Friday night, an hour after I get home from work, I log on to GC.com to look for caches around the town that I will visit tomorrow, the first full day of my nine-day vacation.Ever misplace your GPSr? Here's a bone-chilling, sobering tale that just might hit close to home--too close! A Time Warner publisher's reminder sale draws me to Lebanon, Indiana where books of all kinds will sell for only $1.00 each, and I am so there. Caching is secondary to my short trip up I-65, I'm thinking, but it's always a great way to learn more about a town, and see what interesting features the locals want to show me. Fifteen minutes later, with waypoints and descriptions in hand, I reach into my fanny pack for my simple yellow Etrex so that I can manually input the coords.

But, it's not there. My geep, as I call it, is not in my fanny pack. Oh, yeah, I think. I was wearing my many-pocketed safari vest last weekend; it must be there. I move to the hook by the door, and my hands fly quickly to the geep pocket, but it's unzipped and the geep is not there. Hm. That's odd. I'm not the type to misplace things. But, hey, I'm not as young as I was a year ago, and the '70s took a toll on my memory back in the day. So I check all the pockets in the vest, and it's not there. I double-check the fanny pack, dumping the contents onto the table with no luck.

My purse sits nearby, and I grab it in annoyance and dump it too.

No geep. "Well, hell," I say out loud to myself. "Must be in the trunk of the car." So out to the garage I go and open the trunk. The garage holds the heat of the day, and it must be well over 90° out here as I rummage through the contents of the trunk. My cache first aid kit includes spare logbooks, sunscreen, bug repellant, pens, and pencils, assorted trade items, a flashlight, baggies, and more. But the geep is not there. My muddy hiking boots sit atop the rain slicker, the better to keep the mud off the carpet until it dries. The Red Cross first aid kit lays to one side, and my Colorado aspen walking stick, with its floating compass mounted in the top, is stretched across the full length of the trunk.Sweat trickles down my neck and beads across my brow, and for the first time, I let the idea come to me: I've lost it. It was carefully measured to fit in the trunk, and I carved it myself six years ago, after a trip to Breckenridge with my sister. There are many things in the trunk of the car, but the geep is not among them.

I close the trunk and sigh in frustration. Sweat trickles down my neck and beads across my brow, and for the first time, I let the idea come to me: I've lost it.

"Nah!" I say out loud. (I told you, I live alone, and people who live alone tend to talk to themselves.) I go back into the house and call my friend Mike. Last weekend, I introduced him to caching for the first time. He'd been listening to me telling him how much I enjoy this hobby since last August, but I could never convince him to come with me. For some reason, this time he acquiesced, and we had such a great time caching on Saturday that he called me Sunday and asked me to go shopping with him. He wanted to be outfitted for caching, and we hit the stores for a new GPSr, water bottle fanny pack, safari vest and more. Then we went out to a local park to seek a new cache and try out his new equipment, but that's a separate story.

"Mike!" I say when he answers his phone. "Hey, buddy, I can't find my geep. You haven't seen it have you?" Now, we haven't seen one another since last Sunday, and why, exactly, I thought he might have it was unclear to me. I mean, I know he can be a joker, but would he do that? I'm thinking: maybe I left it on the car bumper and he saw it and picked it up, and then waited for me to notice before springing it on me. "Tada! Here it is, you absent minded nut!" And then, I'm thinking: Oh, no! What if I left it on the bumper, and he didn't notice? That idea rattles me a bit, but I don't say it out loud. Yet. So I'm beginning to get a tad excited at this point, but Mike stays with me while I walk the house with my cordless phone, and we search it together. I check the fanny pack again. The vest pockets. The purse. Back out to the garage, where I go through the trunk again, and then the front seats and center console.

Back into the house, where my two cats have become interested in the game, and they follow me around. Doubtless, they sense my increasing agitation as each search proves unfruitful. I check the laundry basket, and the pockets of the jeans I was wearing last Sunday. Dizzy, my calico kitty, looks in there with me. Nothing.Now I'm getting frantic. I haven't missed a weekend of caching since I learned about the game last August. Then Mike has an inspired idea: check the freezer. I always freeze my water bottles in the summer, so that they remain cold for many hours of caching, and that is something that I hadn't thought of. Laughing, heartened to think, what a riot if it's in there, I nearly trip over my brown tabby cat Peanut, who has come to see what goodies I might pull from the fridge. With fresh hope, I open the freezer. My three water bottles are there, ready for tomorrow's games, but the geep is not there.

Now I'm getting frantic. I haven't missed a weekend of caching since I learned about the game last August. I've cached in snowdrifts up to my knees, driving rainstorms, and raging winds where trees threw things at me. I've cached in subzero cold and 100° heat and floodwaters. I've cached in Turkey Run's hills with my bum knee in a brace, and I've cached with a low-grade fever and streaming sinuses. I've fallen through thin ice and topped my boots in a February melt-off. And, I've dearly loved every minute of it. Well, except for the mosquitoes and blackflies. And the stinging nettles and thorns and the poison ivy. And the DNFs. But, hey, every hobby's got something.

Speaking of DNFs, I search the cat's basket of toys and I realize my hands are shaking just a bit, and I know I've got a real problem here. I'm still sweating, and it's not hot inside. Mike is still with me on the phone, and I start to talk a little crazy. I know he's got to work tomorrow, and so does my other caching friend, and so there's no hope of piggy backing on their geeps.

I start over, one room at a time, a whirlwind of destruction on an adrenaline jag, until I'm angry and crying "I gotta find it Mike. What will I do? I can't afford to buy a new one." To which I am thinking: Yeah, well, that's what credit cards are for. I have only one credit card, and I only use it for true emergencies: the new roof, the furnace and A/C, the car repairs, new glasses. Things I absolutely can't live without. So it's okay, I tell myself. The geep qualifies.

"Wait! I know! The cats must've got it," I tell him. "Yeah. They like to knock things off the countertops to get my attention when their bowls are empty." I start to search around the kitchen pass-through. The empty Diet Coke box. The garden watering can. The bookcase full of cookbooks I never get around to using. Under the nearby living room end table. The coffee table. Oh Jeez! The computer desk! I fly into the den, the cats fast behind me, and I send paper flying and CDs crashing in a heap onto the floor.

Nothing. Mike says soothing things, and tries to calm me, but the aspect of my vacation looming empty before me has me badly shaken, and I realize that he's going to think I'm over the deep end. And maybe he'll decide that caching is as addictive as those cigarettes he's just managing to quit for the tenth time since I've known him. So maybe he'll not want to play after all. Can't have that!

I take a deep breath and try to get a grip, for his sake. "Okay. It's okay," I say, as much to myself as to him. "Mike, I'm going to let you go, so I can search with both hands. Maybe I'll check the car again." He says "okay", but I can hear the concern in his voice. "Um, yeah. Okay. Sure. But, call me, okay?" You know what I'm talking about here. That reluctant suspicion that comes across as I-know-you're-not-ok,-but-I-won't-say-that-out-loud,-and-neither-will-you. That special condescension. That patronizing humor.

But, I don't care. A mental image floats in my mind's eye of my last day of vacation nine days from now: The 70 pounds I've lost in the last year have found me in a single week, and puddle around my prone body like Jabba the Hutt's flab. I am lying semi-comatose in front of the flickering tube as Jerry Springer gives way to Judge Judy, and I've got a Whopper in both fists, a smear of ketchup on my chin and multi-colored stains on my muumuu, and a case of beer with a long straw on the coffee table. AACCKK!! Gotta find it!

I tell Mike goodbye and toss the phone aside. Another mental image: it's last Sunday and the geep, sitting serenely on the bumper's edge, drops gently to the pavement as I drive off toward home. I entertain a fantasy of the Good Samaritan who finds it in the parking lot at Holiday Park. She picks it up, and knows immediately what it is because she's a cacher too. She turns it on and finds my home coordinates listed in the H's and she hops on her motorcycle and passes me on Kessler Blvd. at Michigan Road. When I get home, she's sitting in my driveway waiting for me and this whole frantic nightmare of searching never has to happen at all. Dizzy hugs my shins and I come back to today's reality.

I start over, one room at a time, a whirlwind of destruction on an adrenaline jag, until I'm angry and crying and oh, brother! Get a grip! Sheesh! Finally, I stop. Sulking now, I look at the remnants of last Sunday's paper, sitting mostly unread from last weekend's busy fun, and decide perhaps I need to start looking at the sporting goods and electronics store ads. But, I'm too keyed up, so I decide to go for a walk first, instead. Just what I need now. A nice long walk though Starkey Park's lovely trails, another fine park that caching has shown me.

Relief floods through me. I scoop up the kitties and give them joyful hugs...I go into the bedroom to get my trail running shoes, and as I shove my right foot into the shoe, I'm met with something. Peanut is grinning sideway at me, and I know she's left me a prize in my shoes again. I don't know why she gifts me in this way, and she won't explain it, but it's not unusual to find rabbit-fur mice or cache toys or my toothbrush in my shoes. Hoping today's obstruction is not organic, I up-end the shoe, and there it is! My geep!

Relief floods through me. I scoop up the kitties and give them joyful hugs, even as I contemplate punishing Peanut. If I thought she'd even make the connection, I might. But, there's really no point. I've got my geep and all is right with the world. Well, mostly right. I look up and notice that my normally tidy home is a shambles around me. My extremities are quaking with the adrenaline overload, and the cats have gone running off to hide from the psycho mad hugger. As I contemplate writing my first article for Today's Cacher, I think: maybe I need to re-evaluate the place that caching has taken in my life. Maybe, as my friends and co-workers have pointed out, I've become obsessed. Maybe I should call Mike and talk with him about that. Yeah, maybe. Well, at least let him know I've found my geep, so he doesn't stay up tonight worrying about me.

Now, if I can just find the phone.