( please rest assured that necessary permissions have been secured for this hide )
( do not look for this cache at the posted coordinates )
I created this mystery cache in order to share with you something odd I discovered. I hope that one of you can make sense of it.
I was recently playing fetch with my dogs in the river. My Aussie especially loves to swim out and bring back thrown tennis balls. But one time, after a particularly vigorous throw, he came back with a bottle instead of the ball. I almost threw the bottle in the trash, but then I noticed a piece of paper inside. I got it out and was surprised to see a message written on the wet paper. Water damage has ruined the end of the message, but I’ve written out what I could for you here:
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Hello,
My name is Bob, and I’m sending this message to ask for help. I’ve gotten myself into some trouble and I hope you can help me.
In order for you to understand the trouble I'm in, first I need to tell you more about myself. You see, I’m a world traveler, and over the course of my life I have met many interesting people. One person stands out to me, however. You could say my troubles stem from meeting him. He never even told me his real name. When I asked him what I should call him, he responded, “99level99.”
I later learned that this was his geocaching handle. He was a geocacher. Myself, I’d never heard of geocaching before, but this ‘99level99’ fellow was eager to show me the ropes. And I was eager to learn, as it appeared this activity would fit nicely with my world traveler lifestyle.
99 and I visited many exotic geocache sites and had many adventures together. I recall once working on a night cache in the woods. It was a moonless, pitch-black night except for our two flashlights. We had lost the trail and were shining our lights all over to re-orient ourselves, when suddenly two green lights shined back at us. We froze in our tracks, and the green lights seemed to focus on us. Then there was a large growling noise, a sound of something large crashing through the underbrush, and the two green lights winked out. 99 murmured aloud, “Was it a car or a cat I saw?” I confess that I’m not entirely sure, myself.
In our travels, we had ample opportunity to discuss and dissect many complex aspects of the meaning of life. Well, at least I had ample opportunity to discuss it. 99 never said much, but he made a good sounding board for the ideas I’d cultivated over the years. One day, when I pressed him for his own opinion on morality, he said only, “Live on time; emit no evil.” In the ensuing years, the more I thought about it, the more I was inclined to agree with him.
As we continued our adventures, the common thread was geocaching. Wherever we went, fellow geocachers had preceded us and hidden their caches for us. We had many memorable finds. I once asked 99 how many finds he had logged but he only shook his head. I realized I had seen him sign his handle in countless logs, but I had never once seen him log a find online. Gradually I became obsessed with trying to figure out how many caches he had found, but he didn’t seem to be troubled by such things. I once asked him, “Don’t you care about numbers at all?” He cryptically replied, “Never odd or even.” To this day I puzzle over the meaning of that one.
Ever trying to learn more about 99’s connection to geocaching, I tried a different tack. “Tell me,” I asked, “have you hidden any caches yourself?” He smiled and nodded. I eagerly asked for the cache’s coordinates. He responded: “?? ??.??? -??? ??.???”
[ the coordinates are ruined by water damage, but I can make out one more thing written after ]
...to the geozone, simply look to the East...
[ the rest of the note is ruined by water damage ]
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