Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Feb 22, 2008

Attend a Geocaching potluck

Filed in Blog, Living an Interesting Life

Geocaching is an increasingly popular sport whereby members hide treasure pods full of goodies, post the coordinates, and send people to find them. I’ll get to the whole “hunt and seek” aspect of it in a different post, but for this one I’ll chunter on about the social aspects of how potlucks can make a determined shy person’s life easier.

I’m an introvert, and shy along with it. Introversion is normal, but shyness is a personality problem: I’ve been told many times that I’ll need to “get over it.” Thing is, I never will. The best I can do is learn how to deal with it..to fool it. One way I do this is to attend informal social events with food because eating with others is an overt act of trust which relaxes me.

It also gives me something to do with my hands and body which, when in the throes of shyness, are very awkward. If you’ve ever stood there hyperventilating and wondering what the heck to do with your hands, then you’ll know why I do this.

A few weeks ago, my friend Amber invited me to attend the Geocaching potluck picnic in Sacramento. I plugged the coordinates into my GPS unit and about an hour later we followed the little arrows to the door of a library room in Sacramento.

For an informal gather with no officers, the group was strong and it seemed a little daunting for both of us to walk into a group not knowing a soul. Someone welcomed us at the door, however, and took our food offerings; that first point of contact put us a little more at ease. (Note to event organizers: always install a greeter. We appreciate it.)

We staked out a table–there were long trestle tables laid with bright yellow cloths–and in due course were joined by others who were quite willing to share their stories and chat. We soon learned that further down the table was the champion geocacher who had something like 25,000 logs to his name!

It was a gather, and there were announcements, and chatter and getting-to-know-you stuff. The main point is that we attended and would most likely attend another event if we could. It was something where you didn’t necessarily have to lay out money to join a club or chapter, and that it was open to all comers who had at least a nominal interest in the sport. So, here’s my suggestion, especially if you’re shy:

Join Geocaching.com, set your location, and sign up to receive notifications of new caches that are set up in your area. These will include the event caches, and thus you will have the ability to walk into a potluck with at least one thing in common. If you don’t know anything about Geocaching, people will tell you about it.

Alternatively, find some other kind of potluck that you can attend. It’s the whole “what do do with your hands” problem that you’re solving here. :)