I have a few particular traits that work together and are beneficial to my wants (not needs). They are: a love of driving, a strong sense of frugality, the thrill of the hunt, perseverance in the face of monotony, and a hobby of CD collecting.
I had the day off work, so last night, I have planned out a mega-run of 28 thrift shops to accomplish. I expected up to 30 percent of them to be out of business, so maybe I’d get 20 stops in as long as I could keep going. This is pretty much unprecedented in my exploration history. Even back almost two decades ago, when I would do such mega-runs for pawn shops, I would never try to hit 10 in one go.
This trip is a solo run. Even though the GF shares a lot of the same traits I do, this will be a level of monotony I wouldn’t wish on anyone else. And taking a passenger on such a trip would be borderline abusive. And, at points, it was very trying – self-abusive, possibly.
I started at 8:30 in the morning, hoping to get to the first store at 9:00 when they should be just opening up. Well, that didn’t go well. The first store didn’t open until 10:00. I wasn’t going to sit there for an hour, so I moved on. The next shop had a “be back at” sign that was set for 4:30, whatever that means. Then I had a string of DNFs (geocaching speak for Did Not Find) and when I did find an open shop (a few were closed for the holiday season), I didn’t find anything worth buying.
Finally at stop #13 (13!!!), a Goodwill, I found 2 cds I wanted. I thought my luck was turning, but then hit another DNF. I had pre-programmed my GPS with multiple stops as a single route and I was out of stops for that route, so I made a random stop at a pawn shop to enter the remaining stops. When I went into the pawn shop out of curiosity, I was surprised to see a rather large section of CDs. I worked through the shelves in short order and came away with two more CDs, one of which was a target CD – highly unexpected.
I get up to stop #19 with no luck in finding stores or CDs. It’s 2:00 now and I’m hangry. I planned this to be a stopping point for food, but I was also about 2 hours behind schedule. A short stop at Fuddruckers to recharge and I’m back on the hunt. Despite the exponentially increasing traffic, I amazingly completed all the stops, but sadly, I gained nothing more for my collection. I could have stopped after lunch. I battled my way home through Friday rush hour traffic and got home around 6:30.
So, that’s the sad stats, there. 28 stores in 10 hours to acquire 4 CDs. Not the most efficient way to spend a day.
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