Geocaching: The Big FIVE-OH!

[weaselmom]

Well well welly-well! After a day schlepping around Green Lake, which in this heat was essentially the Bataan Death March with squirrels, we managed to hit our 50th cache! A milestone like this calls for a special celebration, something like breaking a blister in your new hiking socks. So, lone remaining reader, do you care? I'm really too beat to give the full run-down, but I will say that we did some caching Saturday in the Arboretum when it was even hotter. I found one by myself, S found one while I tried not to pass out from the heat, and later that night our own beloved woadwarrior found one *in the dark* by the simple expedient of blindly sticking his hand into a hole, just as his Viking forebears did when they cached a thousand years ago. Today we put about four miles on the old shoe leather and ended up with two DNF out of, what, nine caches today total? I forget. It all blurs together, but I did find one by myself, and Shawn was just brilliant all day. Anyway, 50! Who'd a thunk it? And even though sometimes we squabble like dingoes over a baby, even though we still have bad moments like today when we discovered I left the swag bag at home and thus we couldn't pick up any trinkets, we're sticking with it for the time being. We have to--Shawn's new hiking boots aren't even paid off yet.

Comments

[malixe.livejournal.com]

When do you get big enough to make your own cache?

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure there is a threshold you have to pass (e.g., 100 caches). It's more that I perceive it to be kind of a PITA to maintain one! Ideally it should be up and available for years, which means you as the cache maintainer have to be willing to take care of it for that long (longer than some pets live!). You have to read all the Web logs to see if people are still finding it okay or if maybe it's been muggled, or gotten wet, or the log is full. It has to be approved by one of the members of the approving committee, who will then upload it as live (and start the great stampede to be FTF, or first to find). This is a good deal more effort than I am currently willing to expend!

[malixe.livejournal.com]

That is a bit more of a process than I would have expected. But OTOH, if it's that hard, how come there's so many out there that you can turn it into such a vigorous hobby in just a few months?

Maybe you could limit your commitment by making it known that your particular cache is going to be responsibly maintained for a limited time period (say two years for example) and after that it will be up for adoption by any interested parties?

Just a thought. But if you don'wanna, you don'wanna.

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

Don't laugh, but part of it is that I do administrivia five days a week, and the thought of doing it during my leisure time gives me conniptions. It's bad enough that I am the one who does most of the cache research, maintains bookmarks, and logs our finds. If I had to babysit ammo boxes too, I would go mad! MAD, I tell you!

I am amazed that there are so many people who lovingly maintain their caches--and new ones are being added all the time! Of course, old ones are falling off the lists all the time too; I guess they couldn't find an adopter or the site was too badly muggled and they haven't moved it or something.

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

In just the last few weeks What Fish Am I? was taken off the list. Not sure why.

[jeanineers.livejournal.com]

Grats! We're looking forward to another geocaching experience.

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

You know we'd love to have ya. Don't forget that there are many up in your neck of the woods that we could easily hit!

[bork.livejournal.com]

I need to head out with you all at some point.

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

You were indeed the first person I knew who actually geocached! You were partly responsible for my interest in it even now. Yeah, I'm slow.

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

I love reading your cache stories. You make me laugh Dave-Barry hard when you write this stuff.

I did another cache yesterday, bringing my thrilling total up to -- wait for it -- three. Cache Kwest.

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

I saw your email and was so impressed that you found it! Because obviously you thought to look in the unusual places. Did you have to lurk while muggles ambled around like so many camera-toting sheep?

We found a couple yesterday that were so diabolical that we want to drag *you* to them, point you in the general direction, and say, "Go get it!"

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

Sounds like fun! It's always amusing to watch other people suffer.

Okay, so these two cars get to the general area right before me. Four huge guys boil out and start moving stuff from one trunk to the other -- and you know that's not exactly a crossroads, so they went there on purpose.

And this lone middle-aged muscled white girl wearing combat boots with shorts, with earbuds (from the MP3 player) and holding some sort of handheld device under her coat? I kept expecting them to pull Uzis out of the back seats and spray me.

But no, no worries about muggles, precisely.