Monday, April 28, 2008

So What's In Your Backpack?

A couple of days ago and right smack in the middle of a fast food burger, fries and diet libation a young lad noticed the back of my caching sack. "Hey Mister", he said in between bites of a kid meal. "What is that hanging out of your pack"?

"That's a grabber", says I. " I use it for picking up stuff".

"What kind of stuff?", questions the little tike.

"Hidden treasure", says I. His eyes grow wide and in a high pitched voice he squeaks, "Really?"

"Yup, wanna see some", says I.

"Oh yeah", he says.

Then I pulled out some geocoins and put one in his hand. His eyes grew even bigger as he looked at one of my FTF coins. The series of ooohs and ahhhhs went on for several minutes as I pulled out my swag bag and let him choose a goodie or two.

The father noticed the geocache patch on the back and had heard of geocaching before but never tried it himself. Spent about another 10 minutes or so going over the places I've been and the type of caches I have found. Then the discussion turned again to my backpack and the different things that I have needed to have out of necessity.


So far I have accumulated some absolute have too haves.

Grabber - an absolute must for getting at things out of reach or in places I don't want to reach in.

Flashlight(s).
Magnetic reach pole for getting 35 mm out of signs or high up out of reach.
Needle nose fish lure extractor - also good for getting 35mm out of signs when stuck or stubborn.

Tweezers - micro logs and ticks...
Bug / Tick spray
Umbrella
(not used yet)
Baseball Hat and Gloves
Poncho
6 different sizes of plastic bags
Geocoin bag
Travel Bug bag
Swag bag
(trading stuff)
Bigger trading stuff (first aid kits, maglights, bungee cords, etc.)
GPS Garmin Etrex
Handy Dandy Logbook and pens

Palm TX

Garbage Bags

Not quite up to dynamite and pick axe yet but getting there. The night vision goggles have been ordered.

This of course does not include the storage container of assorted caches from bison tubes to large ammo boxes, plus a bunch of lock boxes and those Rubbermaid soup holders. Hey ya never know when you have to put a cache somewhere. Wouldn't be the first time I have repaired someone else's cache, just love telling someone that, my motto always has been "be prepared and stuff".

Anyway as I was going through the discussion of my backpack contents and it occurred to me that if I have this much just after a couple of months I wonder what I will have in another year?

So as the young tike asked me, I now ask you..... What's in your backpack?

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