----------------------------------------
       Letterboxing
       August 31st, 2018
       ----------------------------------------
       
       Let me preface this by saying my snark here is entirely fictional
       and I have the greatest of respect for other people's hobbies...
       
                       *    *    *    *    *    *    
                       
       Geocaching is bullshit. Seriously? Let me poke in some numbers and
       walk there and boom! a seeeeeecret thing. Tada! (play "Link gets
       the triforce noise" in your head). Oh sure, there's clues to solve
       but at the end of the day the whole physical aspect of going
       somewhere could be removed and replaced with a checkbox that says,
       "Yep, got it."
       
       Now letterboxing... that's the shit right there. None of this
       fancy schmancy technology. Instead, good old fashioned vague
       pioneer directions like, "Go west-north-west for 45 paces until
       you near the tree that looks like an old man taking a piss."
       That's some real adventure! Not the old man taking a piss, the
       dire--you know what I mean. I love letterboxing. I will stamp the
       shit out of some letterboxes. I will leave hitchhikers along the
       way and have grand adventures in state parks. Mmmm, saucy hobby.
       
       The reason I bring this up is not to bash geocaching (though that
       was fun) but because Christy (who loves her some GPS) reminded me
       of an idea I had a while back for letterboxing which, I suppose,
       could be channelled for the dark arts in her hobby as well. My
       idea was to make a series of box challenges which led from one to
       the other and eventually were all pieced together into an Uber
       challenge. Not the car service kind, but like--you know what
       I mean.
       
       The theme was cryptography, which I felt was fitting. The simplest
       box used a Da Vinci cipher. The box then gave a piece of the
       puzzle to the next clue which was an Arnold cipher. Then on to
       a straddling checkerboard. Then the big one was a VIC cipher. And
       when you took the pieces from all the boxes together and
       concatenated all the strings you found, it would be a PGP key you
       could use to decode the final message to the final box.
       
       I got as far as that and some basic clue planning, then I got hung
       up on where I wanted to hide the boxes and never got around to
       doing it. So, if you are out there and you letterbox, please go
       ahead and steal my idea. I'd like to try and find your box
       (snicker). If you're a dirty geocacher, I guess you can do with it
       what you want... ugh.
       
       ;)