Geocaching

After basketball today, the kids and I made a promise. If you have followed the previous entries, you may have noticed that the geocaching content is reaching suspiciously high levels. The truth is that I have become thoroughly obsessed with this game, born in the year 2000. After finding so many caches, it was time to hide one of my own! We happened to need someone to give a short talk after basketball, so I told the story of me and geocaching. To me, searching for hidden things carries the strange pull of exploring the unknown. Judging by the children’s half-understanding expressions, they may not have shared my enthusiasm. ...

Another day of failing to get up for a run ( After NT today, I galloped after a classmate to Wangfujing to meet some of his old schoolmates. That evening we ate “authentic” zhajiangmian and heard all manner of amusing stories about people and events at their school. Passed St. Joseph’s Church in Wangfujing. Beautiful from the outside, though sadly its cache was missing. Passed a rickshaw statue and discovered that the driver had become separated from his vehicle. I cried: “The Force—activate!” This, too, was a kind of cache; all it required was a photo together. (So naturally I photographed my bag with the rickshaw. Classic me.) ...

Nothing much to say about today, so let me fill in yesterday’s trip to the botanical garden. We followed a friend to the Beijing Botanical Garden for a spring outing. Spring in Beijing is brief and brilliant. Besides the beautiful flowers, of course, there is willow fluff filling the sky. Once you let yourself mistake that all-enveloping white for snow, you cannot help marveling at how perfectly Xie Daoyun described it. ...

I want story to sit at the heart of my diary. So when a story I poured myself into is met with “I couldn’t understand it,” it is hard not to feel disappointed. Today, I went to Olympic Forest Park with brothers and sisters to play Frisbee. Everyone was so easygoing, and Frisbee was super fun! I searched for a few caches along the way, only to discover that one lay precisely within a sprinkler’s firing range. After several rounds of matching wits with it (meaning: walking in circles), I received my prize—a pair of shoes completely caked in mud. ...

Dragged myself up at 2:00 a.m. to solve the hunt meta and kept going until 6:30. Every variety of brute force failed, until I finally discovered that I had extracted the starting year incorrectly—because I had simply asked AI at that step. AI still cannot replace humanity after all ( At the time, I didn’t know the reason for the error, but the sun was already up, and it was time to go out and “refresh my mind.” Following the veteran Beijinger—my dad—we headed out to explore and eat! ...

Finished another write-up and posted it on Bilibili! Come see! After eating lamb chops at noon, I had a sudden whim to set off early and do some treasure hunting near my destination. Checking on the subway, holy cow, there was actually a park nearby with 7 caches inside! It could easily be called a budget version of the Olympic Forest Park! The key point is that this so-called “Zhongguancun Park” is not well-known, qualifying as a “niche camping holy land” where you can not only ride bikes directly inside, but even park for free! ...

Did you know? Beijing has a place called “Hangzhou Park,” and it has exactly one way in or out. After playing basketball, guided by Geocaching, I arrived at this park. From the spot where you walk in, you can only see the sign of some hotel. Turning left at the intersection where you are prompted to turn right, this hidden little park appears right before your eyes. Honestly, without Geocaching and Amap, I would never in a million years have walked in here. According to earlier logs, even some people who live nearby had no idea the place existed. So although today’s hunt ended empty-handed—and cost me one broken camera, www—the joy of unlocking a new location still outweighed the disappointment. (MY CAMERAAAAAA.) ...

At small group last night I realized my sleep schedule was somewhat irregular, so I went to bed early. (What a convenient excuse for skipping an update~.) Making up for it today. To be honest, I didn’t do much yesterday. In the morning, I was extremely frustrated by the garbage internet while trying to register my university account at home, so in the afternoon, I went out to play basketball (actually, I asked the coach to add Mondays and Wednesdays so I can work hard on my stamina and show off to the morning run classmates tomorrow, hehe). In the evening, I went to the small group and tried to print a Cheat Sheet using the printer in the shared space, but failed after messing around with it for ages. Right when I was having dinner, my roommate posted some mouth-watering food photos; trying to distract myself by opening my phone, I saw a notification that read “20 Must-Try Air Fryer Delicacies.” Tears of drool streamed from the corners of my mouth. ...