A store to end all stores. I have never seen a store before like Agnew’s General Store. The variety of things in there is really quite remarkable, how they keep up with all the ordering and dealing with that many distributors I have no idea.
You could find anything you could ever possibly need in that store, and then to top it all off, you could head across the street when you are done shopping and pick up an ice cream cone for the road.
I spent the week doing a bunch of different things, I got to fold t-shirts, sort mail, work in the garden center, price and shelf items, help with deliveries, cut a key… well, it’s a General Store so pretty much a whole lot general stuff.
I realize the best part of all my jobs is all the cool people that I get to meet week after week. I really enjoyed getting to know the Barker family here in Wilberforce and that was a huge part of my experience here. We spent a lot of time visiting, we went to this old house that was turned into a movie theatre, played restaurant with the kids, and my week in Wilberforce would not have been complete without going Geocaching. Wilberforce, Ontario is the Geocaching Capital of Canada. So, when in Rome…
Basically, Geocaching is a treasure hunt for adults with GPS equipment. Geocacher’s hide what are called cache’s, usually some kind of container and inside you can find a log book a long with various trinkets. The co-ordiantes (longitude and latitude) of the cache are placed on the Geocaching website, a long with clues on how to find the cache and people can set out to try and find them. Once you find the cache, you can sign the log book, and trade one of your trinkets for something that is in the cache. You would be surprised how many caches are in your neighbourhood, probably alongside a path that you regularly walk on, it is like an underground secret society of Geocachers. Put in your postal code on the site and you will be surprised.
I am going to make things a little more complicated now — in some caches people will place something that is called a travel bug. A travel bug can be anything such as a small teddy bear, some kind of trinket, and this travel bug is given a mission by it’s original owner to complete a certain task. For example, in the very first cache that we found, there were two travel bugs (two small toy pirates). These two pirates are on a race to see who can reach all three oceans that surround Canada and make it back to their original cache. I have one of the pirates. I will be taking him to Vancouver when I go this week and will meet up with a local geocacher who can then place him in a cache on the West Coast – one ocean complete!
This is “Bloody Sam Roberts” – the travel bug:
Are you convinced yet that Geocaching should be included as an Olympic sport in Vancouver 2010?
Anyways, now that you know where Wilberforce is, that it is the Geocaching Capital of Canada, and what Geocaching is, set your GPS to Agnew’s General Store (N45`02.267 W078`13.383) and ask for Mary, aka, “Sticky Moose†in the Geocaching world. She will set you up with all you need to try it out for yourself.
It was a short week as I didn’t get into Wilberforce until late Monday night and then left on Friday to Toronto so that I could catch my flight to Vancouver for the week. My friend is getting married next weekend, so I am heading home for that and to prepare things for when I start my next One Week Job in Toronto Monday, July 30th.
What am I preparing for you ask? Well, I got a pretty fun announcement that starts my first week in Toronto, but have to hold off until Monday to let you know about it – I promised a reporter with the Canadian Press the exclusive on it.
Until then,
-Sean