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How addicted are you?


EXMAN

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i consider myself a fairly active cacher and i'm finding myself spending A LOT of time with this.

i like the dimension that trackables adds to the game, so part of my routine involves searching them out and then verifying whether or not they are even in the cache.

so......between

- searching on-line for the caches in the area

- searching those caches to eliminate those that don't fit my criteria of the day.

- uploading to the GPSR.

- the caching itself.

- logging finds

- admiring my stats

- admiring the stats of others

etc......etc......etc

 

QUESTION / POLL

 

- how many hours a week do you think you spend on this addiction of yours?

 

Me ????

it comes in spurts, but in my 9 months of caching i'd guess 2 hours a day.

so 2 hours x 180 days

360 hours so far this year.

 

it's hard to guesstimate though.

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I guess pretty addicted...it replaced my cocaine and hooker habit. I try to look for at least one cache a day if I am in the mood. I don't freak out if I have something else calendared that prevents me from searching during the weekdays or weekends. If I have a free weekend day...then I might plan for 20 or more.

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QUESTION / POLL

 

- how many hours a week do you think you spend on this addiction of yours?

 

 

If you mean outside, doing the actual hunting, it would average out probably no more than 5 - 6 hours a month.

 

If you wanted to add on the time MrB spends on "voluntary geocaching work" on his laptop and I spend waffling around in these forums... Oh heck... I don't want to guess... :laughing:

 

MrsB

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I'm not addicted at all. I can quit any time I want.

Denial is not a useful step in the healing process.

I am not in denial.

About being addicted or being in denial?

 

I deny both.

 

(let me get serious for one very brief second: Accusing someone of being in denial is very similar to the witch trials of old.)

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Between actually caching and then messing around on forums and working on new hides and scouting locations and looking for caches at upcoming vacations spots, I .... am so addicted. :blink:

 

I probably spend about 2.5-3hours a day doing something related to geocaching.

 

you sound like me.

i'm retired and as of june we are full-time RVers.

thatmeans i'm now on permanent vacation.

since july i've added 6 provinces and 9 ? states to my list.

i had visions of racking up big numbers too, but in the interest of staying married i've been limiting myself to as few as 1 cache in each area.

 

i can't imagine the hours it takes to have completed 10,000 or more caches.

saw a profile where a group did a cross country trip in a rental car.

over 10,000 miles in 11 days.

unbelievable.

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Between checking out the forums, thinking of fun twists on caches, working in the lab on physical caches that I plan to place, looking at maps of areas I would like to hit, trying to solve puzzles and actually getting out in the field I am sure I spend somewhere in the area of 20 hours per week on Geocaching or Geocaching related projects.

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Actually not that much.

 

I cache on Friday mornings with my youngest, so I do plan those trips a bit.

 

But we just got back from a 2 week holiday to Portugal, and I planned to visit a couple of caches whilst there.

I downloaded the details of 4 great looking caches before we left (no Internet whilst on holiday), and we did 2 of the 4.

And I was pretty happy with that.

I love Geocahcing (so do the kids) but I can also step back, and don't want to spend my holiday scrabbling round road side services and under lamp post skirts.

 

I enjoy it for what it is meant to be - a chance to visit new and amazing places.

Not a chance to make my stats look better.

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Actually not that much.

 

I cache on Friday mornings with my youngest, so I do plan those trips a bit.

 

But we just got back from a 2 week holiday to Portugal, and I planned to visit a couple of caches whilst there.

I downloaded the details of 4 great looking caches before we left (no Internet whilst on holiday), and we did 2 of the 4.

And I was pretty happy with that.

I love Geocahcing (so do the kids) but I can also step back, and don't want to spend my holiday scrabbling round road side services and under lamp post skirts.

 

I enjoy it for what it is meant to be - a chance to visit new and amazing places.

Not a chance to make my stats look better.

Edited by EXMAN
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In my experience, those who are most addicted tend to burn out and leave more quickly than those who can moderate their activity level.

 

Of course, there is always an exception to every rule (*cough* Alamogul *cough*).

 

My moto is basically....Excess in moderation. It serves my OCD tendencies...yet it stays in check with the wife and kids.

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I am definitely addicted but as with most of my hobbies and especially new ones I tend to come in hot then peter out a bit. Although I have to say, after the first week of frantically trying to make time for caching, I've decided to just chill out and plan to find a few caches on my day off each week. The time spent on the website, in google earth, and recently looking at benchmarks......OH and the forums......AT LEAST 2-3 hours a day. I check the forums on my lunch break usually, look at my email to see if I got any notifications, then check again when I get home, then spend at least an hour or more in the evening reading on the forums and playing around with mapping and searches, PQ's etc. etc.

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In my experience, those who are most addicted tend to burn out and leave more quickly than those who can moderate their activity level.

 

Of course, there is always an exception to every rule (*cough* Alamogul *cough*).

 

Yeah, that seems to be a good general (*cough* Bobcam *cough*) rule of thumb.

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I work 40 hours a week, so I am on the website and looking at the forums about 37 of those hours. Don't tell my boss!

Just kidding it is more like 10 of those hours. I really hope my boss isn't a secret cacher.

 

Just like now, when I am running a macro pulling up important data to look into 'issues', I can surf here at the same time and get paid for it. I don't count this time because it's on someone else's dime... :rolleyes:

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Tomorrow I will have been caching for a year...i have 650 finds (neither good or bad nor bragging just saying)...because of geocaching I traded in the best car I have ever owned, one I took to car shows, drag races, a 2010 camaro, (I had it for 9 months) I now drive the best car I have ever owned a 2007 jeep wrangler, its my geomobile. Geocaching has got me mountain biking, which in turn has got me into road biking, I've also taken up hiking and backpacking, and I just returned from a 3 day canoe trip this past weekend with a friend to...you guessed it, geocache. The weekend before that we went camping for only the second time of our adult lives at a popular fishing state park....to you guessed it, geocache. You could say we are addicted, lol. that doesnt count the many hours a day i visit the forums at work, and scout out places I want to visit on the maps lol

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I won't comment on if it's an addiction or not :ph34r: but it's definitely a way of life. I can't really imagine life without caching, it just a part of me and my life.

 

I have no idea how much time I spend on caching related things, I'm sure it's quite a lot. Between caching, placing caches and events, volunteering, planning caching, logging caches, forum reading and posting, and Waymarking, who knows? :laughing:

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It depends on what else we've got going on, but it also depends on what we've got going on in the geocaching world as well. I've usually got caching on the mind, & if time spent thinking about it counts..I'm going to need professional help. Right now we have a series of caches coming out that has turned into a 15 cache series with a LOT of research involved. So it's become somewhat akin to having a part-time job at the moment. But a job I like. So much that I don't get paid for it. ;)

 

I like sinking my teeth into these big projects because I don't get to go out caching as much as I'd like. It's a good way to get the geo-fix.

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Does forum use count? :unsure:

 

Yes it does.. Its still about geocaching. :ph34r:

 

Actually off-topic is not about geocaching and that's where I spend most of my forum time. I don't even want to take a guess as to how much time I spend over there. Hey! Keeps me off the streets.

 

I used to spend 4 hours a week just writing up the caches for the weekend. I finally had to buy a paperless GPS or quit geocaching. Guess which I did.

 

So I don't know how to say how much time I spend caching at this point.

Last weekend I only found one cache, but I spent an entire day doing it. Well I also happen to tour an old abandoned mine shaft while I was there, and tour another area of old mining equipment and stop at a really nice waterfall. The time also included driving some two hours or so each way to get there, maybe more.

So was the time spent caching the time it took to find the cache, or the entire day's activities, plus getting ready for the trip?

 

I guess caching has become an integral part of my life right now, so it's just like eating or something.

Is that addicted? No. It's a lifestyle.

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