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Caching without a car?


keansor

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SO and I are only getting started in our careers and do not own or have access to a car on a regular basis. Although this gets us alot of much needed excercise, anyone have any tips for us using only public transportation and walking for caches? We have an Ottawa Go and Get'em event (find as many caches as you can in 24 hours) coming up, and we'd love to be competitive. We're both in good shape and are used to walking for 6 or 7 hours at a time in difficult terrain. Any tips?

 

TY-

Karey

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SO and I are only getting started in our careers and do not own or have access to a car on a regular basis. Although this gets us alot of much needed excercise, anyone have any tips for us using only public transportation and walking for caches? We have an Ottawa Go and Get'em event (find as many caches as you can in 24 hours) coming up, and we'd love to be competitive. We're both in good shape and are used to walking for 6 or 7 hours at a time in difficult terrain. Any tips?

 

TY-

Karey

I think you sould try biking to caches that want I do because I do not have my license yet. :o

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assuming the veterans can't go back to caches they have found, you have a good advantage, use it.

choose a park trail with lots of caches(google earth), grab a bike, a chache your heart out. go after traditionals, if you kill more than twenty minutes at a cache, continue on. Assuming you can put bikes on buses, take advantage of that, have fun, that's the purpose of this competitin. Good luck

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Get in touch with your local public transportation system and ask whether they have a one-day all-inclusive pass available. Many do, although they're rarely advertised on the buses or trains. It makes things a WHOLE lot easier when you don't have to fish for change or a transfer every time you want to hop a bus to the next cache location!

 

Good luck, and I hope the event is a blast!

- Mrs. RWA (legally blind, so well familiar with caching by bus, heehee!)

Edited by RealWorldAvatars
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I never counted exactly, but in 2004 I had a streak of about 60 finds over the course of several months where I found caches with nothing but my bicycle. Home to cache on bike. I don't count carrying a bicycle to a trail in my car. And I covered something like eight different states during the streak.

 

Jamie

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SO and I are only getting started in our careers and do not own or have access to a car on a regular basis. Although this gets us alot of much needed excercise, anyone have any tips for us using only public transportation and walking for caches?

 

Yup. If you aren't a premium member already, pony up the cash. With your premie membership you get the caches along a route feature and lots more.

 

The cache along a route feature lets you set a route from point a to b and shows you all caches that meet the criteria you select within x feet/miles of that route. In this way you can easily see what caches are within easy reach and which will take too much travel time.

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SO and I are only getting started in our careers and do not own or have access to a car on a regular basis. Although this gets us alot of much needed excercise, anyone have any tips for us using only public transportation and walking for caches?

 

Yup. If you aren't a premium member already, pony up the cash. With your premie membership you get the caches along a route feature and lots more.

 

The cache along a route feature lets you set a route from point a to b and shows you all caches that meet the criteria you select within x feet/miles of that route. In this way you can easily see what caches are within easy reach and which will take too much travel time.

 

What Dave said!

 

Get the route and time schedules for whatever transportation is available. Use Google Earth or something like Street Atlas to map out a route. Use Google Earth to create a Pocket Query of caches along that route.

 

Better yet, of course, team up with someone else that has a car that's doing the event!

 

If you need help mapping and routing contact me and I will be glad to help you plan it out - I love stuff like this!

 

Ed

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Somewhat off topic. Would teaming up with another group really be kosher? I mean, you have that many more sets of eyes. And then if you win it would be a tie, them as many as you. In any case, if the two of you log all of the ones you find together, you're still in the same pickle. I've never done an event, much less an event like this one, so I'm just curious.

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Well, if you were in the Rockwall, TX area then you could rack up 20 easy finds by hiking on that bridge that had 20 caches in a 2 mile span.....each .10 mile apart! <_<

 

As far as where you live....they are going to do a big find-as-many-as-you-can event, they are likely going to be going many miles in which walking would hinder you.

 

Yes, going with a group is okay....see if someone from that event would be happy to let you go along with them.

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Thanks all for your help. For the upcoming event, we are looking for only new caches that are being placed specifically for this event, which I didn't mention in my original post. We'll definately take the advice of riding our bikes if that makes it easier (most of the main bus routes here in Ottawa have bike racks), and we have found that the Ottawa transit system does indeed offer a one day, all-access pass that we will likely invest in. Although we've been putting off going in for the premium membership, it does seem like this event may make it well worth our while, simply so that we can access the caches along a route feature. Thanks for the tips, and keep them coming!

 

TY-

Karey

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Cache owners can help out fellow cachers who rely on public transit by remembering that there is an "attribute" icon available for cache pages that means "Cache can be reached by public transit" (it's picture of a bus). I own only a few caches but I've put the icon and the details of how to get to the cache via city bus on the relevant pages.

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Cache owners can help out fellow cachers who rely on public transit by remembering that there is an "attribute" icon available for cache pages that means "Cache can be reached by public transit" (it's picture of a bus). I own only a few caches but I've put the icon and the details of how to get to the cache via city bus on the relevant pages.

Although I haven't visited any of your caches yet, I thank you for including that information in your cache page. B) I do like (and have used) the excellent light rail system in San Diego while I visited there many years ago.

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When gas prices shot up to $1.35 a litre after Hurricane Katrina last year, I left the car in the garage for a few weeks and used transit to do my geocaching. With a day pass, and a good transit map, I was covering a large area and doing a lot of hiking too. I didn't get as many caches done in a day, but I felt like I accomplished something....and saved a big load of cash B)

 

By the way, in that period I ended up driving about 15 kilometres a week for shopping trips only, as opposed to my regular 400-500 km per week! It soon became second nature to hop on a bus. I'm back to my energy-wasting habits now. But geocaching is worth the extra expense.

 

P.S. For a one-day geocaching event, have you considered renting a car?

Edited by GordEtob
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I haven't got around to getting my license yet, so most of my caching is done on foot or via the public bus. Once, I went into town with my woman when she had to go to work at 6am, and walked 10 miles while she was at work, knocking out all the close ones. Then I waited a bit till more had come up in that same area, and did another 8 mile hike. Great excercise, I say...

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I don't drive (never had a lesson) I'll probably be getting my 200th cache tomorrow or Thursday, and only a handful were found via car (as part of a group cache event). I'm very fortunate that my town has bike racks on the buses, which opens up a great variety of options for cache hunting.

 

The only problem is with hiding is that they have to be within a reasonable walking distance of a bus stop, so I can check on them during the winter in case of trouble when the bicycle is in hibernation mode. It is disappoining to bike through a cache-less tract that is just covered in hiding places, but no way to check on it if needed.

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Many of my hides are close to home so use a bike to maintain them. I have a route set up so I can regularly check on my caches and get my fat self some exersize. Bikes work well for urban hides too. Nobody notices when a cyclist rides up to a point and starts wandering around. If you get out of a car and do the same it may draw some attention.

Edited by kingsting
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Since my caching partner lives near The City, all of Manhattan, most of Queens, and large parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn are on his Ten-Mile List. Most of Manhattan is on our 'do not drive' list. We either park on the upper east side, or take the guagua to Port Authority. Then we take the subway. I think we'll do Prospect Park in Brooklyn that way. We hate driving in Queens, but driving is the only way to do more than a few at at time. Needless to sy, there are a fair number of caches in Queens that we need to do. Oh,well.

Anywhere else, we drive!

We've had some pretty good walking tours of Manhattan! Especially the lower east side.

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HA! I just got a scooter(razor type) for free from work today! Turns out a customer left it there about a month ago and it's just been sitting in the back the whole time. I asked about it today, and she said I could have it, before I got to that point! That should cut down on my travel time...

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