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Ideal Cacher?


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I often bemoan the fact that certain aspects of my life make it hard to get caches when I want to. I teach and coach, which makes summers great, but also makes school-year FTFs impossible. I have small kids (2 and 5) who I love to take out on caching trips, but this limits us in terms of terrain, distance, etc. I'm married, and even though my wife loves to cache, married life (house, family functions, etc.) brings with it many responsibilities that get in the way of caching! :ph34r: One big positive is that I live in an active caching area, with hundreds of caches within 25 miles.

 

This got me to wondering, what would be the ideal caching lifestyle? A job would be needed for the $ required, but one with a certain amount of flexibilty in the hours...

 

My challenge is: describe the life (job, marital status, age, residence, etc.) best suited to gecaching. Let's be realistic here - obviously, retired single millionaire would be ideal - describe a real world scenario.

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I often bemoan the fact that certain aspects of my life make it hard to get caches when I want to. I teach and coach, which makes summers great, but also makes school-year FTFs impossible. I have small kids (2 and 5) who I love to take out on caching trips, but this limits us in terms of terrain, distance, etc. I'm married, and even though my wife loves to cache, married life (house, family functions, etc.) brings with it many responsibilities that get in the way of caching! :ph34r: One big positive is that I live in an active caching area, with hundreds of caches within 25 miles.

 

This got me to wondering, what would be the ideal caching lifestyle? A job would be needed for the $ required, but one with a certain amount of flexibilty in the hours...

 

My challenge is: describe the life (job, marital status, age, residence, etc.) best suited to gecaching. Let's be realistic here - obviously, retired single millionaire would be ideal - describe a real world scenario.

 

Any Job where you have Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off. So you have the day off when the new caches get posted and can hit em first.

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Any Job where you have Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off. So you have the day off when the new caches get posted and can hit em first.

Well, since FTF's have never been a big part of THIS cacher's "lifestyle", being able to "hit em first" doesn't factor into my ideals.

 

For my own tastes, I think I have a pretty ideal job for a cacher already.

I'm a supervisor for a parks dept.

They actually pay me money and provide a vehicle to drive from park to park everyday. How cool is that?

On top of that, my day is usually done around 3pm, so I still have the rest of the afternoon everyday to cache if I want.

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This got me to wondering, what would be the ideal caching lifestyle? A job would be needed for the $ required, but one with a certain amount of flexibilty in the hours...

 

I'm a captain with a regional airline. It's my dream job -- I thoroughly enjoy what I do. Others may dread their Mondays, but I actually look forward to mine!

 

(BTW, I happily pay for TWO premium accounts. Some of you also know me as "KBI.")

 

Being in the 'minor leagues' won't make me rich, but it's enough to afford a nice Garmin and lots of batteries, and more importantly it gives me some GREAT caching opportunities. Generally twice a week I find myself at a hotel with a few hours of free time to kill, and in the last couple years it seems there is always at least one cache within walking distance* of whatever hotel I'm in, usually more, sometimes dozens! (*Note the famous quote at the bottom of this post.)

 

It can be tempting to lie around the hotel room half the day watching TV. This hobby gets my [caboose] OUTSIDE. I’ve always enjoyed walking, but caching gives me a destination. I typically find myself walking three to five miles on a cache outing. Many times it's more like eight or ten. My record so far is 15 miles during a particularly long layover in downtown Cincinnati. About half the time I am able to talk one or both crewmembers into coming along. I figure I’ve walked at least 2000 miles as CaptRussell while tracking down ammo cans, film canisters, and hide-a-keys. I've worn out several pairs of Reeboks. Geocaching is an integral part of my Weight Control Program!

 

The list of places where I’ve found caches is detailed in my CaptRussell profile. Next month I plan to log finds in Fayetteville, Arkansas and Corpus Christi, Texas.

 

And of course I'm home a lot. I usually work only three days a week with four days off between trips, so there is usually plenty of time for caching at home. (It IS a full-time job. Like most folks I’m away from home about 60 hours a week – for me it just happens to be 60 hours in a row.)

 

I’d say my job is just about ideal for this game. :ph34r:

 

And hey, if anybody's interested -- my company is currently hiring. :huh:

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No job at all would be your best bet.

New caches get listed 7 days a week, they also get listed at all hours :ph34r: .

In some areas, unless you can leave within a few minutes of a cache being listed you are not going to get a FTF :D . I have left for FTFs as early as 3AM :D . I have also left in stormy weather :D , I was once questioned by a LEO at 1:30AM while crawling on my hands and knees in the mud durring a rain storm trying for a FTF :D . Then I found out the coordiantes were way off when I went back 6 hours later in the daylight, still got the FTF though :D .

When I told the LEO why I was out in the mud and rain he said goecachers must be crazy :D That is what the LEO to questioned me a week earlier told me at 11PM while getting a FTF :huh:

 

that is another part if First to Find-anosis, you get to be the first one to post a FDNF when the cooridinates are off, some times by as much as a mile. :D

 

Always check :huh: the profile of the person that hid the cache so you know what their experiance is as far as finds/hides

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Right now I think my job is one of the better jobs for caching. I travel to different locations in the Western United States and train employees on new software. I also normally rent a car. This means that the company pays my gas when I am geocaching. It also means that I am almost always going to virgin territory as far a caches are concerned.

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My job can be great for geocaching: I'm a job coach (I help folks with disabilites learn their jobs). I get to drive all around the south eastern part of my state. My schedule is very flexible (which can be a problem at times too), and I have pletny of times when I am hanging out for an hour or two with nothing to do. Sometimes I work evenings, giving me more daylight hours to cache, and sometimes I work weekends, giving me weekdays to try for FTFs!

 

Since oftentimes housework & yardwork goes undone due to my caching, I think it would be best to have a "someone" home to make sure things are getting done -- husband, man-servant or pool boy would work for me. But I'm single, so I guess I'll just have to deal with it.

 

Bec

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I can't do much on the weekends because of a wife and 2 yr old daughter that demand a lot of attention. But, I drive around New England all week doing field service on elevators and other equipment. The company supplies the vehicle and the random destinations throughout the week and I keep about 3000 geocaches in my 60CSx. BTW, my wife thinks I'm nuts for hunting at night using a flashlight to score a FTF.

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I have Saturdays off, which is the best day for geo-caching.

Oh, BTW, I'm retired, so every day is a Saturday.

We have some real active cachers around here (active cache hiders) and I often wait days to see who is going to get an FTF before grabing it. After about a week the call becomes irresistible, and away I go.

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I do "in home" work. Company provided vehicle/gas/upkeep. My service area is all of Pennsylvania, and a little of the surrounding areas. Sometimes, I'm ahead of schedule or have a big hole in my schedule and the customer isn't home when I get there. Time to go caching. I usually know my schedule before I leave for work, so I can run a PQ or two to have cache data covering the area I'm heading to/driving through.

 

Lately, I've been too busy to do much work caching, but there are times I've found at least one cache per day for a week or more while working. Some days I've done 5 or more traveling between appointments.

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There are a lot of variables in this thread. I'm more of a hider, so my head is always thinking of places to hide them. And when the hills are open and I don't have any other conmitments I'm gone to the hills to hide or check on a potential hiding place. Caching is just a part of my lifestyle that includes a lot of things.

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I love my job. I work 40 hours a week, just like the next guy, but i have a rather strange schedule. Tuesdays, thrusdays, Fridays, I only work four hours from 630 to 1030. Wed. and Sat. I work noon to 1030, but have a big 3 hour break in the middle. and sundays I work 1 to 5. It leaves nearly all day open for caching.

 

i work in theatre, where all i have to do is go and run shows, most of which are at night. I think this is a near perfect schedule. It really helps to not have kids and a wife, tho...

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I'm an insurance claims adjuster and I am constantly in and out of the office all the time and travel to all ends of my province. This is a pretty good job to have for caching.

 

Tim

 

I love my job. I work 40 hours a week, just like the next guy, but i have a rather strange schedule. Tuesdays, thrusdays, Fridays, I only work four hours from 630 to 1030. Wed. and Sat. I work noon to 1030, but have a big 3 hour break in the middle. and sundays I work 1 to 5. It leaves nearly all day open for caching.

 

i work in theatre, where all i have to do is go and run shows, most of which are at night. I think this is a near perfect schedule. It really helps to not have kids and a wife, tho...

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As Tahosa stated earlier, there are really a lot of variables in answering this question. For example, I am not at all a numbers person, and I sometimes seek only one or two caches per week, but I tend to spend a lot of time -- sometimes a hundred hours or more (and untold dollars as well!) -- on researching and placing extreme caches. On the other hand, my wife Sue is far more into numbers, and is also addicted to finding puzzle caches, so she spends far more time than I in seeking caches. And, neither of us are FTF addicts, although we will stoop to grabbing an FTF once in a while, just for the fun of it.

 

Having covered those basic issues about variables above, I suspect that Sue and I have somewhat ideal jobs for geocaching. We both work from home, and we both get to totally set our own hours regarding the work we perform for our clients. So, while are neither of us are FTF addicts, we do enjoy the incredible ability to pretty much go out seeking or hiding caches whenever we so desire, day or night, weekday or weekend. And, as a scientific consultant and lecturer, I travel a fair amount, and this gives me an excuse to do some caching when I travel. Well, that is. . . with the following two exceptions:

  • a 9-day trip to Indianapolis last December, where the weather was so severe and my lecture schedule so busy that my caching buddy Arayanna (who was traveling with me) and I never did actually find any caches
  • an 8-day trip to Nicaragua last October, where there are only TWO physical caches (plus one virtual) in the entire country!

Lastly, since we both work from home, we really get to meet a lot of other geocachers, since we are free at almost any time of day or week to join up with other cachers for an impromptu caching trip, and we also live in the wilderness in the mountains, nearby to several of our backcountry caches, and it is not at all unusual for a cache hunter who has been seeking our local caches to call us while on the road and ask if they may drop by our house to visit for a while! We also sometimes receive calls at all hours of the day, and on any or all days of the week, from cachers who are about to tackle one or more of our Psycho Urban caches and are inviting us to come watch them seek our cache(s)! Since we work from home, it is easy to give in to impulse and say "yes", and join the cache hunters for a while for some fun!

 

Oh, and it probably helps that we do not have kids, and rather only have a dog, a cat, and 70 chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys!

Edited by Vinny & Sue Team
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I work as a Travel Nurse, meaning I do contracts at hospitals that are short staffed (basically, I can go anywhere in the country I want to). I start a new contract about every 13 weeks or so, moving to a new part of the country. IE, been in Wyoming for the past 4 months, and tomorrow I leave for Boston (my company finds/pays for my housing - fully furnished, with utilities and pays for my transportation costs). Not only can I cache on my way TO the new location, I can cache for the 13 weeks that I'm actually there since I work 3 12 hr shifts per week. So, I can get a whole new list of caches every time I move! Cool, huh? I'm still a newbie to this, so I'm pretty pumped about new places, new caches (to me, anyway) that I can handle as a newbie, and never run out of options.

 

I would have done more caches here in Wyoming while I was here, but taking care of the rattlesnake bite patient in the ER has pretty much turned me into a hermit! I have a horrible phobia of snakes, and was even freaked out by taking care of someone ELSE who had been bitten! :)

 

Hopefully Boston will have more caches that aren't quite so dangerous with the snakes for me.. :laughing:

 

Happy Caching!

 

Jen911

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Professional Cacher is the only one I can think of.

 

We've got a local here who almost fits this bill. He works for REI as a class instructor (I don't recall the exact title). This means that he teaches classes (outside, hands-on) for things like camping, hiking, and yes - caching.

 

We all hate him. :laughing:

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I've had two great-for-caching jobs since I started the obsession, but they were good for totally different reasons.

 

The first was as an event planner, because I was constantly traveling to scout locations at company expense. I even put together a company event that was entirely geocaching-based, and during the planning phases had 3 fully paid days (NOT vacation, actual work days) where all I did was travel to the location and go geocaching to get a feel for how the local caches were hidden. Not to mention company car, paid gas, and paid hotels!

 

My current job is in a call center as I'm building my own event business, and it's great for caching because I have time between calls to solve puzzles, plan routes, and just generally load up my GPS & book of cache pages so that wherever I am, I have coordinates and printouts already set....keeps me occupied on the boring days, and saves valuable time when I can get out caching.

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I work a 24/48 schedule with the Fire Dept. On duty for 24 hours then off for 48.. So basically everday I go to work is like Friday, after work I have two days off to cache.

 

Amen, brudda!! Me too! But why is it that all the new caches around my area are posted while I'm on duty?? The other local cachers, who have all their evenings free, get the FTFs first!! :);) (I'm sure you know how that works - the odds are 2 out of 3 that you'll be off for any given event at any future date. The reality is, of course, you're working!)

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Mine is pretty good.

 

I'm a student. I live in a fairly active geocaching area with hundreds of caches around. For me personally, my best studying is done while sitting outside. Under a tree or on a hill with a view. So between classes or after class I take my backpack (full of geocaching stuff as well as school supplies) and find a distant fun mountain cache with a couple of micros on the way. I get my sunshine, my geocaching and my homework done all at once. That says something about caching, I've always been a troubled student, but since doing my college studying outdoors rather than in the stuffy library my GPA is now 3.8. <_<

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