My Geek Odyssey

Monday will start a new arc, but I thought I should finish the geocaching 101 comics with this one.  I know many people who obsess about their hobbies- that’s what makes them a geek.  Someone who spends every minute worrying about their fantasy football team, or car, or comics or… you get the idea.  Sadly geocaching can create Pavlovian responses in some – the email comes that a cache has been published and there is nothing they can do except think about finding that cache.  There are those who cannot drive to the grocery (or the local pizza place) without taking a side trip to find a cache.  Sometimes these side trips can me miles out of their way.  We all know those who are “die-hard” when it comes to their hobbies… caching is no different.

For many it all starts with a challenge… A challenge cache is one that you can only log if you have met certain requirements.  The first of these to my knowledge were dealing with numbers… find so many traditional caches, so many virtuals, etc.   Then cam the day challenges cache for so many days in row- right now the biggie around here is the 366 day challencge- you have to show that you have found a cache for every day on the calendar.

The two challenges sited here were the Indiana Virtual Challenge in which you had to log all the virtuals in Indiana.  There was only one left on most people’s list and the road was washed out… so to make sure Sue could be FTF we hiked out to it, before they opened the road.

The other was the 100 day challenge… Sue decided to start this challenge in the fall which meant finishing it in the dead of winter.  The trick is to save some for nearby… which she had-  that still doesn’t help when it’s a snow day because all the roads in the county are considered impassible.  Sue’s last cache for that was “100 days of cursing Professor Zoom” placed by Cecil near enough so she would be guaranteed to get it.  For a complete list of challenges in Indiana visit IndianaGeocaching.com

One special kind of event is a flash mob.  You may have heard of these, not in the realm of geocaching.  A flash mob is when a bunch of people descend on a public place and do something (usually silly) at the same time.  It could be sing a song, do a dance, cheer… and then gather up their stuff to vanish back into the crowd.  In geocaching flash mobs as events have rules and a procedure that should be followed.  First- sign the log, second do the activity, third eat a snack, and finally take a photo.  This all needs to happen in the space of 15 minutes.  Podcacher has hosted the World Wide Flash Mob for years.  For GeoWoodstock Sue & I (mostly Sue) put on a flash mob on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.  By being a limited time they tend to be a fun break from caching.

Here’s the funny part… after you’ve been caching a while most folks don’t blend into the crowd that well.  You see a bunch of folks gathered together looking at their watches or GPS units and you know what’s going on.  Fortunately, most muggles are oblivious.  In my meager flash mob experience I have seen good ones and ones where the whole meaning was lost.  One I recall- the time came to mob and all that happened was the group moved in mass from the parking lot to a sign. Not much coming out of the crowd to the surprise of onlookers.  The best one was the most recent World Wide Flash Mob in which we all wandered through a mall talking on bananas… the looks we got showed me the potential of a well done flash mob.

Was ours at Niagara Falls well done?  I think we did a good job… until the end.  When you get a bunch of geocachers together we all tend to not want to go away.  Stories to tell, friendships to make… 15 minutes just isn’t enough time.  Besides that, the wedding veils, the “champagne” toast, the police asking us what we were doing, all lead to a memorable experience.  If I were to do it again, I’d just create a second location for everyone to gather away from the original ground zero… live and learn.

It’s kind of funny… there are so many folks who after they find their first cache decide to go home and put a cache out… not the best idea.  There are so many different ways of hiding a cache that I have always recommended to find at least 100.  Cecil has a general rule that he should have at least one cache for every 100 finds.  The Dr. Who series kind of made that a bit strange since he really didn’t hide them, but if he hadn’t sent them out they wouldn’t have been placed…

So you know of a great place, you have an idea for the perfect hide… make sure that if someone stumbles upon it by accident they can easily figure out what it is.  Many communities are now asking cachers to use clear containers.  I had the chance to attend an event put on by the Louisville Bomb Squad, their advice- make sure every side has something that denotes it is a geocache.  If not, they will not pick it up to check the side facing the tree, they will blow it up.  They will x-ray it first, and if it looks suspicious they will blow it up.  Non-geocacher (also known as a “Muggle”) get a little nervous when they see someone in camo placing a metal box in a parking lot… they tend to call the police… go figure!  So if you placing your first cache, be careful and make sure to follow all the rules, and a little common sense.

The rule is simple- if you take something, leave something.  Sadly new cachers tend to forget this and start feeling guilty.  I’ve actually found money, paper money, in a cache along with Happy Meal toys, and other Dollar Store trinkets- my guess is someone was caching with a kid who really, really, really, wanted the rub on tattoo in the cache, so whoever was caching with the kid, bought it.

Besides shiny things and junk, there are those who create intricate signature items.  I once thought about buying a bunch of Professor Zoom cards from the DC collectible card game to place in caches… until I found out that “collectible” means expensive.  Cecil once put toy parachuting monkeys in caches.  He soon discovered pathtags and since they are shiny, and they are collectible… he went with those.  They also really confuse anyone the first time they encounter them, because they think they are a geocoin and therefore trackable (more on that Monday).  If you ever run into one in the wild, don’t panic, if you like it- keep it.

One big no-no for trading would be food items or something smelly. Items like that tend to attract animals who can either steal or destroy the cache as they hunt for dinner.

One of my goals for the summer was to work on “cartoon guide” to Geocaching… (“Gee-Oh-Cash-Ing”) and with GeoWoodstock… (“Gee-Oh-Wood-St-Ock”) just around the corner (and not having any good ideas for storylines) I thought this would be a perfect time to get it done.

My favorite definition of geocaching is using multi-million dollar satellites to find Tupperware in the woods. So while this might be a good place to start as a newbie, I really don’t have the space to cover all the details. I would head over to geocaching.com and watch the short introductory video, and set up a free account. The basics so far would be- 1. find the cache (“cash”), 2. open the cache, 3. sign the logbook to prove you were there, 4. trade anything you want (optional- Cecil would prefer you don’t) 5. put it all back where you found it. Pretty simple… in concept.

Oh, and GeoWoodstock is a massive geocaching event held annually in a different part of the country. This year it is in Pennsylvania, I’ll try to blog a bit once we get out there.