2002/03/30 – SPOONERS MESA

Let me start this log by saying I love Iron Chef caches. Each one is memorable to me for different reasons. He’s stuck me in a hole, Taught me about gunpowder, and made me believe I was about to be attacked by Sauron's shadowy Ringwraiths. He has a ton more of cache’s I haven’t visited yet and let me tell you I just can’t wait. The fun and thrills I had at SPOONERS MESA is just enough to whet my appetite for now.

Most of my cache hunts lately have been in the sole company of Gromit the Wonderdog. Today the two of us are honored to be accompanied by my beautiful wife Whistlestick. Were all the Malls closed? Did my three kids spend the weekend helping the homeless in Mexico? Was Whistlestick feeling I wasn’t safe geocaching by myself due to my gimpy leg?  DING DING DING DING… Gentlemen we have a winner. The wife was afraid my leg was going to fold up like the card table of a Three-card Monty huckster who has just espied the constables moving into his con game kingdom. Doesn’t matter how much you protest that you’re okay, those loving helpmeets just want to nurture and protect you.

SPOONERS MESA is located right along side the US Mexican border so we get to drive upon all the dirt roads that the US Border Patrol provides alongside our side of the border. I’m looking forward to throwing the Pathfinder into 4 wheel drive and climbing some dirt hills in search of the cache, but before we get that far I have to relate an amusing image Whistlestick implanted in my head. We were about 4 miles away from the cache navigating solely by GPS arrow when we found ourselves driving thru an area that was obviously zoned for Horse and Pony horticulture. Lots of rent-a-horse businesses lined both sides of the roads we were on and we could see families out on weekend trot holidays with their kids. Here’s when Whistlestick planted the following image in my mind.

“Charles, do you think they have problems with the illegal immigrants stealing their ponies and riding them North” said a serious Whistlestick in an innocent tone of voice.  I was done for. You might not have noticed but I have an active imagination. It was just seconds till I was bastardizing Marty Robbins lyrics to the song EL PASO. With my apology to Marty.

Out in the South California town of Chula Vista
I was driving with my beautiful wife
Noontime would find me at SPOONERS flat Mesa
But first I’d envision pony-rustling gauchos riding for life

Riding on their panting freshly rustled ponies
Chased and hounded by the Border Patrol-oh-oh-ol
Barebacked equine riders, riding from  their homes
Would they be captured? It’s the luck of the roll-ooo-ooo-ol

Riding so fast the ponies would lather
Chased by the green Border SUVs down the road
yelling and entreating their rides to go faster
The illegals prayed for their trail to go cold

So if you go to SPOONERS MESA on most any weekend
Even though Del Mars closed you can see ponies racing the tides
Chased by green tailored serious miened men
It’s a sight to see SUV posse’s chasing stolen rides

Out in the South California town of Chula Vista
I was driving with my beautiful wife
Noontime would find me at SPOONERS flat Mesa
But first I had envision pony rustling gauchos riding for life

Still singing we drove out of pony town USA and approached the hill containing SPOONERS MESA. I don’t know if we were lucky or not but we pretty much drove straight to an access road that led up a dirt road and to the Border Patrols rabbit warrens of dirt trails that parallel the border. They must put in a lot of miles running up and down those trails as all the roads show a lot of signs of use. Gromit started to get excited from his post in the backseat as he sensed the cache was near. I don’t know if he is reading the GPS over my shoulder or if he can just tell by the frequency with which I check it out for nearness but he definitely has a sixth sense for when we are about to pull over and hit the road hiking. We are about a tenth of a mile away and the road is leading us straight in line with the arrow so it won’t be long.

Oh Oh… looks like a problem, as we drive closer it appears that there is a Border Patrol vehicle parked right on top of the cache area. The GPS is pointing so hard at the car I felt for a moment I was holding a LO-JACK unit and the Border Patrol unit had just been stolen. I turned to my wife and said we’d have to come back another time as there was no way we could hunt the cache in full view of the authorities but Whistlestick just said “Peshaww! They are public servants, why would they be concerned with a couple of US citizens going on a high tech GPS hunt near the border?”.

Taken aback, I did as I was bid and we parked about 30 feet away. Whistlestick further surprised me by approaching the men in the vehicle. “come away from there sweetie. Those guys don’t need to be bugged while they are working” I yelled in a quiet non-threatening tone of voice so as not to alarm the vehicle’s human contents.

“it’ll be okay, I’ll just let them know what we are doing so they don’t wonder” she replied. “It will just take a moment”.

Wincing internally at the temerity of my wife’s actions I wasn’t surprised to hear the agent inside yell at my wife “Please step away from the vehicle”. Whistlestick, who I’m sure must have thought they were talking to some other person approaching their vehicle was not deterred and kept walking towards the car. “Mam… Please stay away from the car” boomed out the window a second time.

Now realizing that they were in fact talking to her my wife pulled up short and shouted “We are just on a scavenger hunt… don’t worry about us” as she turned around and came back to me. “Charles, they just didn’t want me to come up to their car. That was strange”. I was thinking to myself… No, I could see not wanting to have some wacky lady approach my vehicle from the rear in a secluded area of the border. They probably thought we were white-collar coyotes here to pick up a couple of passengers… But I wisely kept my thoughts to myself.

Standing around directing my wife to do my bidding is not something that comes up very often in my world, so it was with a with an inner though praising my gimpyness that I was telling my wife to look hither and yon. “Look under that bush over there”… “Well, try that pile of rocks”… “did you check that outcropping of concrete?”… “How about over there where Gromit is sniffing?”. I kept her busy for about ten minutes before she found it and then my fun was over. Whistlestick brought the cache over to me.

Okay here is the point in the day’s activities where I do what afterwards even I  realize was the act of a bonified doofus. I read all the log entries and then added my own. After relating the fact that the Border Patrol was only thirty feet away in full view of where I was writing in the log. I wrote the following “… where the Border Patrol is just sitting in their car snoozing doing their best imitation of a city-worker”. Chuckling to myself on my comedic line I caused Whistlestick to ask what I wrote. Oh, I was just comparing those Border patrol guys to city workers. You know because they are just sitting in their cars getting paid for doing nothing.

“CHARLES! You know as soon as we leave they will be over here reading the log. They’re going to come get us an rough you up for making fun of them” she said worriedly. Oh, would they do that? I considered tearing the page out but I don’t own the log, it’s the IRON CHEF’s so I don’t feel I’m entitled to just destroy a page because of incipient police brutality, all in my now really-imaginative mind, mind you. So I just tell her that they have better things to do than come over here and look for what we just wrote down. But its in a quiet voice that I tell the wife to put the cache back, now including a yrium tagged spoon, back into its hiding spot without letting the authorities see. To distract them I start hobbling back to the car with Gromit figuring the large handicapped dude ambling around like a drunken Foster Brooks has to be more fun than watching my wife who appears to be studying some weeds.

As we drive away I admit it was at a faster speed than when we approached cuz I was thinking they might go over and see the uncharitable comment I left in the log. We had made it all the way to back in sight of the road when Whistlestick yelled at the top of her lungs “Charles they’re COMING TO GET YOU!”. I just froze in my tracks and my head was swiveling around like Gromit’s does when he hears a dropped puppy cooky, trying to see where the gendarmes were coming from. After a frantic moment I realized that the wife had once again gotten the better of me. And I’m terribly afraid it won’t be for the last time.

Thanks Iron Chef for the fun day!

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