What are the odds?

[saturniid]

I started this thread after looking for a place to post my story.

 

Post your stranger than fiction stories about geocaching here.

 

Here's mine:

 

We are from northern Michigan. We have cached here for about a year and have 110 finds and have come to know many cachers and cache owners through posts and log books. We recognized the names.

 

So anyway I have a sales trip scheduled for Las Vegas and while mapping the caches in Las Vegas I notice there is a bug hotel on the property of the hotel I am staying. We have three trackables in our possession and so I decide to take them with me to trade for trackables in the bug hotel in Vegas. Nothing strange about that.

 

So I arrive and go to the cache on the second day I am there and trade out two of the bugs I have since there are only two in the cache. I am there for a week so since this cache gets on average 2 finds a day I figure later in the week I will be able to trade out the third bug I brought from northern Michigan. So Friday May 11th I go to the cache and discover a new TB and make the swap. I now have three new bugs to bring back to northern Michigan.

 

So I go to the hotel room and log in and as I expected the bug has not been logged into the cache yet since people trade while on vacation and sometimes don't log them until they return home. So I hold onto the TB and bring it home with me. So on Tuesday May 15th I log in and the bug has been logged into the cache so I make my own post grabbing the bug from the cache. As ussual for me(we like to see where bugs go we have helped along) I put the bug on my watch list and open up google earth. I have several windows going...one checking for new caches in our area...one posting some of my pictures to flickr...anyway I am distracted. I am clicking back and forth between windows and flip through the TB profile page I still had open and read the name of the person who created and placed it. It did not immeadiately register because the name was so familiar to me that I thought I was looking at something I had openned about a local cache. So I flipped on through to Google earth where the path for this new TB was now loaded. I tracked it backwards from Vegas to northern Michigan.

 

Wait a minute...northern Michigan? Wait...what owners name was on the TBs profile page? Needless to say I was flipping back and forth trying to see what I had done wrong. I actually figured I had accidentally grabbed from the cache in Vegas a bug I had placed there a few day before. More flipping back and forth between google earth and the profile page.

 

What had actually happened is I picked up a bug on May 11th...which was placed in the cache by someone I did not know on May 11th which originated from a cache 5 miles from my home in Michigan 1700 miles away from Las Vegas. I know well the owner of the bug from logs on almost all the caches in the area. I know exactly where the cache is it was originally placed in. The bug started life on Feb 4th in northen Michigan and made stops in Arkansas, South Dakota and then onto Vegas on May 11th. It took 3 1/2 months to make the trip. I left northern Michigan on May 6th and took 5 hours to arrive.

 

I am still shaking my head on this one. I know there has to be a way to figure the odds for this happening but the numbers have to be huge.

 

Today I placed back in the original cache a bug that left there 3 1/2 monthes ago which I discovered purely by chance 1700 miles away and didn't even know what I had until I logged in once back at home. Freakie!

 

I know the work of Carl Jung and "meaningful coincidence"...Seems there is some synchronicity here.

 

Are there other stranger than fiction stories out there...I would like to think so...Post em here.

[+DudleyGrunt]

Post your stranger than fiction stories about geocaching here.

 

OK. I've been caching since last May and until participating in this years "Cache Across Maryland" (CAM) challenge, I'd only ever run into another cacher on the trail twice. Both times, it was the same person - UFF298. These run ins were seperate days and in different areas.

 

During CAM, I ran into him at one of the 10 caches that make up the challenge and when I attended the CAM picnic, I ended up parking right next to him.

 

Coincidence or something more?

[+WeightMan]

A year and a half ago, I had to be in Jacksonville for a meeting. I flew into Savannah and rented a car and cached my way to JAX. I ran out of town and so skipped several cache. On the way back to Savannah five days later, I decided to stop at a southbound rest stop TB hotel. In that cache was a TB that had been placed while I was in JAX. That TB wanted to go to Seattle. Since I am from Seattle, that was a bit strange. If I had stopped on my way south, I would have missed the TB.

[+Theseus]

I've had a few coincidences over the years. A couple samples:

 

I picked up Silver Surfer TB in a cache in metrowest Boston early in 2004. It wanted waves so I held it until I went to Hilton Head, SC. Less than two weeks after I dropped it off it was picked up by another MA cacher and subsequently dropped in a metrowest Boston cache just a few miles from where I had picked it up.

 

In November 2003 I sent out my FindJon Chevy TB with a mission to make it from Boston to San Francisco. Over the next couple years it went from Maine to Tennessee to South Carolina to North Carolina to Delaware to Texas before landing in New Orleans in May 2005, which happened to be exactly where I spent a long weekend at my bachelor party. I didn't realize it until after but I stayed about 500 feet away from where the TB was sitting all weekend.

[+Miragee]

Last Monday, on a one-day, 300-mile trip to Yuma and back, we found a Multi-cache that had a bug in it with a goal to go to the Midwest Geobash. Even though the cache had not been found in a month, we left the TB there, rather than bring it back to California and further away from its goal.

 

At the next cache, we ran into another cacher, who was from Michigan. I I asked him if he was going to the Geobash. He was. We told him about the rubber ducky TB in the other cache, one he wasn't going to do because it was a Multi.

 

He did that cache and picked up the TB so it could meet its goal.

[+Pink Paisley]

Had a message from the last finder for one of my caches, who said that this cache had been found by a dog walker who had written a note in the log book and hidden the cache nearby, having found it out in the open.

 

The next day, I walk into my office where a colleague says to me "You know that GPS thing you were telling me about? I was out walking the dogs last night and I found one of those boxes......" At no point had I told him that I'd hidden one at Gerry's Hole.

 

AND

 

In August 2005 whilst caching here in the UK (yes OK I should have been working....I picked up a TB, "Spidey" who was on a mission to save New York from Dr Dre or somebody from Coalpost #41. I was due to visit the states within a few weeks and e-mailed the owner offering in a sort of coded way to hang onto spidey and be helpful - California, more helpful - New Jersey, or very helpful - NY itself. The owner plumped for very helpful and I dropped him into Swamp Gas in Central Park. I thought nothing else about it other than to post some photos of Spidey outside the Marvel shop near Times Square and with a guy dressed as Spiderman.

 

I went home.

 

Spidey went off to Virginia and Maryland.

 

In October 2006 he turned up in one of my own caches back here in the UK, The Downfall of Harriet France.

 

I sent the little bugger off to New Zealand with KiwiGary and he hasn't been back since.

[+Renegade Knight]

...I know there has to be a way to figure the odds for this happening...

 

Since it happened the probability is now 1.

[+rhelt100]

Mine has nothing to do with travel bugs, but with another cacher. I went away for labor day weekend with a group of cachers for a camp 'n cache weekend roughly 4 hours drive away. While caching in Canada, we started running into a really familiar name in the logs. One MarvinTM, a cacher from my hometown that hasn't been real active as of late, had visited 4 caches that we found. A few we missed him by just minutes/hours, and a few by a day or two. When I got home, I found an email from him saying he had seen my name on several logs too. Somehow, we found several caches in the same day and our paths never crossed.

[saturniid]

Very cool posts...I am glad to hear other people having these odd happenings.

 

I have another "jaw dropper" but I am going to let "Jstsnoopn" post it first if they like. You wouldn't believe me if I wrote it since my maiden post here was rather unbelievable in of itself.

[+Thrak]

In 2005 my wife and I traveled from California to Montana to visit our daughter. On the way home we found a cache in Nevada called Holy Boulders Batman! When we got home we were surprised to find that the next cachers to find it were neighbors from our caching group back home. They had been there the very next day after we had found the cache.

Edited September 6, 2007 by Thrak

[+The Leprechauns]

Last weekend, I was caching in Southern California. I took a 10-mile detour to find a cache that sounded like it was hidden in an interesting manner. I was right. My friend was amazed at how quickly I found the cache. So, I told her I had seen one just like it from a hider back home in Pennsylvania. Then I opened the cache to sign the log. Guess whose name was on the logsheet just a few spaces up? Yup -- the Pennsylvania hider whose name I had just mentioned.

[+Steinwälzer]

Last week was my birthday. I mentioned in the geocoin forum that nothing was in my mailbox that day, not even a birthday card, and after that two cachers offered to send me a birthday gift. On the same evening I went out caching (it was a monday, no party), my very first night-cache (a multi). In that cache there was a travelling "Painting for Cache"-Geocoin I had never seen before and I wanted to find this cache and this coin (some kind of birthday event for me). Unfortunately I couldn't find all stages of the cache, and so I went home without the final cache and without having seen this special coin. I didn't mention that story in the forums, and I don't think that the persons who wanted to send me something could know about that as they can't see my DNF-Logs. So I was more than surprised as today one of my birthday gifts arrived, and guess what, it is a "Painting for Cache"-Geocoin

Edited September 10, 2007 by Steinwälzer

[saturniid]

OK...jstsnoopin didn't post the other freaky moment I have had so I will go ahead and post...

 

While on a sales trip I picked up the travel bug "Purple Beetle Bug" in Calgary Alberta on 7/23/2007 from Inner City Park - Roxboro(GCYMDV) and accidently took it back to northern Michigan AWAY from its goal of reaching Disneyland. I then placed it in a local TB Hotel and wrote a sheepish log for the TB explaining how it would move quickly back west since I live in a well vacationed area. I then had a trip pop up that would take me to So. California very close to Disneyland so I searched my logs trying to find the bug hoping I could retreive it and get it closer to it's goal...I for the life of me could not find it. So I left for California without it. Anyway, on 9/6/2007 I am looking for my very first cache in California and when I arrive near "Key(chains) to the city"(GCNZ3Q) who do I meet but "jstsnoopn" the owner of "Purple Beetle Bug" the bug I had picked up in Canada vacationing in So California from Calgary...ack!

 

Back when I first realized that I had taken the bug east and not southwest one of the thoughts I had was how glad I was that I would probably never meet the owners. Well lets just say I got my just deserts. I recounted the story to them and apoligized...they were great about it and we spent the next hour exchanging GCing stories. Never say never!

 

And whats more weird is that they had just visited the Las Vegas Cache "Convention Center Hotel Cache"(GCYDK5) I mentioned above. The only cache they found in Las Vegas, What an odd world we live in.

[+aviatrix22]

I went to Colorado and really wanted to do Mondo's TB Hotel near the airport and since I had a car this time around I could do it. I brought a few TBs and coins down from Seattle and swapped them for some in the cache. When I returned home to log the newly found TB's, I saw that a Seattle area cacher that I know had dropped them off just before I got there! I emailed him and he had stopped off in Denver on his way to Seattle and slipped out to do this cache and make some swaps. As it turned out, the TBs were all from his trip back East, so they made it all the way West instead of stopping off in Denver! What are the odds of both of us being in that area at the same time, wanting to do this cache, and swapping TBs within hours of each other??

Another time I released a TB in Seattle, and someone took it down to California. The brother of the guy who picked it up lives in Seattle and brought it back up here, not knowing that it originated here...and I knew him! He took it back down to California a few weeks later!

One more thing....this may have happened to manyof you...have you ever found a cache while looking for another one? I found a cache in a park near my house and decided it would be fun to place another one in the park. On the way out, I was looking for good spots and I saw a tree about 70' off the trail that looked interesting, so I went down to check it out and found a nice ammo can there! I was surprised to find it since I thought I had done all the caches around my house. Turns out this was a puzzle cache I hadn't solved yet...so there was one I didn't have to solve!

[+SgtSue]

My life is full of coincidences in and out of geocaching. While on a business trip to Germany I attended the Bad Drukiem wine fest. Sat at a table in the beer tent (yes it was a wine fest but you know GIs). Few minutes later I notice some people sitting down to the table in front of me. The guy looked and pointed at my shirt then his. We were both wearing the SAME geocaching T-shirt. Turns out he was from Chicago visiting a brother-in-law.