It’s Not About The Numbers Anymore

A Reflection of GeoWoodstock XXI & the State of Geocaching

Let me start off by saying we arrived back from our epic Whimventure in Europe at 2:00 AM and by 9:00 PM we were in Morgantown, West Virginia for GeoWoodstock. I say this because it might have clouded my judgement when it comes to certain things.

Cecil with Signal the Frog, Geocaching’s Mascot

A Little Background

Geocaching has been around 25 years. It is a hobby in which you use GPS coordinates to find something someone has hidden at a specific location.  The joke is “I use multi-billion dollar satellites to find Tupperware in the woods.”

Some hides are amazingly complex like this one about Mothman in West Virginia

Sue and I have been Geocaching since 2006, back when you cached with a handheld GPS and usually a paper printout of the cache page.  Sue has been an active cacher from the beginning, me… yes & no.  I was really active then stopped due to some issues, I returned after retirement and have focused on Adventure Labs more than actual geocaches for the most part.  When I was active I was evangelical and many cachers got started in the hobby because I introduced them.  I currently do a comic strip for FTF Geocacher Magazine and am talking with another Geocaching publication about doing more. As for numbers (I know what the title says, I wrote it) we have found a geocache in every U.S. state except Alaska.  We have found caches in eight different countries.  Sue has about 10,000 more finds than I do- she’s very thorough about filling in maps and grids… me?  Whatever.  Cecil, Evil GeoCaching Monkey (bent on world domination) started off as a log in a cache and now is my alter ego.

Giga, Mega, Block Party, huh?

GeoWoodstock is what is called a Giga event which means it has a different icon than a Mega event because more people have said they would attend.  Woodstocks are annual events in a different location each year.  There is no main organizer, a local group puts together a proposal and past hosts decide who gets the honor.  It’s a secret until the end of the current Woodstock.

The organizers have a massive job and deserve respect for taking on this Herculean task.  Then dealing with everyone’s complaints when things don’t go exactly the way some geocacher wants.  Usually the hosts place a number of new geocaches and a series of side events to keep people entertained the week prior. The one thing this has brought to my attention is the numbers game.

When we first started caching one way you could prove you were serious or an experienced geocacher was the number of finds you had.  I’m not sure that is the best way to look at things now.

What’s Changed?

I think two things radically changed to landscape of geocaching as a hobby- smart phones and Adventure Labs.

The Ironic Dumbing Down of Geocaching

When we started caching you needed a handheld GPS to find things. This was a barrier to starting.  You had to make an investment.  Because of that you were invested.  I recall taking an economics class as a teacher and being told that by putting even a small monetary investment into an activity increased people taking it seriously, now it’s a free app and if you don’t go with “premium membership” it’s free to do.  (Cecil is a premium member). This opened the hobby up to everyone which is great.  This also opened the hobby up to everyone which is horrible.  Before people helped each other out, took care when caching, now… not so much.  Which might be why when putting out a new cache a lot of them became “premium membership only” caches.

Off to Adventure!

Then came Adventure Labs.  I’m a fan of Ad Labs.  They are location based questions that pop up when you get close to them. I like wandering around an area and discovering cool things about a place.  That’s what the original intention of Ad Labs was- an easy way to learn about cool things in an urban area where it would be difficult to hide a physical cache. Unfortunately, they started putting multiple Adventure Labs at Welcome Centers and Rest Areas.  When I say multiple, I mean hundreds.  All with multiple choice answers. So all you need to do is keep guessing until you move on… you don’t even need to read the question.  I discovered during this epic Whimventure that Ad Labs can be like events and only run for a certain time.  At London Calling there was an Ad Lab tied to a series of gadget caches in the main hall.  Solve the gadget to get the answer.  I don’t mind this as much, but here’s where the game has changed… with Ad Labs, it’s not about the numbers anymore.

Imaginary Numbers are Real

When I first started out having 1,000 finds was a big deal.  Getting 100 finds in a day was a monumental accomplishment.  With Ad Labs, every question you answer is considered a find.  So I can get 600 finds in 90 minutes sitting in my car at the West Virginia Welcome Center sipping on a Dr. Pepper while eating potato chips. The only thing I have to deal with is a possible repetitive stress injury.  Saying you’ve got 10,000 finds just says that you sat at a lot of rest areas - West Virginia, Ohio, and New Jersey come to mind.

So what matters now?

I’m guessing the new mark of a cacher will be specific accomplishments.  How many different icons have you gotten?  How long have you been caching (pre-smartphone?) How many states have you found a cache? How many countries? What challenges have you completed?  Jasmer Challenge- found a cache placed in every month since caching started.  DT Challenge - filled in your Difficulty/Terrain grid.  How many First To Finds (FTF) do you have? These things will mean more than just having a bazillion finds.

Monkey Brad talked about the community at the closing of GeoWoodstock and how cachers from anywhere can get together and if they’ve been to the same city, they can talk about the same caches they found in that area.  This is what’s missing from these mass dumps of Ad Labs.  I doubt I’ll chat with a fellow cacher about our shared experience answering 600 multiple choice question in a rest area

Thoughts on Improving the Situation

I don’t know.  A couple of options could be mandating the distance between Ad Labs stages- like they do with geocaches.  Another could be only counting a completed Ad Lab as a find not each stage. With multi-caches and virtual that gave multiple stages only counting as a single find Ad Lab stages end up overwhelming your numbers. Requiring Ad Labs to use more than just multiple choice questions.  Removing multiple choice completely has its own problems when it comes to the phrasing of answers.  Limiting the number of Ad Lab stages in a specific area.  For example the stages for every Ad Lab at the West Virginia Welcome Center are in the same place.  Perhaps don’t allow for Ad Lab Geo Art, while cute the Ad Labs in West Virginia create the outline of the state. London Callings Ad Labs spelled out “Calling” on the Thames.

I have to remind myself that everyone plays the game differently, and that OK. I just think as we try to compare our accomplishments to each other (it’s human nature) in Geocaching, at least, numbers no longer mean what they once did.

Cecil’s numbers as of this post. The Adventure Lab App has a count of him completing 250 total Labs and 62 in progress.