Sunday, October 18, 2009

Lonelies and FTF's

I've been concentrating my efforts this month on only doing Lonely Caches and FTF (First to Finds). Why? Well the answer may seem a little strange to the non-caching community but I have the 200 milestone coming up. My plan is to hit this milestone while in Orlando, FL at DisneyWorld. There are a couple of virtual caches there and this is a special once in a lifetime trip for us as a family.

Lonely Caches are geocaches that haven't been found for more than 4 months. As a member of the Wisconsin Geocaching Association I participate in this "game" where you get to accumulate bragging points. "Chasing lonelies" (as I call it) has taken me on some wild adventures into the wilderness, taught me many history lessons, and generally just challenged my geocaching skills. The reason many of these caches are lonely, is because they generally aren't easy to do. The majority of these that I've done involve some kind of puzzle aspect and require some kind of research to complete them. The research may involve internet searches, trips to the library for books referenced, or plain old just walking the streets reading street signs and tags from power poles. While these types of caches don't generate high numbers they do provide a great challenge.

First to Finds (FTF's) provide another bragging rights opportunity in the caching community. The first person to find a new cache gets the bragging rights to claim FTF which is just one of the many numbers cachers track. I don't have my log handy at the moment, but I believe I snagged #26 this weekend while doing Stuck between a Bell and a “Starry” place which a fellow cacher named BakRdz did to give me some grief about being an addict.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

What a PuzLr

What a wild last few days with a major upgrade event at work and an attempt on a couple of FTF's. The biggest of these events was the FTF today on A BakRdz’ PuzLr by BakRdz. The full log explains the details, but to summarize - I made a bunch of mistakes and was still able to get a CO-FTF with 2boyz. JimandLinda also arrived on the scene and scored STF.

After that it was a trip over to Starbucks to meet with BakRdz. It was a coincidence because we had this planned prior to the activity with this puzzle cache. It was great to meet some of these fellow cachers face / face and share in the excitement.