2009 Great SA TB Race

4.2k · June 29, 2009

Some new bonus points - goody.

What about another photo nomination - Leopardo - visiting the desert:

And I really like the postcard in Arabia!

1.1k · June 29, 2009

There are still only two pics (maybe a 3rd) of the month which stands out to me.

June 30, 2009

This is a cool pic for the June nominations .... there are three or four racers in the tree, but we really liked it!

Edited June 30, 2009 by GEO936

June 30, 2009

More about them, the Chinese Painted Quails:

Faszi (= male in slang Hungarian) is the male

Csíkosbögy (= striped craw in Hungarian) female

Bajna (barna = brown in Hungarian) female

Futtancs (= crazy runner in Hungarian) female

More pictures about them:

Faszi with another TB:

Csíkosbögy under attack:

They never saw any predator, and they really scared from that TB. Scared from a plastic thing which is a small plastic animal. Just think, how strong is the instinctive behavior!

Bajna at the new year party:

Faszi makes party too:

No pictures from Futtancs, as she is crazy...

Edited June 30, 2009 by makos

2.3k · June 30, 2009

SOME STATISTICS FOR JUNE

The final scorecard has been published on the Race Webpage for all to see. Have a look here SCORECARD LINK

I have a few interesting stats below about the race so far.

Furtherest travelled in SA for June

1. besem's Purple Dragon in The Great SA TB Race

1. 2009 Great SA TB Race ~ The Big Five

3. cincol's 2009 Great SA TB Race Travel Bug

Most Bonus Points Accumulated for June

1. DiePienaars N.Ireland Racing Coin

2. Worm's RoadRunner

3. 2009 SA Bug Racer - The Capital TB

3. Arwen's Bling-Bling Mini Cooper

3. Cacheachu

Most Caches visited for June - no less than 6 each!

1. Eager Beaver Fever

1. DiePienaars N.Ireland Racing Coin

1. Worm's RoadRunner

The leaders for the 1st month are seperated by ONE single point! Quite incredible considering that they are located on opposite sides of the world at the moment. I can see some stiff competition coming for July.

Good luck with the racers and a huge thank you to everybody that has moved racers and taken the trouble to take and post photographs. The photos are certainly makinh a difference when it comes to bonus points.

Edited June 30, 2009 by cincol

2.3k · June 30, 2009

Duplicate

4.2k · July 1, 2009

Well Done Urban Hunters for taking the early lead. We have to see what we can do to reel you in now.

Cummon' Ginger - I know you have other things on your mind now - but let's get those other 3 TB's out the starting blocks!

July 1, 2009

Thanks for the points update! My racer got a lot more points than I thought it would (62 versus my calculated 40), so I just want to clarify a few of the rules:

1.) I'm assuming the distance points are not given per 50 GC miles, but per 50 GC kilometers?

2.) From the rules: "One cacher posting multiple pictures will not gain additional points". Does this only apply to the 2 points scored for a picture, and not to the bonus points? In my case, GEO936 took several pictures of my coin, including one with an animal and one with a Springbok jersey (thanks a lot to GEO936 for that!), and it seems that I scored points in all three picture catergories (2 pts for a picture, 5 for one with an animal and 10 for the one with the Springbok jersey) even though it is the same cacher who took the pictures. Along the same lines, what happens if a cacher takes only one picture, but the picture of the racer is at a provincial boundary, and also has an animal in it. How many points does that pictures score for the racer? 12? 5? or only 2?

3.) Is there a limit on the number of times a certain bonus can be scored? I.e., if a racer is dropped into 5 caches, each with the letter Q, W or Y, will the racer score 5 points, or 25 points?

2.3k · July 1, 2009

Thanks for the points update! My racer got a lot more points than I thought it would (62 versus my calculated 40), so I just want to clarify a few of the rules:

1.) I'm assuming the distance points are not given per 50 GC miles, but per 50 GC kilometers?

2.) From the rules: "One cacher posting multiple pictures will not gain additional points". Does this only apply to the 2 points scored for a picture, and not to the bonus points? In my case, GEO936 took several pictures of my coin, including one with an animal and one with a Springbok jersey (thanks a lot to GEO936 for that!), and it seems that I scored points in all three picture catergories (2 pts for a picture, 5 for one with an animal and 10 for the one with the Springbok jersey) even though it is the same cacher who took the pictures. Along the same lines, what happens if a cacher takes only one picture, but the picture of the racer is at a provincial boundary, and also has an animal in it. How many points does that pictures score for the racer? 12? 5? or only 2?

3.) Is there a limit on the number of times a certain bonus can be scored? I.e., if a racer is dropped into 5 caches, each with the letter Q, W or Y, will the racer score 5 points, or 25 points?

Thanks for the questions besem - that is why we have a discussion on this Forum.

1.) 1 point per 50km as my gc.com link displays kilometres and not miles. I am not going to recalculate everything into miles. All the TB owners live in countries that are metricated. Only the US still uses non-metric units so we will stay with metrication - much easier.

2.) Photos will only earn points once per cache log. BUT, if there are multiple photos with bonus objects the bonus points will still count, but not the additional photos. In other words if there are 5 photographs only 2 points will be earned for the photos, but the bonusses that are depicted in the other photos will still earn points. On the question of the provincial boundary showing an animal and a Lion's jersey with the space shuttle flying overhead - well I will take a decision when I see something along those lines posted! Until then ...........

3.) A TB will score the bonus points for EACH cache that it is pleaced in, in SOUTH AFRICA only, that contain any of those letters for the month of July. This is one of the SA incentives and will change every month.

I hope this helps and your queries are answered.

July 1, 2009

I hope this helps and your queries are answered.

Yep, all ambiguities have been resolved thanks! For now...

4.2k · July 1, 2009

I see the fourth country has just been visited.....sorry - I see FIFTH country

Only 190 more to go!

Edited July 1, 2009 by Carbon Hunter

1.1k · July 1, 2009

I see the fourth country has just been visited.....sorry - I see FIFTH country

Only 190 more to go!

Are there not 2476 (Who want to go to ZIM) countries in the world?

1.6k · July 1, 2009

Oooops triplicated post

Edited July 1, 2009 by Wazat

1.6k · July 1, 2009

2.) .............On the question of the provincial boundary showing an animal and a Lion's jersey with the space shuttle flying overhead - well I will take a decision when I see something along those lines posted! Until then ...........

See point 11 of my bug's listing. Hee hee. I was onto this right away. LOL.

1.6k · July 1, 2009

2.) .............On the question of the provincial boundary showing an animal and a Lion's jersey with the space shuttle flying overhead - well I will take a decision when I see something along those lines posted! Until then ...........

See point 11 of my bug's listing. Hee hee. I was onto this right away. LOL.

4.2k · July 2, 2009

These guys are looking for a TB Racer for their trip to a new cache!

2.3k · July 5, 2009

REMINDER

The nominations for the June Photo of the Month [and the 10 bonus points for the winner] will close tomorrow [6 July]. Be sure to get your nomination in as the winner will be announced here on the Forum tomorrow evening.

Happy racing everyone. :unsure:

2.3k · July 6, 2009

PHOTOGRAPH OF THE MONTH WINNER FOR JUNE 2009

10 Bonus points earned! Well done.

July 7, 2009

We nominate this one for the July entries! Nice one Far-Jar-Hug!

July 7, 2009

We also nominate this cute pic for July. Well done SAfricanSweetP! You are obviously well connected to be able to get into the cages!

July 8, 2009

2.) Photos will only earn points once per cache log. BUT, if there are multiple photos with bonus objects the bonus points will still count, but not the additional photos. In other words if there are 5 photographs only 2 points will be earned for the photos, but the bonusses that are depicted in the other photos will still earn points. On the question of the provincial boundary showing an animal and a Lion's jersey with the space shuttle flying overhead - well I will take a decision when I see something along those lines posted! Until then ...........

Just got to thinking about this response cincol....can you please confirm that if we (GEO936) take a photo of a racing TB with 5 different animals (i.e. one animal per pic over a period of time resulting in 5 photos each with its own animal e.g. zebra, impala, warthog, elephant & lion), do each of those photos earn the 5 bonus points each? Also, I am guessing that bonus points will only be awarded once per animal species, e.g. one photo with a zebra and that's it. Please confirm. Unfortunately, we read a lot of ambiguity in your explanations/responses....not sure why and if it is just us, but we are not so bright upstairs you see. <_<

2.3k · July 8, 2009

Thanks for the questions. No ambiguity intended at all.

1 log with 3 photos of 3 different animals will earn 2 points for the photos + 5 points for the animals. This is to stop 1 cacher taking 10 photos and posting them all with 1 log - not fair in my book.

3 logs over time with seperate photos of animals by different cachers will score on the same basis. I am not concerned with species as that is too restrictive and an administrative nightmare. I will not be able to keep track if a budgie was photographed in June 2009 and again in My 2010 - or a zebra or impala for that matter. As long as the photos are seperate logs by different cachers I will award the scores, OR if the same cacher has logged the photos over a period. eg: travelling to the Cape and taking photos at various places of the TB and then logging notes on different days during the "tour". 5 logs covering 5 days all logged on the same day will obviously cause we to sit up straight in my seat and question the sincerity of the logger, especially if it happens to be the TB owner as well.

However, this is a GAME that should be FUN and I will always endeavour to make my decisions based on that maxim with as few pedantic interventions as possible. I hope that helps.

July 8, 2009

Hi-jack

Ve haf ze space shuttle eef you not moof ze Mrs GliderS racer or haf cashfan place ze numer sebe racer ve vil nots lets ju go Ha ha ha. <_<

July 9, 2009

Um, well, there goes my plan of taking my TB to the zoo before placing it... no fair!!!! :unsure: My plan was to get a good start by posting many photos of my racer with different animals. The rules didn't say how many initially... but ok, ok - I'll let it go....

Guys, my life is a bit too hectic at the moment. Is anyone close to Roodepoort/Midrand/Woodmead who is prepared to take the 3 poor disadvantaged TBs I have with me and let them loose? Pleeease guys - help.

I'm sorry that I am letting those racers down (mine also in the process). At the moment, I'm just 'planning' to cache and is just not working out as planned every time. :cool:

Give us some time to finish house building and get the wedding over with - if we survive this all - hehehe of course we wil (and enjoying it much!!!!) - we'll be back with a vengeance!!

Thanks for understanding!

Ging'

July 9, 2009

Guys, my life is a bit too hectic at the moment. Is anyone close to Roodepoort/Midrand/Woodmead who is prepared to take the 3 poor disadvantaged TBs I have with me and let them loose? Pleeease guys - help.

I'm sorry that I am letting those racers down (mine also in the process). At the moment, I'm just 'planning' to cache and is just not working out as planned every time.

Hey Ginger....we are willing to help out. Please get in touch with us over email (we did send you a message last night) and let us know addresses and we'll make a plan. We are willing to help out the racers....one for all - all for one! Cheers GEO936

July 9, 2009

Thanks to Geo936 - I owe you!!

:-D

July 9, 2009

Without showing favouritism to either child, here are two worthy nominations.

and

BruceTP

July 14, 2009

Shew!! Eventually, two days of constant updating, we have finally finished adding all the goodies to the Racers we had in our possession. We had up to 7 Racers this weekend!! We tried our very best to take photos with animals (not easy), rugby stuff before the close off date on 4th july, and we placed the racers into caches with the bonus letters (w/y/x). We managed to gain a fair amount of points for these Racers - approx. 25 to 40 - depending on the Racer, so I'm sure that has helped the Racer's standing in the Race. We had a lot of fun trying to take as many photos as possible, but now that we are Racerbugless, we wish each Racer the very best in the Race from now on! Bon Voyage and Godspeed!

8.6k · July 14, 2009

GEO936,

Your photographs added to my Welsh Rugby union TB are much appreciated, as are the ones from Far-Jar-Hug (Great name - whatever does it mean? ) and ecurb_h.

There's not a lot I can do to influence my TB's travels in this Race but it's good fun just to watch, read the logs and see the interesting photographs from another country.

Thanks also to those in the background who are totting up the points and updating the webpage regularly - Great job!

MrsB

1.1k · July 14, 2009

It hasn't always been easy.

One bug gives me grey hairs ... and its the love bug. I am convinced love bug is a little devil in disguise. When downloading the KML file for that bug, it would work out to either 58km, or 98km or 137km. Eventually it moved and I thought thought my problems were solved. But still it persist.

Also other small errors creep in from time to time, so it keeps me busy, but luckily not as much as it used to when we started. And I learnt lots of PHP.

2.3k · July 14, 2009

MID MONTH POSITIONS

Due to the large number of participants - and the closeness of the top competitors, I have included the Top 15 - they are very close and normally 1 cache visit by a TB will affect a number of positions!

1. The gold diggers free state Ferrari

2. Eager Beaver Fever

3. 2009 Great SA TB Race - Flags of the World Post Card

4. Leopardo

5. DiePienaars N.Ireland Racing Coin

6. Zulu Love Letter TB

7. Sir Henry Morgan Pirate of the Caribbean

7. Worm's RoadRunner

9. Mom's Marathon Racer

9. Love Bug

11. Bouncing Smiley TB

12. Pongo the Racing Dalmatian

13. Welsh Rugby Union

13. Cacheachu

15. besem's Purple Dragon in The Great SA TB Race

15. 2009 Great SA TB Race ~ The Big Five

Happy racing everyone.

July 14, 2009

It hasn't always been easy.

One bug gives me grey hairs ... and its the love bug. I am convinced love bug is a little devil in disguise. When downloading the KML file for that bug, it would work out to either 58km, or 98km or 137km. Eventually it moved and I thought thought my problems were solved. But still it persist.

Also other small errors creep in from time to time, so it keeps me busy, but luckily not as much as it used to when we started. And I learnt lots of PHP.

Damhuisclan you are doing a STERLING job with the webpages on the Race. It doesn't matter about the glitches and slight errors. The main thing is that you have made the effort to do this for us, and for that we are truly grateful. Thanks to you, we have a graphical representation of what is happening with the Race, and it makes such a difference. Thank you so much!

1.1k · July 14, 2009

July 14, 2009

And also not to forget about cincol - Thank you for all your hard work with tallying up the points and keeping us up to date with the Race standings! You are also doing a great job and we appreciate your efforts!

July 14, 2009

Duplicate post deleted

Edited July 14, 2009 by GEO936

1.6k · July 15, 2009

It hasn't always been easy.

One bug gives me grey hairs ... and its the love bug. I am convinced love bug is a little devil in disguise. When downloading the KML file for that bug, it would work out to either 58km, or 98km or 137km. Eventually it moved and I thought thought my problems were solved. But still it persist.

Also other small errors creep in from time to time, so it keeps me busy, but luckily not as much as it used to when we started. And I learnt lots of PHP.

Hee hee.... don't worry about distance for now.... this little guy is out getting loads of points.... LOL

1.1k · July 15, 2009

Hee hee.... don't worry about distance for now.... this little guy is out getting loads of points.... LOL

GPS and the game is supposed to be an 'exact science', as one can "pin point" one's location on the earth.

But downloading the same KML file for the same travelbug twice, produces different GPS points each time for some if not all of the waypoints. And in the case of the Love bug, it gets some additional waypoints sometimes.

It is not the end of the world, but is a little anoyance, and must be in some calculation error on GC's side when producing these KML files. I find it strange though as the GPS points are fixed for each STOP or cache.

Maybe there is a calculation which takes continental drift into account?

1.1k · July 15, 2009

Just want to mention a thanks to BruceTP for telling me about a small error on the stats at the bottom of the participants page, where the number of entrants was wrong. This has been corrected.

"Pirates" were also removed. A "Pirate" was an entrant which did not represent a specific country. There were 3 of them.

July 15, 2009

MID MONTH POSITIONS

Pray, tell all! What are the current point values per contestant?

2.3k · July 15, 2009

MID MONTH POSITIONS

Pray, tell all! What are the current point values per contestant?

All the detailed scores are published monthly as tradition has it. I place the Mid Month Positions every month just to add a little bit of spice to the race. That said, if everybody wants the scores published at mid-month for the Top 15 I can do so with the detail coming at month end on the website. At the end of the day it is YOUR race and I will endeavour to do what the participants want.

2.3k · July 15, 2009

Duplicate post for some reason or other. []

Edited July 16, 2009 by cincol

1.6k · July 16, 2009

Hee hee.... don't worry about distance for now.... this little guy is out getting loads of points.... LOL

GPS and the game is ........

Maybe there is a calculation which takes continental drift into account?

I recalculated the distance on the TB and it jumped up to 259km... maybe try it again.

2.3k · July 16, 2009

CORRECTION TO POSITIONS

A small error was found in the post for Mid Month Positions. Below is the corrected Top 15 as of TODAY. Apologies for any hassles that it might have caused.

1. The gold diggers free state Ferrari - 249

2. Eager Beaver Fever - 248

3. 2009 Great SA TB Race - Flags of the World Post Card - 241

4. Leopardo - 161

5. DiePienaars N.Ireland Racing Coin - 102

6. Zulu Love Letter TB - 97

7. Sir Henry Morgan Pirate of the Caribbean - 96

7. Worm's RoadRunner - 96

9. Mom's Marathon Racer - 85

9. Love Bug - 85

11. Bouncing Smiley TB - 79

12. Pongo the Racing Dalmatian - 76

13. Arwen's Bling-Bling Mini Cooper - 74

14. Welsh Rugby Union - 69

15. BruceTP's 2009 Great SA TB Race Medallion - 67

Happy racing and PLENTY can happen before month end!

2.3k · July 16, 2009

RULE ADJUSTEMENT

MILES versus KILOMETRES – originally I thought that we would use miles based on the US [gc.com], by due to the fact that SA is metric and the TB pages show kms I changed that. However, the TB pages show miles on SOME of the TB’s and I convert them to kilos. Also if you click “View Map” then the distances are ALL in miles – typically Yank logic? So, the points for "mileage" are based on 1 points for every 50 KILOMETRES travelled rather than miles. If your TB shows miles on ots page, don't worry as I do the conversion on my spreadsheet.

Furthermore, the month of June had 2 extra discretionary bonus points that were not published on the website but WERE applied to the TB's. These discretionary points were:-

10 points per each TB that is FIRST in any province except Gauteng

10 points for any photos related to Lions Tour

10 points for any TB visiting any KZN cache

I will ask DamhuisClan to change the wording on the web page to kilometres as well as add the other 2 bounus points to the June notes.

Apologies if this caused anybody any undue stress.

Edited July 16, 2009 by cincol

July 16, 2009

Apologies if this caused anybody any undue stress.

Apologies accepted. This was the least of my stress!

Thanks for clearing up the ambiguities and I look forward to following the points with great interest.

Thanks too for all your hard work cincol in managing the race.

BruceTP

1.1k · July 16, 2009

Oops ... looks like we slipped up a bit ...

I will update the race pages on Friday night.

just for those not knowing where the pages are:

http://www.sageostats.co.za/tbrace

As long as all TBs have the same rules applied it is still fair to all.

4.2k · July 17, 2009

Hey - Leopardo is doing some good work in the heat of the desert.

Perhaps I can finally get my grubby hands on him - he's landed in one of my caches (FTF) here in Abu Dhabi

1.1k · July 17, 2009

I will update the race pages on Friday night.

Pages have been updated, to reflect the corrected rules.

A small "disclaimer" added to the scores page.

1.1k · July 18, 2009

I am thinking of maybe adding in the display of movement of the TB for each update, each week, and maybe each month.

If the distance is displayed for the movement in each week, on what day should the week start on?

I think either Monday, or maybe Friday?

2.3k · July 18, 2009

I am thinking of maybe adding in the display of movement of the TB for each update, each week, and maybe each month.

If the distance is displayed for the movement in each week, on what day should the week start on?

I think either Monday, or maybe Friday?

Maybe a Tuesday as many cachers will only log their weekend finds on a Monday.

2009 Great SA TB Race

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