TB There and Back

[+Mrs & Mrs Bickerson]

We would like to send a TB to a location then have it return to the city is started in. Any ideas on how to keep it heading in the right direction when the right direction changes?

[+cerberus1]

A polite email to the current holder might help, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[+Gitchee-Gummee]

It does happen, just not very often -- I would even venture to say rarely so.

[+dprovan]

I haven't had a TB get to it's destination yet, but if one ever does, I plan to change the goal entirely to indicate the next destination, then list previous goals in the description telling when and how they were completed and by who.

 

I also try to make the goal a little vague so that it will still make a little sense if the TB gets to its destination after I've lost interest in geocaching and don't realize it's reached its destination, since I've seen a couple TBs where that happened. It makes the TB look silly when the goal implies it's supposed to sit in one cache until kingdom come.

[+Mrs & Mrs Bickerson]

Thanks dprovan. I'll give that a try.

[+The Blorenges]

Have you consider making its mission to get to a specific cacher in/near your chosen city? i.e. to get to any cache owned by Cacher Whoever? If you can set it up with the other cacher's cooperation perhaps they'd be willing to retrieve the TB from their cache when it arrives (hopefully!) and then attach a new mission tag for its return journey back to you.

 

MrsB

[+fuzziebear3]

My thought is to keep the mission simple, and updated. If you can get someone to fix a mission tag when it changes, that is a great idea too.

 

If it is not clear on the bug and the page which part of the journey it is on, then it might keep going backwards instead of forwards.

[+Scratch Ankle]

I don't have much expertise in this. I've released one and it's disappeared. But from that and reading a lot of logs of other trackables it appears that almost nobody actually pays attention to the goal of the trackable. They find it, pick it up, and move it somewhere that may or may not have anything to do with the goal of the trip. Often it has nothing to do with the goal.

 

On the way to my family reunion I dropped mine in western New York with the goal (attached to the trackable) of going to London Bridge in Lake Havasu City in Arizona (my sister's home) and then return to London, Kentucky (my home area). I hoped for it to make it's way back before the next reunion and I would hand it to my sister. It was picked up and moved several times northeast (although not any great distance) instead of southwest. It finally found it's way to Michigan and someone there picked it up and took it to Texas which was a big jump on its way. I started to get hopeful. Someone picked it up there and said they would move it on. I assumed that meant toward Arizona. Instead he took it back to Michigan where it has disappeared.

 

I'm getting ready to send another on its way but I have no expectations that it will actually arrive at a goal except by pure luck. Certainly expecting a cross country and return trip in a year is a pipe dream. Keep your goal simple and attach it to the trackable so when someone finds it they know (or should know) right then what the goal is and act accordingly. Whether they actually pay attention is another matter. Good luck.