Display total milleage of a geocacher

[+Zartimus]

By calculating the distance between all their cache finds sequentially. I've seen a travel bug used by a family for this purpose and thought it a fantastic idea. The data is there, it is not an exact number but none the less an interesting pseudo statistic.

 

The travel bug they use to log cache mileage is here:

 

http://www.geocaching.com/track/track_detail.asp?ID=1163

 

Oh and Kilometers are nice too. Perhaps a conversion in the profile info to display kilometers instead of miles?

[+Wild Rover]

The family in question may well have caused geocaching to change the rules for the "top 10" and I have no real problem with that. I waited to see the new top 10 and as I feared the new version is USA centred - the games of keeping a travel bug in a particular area is just as unreasonable as the single person travel bug - the rest of the world does not have the concentration of caches. Having been critical why not try a combination of both ideas ie a minimum no of users coupled with total distance travelled?

(An alterantive would be, say, no 2 consecutive legs can be taken with the same geocacher)

I am oipen to be shot at!!!!!!!

[+Prime Suspect]

This could be done programmatically, without too much trouble. Grab all your found cache ID numbers off your "My Cache Page", retrieve them in a LOC file, then run sequential Great Circle calculations against the coordinates.

 

The resulting number doesn't really mean anything, though. Cache 94 might be in Arkansas, and 95 in Michigan. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I traveled from Arkansas to Michigan.

 

[+Jamie Z]

quote:

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Originally posted by Prime Suspect:

Cache 94 might be in Arkansas, and 95 in Michigan. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I traveled from Arkansas to Michigan.

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What, some sort of Star Trek technology or what?

 

Jamie

[Rubbertoe]

Would you be measuring from cache to cache, or do we get credit for the return trip home each time? There are too many goofy variables for this to work... lets say you get a bunch of caches in one day, one after the other... then, over the next few weeks you get one a day, driving to it - and then back home each time. Like you said - a personal travel bug is great for this... perhaps you could even retroactively place it into caches you've visited, and then immediately remove it - making a personal bug path that way. *shrug*

 

The Toe Pages

[+Prime Suspect]

quote:

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Originally posted by Jamie Z:

quote:

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Originally posted by Prime Suspect:

Cache 94 might be in Arkansas, and 95 in Michigan. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I traveled from Arkansas to Michigan.

---

What, some sort of Star Trek technology or what?

 

Jamie

---

 

No, it means I traveled by car from Texas to Arkansas (with a stop in Oklahoma), found a cache while there, then returned to Texas. Then I flew from Texas to Michigan and found another cache.

 

Just an example of why this connect-the-cache distancing is silly and meaningless.

 

[+worldtraveler]

In my case, that's Mapsource. I've created a single route of all my cache travels and just add to the route when I find new caches. If I'm caching near home, I use the actual mileage traveled (using autorouting); but when I travel >100 miles from home, I just use the direct mileage. I try to always log at least one cache near home between long trips so the sequence of cache finds accurately depicts my travels.

 

I'm currently somewhere over 100K miles and should have another 25K miles after this current round-the-world jaunt.

 

Soon after getting into this sport, I figured I'd probably never be near the top of any list for most caches found; but I suspected I stood a chance of logging the most caching miles. As far as I know, no one else is close.

 

I have a travel bug I've carried with me on all my hunts and have considered using it as a personal tb; I just haven't gotten around to going back through all the finds to recreate the history. Maybe someday.

 

Worldtraveler

[+Markwell]

And through in those (ugh) Locationless Caches that you may have found in your home town, but have coordinates in Iceland.

 

Could make this calculation kind of skewed.

 

Markwell

Chicago Geocaching

[+worldtraveler]

quote:

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Originally posted by Markwell:

And through in those (ugh) Locationless Caches that you may have found in your home town, but have coordinates in Iceland.

 

Could make this calculation kind of skewed.

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Just one more reason why I don't do locationless caches that don't require navigating to "real" coordinates. Your "Photographer's" caches are some of the rare "legitimate" locationless caches, IMO.

 

Worldtraveler

[+CYBret]

I'd love to have this kind of info, as indicated HERE. Sure it's going to be terribly inaccurate, but still it would be amazing to see how many miles I've put in on my caching trips.

 

Bret

 

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.

When a man found it, he hid it again." Mt. 13:44

[+Markwell]

quote:

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Originally posted by worldtraveler:

Your "Photographer's" caches are some of the rare "legitimate" locationless caches, IMO.

---

 

I know you don't mean to get my goat (especially since your Hawaii Trip), but I take great exception to that. The Photographer's Caches are not locationless. Locationless caches do not have coordinates to be directed to prior to leaving your front door.

 

The Photographer's Caches are a combination of virtual caches and moving caches, both of which are done legitimately (Moving Target and Gilbert's Stash a Traveling Cache are examples of moving caches).

 

For my caches you are directed to a particular set of coordinates and asked to take a picture to log the find - identical to other virtual caches. The only difference is that after they've been found, the finder suggests a new location.

 

There. I feel better.

 

Markwell

Chicago Geocaching

"Therapy is expensive but bubble wrap is free."

[eaglescout]

I would not be *** intrested in the Travel distance as a map showing where you have gotten caches from, That would be more realistic when you show it to someone who might not be a cacher but is intrested to see what you have accomplished. I would show that to people and they might be able to better grasp the concept of geocaching.

[+worldtraveler]

No, I wasn't trying to jerk your chain, my friend. I was recalling the early forum discussions using my imperfect memory. I thought your Photo caches had been grouped (erroneously, IMO) with the locationless caches back when they created the category. I had never searched the category until a few minutes ago, so I didn't know otherwise.

 

Sorry! My bad. I'm glad the distinction has been officially recognized even though I was slow to catch on.

 

Worldtraveler

[+fizzymagic]

This is essentially a trivial exercise to do in Excel. Why should geocaching.com do something that you can do quite simply yourself?

 

Actually, now that I think about it, geocaching.com cannot do it properly. You must do it yourself. If you find more than one cache on a given day, geocaching.com does not maintain enough information to know in what order they were found.

 

FWIW, my total calculated this way is almost 46,000 miles. My total calculated as the sum of the distances from my home coordinates to each cache found is closing in on 200,000 miles. I think both are cool measures; the first one indicates how far you've traveled doing caches, while the second indicates how much caching you have done far from home.

 

[This message was edited by fizzymagic on October 31, 2002 at 07:34 PM.]