BruceTP

After much thought and consideration and with no further comments forthcoming, I have decided to go with Zakumi of Macaddikt. The innocence of youth, the coy expression is encapsulated in the imagery of the photograph. Zakumi was officially born on Youth day 1994 (16 June 1994) and this emblem and its future in the race is in the hands of a child. Congratulations to Macaddikt on your 10 bonus points.

I agree and I have still not come up with a definitive result. I do like the above entry but if you consider that then Bout's entry also deserves recognition as it is well composed and good use of depth of field. So any takers on: In the mean time, I have published, thanks to B&C, the latest scores. Sorry for the delay.

January's photos of the month have been published. If you feel that there are others which are deserving, please say so. Otherwise enjoy seeing where the TB's have been and vote for your choice of winner and why.

This sounds like a great idea. It will also be a boost for anyone who has 2011 TB Race entrants in their possession because all the FTFs will mean mega points.... Once the route has been finalised, I am prepared to help plant a cache or two for the day. Being far out they will have to be low maintenance ones, well hidden! I would prefer Saturday as I am committed every Sunday. Silvia, if you wanted to go on the bike with Rolf, I will gladly take the kids in the car and meet you all along the way at the various caches.

Thank you for your patience. The dust seems to have settled and life has almost calmed down to just being frenetic. With B&C's help, I am now able to publish the provisional, unaudited scores as at 24 January. It certainly makes for some interesting reading. So with no surprises on the local front, it is congratulations to MadSons' Sylvester Sea Turtle TB3MZK4 with 2448 points. But, on the international front, a newcomer has come in and taken the lead: a sterling performance from JPMZA's Racing Subaru Impreza WRC TB3MZE5 at 1619 points. Keep a look out for photographs to nominate for January. So, until next time, enjoy the race.

The fact that they are only disabled means there could be a glimmer of hope. Had they been archived it would have been irrevocable. Let us prevent that happening and redeem the situation.

Thanks for that. I went and added my 2c worth as well as a vote on that forum.

Go for it. Any date is fine with me. List the Earth cache in advance for release on that day so that after the lecture we will have all the information at our fingertips to answer the questions. I think it is a great idea.

I find it sad that we are going to lose a third of all virtual caches surviving in South Africa when Metro Nomad archives his three Cape virtual caches. Once they are gone, they are gone and we can never recover them. We can't even replace them with others because under the current rules you cannot place a new virtual cache. When you consider that all three were placed in 2003 and have accumulated a wealth of logs and history along with them, it would be a real shame to lose all that. Is there nobody in the Cape who is prepared to adopt these caches and preserve them for posterity seeing that Metro Nomad is unable to maintain them?

Although the deadline was the 15th, I have only just caught up with my logging from my trip to Cape Town and the weekend's caching spree in Centurion, not to mention some late night FTF hunting. I must agree with Hesamati, the photo of Undercover Ginger captures so much. It has been well composed and good use of depth of field has been achieved. Many of the others of Undercover Ginger were cleverly composed and hence many were nominated. "Don't come knockin'" was also well done. The subject was in clear focus and also captured the essence of the December snow in Germany. Ooo, good question. Love the photo. The voting is open to anyone participating on this forum or who has taken an interest in the race through the website and e-mails me directly via the links. Depending on how many nominations there are, you are invited to rate your top three and also give a motivation of why that photo grabs your attention. So congratulations therefore goes to: Undercover Ginger at Rolandale (Visit the log.) Well done! I look forward to receiving your nominations for January.

Indeed Trevor. Congratulations on your 400 and it was a privilege for me to be out caching with you when you found it. Thanks again for a great afternoon out caching with you while I was still in Cape Town and for your hospitality. Here's to the next 400 and onto your 1000.

The latest provisional scores are out. We are now at 25 TBs which have gone international. Please check your listing from time to time and just check that your total distance reflects the right value. If it does not then just go to the ACTIONS box on the right hand side in the listing and click on recalculate distance. There were a couple which I picked up on and had to do a manual distance calculation. There may be others which I have missed. So well done to MadSons and Leon St for being the current leaders in the local and international categories respectively. Enjoy the scores.....

I concur. It will be a couple of days before I get through logging all the finds from this weekend away. So let my just add my thanks to CapeDoc and his team for a memorable event. Despite the temperature and humidity everybody made it and enjoyed the hike and the picnic thereafter. My thanks also to Damhuisclan for being my transport while I have been here. It was great being with you these past two days and safe travel back tomorrow. I look forward to your input and teaching at the next Gauteng techno event.

Thanks to B & C who have supplied me with some race summaries for the entrants. I have made the link to those files the click on the name. If you click on the TB reference it will still take you to the GC TB page. I have published the first 20 and would like to solicit your comment before doing all the rest. Enjoy.

Thanks for that. It does indeed look so real and lifelike - the combi stuck in the snow. Thanks to theRabbits for taking and posting the photograph.

With over 700 photographs published on the various logs, I only had 3 nominations. So what I did was to go through each TB and try and get one photograph from each to publish. It had to clearly show the TB and also capture some of the ambiance of the cache. From this list I look forward to some comments and suggestions for an overall winner. All the photographs can be viewed here. The final winner will be published on 15 January once I get back form the 10 year celebrations in CapeTown. In the interim, get voting.....

I would have expected the number to be higher. Of the 102 new TBs in circulation as a result of the 2011 TB Race, 82 are still in SA. Are they all in cacher's bags because it does not seem to have made any dent in the statistics?

I really appreciate your offer of help even if you were press-ganged! The provisional year end results have been published. Logs are still coming in for TBs with December logs so please let me know if there any updates which I have not picked up on and I shall gladly update your scores. I intend keeping each of the monthend scoresheets for later analysis by the number gurus. They are available on request if you would like to do your own number crunching. Available in Numbers, XLS or CSV formats.

With 2010 fast drawing to a close, I still have 20 TB scores to tally and then the year end scores will be completed. It is amazing to see how some TBs race ahead while others go nowhere fast. On the upside, my TB as well as Happy Hunter's Tigger have now surfaced after having been MIA for exactly a month. So hopefully they can catch up a little. The scores thus far have been published but the completed version should be available later today. It is certainly a mammoth undertaking, but fun to track all the various TBs and monitor their progress. Well done to all of the TBs out there and may you all fare well in the new year. Like Edward Lear's Owl and Pussycat who sailed away for a year and a day in their beautiful pea-green boat to the land where the Bong-tree grows: TBs, see this beautiful land of ours, see the world and see you all back for the finish line in a year and a day.

I concur with the manifold sentiments expressed ibid. The new layout, to me, seems cluttered and I did not see the need to change the old layout in the first place. It lacked nothing this new layout has to offer. English is an amazingly rich language and I am sure the correct syntax could have been found to describe a list of favourites or preferences. This brings me to another point.... If we now have the option to express our preferences, why not the opposite? Give one the ability to show which caches are your least favourite. There have been some caches which are infinitely forgettable and should only be attempted if you are that desperate for numbers. Attempt at your own peril and all that! Then, at least someone new, who may be passing through an area won't be tempted waste time on a 3 km hike through blackjacks up a hill to find a micro which may or may not even be there because the cache owner has lost interest and cannot be bothered to maintain their own caches. All hypothetical, of course. Just a thought...

I have updated a further 20 scores tonight and the international tally has increased to 14. It is interesting to see where all the TBs are going and visiting. Keep them moving and photographing them. If I manage to update 20 scores in an evening, your TB will be updated at least once a week. So please be patient. Then once a month, with the help of Avanclan, a full audit will be done on all TBs at once so that an accurate positional list can be obtained. (Thanks to Avanclan and to Carbon hunter for volunteering you, if you did not know...)

wow yes! But is that the purpose of having a TB in a race? Only asking. As dipping is only allowed in caches you are logging for the first time, there will come a saturation point when you can no longer find 100 new ones every weekend. Those current lead racers are there because of last week's caching spree in Bloemfontein. Time will tell but I am sure as more cachers move TB's The points will even out. My one still has not even been logged out of the November event yet. I do not know who took it but I do hope it gets going some time. PS. My 2009 entry which supposedly has been stuck in Danger Point Lighthouse for the past six months has surfaced in Mpumalanga!

After an eight hour marathon session, I am now able to present you with snapshot of the scores at present. There are a few surprises and others not. I trust that you will enjoy them and he statisticians out there should have a field day. With 362 photographs posted thus far, are there only two worthy of nomination for photo of the month? Even if you don't nominate any, they are worth just browsing through. Well done to B and C for a great photographic contribution and for leading the pack. Until next time, enjoy the race further.

Here is another opportunity to join the race: GC2K44C KZN caches in on Bloem An Event cache by Noddy & KT Event Date: Tuesday, 21 December 2010

We have more than doubled last years total number of entrants. With two events still to go, we are sitting at 99. It is an amazing achievement. GC2J7QK QC X - December 2010 - Mall @ Reds An Event cache by Wormgeocash Event Date: Wednesday, 15 December 2010 GC2JZVM KaapseHoepsie PanneKoeksie Xmas Jol An Event cache by Fish Eagle, GPS Storm and RedGlobe Event Date: Thursday, 16 December 2010