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| Changing Interests |
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| by Scott Legal |
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Geocaching has introduced me to a lot of new people, a lot of whom I've become good friends with. I have been on many great adventures and found a lot of memorable caches. I'm coming up on three years of geocaching and the summer of 2005 has had me reflecting on what I like and dislike about geocaching. As some of you may know, I changed jobs this past spring after 20 years working for the same company. The change has been a good one and I have no regrets. The change did however cut dramatically into my free time. My commute is now an hour round trip rather than a 10-foot walk down the hall. I am working longer hours at one stretch, rather than breaking up my hours throughout the day and evening. Another thing that I've considered is the fact that, while hiking caches are good exercise, I put on a lot of weight over the past three years because hiking and urban caching proved to be far less strenuous than my previous passion of mountainbiking.
When spring was winding down I faced growing discontent with urban caching. Almost since the get go, I didn't enjoy these caches. I bore quickly of the pursuit and rarely found more than 5-10 caches before quitting. I guess I had finally found one too many the often pointless caches that exposed me to the stares of a leery public, making me feel like an urban terrorist. I decided then that I had enough and threw in the towel on urban caching. At the same time, there was a shortage of trail caches and I decided to go for a ride. I've been riding throughout this geocaching adventure, but I guess this time I was in a different frame of mind than other times. This time, the magic of mountainbiking came back. No longer was my mountainbike a vehicle to get me to a far away trail cache, but was once again a tool of immense enjoyment.
I was suddenly making the easy decision to ride rather than geocache. I started riding so much that it became a passion once again. If it weren't for a bunch of caches conveniently placed by BLIG on a few of my favorite riding trails, I probably wouldn't have geocached again the whole summer. My passion for mountainbiking resulted in the purchase of a new bike and the logging of some longer and harder rides. I’ve also lost about 8 pounds. And it has brought me to the point that I am at now, where I envision the changing of the focus of this website.
My first step has been to change the title of the website. The title is no longer "Geocaching in Thousand Oaks, CA". Instead it is now "Geocaching, Hiking & Mountainbiking in Thousand Oaks, CA". There is obviously some content pertaining to hiking in here as all but one of my geotreks are hiking treks. There is almost no content dedicated to mountainbiking. That will change over time. I'm not sure what content I will provide at this point, but I will most certainly provide content. I don't want to rush this, nor do I have a lot of time to do so. While the title may indicate otherwise, it is merely a statement that my interests have shifted.
Geocaching will continue to have a home here for the foreseeable future. However, I do not see any future additions in geocaching content outside of the sort of content that is already present. I have also abandoned plans to refine my geotreks section to more localized treks. Most of you probably won't notice much of a difference here unless you look for it. If you find it, I hope you enjoy it.
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