Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...isn't it?

[evilrooster]

I go caching with my 2 1/2 year old son. We mostly do urban caches, rarely walking more than half a mile in total, so I tend to let (make) him walk rather than using a stroller or backpack (as I did when he was younger).

 

He's only recently figured out what we're doing, that I use a "GPS" to go find "treasure". My GPS is an attatchment to my Palm Vx PDA, which means I do a lot of tapping with a stylus.

 

So today we found some "treasure" in a park in our city (Edinburgh, Scotland). He chose some magnetic marbles to take away, still in their packaging. Something about the flat packaging made him think of my Palm, so he declared it his "GPS". Then he made me find him a stick to use as a stylus (he called it a "pencil") and stood around tapping on the cardboard for a few seconds.

 

"Six...four...um...that way!" he declared, pointing down the path. So we set off. A few paces more, a few more taps, and suddenly we were supposed to go back the way we'd come. We spent fifteen or twenty minutes to-ing and fro-ing, with him tapping at random, muttering numbers, then pointing off in new directions.

 

I told my non-caching husband, who comes with us sometimes. He laughed for rather longer than I appreciated...

 

I guess maybe I should be more definitive in my directions?

 

evilrooster

-the email of the species is deadlier than the mail-

[+Team Shibby]

Thats a cute story, but IS there an easy way to describe a GPS to a 2 1/2 yr old

 

Kar

[+NattyBooshka]

Walking backwards and forwards as the GPS changes it's "mind?" Sounds like us near a cache recently!

 

Some people are born great, some achieve greatness, and some just grate

[evilrooster]

My GPS gets a bit confused when we get too close to a cache. I tend to stop going by its route mapping and distance calculations and start going by the "raw" coordinates at that point, which does lead to a certain amount of pacing as I get lat & long right.

 

(On the other hand, at a recent cache bash, I established that I had by far the best coverage under trees.)

 

Since I also have a very poor memory for numbers, I usually find myself reciting the last three digits of the coordinate I'm trying to match as I walk.

 

Children are such good imitators. I'm so glad I cleaned up my language before he was born...

 

evilrooster

-the email of the species is deadlier than the mail-