Time capsule treasure map & pickleball, again

Dear Rachel,

I have this stack of small papers where I have written notes to myself. Backs of envelopes, tops of receipts, things like that. I keep trying to clear it off my kitchen table, but then I see all the good ideas and think, oh I need to keep that, I won’t remember it otherwise. So the pile stays and grows. What’s a good alternative for organizing all my brilliant-for-later ideas?

– Struck by Inspiration

Dear Inspired Victim,

I got it. Make yourself a special box to put all the ideas in. Like one made of fine cedar, or an old Merrell shoe box. Take that box far out into the wilderness and bury it. On your way home, create a treasure map with lots of riddlesome clues. Hide that map in your most important personal effects. You will soon forget all about the box and all its contents, freeing yourself from the burden of all your down-the-road genius. But your heirs? They’ll kick off a Forrest Fenn-style search for whatever you buried out there.

– Marked with an X, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I’ve seen all these letters you get about pickleball this and pickleball that. Yet somehow, Overland Park, Kans., gets celebrated as the most pickleball-obsessed city in America. (SLC was second, and someplace in Michigan was third.) I can only think that the criteria did not include letters to the newspaper, because clearly, Durango is beyond obsessed. What gives?

– Left Hanging

Dear Dangling Pickle,

Not only did Durango not make the list, but no Colorado community cracked the top 25. The list (at least the one I found) was based on Google searches about pickleball, so I can come to only one conclusion: Durangotans and Coloradans have already reached expert status, so we don’t NEED to look up any stinkin’ information about the sport we’re best in the world at, alongside skiing, biking, rafting, drinking and costuming.

– Top that, Rachel