alternate career paths

TPB, Esq., who, I note, was born in the same hospital that I was, describes his first foray into geocaching.

My husband and I have been finding geocaches on and off for a few years now. If we're geocaching in a populated area, it's always guaranteed to get a few stares. Picture two adults, sometimes wrapped in dripping rain gear in the winter, sometimes covered in dirt from a crawl through a dry stream bed. We trudge in circles around an increasingly smaller area, muttering to each other and bent over a little plastic GPS. "Let's go a few steps this way." We do, straight into bushes and stones. We lift branches, we peer into the crooks of trees, and we scale rocks. We do not, by any stretch of the imagination, look dignified.

It's a funny thing, this business of finding a secret stash. "I found it!" one of us will shout, and the other runs up. We know it's just a container with cheap plastic toys and maybe the occasional lucky penny. But it's something we found, a little mystery we solved together. For a moment I am Nancy Drew, and my husband is another intrepid detective, we haven't yet decided which one, but definitely not one of the Hardy Boys because they're such poncy goody-goodies.

I want to be a pirate queen and find hidden treasure around the world. They probably don't make you take finals to be a pirate queen.