I have a confession to make. I attempted to find SPIKEE one week ago and failed… failed miserably in fact, and what’s worse is I didn’t log it as a not found. I can hear you gasping in disbelief… “GASP! Yrium didn’t find the cache after he set out hunting for it and then HE DIDN’T LOG IT AS A NOT FOUND… GASP!”. Well let me tell you the sad story now. Whistlestick, Gromit and I set out to find SPIKEE on 06/02/2002 and our morale was high and our expectations were great. (Apologies to Dickens) It’s about a 30-minute drive from Escondido to get to the general area where SPIKEE resides. We were about a mile or so away navigating by GPS only when I started to get a little feeling of what I like to euphemistically refer to as gastronomic fluidic distress with bouts of OH MY GOSH!

“Ah Whistlestick… I have a problem. We need to find some facilities and fast”. I gasped during a particularly alarming peristaltic contraction. As my eyes went into a hyperactive back and forth visual mamba routine my mind flashed back to an event that had happened about eighteen hours earlier. I was in 7-11 ambling to the counter to pay for my Mountain Dew when a seductive advertisement for hot dogs with cheese and chili caught my eye. Salivating like Homer Simpson upon seeing a donut I pulled up short and informed the hot dog dispensing technician behind the counter “I’d like a regular hotdog please”. Upon receiving my red-hot I went to the hot dog fixing counter and proceeded to beautify it with the aforementioned cheese and chili. Then the cause of my present distress happened to catch my eye. Right next to the Mom and Apple-pie condiments of Mustard, Ketchup, Pickle Relish, and Onions was a little vat filled with oily Jalapenos swimming in a toxic bath of water that looked like it might have been bottled at a Superfund cleanup site. “I’ve got to throw some of those bad boys on my hot dog” I thought to myself as I fished them out with the mini-ladle provided for that purpose and spooned them onto my hot dog. The fuse was lit… The clock was ticking… Eighteen hours later it went off in my bowel’s nether regions and started my present predicament.

Zooming up and down the little streets in Encinitas in a frenzied fashion, we came across a little outpost of hospitality called ‘Encinitas Station’. I just want to take this opportunity to thank the city council of Encinitas for their foresight and planning. It was close but I made it, unfortunately I was in no condition to continue our cache-hunting foray, so I advised Whistlestick that I thought we should come back later next week and search in comfort. Being the understanding wife she is she just lowered her eyes and gave me that “Charles… Charles… Charles” look - that I love so much. As we turned our path toward home I just had to yell out “Curse you Mr. Big-Bite!”.

A week later the same trio set out again to find SPIKEE. This time I was more circumspect in my dietary selections so had no fear of repeating last week’s fiasco. We parked the Pathfinder just North of the Jack-in-the-Box and dropped down into the railway bed arroyo. It seemed to be a popular crossing point for Surfers and dog-walkers as the many drop down trails testified. Gromit was snubbed by a tennis ball-chasing dog, who was more interested in his owner’s next fling of the tennis ball than he was in exchanging sniffs with the wonderpup. We hiked thru the fine ocher colored dust lining the trail for a few minutes observing the eroded mini-cliffs on either side of the tracks as we quickly traversed the last few yards to the general cache area. From about 30 feet away Whistlestick pulled up and said, “I see it”. Standing behind her and looking over her shoulder I spent about a minute and a half trying to discern the cache container with no success. After giving in and admitting my blindness she pointed it out and I almost slapped my forehead with my hand over not being able to see it.

It was just the work of a few moments to retrieve the cache container and move a little distance away so that I could sit and read thru the log. I didn’t know that this cache had been previously plundered. Reading the log I learned that it had only been replaced just a month or so earlier. Thank you Jay, Cameron, Dave, Kevin, Leslie & Bridget for replacing SPIKEE. It has a unique feel that I haven’t encountered in any other of my cache hunts. We took the little bunny encrusted hairclip and dropped off a wiener dude antennae topper, a georged dollar bill and five genuine “yrium’s pals” geocacher trading cards. These are #1 in a set of twenty that I’ll be putting in caches in the coming months. Hope you like them.

We enjoyed SPIKEE, thanks for the cache!

--- yrium ---