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2018: Caching Everyday!


Geonomes

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Committed to caching everyday in 2018?

I’m going to try to make it the entire year.   Wondering who else is going to try to get out Everyday.

I’m ending 2017 with a current streak of 33 days in a row.  I’m hoping to continue this in 2018.

Who wants to work together to support and offer strategies for finding a new cache every day in 2018?

Whats your longest streak so far?  

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We had a cacher in our area who succeeded in finding at least one cache everyday for 365 consecutive days one year.  He followed that by finding no caches (0) for the following year (and then some).  Lesson to this story is :  Be careful about your goal as it could make you come to despise what you used to think was an enjoyable activity.

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I kinda agree with medoug.  The other 2/3rds used to be a FTF monster, to the point of going out in coveralls (covering the jammies) if late at night.

 - Doesn't cache solo anymore, and hasn't cached at all this year.

Add in weather, sickness, work... something usually messes things up.   "Strategies" may come down to just claiming one for today, saving the other for tomorrow "just this once" .  Ugh...  no thanks.

My "longest streak" is eleven days.  I don't ever expect that to be greater.

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My longest streak is 37 days, done while on a trip in our trailer. 

Every time this comes up, I think of what Mark Twain wrote in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" - "If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."  I'd rather geocaching stay Play and not become Work. 

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I finished a streak of 367 days back in February. I was aiming for a challenge cache requiring a find on every calendar date of the year.  I found the last 30 days quite gruelling. Now I've done it I have no intention of putting myself under that sort of pressure for a hobby again. Current streak: 2 days. It might get to three...

 

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My longest streak as of now is 2364 days.  It is what I really like about caching.  I am worried if I ever end it I might not feel the need to keep caching.  I probably would though.

 My daughter and I went out caching and then made a hide.  One of the FTF's said "Thanks for placing this to help with our streak"  I asked him what that was.  He told me not to find the ones close to home if I wanted to find one everyday. I found this very interesting because I work 6 days a week in about 100 miles or so radius from my house in all different directions. I usually drive 200 or more miles in a day.  It is pretty easy for me to stop for a hide or two along the way.  Then my daughter lives kind of far away so I often go visit her on my day off or am going fishing.  I try to never find a cache close to home unless I have to. 

  There was only one day that I was deadly sick.  Luckily there was a multi cache that the CO had decided to end and made each of the stops a traditional. I had my mom drive me there and I made the short walk over to sign it. I am now to where I have to drive about 15 min to my nearest unfound cache but it is rare that I am off and need to do it, also the occasional new cache pops up.

 I do feel bad when a friend publishes a cache and if I am not FTF I might have to wait a month or 2 before I go to find it.  Other then that it is really enjoyable.  If I had not found out about it at the start and found all the nearby caches it would have never been able to happen.  Hope you can make the year!  I enjoy it.

 

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I tried this out back when we first started caching; I personally found our streak (100 days or so) a bit like work toward the end.  Ironically it wasn't caching during work days that was the issue, as I had a 40 km commute in a cache-rich area of Germany and had no issues with setting caches aside.  It was more that caching became something I had to do, even on a weekend when I wanted to stay home or when the wife had other plans. 

The low point for me was around day 90; on an evening that should have been a date night in Frankfurt, we ended up having to chase down a multi that had the final stage a couple train stops out of town because we coudn't find the other caches I'd put in the GPSr.  Really, then, I suppose it was my lack of planning that did it in, but whichever way you look at it, I got tired of it and I stopped after we cleared 100 days. 

The only time we came close to streaking since then was in August 2013, when every day came with a souvenir, but even then I missed a few days to accommodate our daughter's birth.

Perhaps now that I don't feel obligated to take the family out with me every time I go geocaching, it would be different.  But I'm not interested enough to find out.

To the OP: good luck, and don't take my response as an attempt to discourage you, just sharing my experience.

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7 hours ago, The Jester said:

My longest streak is 37 days, done while on a trip in our trailer. 

Every time this comes up, I think of what Mark Twain wrote in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" - "If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."  I'd rather geocaching stay Play and not become Work. 

Excellent quote, describes what I feel about 'streaks' nicely.

Tried it, managed a couple of weeks, found I was reduced to looking for utterly dispiriting drive by micro rubbish caches (having found much of the good stuff near home already), decided it simply wasn't worth the effort. Just not my kind of caching.

 

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I completed a 366 day streak that began with the "31 Days of August" promotion in 2013.  I don't think I'll do a longer one, except perhaps after I retire.  I learned and experienced a lot during my streak - some good things, some bad. 

I learned the power of planning and the techniques for cache selection.  Have a plan each day for what cache you're going to find - and include a backup cache, because you will DNF caches at the most inopportune times.   Weed out caches with recent DNF's.  Become an expert at studying travel routes for weekly shopping errands, to spot caches on the map along the way.  Cleared out all the caches near your favorite grocery store?  Take a different route home from work, stopping at a different grocery store - with many unfound caches along the route.  Is there a "power trail" near your gym?  Find one cache along the trail at a time - each day you stop off at the gym.

Expand your horizons and become a cache omnivore.  Once you've cleaned out all the traditional caches in local parks, those parking lot micros look a lot more attractive.  You'll be grateful for them on a cold February Tuesday evening when you need to find a cache while freezing rain is falling on top of six inches of slush from last weekend's snow, so save them for days like that.  Cleaned out all the traditional caches along your commuter route?  Those multicaches and letterbox hybrids are still there, unfound.  Never saw the point in puzzle caches and found them "too hard?"  Some of them are easier than you thought, once you add the motivation of scoring that day's find.

Resist the temptation to cheat.  You'll feel better about your accomplishment, knowing it was legit.  Your ethics will be tested on a day where you worked overtime, you had an evening obligation, you're coming down with a cold, it's 10:00 pm, and you haven't found a cache that day.  Go out and find one anyway.

Most of all, have fun.  If it stops being fun, don't do it anymore.

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16 hours ago, The Jester said:

My longest streak is 37 days, done while on a trip in our trailer. 

Every time this comes up, I think of what Mark Twain wrote in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" - "If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."  I'd rather geocaching stay Play and not become Work. 

Mine is nine days, and Mark Twain got it right.  

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On 12/31/2017 at 1:40 PM, The Leprechauns said:

I learned the power of planning and the techniques for cache selection.  

Resist the temptation to cheat.  You'll feel better about your accomplishment, knowing it was legit.  Your ethics will be tested on a day where you worked overtime, you had an evening obligation, you're coming down with a cold, it's 10:00 pm, and you haven't found a cache that day.  Go out and find one anyway.

Most of all, have fun.  If it stops being fun, don't do it anymore.

Everything The Leprechauns said +

Then you can also find yourself waiting until 11:15pm to go out for the day's cache and then sitting in a parking lot for 20 minutes at 11:40 pm waiting for midnight to get a second one so you don't have to go out the next day.  Strategies and technicalities.  You could plan it closer but if you have complications or are not an experienced night cacher, you run the risk. 

Like others have suggested, while you are sitting there by yourself in the dark listening to the radio, all you do is think to yourself, does it really matter or who would know if I just went ahead and signed it so I can go home to sleep because I need to get up early for work. Waiting that extra 5-10 minutes starts to sound silly, especially if you have people at home waiting for you.

I had a trail about 7 miles away but it was the opposite direction of everything in the city. I made it 137 days before I felt it was a chore and wasn't fun anymore.  It took me over 2 months to start again.

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On 12/31/2017 at 2:40 PM, The Leprechauns said:

Most of all, have fun.  If it stops being fun, don't do it anymore.

General rule of thumb, this. To some, a streak may become "work" and thus unfun. To others, the work required to keep the streak IS the fun.  Don't let others get you down. If you have fun doing it, do it until it's not. You have no obligation to do things you don't want to do :)

My longest is 366, for a local "Ironman Challenge" cache - this was before challenges for 500, 1000, or more were published (or at least before I noticeed them) so I wanted to get a good length. I started March 1st 2011, to end of February 29, 2012 - I started with the goal of 366 unique consecutive days, and to not cache the day before and after.

I didn't want to get into the hook of "oh just one more day" "no I can't end my streak now!" where it's like you're fighting with yourself about what to do :) Having a goal and reaching it was the intent, and that year inspired the theme I now use in other areas of life, and the theme of my video channel. Plan the journey, enjoy the journey, accomplish goals you set for yourself. (no matter how cheesy that may sound to some :P)  You learn to appreciate a lot more.

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I think Leprechauns has it right.

I tried to streak and it quickly ended after 11 days or so. I started in December, while working in a major metropolitan city so I thought to myself, "this should be easy, Seattle is filled with caches" but those 30 minute lunch breaks soon filled up with walking all over downtown for caches and not actually getting anything to eat.

I never really had a good support system, either. Family members weren't exactly into caching so on evenings when we wanted to hangout, and I needed a cache, it just didn't work out. Also, I cached locally and burned myself by already having found a lot near home. So in order to streak, I'd have to travel farther out before work or after work then I wanted to. And I soon realized this around day four or five. And then all my other obligations started to get in the way. And then I started to worry that I'd cache so much that I'd get burned out. I didn't want to ruin geocaching for myself so I just stopped.

Some members are right. People go on these long streaks and then quit and are never heard from again. I've talked to two people who did streaks, and both admitted to cheating.

 

Good luck.  

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On 12/31/2017 at 9:30 AM, niraD said:
On 12/31/2017 at 7:39 AM, bflentje said:

Like I keep saying, everyone I know that streaks has cheated.. no matter how much they lie in saying they didn't.

Everyone I know that has had a geocaching streak has not cheated... no matter how much some people may claim they did.

It is interesting how different from the rest of the geocaching world the culture is here where niraD and I cache. I'm sure he's thinking about one particular streaker in the area that everyone knew about who was on his streak for years. One day he just said, "Ooops, I forgot," and that was the end of it. I don't think anyone around here gave it a second thought, but apparently in many other places, a streaker like that would have quietly covered up their mistake and kept the "streak" going.

I was caching a lot one year and realized I'd just casually gotten to a hundred days, so I decided to stick it out for a full year in order to meet the challenge cache requirements. It was an effort, but all hobbies sometimes involve working hard at something. At no time in the year did I feel like geocaching wasn't play. It's true I took a break for several days after day 367. (366 because it was a leap year streak challenge, then 367 because I went out the next day to find the challenge cache itself.) But really that break was mostly about enjoying the glow of success, not because I didn't want to geocache.

But it's not for everyone. Lots of people like to hike, but not all hikers try the Grand Canyon rim to rim.

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My longest was during the 31 days of August promotion back in 2013.  I have a full-time job, two young kids and a wife that only tolerates my little pastime...so streaks are really not an option for me if I want to stay married, especially since doing so now would mean having to drive way out to the far suburbs every day.

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5 hours ago, Harry Dolphin said:
5 hours ago, dprovan said:

But it's not for everyone. Lots of people like to hike, but not all hikers try the Grand Canyon rim to rim.

True.  But it was a lot of fun!  But I was a lot younger then.

Yeah, I feel the same way about my 366 day cache streak. It's starting to look like I'll never make the canyon hike, though.

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On 1/2/2018 at 5:51 PM, bflentje said:

I'd still bet money that more cheat than not, especially as the streak gets longer and longer.

Anyone who has a full-time job that requires them to be in one location clearly cannot streak for long unless they don't have to be home for any reason.  Once one's home area and work area are depleted, it requires lots of extra driving to keep a streak alive.  

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1 hour ago, J Grouchy said:

Anyone who has a full-time job that requires them to be in one location clearly cannot streak for long unless they don't have to be home for any reason.  Once one's home area and work area are depleted, it requires lots of extra driving to keep a streak alive.  

I've also read about streaks broken due to a long international flight.  I once had a trip when I was either on an airplane or in an airport for a full day and a half.  Fortunately, one of those airports was Changi airport in Singapore which as a cache in the airport.  I have never attempted a find a cache a day streak, and in fact my Stats page tells me that it's been 72 days since I last found a cache.  

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I had the fortune of still having a few hundred unfound within my city, and being a transit user I always had time for a couple of hours after work to hop on the bus, grab a cache, and head home. Work from the outside in, save the quick/easy ones for lack of time. Really it's all just a matter of planning.  If you start a streak and don't think ahead first about whether it's even feasible, then you can definitely run out of steam.

Planning, I'd say, is the absolute top priority for maintaining a solid lengthy streak. To some that amount of work can become unfun. And that's completely understandable... I'm never going for another year streak again; let alone for these 1000, 2000+ streak challenge caches. guh.

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We know of one who had a weekend for Nat'l, Guard, yet still somehow managed to make their streak.   Learned at an event that the girlfriend "helped" a bit.   - But seeing an entry when knowing one was at a funeral was when I finally stopped listening.

Don't know why some can't be honest and simply say "I didn't make it"....     :)

 

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On 12/30/2017 at 6:30 PM, Geonomes said:

Committed to caching everyday in 2018?

I’m going to try to make it the entire year.   Wondering who else is going to try to get out Everyday.

I’m ending 2017 with a current streak of 33 days in a row.  I’m hoping to continue this in 2018.

Who wants to work together to support and offer strategies for finding a new cache every day in 2018?

Whats your longest streak so far?  

I'm not sure we'll commit to the full year 2018 - but we'll see how long we can maintain our current streak (6 days!!)  We did find a cache on Dec 30 & 31, and have purposely gone out each of the 4 days in 2018 to find a cache, with the intention of finding a cache a day.  We've been caching less than a year, so a year long streak seems pretty daunting.  My personal longest streak was 8 days, hubby's is 6.  We've tied his 6 today, if we get to 10 then we'll go from there.  If it becomes "work" or an obligation, rather than a joy, I'm content to stop.

Today we tried for 4 caches (1 I had logged previously, a different one hubby had logged); the 2 new ones were both DNF's, and we each were able to log the one the other had found.  A disappointing day but we kept our "streak" alive!

As far as our strategy?  We are saving a lot of local, closeby caches and trails that we can ration out on those days when we need to grab a quick one. We are retired, and so we can plan caching outings for most days; weather is a factor but living where we do (California SF Bay Area), it is more we don't WANT to go out and find a cache than it's not possible to go out and find a cache.

If this thread can offer more suggestions and encouragement, or I can use it to offer the same to other cachers, that's a good thing!  Good luch and happy caching to you, Geonomes; I hope you make it the entire year!  I hope we do too, we'll see how it goes!!  The year is very young, and we've barely started....

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15 hours ago, cerberus1 said:

We know of one who had a weekend for Nat'l, Guard, yet still somehow managed to make their streak.   Learned at an event that the girlfriend "helped" a bit.   - But seeing an entry when knowing one was at a funeral was when I finally stopped listening.

Would it matter if they considered themselves a team? Do team accounts have different rules, in your mind, for what makes a valid streak? Or is the only problem here that they haven't previously shown any signs that it's a team account?

Just wondering. Myself, I've never been that clear on what to consider legitimate on team accounts even before considering streaks. Friends of mine us a single account that shows no signs of being a team account, then they both geocache and file logs even when they're on different continents. Is there some reason that should bother me?

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48 minutes ago, dprovan said:

Would it matter if they considered themselves a team? Do team accounts have different rules, in your mind, for what makes a valid streak? Or is the only problem here that they haven't previously shown any signs that it's a team account?

Just wondering. Myself, I've never been that clear on what to consider legitimate on team accounts even before considering streaks. Friends of mine us a single account that shows no signs of being a team account, then they both geocache and file logs even when they're on different continents. Is there some reason that should bother me?

Off-topic, but if they were a "team" I wouldn't have mentioned it here, because of those who pick nits...

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It is consecutive day 1897 for me, or just over 5 years and 2 months. Here's my tip: pace yourself. No matter how easy a cache looks or how close it is, just get one per day. Start as far away as you can, work your way to your home, save the closest caches for a rainy day. You will be tempted to get more than one or get those ones close to home. Don't. That's why most streaks don't last.

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1 hour ago, PhMJ said:

It is consecutive day 1897 for me, or just over 5 years and 2 months. Here's my tip: pace yourself. No matter how easy a cache looks or how close it is, just get one per day. Start as far away as you can, work your way to your home, save the closest caches for a rainy day. You will be tempted to get more than one or get those ones close to home. Don't. That's why most streaks don't last.

Impressive self-control!

And side note, that's also why many streak types aren't allowed as challenge caches any more - it can prompt people not to find caches. Glad that >365 day streak challenges aren't allowed any more :P  I'm happy with my 366, that was hard enough.

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3 hours ago, cerberus1 said:

Off-topic, but if they were a "team" I wouldn't have mentioned it here, because of those who pick nits...

Oh. I didn't know they weren't a team. How do you know that? After all, they sure are acting like a team. And that doesn't answer my question, so I have to guess that you're saying the answer is that it would be OK if they were a team. I don't understand why you didn't just say that instead of talking about nits as if someone's here is picking them.

Also I'm not sure why you labeled this post "off-topic" and not the original where you first brought up this behavior.

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Comitted to caching everyday in 2018? No, definitely not. :) 

Whats your longest streak so far?  As of Friday I'm at 1059 days in a row for a physical-caches-only streak. But I feel like ending the streak it very soon, at latest on Sunday.

Why? I'm playing with numbers to find a reason to stop, free from sense. :) Sunday would give a nice prime number, 1061, and my percentage of traditional geocaches (including all finds while streaking) could fall below 40% for the first time, while average T should be at least 2 and the percentage of multi-caches above 25% while streaking.

Did I think of quitting earlier? Not really. And every time I thought, there are so/too few fitting geocaches left, new geocaches appeared, even in winter.

But of 180 favorite points I "earned" while streaking 100 are still left, I only have used 80. While I'm quite picky when choosing the geocaches I visit I  "had to" visit sometimes what was available for that day, also geocaches I likely wouldn't have visited without streaking.

What was my motivation for streaking? I didn't plan it, I started without too much thinking about it when by chance I had visited a Mystery the day before and two days before and a new 31-days Mystery Challenge was published. This 31 days were easy, I then had 150+ or so solved, but not yet visited mysteries. Then I had no plan, so I continued until 123 days of mystery. This number was a good point to stop the mystery-streak at a point where it was still fun, then I continued the streak as a mixed types (Traditional, Mystery, Multi, Wherigo and Letterbox Hybrid) streak. In between I had a 31-day multi-cache streak, but when that was no fun any more I moved to mixed types.

Then I thought, so many cheaters on one hand and too many people claiming everybody is cheating on the other hand, I want to prove it is possible to do a one year streak without any form of cheating and without (in my eyes) fishy things like a "find" due to accepting logpermissions or placing a throwdown when the cache seems to be missing or scheduling events in winter when the weather is likely to be bad and fewer caches are findable etc.

After one year it was proved it is entirely possible to have a correct streak, then I added a second year to my test. Some time later I had to use crutches, then I wanted to keep my streak until I was fully recovered. After more than 2 1/2 years my family finally accepted somehow that I want to find a cache every day.

Strategies for finding a new cache every day? Have a good overview what is available and don't waste opportunities. And like others said already, start as far away from home/work as you can and leave nearer caches for later. Don't go for FTF when you already found a cache that day if this cache might come handy later. I didn't do it, but building a group of geocachers that also have the same goal might help keeping motivation and help find that otherwise unfindable cache when you run out of other options.

I never had a "reserve fund" because I already had found a lot of caches around me before I started my streak and I always "had to" visit all nearby new ones (the ones that didn't get moved to my imagined Ignore List) within a few days after publish, but others told me that keeping a reserve for emergencies or bad weather helps a lot when it get's difficult. 

For me it was easier to go for a cache before work or during (extended) lunch break, especially in winter in order to have a second or third chance somewhere else for that day if I DNF-ed something. There were few days I had two time-consuming DNFs in different areas before finding one geocache in a third area. Others (without children at home) go geocaching late to relax after work, but to play it save they have a few 100% findable caches as reserve if their scheduled evening geocache plan doesn't work out. 

There are other conditions you can't influence, like getting too sick to leave the house or having to travel to a place without geocaches etc.

My recommendations: Stop when it isn't fun any more and never ever cheat. Don't overstrain yourself or the nerves of your family. Don't compare yourself with people that live in a different situation.

Edited by AnnaMoritz
grammar?
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21 hours ago, CAVinoGal said:

If this thread can offer more suggestions and encouragement, or I can use it to offer the same to other cachers, that's a good thing!  Good luch and happy caching to you, Geonomes; I hope you make it the entire year!  I hope we do too, we'll see how it goes!!  The year is very young, and we've barely started....

Thank you!!  And good luck to you too!  We both qualified for the last of 2017 and first of 2018 souvenirs and the special (3 pack) trackable that was for sale in the shop. 

I am new to the Los Angeles Area.   My opportunity map looks like this map.   I generally can find a free hour each day.   So far it's working out.  My caching style has changed from try to get as many as possible near each other in a given day.  My PR: seven in one day.  To a new style of, do my normal day which is often filled with random trips around LA.  Try to find a cache at the furthest spot from home & work as possible, but only one.  Stop.   Do not clean an area out,  I'll need them another day.  Look forward to it.  Keep it honest and fun.   Do it after taking care of business and be done caching by mid-afternoon.   Avoid the midnight anxiety.  Solve puzzles before going, DNF after 10 minutes, move on, come back another day.    Keep it fun, the fun reward, the challenge of the day.   BTW: I wish it was a leap year.   I've set an alarm for 2/29/2020 in case I'm not thinking about Geocaching that day in the future.  Ha.  

Today marks 38 consecutive.  Just getting started.   A cache a day...

Screenshot 2018-01-05 01.46.37.png

Screenshot 2018-01-05 01.53.58.png

Edited by Geonomes
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On 12/30/2017 at 6:30 PM, Geonomes said:

Who wants to work together to support and offer strategies for finding a new cache every day in 2018?

Others have already mentioned the most useful strategies. The main one is not to waste opportunities. Leave the caches near home for when you really need them later. If you are traveling away from home, then find a cache wherever you're traveling. And if it's somewhere you'll visit again, then find only one, to save the rest for when you need them later. If your commute is flexible, then you can find a cache anywhere between home and work. If you start a new job, then you've got a whole new territory to work with (one cache at a time, of course).

The only time I found more than one cache a day during my streak was when I was invited to join a group geocaching trip in an open space that was nowhere near any of my usual locations. I figured that I wouldn't need any of those caches later, so I went ahead and found more than I had ever found in a single day before then.

On 12/30/2017 at 6:30 PM, Geonomes said:

Whats your longest streak so far?  

366 consecutive days with finds from 2013-08-01 to 2014-08-01

I started with Groundspeak's 31 Days of August Souvenir promotion that summer. Then I just kept going to see how long I could keep it up. At some point, I decided to end it after a year. Then I decided to end it with a local Puzzling Month challenge cache. Then I decided to end it after 366 days, because I discovered a 366-Day Streak challenge cache. I found puzzle caches to qualify for the Puzzling Month challenge on the first 30 days of July, then found the cache itself on the 31st of July. Then I found one more cache to make it 366 Days (which should have been the local 365-Day Streak challenge cache, but I forgot about it at the time). Then I very deliberately allowed a day to pass without finding any caches.

Edited by niraD
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15 hours ago, dprovan said:
19 hours ago, cerberus1 said:

Off-topic, but if they were a "team" I wouldn't have mentioned it here, because of those who pick nits...

Oh. I didn't know they weren't a team. How do you know that? After all, they sure are acting like a team. And that doesn't answer my question, so I have to guess that you're saying the answer is that it would be OK if they were a team. I don't understand why you didn't just say that instead of talking about nits as if someone's here is picking them.

I don't see it as picking nits or whether or not it's OK to report a streak.  At the end of the day, this thread is being used to compare a statistic, the number of consecutive days in a row where a find has been logged for a specific account.  The fact is, if two geocachers are acting as a team and looking for geocaches separately they potentially have twice as many opportunities to find a cache on any given day.  It's not that geocaching as a team is wrong, but it's a different method of achieving a statistic and an account which only has one geocacher contributing to it.

Last night at the hockey game I attended (I'm a season ticket holder for the Cornell University mens hockey team) the other team (Princeton) tied the score 1-1 early in the second period.  The statistic (score) was by no means indicative that the teams were equal.  The other team scored after two Cornell players were called on penalties just a few seconds apart and had to play for two minutes with a two man disadvantage.  The final score may have been better indicator for who was the better team last night.  Cornell won the game 7-1, but if Cornell would have had to play the entire game with two players on the ice less than the Princeton, I'm sure that the score would have been even more lopsided in the other direction.  A geocaching team with two or more people are playing the game with more players than a single person account team.

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1 hour ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

I don't see it as picking nits or whether or not it's OK to report a streak.  At the end of the day, this thread is being used to compare a statistic, the number of consecutive days in a row where a find has been logged for a specific account.  The fact is, if two geocachers are acting as a team and looking for geocaches separately they potentially have twice as many opportunities to find a cache on any given day.  It's not that geocaching as a team is wrong, but it's a different method of achieving a statistic and an account which only has one geocacher contributing to it.

Last night at the hockey game I attended (I'm a season ticket holder for the Cornell University mens hockey team) the other team (Princeton) tied the score 1-1 early in the second period.  The statistic (score) was by no means indicative that the teams were equal.  The other team scored after two Cornell players were called on penalties just a few seconds apart and had to play for two minutes with a two man disadvantage.  The final score may have been better indicator for who was the better team last night.  Cornell won the game 7-1, but if Cornell would have had to play the entire game with two players on the ice less than the Princeton, I'm sure that the score would have been even more lopsided in the other direction.  A geocaching team with two or more people are playing the game with more players than a single person account team.

 I'm not sure how someone can feel good claiming a find on a cache they never actually found. Like you implied, it's apples and oranges, comparing a single honest person's achievement with a "team's" claimed achievement. But here again, it's just another silly way that people have come up with to get them numbers.

To the OP, i know a few people personally that claimed they met the 365 day challenge. Except for the one that admitted they "fudged" and did not actually go out everyday, they all complained about halfway through, how tiring and monotonous the challenge had become. It was almost like they were on their death beds at times and i never heard so much moaning.:o  But of course that went away the day they completed their challenge. All that previous misery was forgotten about at that point. :P

Good luck with your mission!

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43 minutes ago, Mudfrog said:

they all complained about halfway through, how tiring and monotonous the challenge had become.

I've heard similar complaints from friends who compete in marathons or triathlons. And yet they continue to train and they continue to compete. Go figure...

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On 1/6/2018 at 7:54 AM, Mudfrog said:

 I'm not sure how someone can feel good claiming a find on a cache they never actually found. Like you implied, it's apples and oranges, comparing a single honest person's achievement with a "team's" claimed achievement. But here again, it's just another silly way that people have come up with to get them numbers.

My problem is in you thinking anyone working as a team is doing it just for the numbers. This quote reeks of disdain for anyone operating as a team. But what I've seen is that people working in teams are working in teams for the purest of reasons, and it's only a lucky quirk, one they don't even think about, that it's easier for a team to keep up a streak. Once in a while, they get a challenge cache with less effort than it takes you. Who cares? It's no reason to call them dishonest.

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On 12/31/2017 at 0:30 PM, niraD said:

Everyone I know that has had a geocaching streak has not cheated... no matter how much some people may claim they did.

I'm wondering if there's another restriction I can put on my caching so people can verify my streak.  I don't care to post to social media, I don't take photos of every cache I find, and I write my logs when I feel like it or have time.  What would people have in mind for validating a streak?  I might do it until I tire of the additional work.

 

I've been doing cache-a-day since just before my first year caching anniversary.  Over the years, I've picked up additional restrictions that limit how I play the game.  Here are the rules I've picked up from people, and a few I made on my own to define the game:

-- A "day" is 12:00:00 AM to 11:59:59 PM, local time.  This is a calendar day, and that's how it works.  It doesn't matter about when you go to sleep.

-- You can find a cache at 11:45 PM and then drive to another area, sit there until midnight, and go look for the next day's cache.  Just be aware that you're cutting things very close by waiting until 11:45 PM to find that day's cache.

-- The date and time you find the cache is what matters.  It doesn't matter when you log the cache online.  You can log caches in any order, but the dates must be right.

-- If you're caching with people, they can sign your handle so long as you're physically with them.  If I'm driving, someone in the car can hop out and sign the cache for me if the cache is next to the car.

-- While I've never been hospitalized, I guess I'd be okay with someone from the community bringing a log sheet from a different cache for the person to sign every day.  I think that's sweet that the community would care enough about that person.  I'd be on edge about it for myself, but I'm more of a purist.

-- Only physical and hidden caches count: no virtuals, earthcaches, webcams, or events are allowed.  Go out and find a cache.

-- You cannot "prefind" a cache.  If you helped hide the cache, it's invalid.  You cannot be involved in hiding the cache in any way.  Due to tribute caches, where people give you tribute cache coordinates before the cache is published, those are allowed, but must be logged on the day you found it, which would usually be before the cache's publication.  Be aware that if a tribute cache is not published, you just broke your streak.

-- The moment you see the cache, that's when you found it.  An exception is when retrieval is part of the challenge, such as climbing a tree.  However, you must make an effort to retrieve the cache without delaying until the next day.  If the next day happens before you can get to the cache, that next day is what you must use.

-- You can solve a mystery cache on any day you want.  The find date is when you sign the log.  However, I'm less sure about multis.  I've never tried finding all but a multi's final and then, days or months later, attempting the final for that day's cache.  I don't think I'd like that type of behavior.

 

 

I think that's most of the rules.  I'll have a streak again when I log the last two weeks or so of finds.

By the way, I started doing cache-a-day because I discovered that's what I had been doing.  Out of curiosity, I wondered how long it would last.  It has lasted a long, long time.  I hadn't heard the term "streak" and I didn't want to compete against anyone.  I joke that I might quit geocaching when I willingly break the streak.

One last thing: the key to doing cache-a-day is to manage your area and not go all crazy about finding everything that pops up.  Leave a bunch of easy ones nearby and go for the harder, farther stuff as much as you have time.

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2 hours ago, Ranger Fox said:

-- You can solve a mystery cache on any day you want.  The find date is when you sign the log.  However, I'm less sure about multis.  I've never tried finding all but a multi's final and then, days or months later, attempting the final for that day's cache.  I don't think I'd like that type of behavior.

There's a T5 4-stage multi that took me three days to work through all the waypoints and then the final; it was just too physically demanding in the heat at the time to do it all in one hit. I'm not interested in streaks, but even if I were, I don't see why this would be considered bad behaviour - surely the date of the find is just the date I finally put my signature in the log.

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1 hour ago, barefootjeff said:

There's a T5 4-stage multi that took me three days to work through all the waypoints and then the final; it was just too physically demanding in the heat at the time to do it all in one hit. I'm not interested in streaks, but even if I were, I don't see why this would be considered bad behaviour - surely the date of the find is just the date I finally put my signature in the log.

My personal opinion is as long as you put in an honest effort and don't manipulate things unfairly just for a daily find, do multis however you want.  I remember there was a very difficult multi that was new and the first stage was also missing.  After I made several visits, put in eight hours, and raked the forest floor clean, the owner replaced the first stage.  The next night, I couldn't find the second stage.  I later heard the second stage was written in marker on a rock, so I went out, found that stage, then FTFed the difficult final.  This, of course, meant I found the cache on the day I signed the log.  The effort was honest and I didn't manipulate things just for a daily find.

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3 hours ago, Ranger Fox said:

I've been doing cache-a-day since just before my first year caching anniversary. I'm just short of my 1 yr anniversary - and just beginning the COTD adventure.  This thread is a help in "managing" the challenge.

-- A "day" is 12:00:00 AM to 11:59:59 PM, local time.  This is a calendar day, and that's how it works.  It doesn't matter about when you go to sleep.  Check

-- You can find a cache at 11:45 PM and then drive to another area, sit there until midnight, and go look for the next day's cache.  Just be aware that you're cutting things very close by waiting until 11:45 PM to find that day's cache. Check

-- The date and time you find the cache is what matters.  It doesn't matter when you log the cache online.  You can log caches in any order, but the dates must be right.  Check

-- If you're caching with people, they can sign your handle so long as you're physically with them.  If I'm driving, someone in the car can hop out and sign the cache for me if the cache is next to the car.   Almost... I feel a need to participate in the hunt, and see where the cache was hidden - sometimes I'll be the one to find it, sometimes I'm the one to replace it - sometimes I'm the one signing all our names to the log.  In any case, I've personally been part of the process.  

-- While I've never been hospitalized, I guess I'd be okay with someone from the community bringing a log sheet from a different cache for the person to sign every day.  I think that's sweet that the community would care enough about that person.  I'd be on edge about it for myself, but I'm more of a purist.  Hmmm, not sure how I'd be with this - I think I'd probably end the streak and start over when I was well enough to find the caches myself. I'm not that close to enough local geocachers for this to happen....

-- Only physical and hidden caches count: no virtuals, earthcaches, webcams, or events are allowed.  Go out and find a cache.  I'm more inclined to count Virtuals and Earthcaches too - but that's me.  The VIrtuals and Earthcaches I've done have been just as "cache" worthy (or moreso) than some of the traditionals I've found.  Events, maybe, but we typically geocache our way to and from an event, so we'd log a "regular" find on the same day as well.

-- You cannot "prefind" a cache.  If you helped hide the cache, it's invalid.  You cannot be involved in hiding the cache in any way.  Due to tribute caches, where people give you tribute cache coordinates before the cache is published, those are allowed, but must be logged on the day you found it, which would usually be before the cache's publication.  Be aware that if a tribute cache is not published, you just broke your streak. Check

-- The moment you see the cache, that's when you found it.  I would say the "find" occurs when you sign the logsheet; if I saw a cache container, but couldn't get to it, I can't claim a find.  An exception is when retrieval is part of the challenge, such as climbing a tree.  However, you must make an effort to retrieve the cache without delaying until the next day.  If the next day happens before you can get to the cache, that next day is what you must use.

-- You can solve a mystery cache on any day you want.  The find date is when you sign the log. Check  However, I'm less sure about multis.  I've never tried finding all but a multi's final and then, days or months later, attempting the final for that day's cache.  I don't think I'd like that type of behavior.  The "find" happens when you sign the log, IMO.  So, only the final stage would count as a COTD.  What's different than solving a puzzle, or solving the stages of a multi, but putting aside the final for a better time?  I've got lots of puzzles solved, waiting for me to go get them ... multi's are more elaborate puzzles, IMO.

I think that's most of the rules.  I'll have a streak again when I log the last two weeks or so of finds.

By the way, I started doing cache-a-day because I discovered that's what I had been doing.  Out of curiosity, I wondered how long it would last.  It has lasted a long, long time.  I hadn't heard the term "streak" and I didn't want to compete against anyone.  I joke that I might quit geocaching when I willingly break the streak.

One last thing: the key to doing cache-a-day is to manage your area and not go all crazy about finding everything that pops up.  Leave a bunch of easy ones nearby and go for the harder, farther stuff as much as you have time.  Check

I'm only at 10 consecutive days... we'll see how long it remains fun!!  No real rules - just common sense and accountability to ourselves as to what we accept as valid for our find each day.  Ranger Fox's self imposed rules work for us for the most part, and "cheating" is only cheating ourselves...

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9 minutes ago, CAVinoGal said:

I'm only at 10 consecutive days... we'll see how long it remains fun!!  No real rules - just common sense and accountability to ourselves as to what we accept as valid for our find each day.  Ranger Fox's self imposed rules work for us for the most part, and "cheating" is only cheating ourselves...

A few interesting things:

-- I got the idea for physical-only, non-event caches from other people.  They only recognized physical, hidden caches with logs.  I adopted that as a restriction, then.

-- If a cache is hidden on a street sign, I don't mind parking on the roadside and letting the other person sign the log.  Same with light poles.  I do mind, however, parking in a lot and letting someone go down a hill, search for a well-hidden cache, and sign the log.

-- For the find time, you'll notice I said an exception about tree climbing.  For the most part, the find time is the same as when you sign the log.  It's only when the cache gets creative and the cacher finds a cache close to midnight does the distinction come into play.  I believe in whatever is fair to both the cacher and everyone else doing the cache-a-day game.

-- I did forget one personal rule I have: I cannot maintain a cache and count it as my daily cache.  This is because the original cache might be there or recovered at a later date.  If that were to happen, my replacement would be invalid and I'd have to delete the log, thus breaking the streak.

 

-- I started my streak in March of 2007.  I'll catch up on logging again in a week or so.

Cache-a-day requires sustainable geocache area maintenance.  I typically drive twenty to thirty minutes away most days even though I have thirty or forty caches some three or four minutes away from where I live.  (My daily commute is an hour each way on the interstate, and this time is in addition to it, not part of it.)

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8 hours ago, dprovan said:

My problem is in you thinking anyone working as a team is doing it just for the numbers. This quote reeks of disdain for anyone operating as a team. But what I've seen is that people working in teams are working in teams for the purest of reasons, and it's only a lucky quirk, one they don't even think about, that it's easier for a team to keep up a streak. Once in a while, they get a challenge cache with less effort than it takes you. Who cares? It's no reason to call them dishonest.

It's a personal taste thing. I agree that permanent teams don't normally make up their team for anything nefarious.. I suppose that you could look at this the same as a football team which has team members sitting on the bench not actually playing. The team wins the game and and everyone gets the glory.

I shouldn't have worded my previous reply the way i did. As per usual, this is another aspect of geocaching that i see as either yes or no. Either i personally make it to ground zero and find a cache,,, or i don't. There is no in-between for me. I do have to try and remember that most people aren't so rigid with their thinking.

Honestly, i don't really care much about this. I'm simply posting my .02 cents worth here on the forums.:P

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6 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

There's a T5 4-stage multi that took me three days to work through all the waypoints and then the final; it was just too physically demanding in the heat at the time to do it all in one hit. I'm not interested in streaks, but even if I were, I don't see why this would be considered bad behaviour - surely the date of the find is just the date I finally put my signature in the log.

One of my milestones is a 10-stage multi-cache that took me several days (spread over a couple weeks) to complete. Each day I would collect the information from one or two stages. On the last day, I collected information from the last three stages, found the final, and signed the log. That's the day I logged the find, and I wouldn't do it any other way, even if I had been working on a streak at the time.

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13 hours ago, Ranger Fox said:

My personal opinion is as long as you put in an honest effort and don't manipulate things unfairly just for a daily find, do multis however you want.

I think, from the perspective of the cacher, the manner in which the multi is accomplished and logged affects no other cacher if the log (that others will read) is honest and true - whether intentionally doing stages different days for a streak or not.

And as an other cacher, whether or not they strategically complete the multi to log the final on the day they need is irrelevant to me so I can't consider it cheating or unfair. It is what it is. As long as what's stated in the log is true (eg the findability of each stage and the final is accurate to the dates) since that would likely affect my search and is a status report to the CO, then whatev.

 

ETA: That is to say, when people are doing daily streaks, if I think someone is 'fudging', honestly I don't think they're somehow cheating me, or it's unfair to me. It really isn't. It may be to them, but if they're fine with it, then that's their standard and I just shrug. I can say how I do streaks, and they them, and they're different. As long as the logs are accurate.

Edited by thebruce0
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