+Ibar Posted June 16, 2014 Share Posted June 16, 2014 (edited) The story goes like this ... ...more than a year ago, one of my FB friends posted something strange, with an icon of a white box and a green cover (TB), and then another day the box had a yellow cover (Multi). Eventually we talked about it and he showed me quickly what geocaching was ("walking with a goal" is how he called it). That wasn't clearly something for me, on one hand I'm pretty good at hiding my car keys at home on D5 places without any effort, and on the other hand my sense of orientation is famous worldwide, I must be one of the few persons in this planet that managed to get completely lost in his hometown Anyway, exactly one year ago, day by day I decided to deviate a few hundred meters in my daily run and try to find "something" I had no clue how it would look like. To my biggest surprise, and thanks to the hint .. I found it !!! exactly 365 days, exactly 500 caches (timing is everything) and 12 countries later I've learned, oh yes I have learned: ... on my first months I learned: - That "Spoiler" is not the name of the dog appearing in all pictures of a local series - That if you think you have to destroy a tree to get to the cache, then you're probably looking at the wrong place. - That cachers aren't necessarily the best friends of trees and chapels - That you don't necessarily have to cache nightcaches by night, and you know what? On daylight is muuuuch easier !! - About creepy creatures hiding under rocks I've never thought would exist - About labradorite, feldspar and many different types of rocks with a looong story behind. I really admire the EarthCaching community, shame there aren't that many EC's around - That on a D1,5 you don't have to climb a tree nor to jump over a wide creek, regardless of what the GPS may think - How stupid I look on a webcam when I'm trying to take a pic with my iphone in the middle of a busy street of "that" website - How frustrated it can be to be a FTA (First to Arrive) and still STF - How great it feels to log your FIRST FTF - That FTF stuff is not for me. My work is stressing enough, and finding a cache as 1000th person can feel as good as being the FTF (honestly) - That FIC (First in Country, I mean my first cache in a given country) is MAGIC - That D/T ratio is country-dependent. A German D1/T1 can be as challenging as a Belgian D2/T2 or a Portuguese D3/T3 ... I can prove that!! - To be thankful to the one that decided not to delete old Virtuals, when you just have one shot on a very remote country, that's the best thing you can land upon - That I'm VERY fortunate to leave in Flanders (Belgium) where we have almost as many caches as inhabitants, and to work in Germany, where definitely there are more caches than citizens - That I can disappear in WW bunkers and climb to (small) trees and enjoy it like a small child - That I will never log a T5 cache (and that's fine) - That a Multi doesn't mean a stash, and then a stash and then ...but that the stash may JUST be the last thing (trust me, it took me a looong time to realize that) - That a "?" cache in a map, may mean a puzzle, or a bonus, or a challenge or an unknown size or ... who knows !! - That, my assumption that geocachers is a secret society of rare organisms coming from outer space hiding millions of objects below our noses wasn't completely accurate. Geocachers seem to be humans!! I've met 3 of them in my 500 caches, and they looked quite normal - That, thanks to attending one of their secret gatherings (they called it "MegaEvents") I realize that not only they are humans, but they look suspiciously similar to me (40-50 years old, kind of easy-going) Then I moved to the next phase .. hiding my own caches !!! And then I learned again, I learned: - Why some of the caches I was searching weren't really on GZ ... because my first ones weren't there either - How crazy FTF seekers may be. You don't want to know on which weather were some of my caches first found - to hate shorts "Found Easily!" logs. Well, if it was D1,5/T1,5 what did they expect, a nano up 20m in a tree somewhere in the Amazon basin? - that some caches have legs. You put them somewhere, then they go somewhere else, then they get back - how tough it can be to convince a reviewer to post a cache, specially a Challenge one - how neighbour-sensitive some caches may be (I had to relocate two, that were on a, presumed, perfectly fine site) And finally ... I even bought TB's !!! and then .. I learned: - that the romantic idea of letting your TB's travel around the world is just that, a romantic idea. I have 3 TB's out there, one hasn't been found yet (challenging cache) and the other two are probably gone for good. - that this point is statistically proven. Out of the many TB's that theoretically should be on the caches I was logging (remember 500 in 12 countries), less than 10% were still there But anyway, I don't want to close this first-year-log on a sad note. Honestly it's been a lot of fun, have discovered many interesting places, sometimes VERY close to home or places I often go to, I've learned a lot about their big or small stories, have georun (more than half of my caches have been logged on some kind of running tour)different paths than the ones I used to, and with every smiley, there was as well a smile on my face Wait, and what now? Well since I discovered a 10 years old nest-cache falling apart in Germany, I've found old caches cute, so I may try to fill in the month-calendar one of these days, other than that there are still 2.000.000 something stories to discover ... I can't wait! Keep on caching !! Edited June 16, 2014 by Ibar Quote Link to comment
etarace Posted June 16, 2014 Share Posted June 16, 2014 Yay! Thank you for sharing that story! We hear and do a lot of complaining so it is nice to hear such a genuine and happy tale. I'm finding old caches cute too, and I think about planning a trip to my hometown ... ... ... primarily to find some caches hidden in 2000. My sister can think it is to visit her. Quote Link to comment
+andyakashrek Posted June 16, 2014 Share Posted June 16, 2014 "That I will never log a T5 cache" Hmmmm, we will see. Bet you do. Quote Link to comment
+6NoisyHikers Posted June 16, 2014 Share Posted June 16, 2014 What a great story, Ibar! It's great to hear that you have developed a love for - and a sense of humour about - caching Here's to many more years of adventures for you! Quote Link to comment
wrangler clem Posted June 17, 2014 Share Posted June 17, 2014 Wonderful way of describing the life of a geocacher. Quote Link to comment
+Ibar Posted June 20, 2014 Author Share Posted June 20, 2014 Yay! Thank you for sharing that story! We hear and do a lot of complaining so it is nice to hear such a genuine and happy tale. I'm finding old caches cute too, and I think about planning a trip to my hometown ... ... ... primarily to find some caches hidden in 2000. My sister can think it is to visit her. 2000? Here in Belgium I've found one from 2004 and that's almost "prehistoric" Quote Link to comment
+NYPaddleCacher Posted June 20, 2014 Share Posted June 20, 2014 Yay! Thank you for sharing that story! We hear and do a lot of complaining so it is nice to hear such a genuine and happy tale. I'm finding old caches cute too, and I think about planning a trip to my hometown ... ... ... primarily to find some caches hidden in 2000. My sister can think it is to visit her. If you get the chance, I highly recommend taking a drive to go find "The Spot". It's not that far from you and is the 5th oldest active geocache in the world. It's also in a real pretty spot and still has a log book from 2000. Quote Link to comment
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