Travel Bugs: Do You Love Cache Container Litter?

[+Jango & Boba Fett]

This is not a rant nor is it a cryptic snipe at anyone; its a plea for some help.

 

We know that you either love Travel Bugs or loath them but why do some seem to get stuck wandering around in circles while others get straight on with their stated mission? We are not obsessive TB fans and our approach is:

• leave it be if we can’t help with the mission
  
• pick it up if we can move it on to a relevant East Anglian cache in the next week
  
• pick it up if it has been stuck in East Anglia and drop it off at least 200 km away in the next couple of month
  

Unfortunately Norfolk and Suffolk seem to be a bit of a TB black hole. They arrive from all over the country and then just circulate slowly, in one case a round the world racer got stuck here for over 2 years during which time it was moved between local caches by nearly 40 different people. Lack of mission tags is one problem (we now carry key ring tags not as swaps but to use as replacement mission tags), and having only one TB Hotel is another. Its no real surprise that the UKs Travel Bug Graveyard is on the edge of the Fens!

 

The younger member of our team came up with a plan to test whether it was possible to help TBs escape the eastern counties and get back on mission. He started his experiment with 6 TBs that had been stuck going around and around, most of which had lost their mission tags. Each TB has a different escape plan but all of them have long distance overseas missions. They’ve gone into a TB Hotel, been grabbed at a cache bash, given to a caching friend and the last two are going into a new TB Hotel and a new Motorway Mayhem cache on the main holiday routes into/out of East Anglia.

 

The record escapee has now reached California but two of the escapees, after a hopeful start, have resumed their off mission meanderings - although they do now have mission tags. Any comments on

1. how you treat TBs
   
2. whether TB Hotels are there as sweet shops or as departure lounges
   
3. how to improve the chances of a TB following its mission
   
4. your weirdest example of an off mission TB - we moved one which wanted to travel around the Welsh Coast from a West Midlands Motorway cache to Portmadog only for the next visitor to return it to the exact same motorway cache!
   

Boba Fett - TB Escape Committee Chairperson

Jango Fett - Chairperson’s Lackey

Edited June 10, 2006 by Jango & Boba Fett

[+BlueDeuce]

how to improve the chances of a TB following its mission

 

My recommendation is to physically attach the goal/mission sheet to the bug, such as with a self-laminating luggage tag. It is far less likely to be lost than a printed sheet stuck in a baggie.

 

A smaller tag also requires you to be more concise in your description of your goal and therefore easier to read.

 

Your goal should something a majority of cachers want to do, or can do. Cachers can handle a bug that the goal is to move from cache to cache, but say a goal that requires them to only take a bug if it’s then placed in another country isn’t going to move very fast.

 

And lastly, if your bug's goal is simply to move from cache to cache, then you shouldn’t be surprised if that’s all it does.

[+Bear and Ragged]

Read the mission , if it's attached to the TB. Have also attached/reattached missions to TB's if they have a specific mission, before releasing them back out.

 

Read the TB's page, and see where it's been. -If it's been going around the area, we make a concious effort to move it away, IF that complies with it's mission.

 

We found one TB that's going to the same half a dozen caches... However it's mission was not to go out of the county!

 

We moved on TB -that was off to Dundee- 50 miles northwards and left it in a cache near the M1, with a note in the log book saying "Wants to go north to Dundee", and despite this AND the fact it had a mission statement attached, the next cacher moved it 130 miles south!

 

G