Key-rock

This is the interior of my key-rock.

My nerdy delight in Geocaching led me to it. Geocaching is something I’ve written about before where nerds hide things for other nerds to find. It’s delightful. I am very much one of those nerds, and even if my Geocaching stats are not very high, I try to find at least one thing in every place I go, so long as I remember to look, which I frequently don’t… I got one in Saudi though. And one in The Azores…

I’m writing about the “rock” because it alerted me to the existence of things like it. I’m sure I’ve dismissed caches in the past thinking they were rocks that were actually these things. Cunning cunning nerds. Nerds with disposable income. You have to pay to buy something you’re just going to leave for other people to find…

Sometimes things look like nothing but actually have great meaning. If everybody had key-rocks like this one then you’d just look at the top and think “oh, a key-rock”. Right now, they’re rare enough that you think “oh, a rock”. Nerdmoney well spent as a geocache. I took a photo of just the interior in order not to hasten the dissipation of the illusion.

I bought the key-rock online. It wasn’t expensive but it still cost money, just as a subscription to the Geocaching site costs money. Last night before I drove to Peterborough I left the rock out for Tom. I’m using it to hide my key, not a cache. This is what it was made for. If you try to buy something like it through the “official Geocaching website” it costs much more. The market etc etc. I bought it thinking I might make a cache. But for now it is a practical item for times like last night when an old friend is staying in my vacant flat.

I thought about giving him riddles and cryptic clues to find the thing. “First you must answer questions three!” Time got the better of me though, and I wasn’t sure what sort of state he’d be in when he got here. He’s living in York these days so chances are he was taking in some London theatre and very possibly some alcohol thereafter. I left him very clear video messages instead. Merciful, but also practical as I wanted an early bed and didn’t want to be woken up by panic calls.

It worked. I just retrieved the key for myself and I’m safely installed at home again. Sad to miss Tom, but we all have to make money. I’m back on the workshop grind, as you might have noticed from my emergency blog yesterday. Why else would I spend so much blogspace expanding details of a keyholder that looks like a rock…?

Bed.