South Africa 2011: “Red Stripe”

A young South African engineer writes of a quest he is planning for his girlfriend Pia. Pia is still grieving over the loss of her favorite grandfather, a cheerful old man who was for many years a popular and well-loved figure in the town.

Now this happy old grandfather was known for hiking each evening to a certain bench on a certain scenic beach, carrying with him exactly two bottles of chilled Jamaican Red Stripe beer.  He so preferred this brand, normally unavailable in South Africa, that he had cases of it imported specially. Pia says that as a young girl she would often join him on these hikes, and she ranks the memories of the many evenings she spent watching the sunset on his bench while he drank as among her happiest.

So our young engineer’s plan is to install some electronics into an ordinary cold beverage container, creating the world’s first “Reverse Geocache Puzzle Cooler”. Before he presents Pia this unusual gift he will naturally lock two cold bottles of Red Stripe inside and program it to open only at a certain special place. You can probably guess where. He predicts that when Pia arrives at the famous bench and grasps the significance of the cooler’s contents, “it will melt her”. Indeed. What a lovely memorial experience that will be.