Saturday, July 7, 2007

13. The Legend of Boomer Bear

Once upon a time there was a travel bug named Boomer Bear. He began his life on July 15th 2006, in Oklahoma. All Travel Bugs must have a goal, and Boomer's is to see as many college football stadiums as possible.

On August 1st last year, a father and son from Tucson, travelling across the nation, picked Boomer up from a travel bug hotel in Oklahoma, and took him on his first set of adventures. Boomer saw the Kansas City Chiefs practice at UWRF, then went on to see Notre Dame stadium, Knute Rockne's grave, and the college football hall of fame.

One short week later, Boomer was dropped off in a geocache outside of Nashville, TN, hoping no doubt for a rabid southern football fan to take him from stadium to stadium throughout the 2006 college football season.

But it was not to be.

Boomer waited in the Nashville cache until the first of October, when he was retrieved by a man who took him all the way to San Diego, but did not show him any football. The bear lay forgotten through the whole season. In February, he was placed in a very challenging multi-cache in the hills north of San Diego.

This was a very difficult cache, and not many cachers found it. Months went by. Finally, the bear heard the lid of the ammo can pried open, and he saw the sunlight stream in. Alas, the geocacher looked at the bear, but chose a different treasure. The lid closed again. Boomer wondered if he was doomed to spend another football season just waiting.

Meanwhile, Boomer's fate became known to the father and son who had taken him on his first adventures. Unwilling to let Boomer hibernate away another season, they set out from Tucson on July 7, 2007 to rescue him. Despite the complexity of the multi-cache's puzzles, despite the record-breaking heat wave, they persevered, found the cache, and retrieved from California the bear they had left in Tennessee.

This is a true story.

To be continued...

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