing about geocaching for months, I would not have a single story about caching on the entire page.
I'm down with caching.
But I'm not the only one around here who has lost that lovin' feeling.
It is catchy, collective, contagious.
It's the post-Ike caching ick.
In the Houston Geocaching Society forums, someone else summed up the general feeling.
This is bbqbob2's comment in response to Georeynozos's thread asking if anyone had started caching in Houston after Hurricane Ike:

"I tried a new cache in Clear Lake yesterday and the mossies were small, nasty and plentiful. Couldn't get into the hunt though - two houses missing fences looked out onto GZ and the people were working moving debris in their back yard. I walked away. Seemed like there had to be something more important I should be doing."

Last night, I got my first smiley in two weeks by meeting up with some other cachers at a hamburger joint. The mood was solemn.
At our first get together at this place a few months ago, about seventy people showed up. The atmosphere was raucous. We were all talking excitedly about geocaches, the runs we were planning, the puzzles we were solving, the trackables we were trading.
This night, some fifteen of us sat around and talked about other places, other things, but somehow coming back to the same subject over and over.
"You got power yet?"
"Yeah, finally. You?"
We talked about clearing up tree debris, about camping out in our house, about how we had been hunkering down, or trips we've been on lately. Noticably absent was the talk of caching. When asked if they had been caching lately, most people shrugged their shoulders and said, "I've checked on a couple of mine, but that's about it."
The reasons are fairly simple, but I find it interesting it would effect the community in such a similiar way.
With Hurricane Ike's 100 mph winds, everyone assumes that most geocaches were damaged, moved, destroyed, or simply disappeared. It is going to take some work to build our hides back up again. No one wants to trudge through wet grass and fallen forests with the premise that they "might" find what they are looking for. We are waiting for owners to check their hides before we go looking for them.
As hiders, as cache owners, we are somewhat reluctant to leave our houses to go check our caches because of the post-Ike traffic (which HAS to be said like you are Jimi Hendrix singing "Cross Town Traffic". This amuses me every day. Oh, to be easily entertained...). Full power has not been returned to Houston and the surrounding areas yet. Traffic signals are on a blinking red all over town, causing congestion. Gas stations are back online, but most people have in the back of their minds a memory of the lines backed up for blocks.
Oh, and the rain has brought out a force of Texas sized mosquitos. I half-heartedly went after a park and grab style hide on the way to the event and although I was only going fifty feet from my car, I was swarmed with so many mossies that I sprinted quickly back to the safety of my Camry. Screw that.
For the entire month of September, I have a grand total of ten finds.
Usually I try for ten finds a week, otherwise I find myself slipping on the Grand High Poobah List.
I haven't even looked at my rank on the Grand Poobah List in at least a month.
I was excited about caching before Hurricane Ike. I had great plans to spend my birthday engaging in this pasttime, ending up at the HGCS September Birthday Event. I wanted to get to my #1200 find in one fell swoop.
Now, though, I am feeling like freysman, who said this:
"I just can't get excited about being eaten by mossies for a string of DNFs and bad news..."
I'm hoping things turn around soon.