Pure Luck

Sorry, forgot to include the original quote that I had based my plan on. Q. What is a Travel Bug? A. Simply put, a Travel Bug is a new form of hitchhiker you can track on Geocaching.com. A hitchhiker is basically an item that is carried from cache to cache (or person to person) and you can follow its progress online. By Person to Person, I had interpretted that as cacher to cacher, and had not felt that face to face contact was required. My apologies to all of you who felt I was going outside of the unwritten rules.

For the sake of reducing the stress level, I have agreed to run the bug outside of the race. (Equivalent to my original offer to run it in an "exhibition class".)

Well, I would agree that with a normal travel bug the intent is to have it travel cache to cache. But in this case, it is in a race, where they have explicitly stated "TB's may have any other attachments that racers feel will improve their chances." Doesn't that open it up to any mode of transport. If one geocacher mails the bug to another Geocacher, who then drops it in a cache to be found. All you are doing is eliminating the need for a plane ticket. (Just to stir the discussion.) Why does it have to be left to fate? Is this any worse than the cachers who picked up other competitors bugs at the start, and then "lost them".

When you log your visit at the cache,one of the bottom items on the page is a drop down menu to leave an item from your inventory. You can only drop one bug at a time, so you need to open additional notes on a cache if you drop multiple bugs at the same time. If you know that you picked up the bug correctly, and now it is not showing in your inventory my guess is that someone else logged picking up the bug before you got the chance to log dropping it off. Therefore "stealing" it (probably accidentally) from your inventory. This is a good reason not to post the Travel bug ID number to any web page. With the ID number you can pretty much do what you want.

I'm just curious about what type of response I will get. If a travel bug is in a race for prizes, and the rules state you can attach anything you want to expidite the trip. Does it need to be continuously transported by Geocachers, or would it be acceptable to provide the big hops by mail or courier? As long as the bug's mileage is accurate, and the bug actually gets logged into real caches. I'm testing the theory in a race, and would like some feedback on if this is good planning, or cheating. The Race; http://members.shaw.ca/jcoutu1/index.html My bug; http://www.geocaching.com/track/track_detail.asp?ID=3928

Actually, I wasn't trying too hard to be inconspicuous. Just walked down the trail past the area with the cache, turned left out of sight of the family, and came back through the trees. He was either watching me from the time I got out of the car, or heard me walking in the bush (On a small trail). Also, the Teddy bear was in the cache when I got there. I took it out to get at the log book, and happened to be holding it an an unfortunate time. I think it is just an problem with the cache location. It's too close to the playground.