How to keep a streak alive...

[+TheCachingJilljeck]

I have a consecutive days of geocaching streak going and would like to keep it going as long as possible but have an interesting dilemma. In the future, I will be flying from North America to Oceania. As I will be headed west across the international date line, I will advance ahead 2 days. Thus, in essence, one day will not exist for me and my streak will come to an end.

 

Any ideas of how to keep it going (within the spirit of the rules)?

[+The_Jumping_Pig]

I'm assuming its an overnight flight, otherwise you would still have some time on both days.

 

Better hope you haven't logged your locationless yet ;). 

[+TheCachingJilljeck]

1 hour ago, The_Jumping_Pig said:

I'm assuming its an overnight flight, otherwise you would still have some time on both days.

 

Better hope you haven't logged your locationless yet ;). 

I thought about the locationless one...but I don't think this gets around the issue of the date

[+The A-Team]

If the departure and arrival times/dates are such that you won't be on the ground during that middle day, then you really don't have any options. The streak would have to end.

 

There's a local who has been working on a streak for over 10 years, and he chose not to go on an Alaskan geocaching cruise with lots of other locals because it had a day at sea. He personally felt strongly enough about continuing his streak that he just didn't go.

 

If you really want your streak to continue, then you might need to change your flights so you're on the ground and can find a cache on each day, or cancel the trip entirely. It's up to you to determine how important it is to you.

[+lee737]

4 hours ago, TheCachingJilljeck said:

I have a consecutive days of geocaching streak going and would like to keep it going as long as possible but have an interesting dilemma.

Clearly you are more ethical than the 'hyper-streakers' in these parts.... good for you! People use all sorts of scams to keep streaks going - spare EarthCaches, challenges, and straight-up delayed logging! None of which are 'streak ethical' in my books, but they do it.....

[+NanCycle]

1 hour ago, lee737 said:

Clearly you are more ethical than the 'hyper-streakers' in these parts.... good for you! People use all sorts of scams to keep streaks going - spare EarthCaches, challenges, and straight-up delayed logging! None of which are 'streak ethical' in my books, but they do it.....

Yep, someone I know was "saving" a bunch of finds to log for days when they didn't actually find a cache.  I deleted them from my Friends because of this.  It was too aggravating to see the notices of their so-called finds on local caches long after I knew they had moved to another state.  

[+The_Jumping_Pig]

5 hours ago, TheCachingJilljeck said:

I thought about the locationless one...but I don't think this gets around the issue of the date

 Unless you pass the international date line at exactly midnight, you'll have some time to log the locationless (if you can get wifi on the plane, may have to buy it).

Like

10:00pm flight leaves, get a cache earlier in the day (day 1)

11:00pm cross internation date line, log locationless (find something on plane with 25 in it). (day 2)

12:00am next day, grab a cache in whatever your final destanation is (day 3)

Edited June 29 by The_Jumping_Pig

[+barefootjeff]

6 minutes ago, The_Jumping_Pig said:

find something on plane with 25

 

There'll almost certainly be a seat row 25.

[+Smitherington]

I was recently on an Alaskan cruise and I was surprised to be able to log earth caches from the ship in Glacier Bay.  Lovely.

[+TheCachingJilljeck]

Thanks for the suggestions. Everyone has their own priorities but personally I would never cancel a trip like this just to keep a streak going (as apparently others have done). Isn't exploring the whole point of geocaching? Sounds like in all probability my streak will come to an end and thats ok with me. 

[+JL_HSTRE]

On 6/29/2025 at 3:01 PM, The A-Team said:

There's a local who has been working on a streak for over 10 years, and he chose not to go on an Alaskan geocaching cruise with lots of other locals because it had a day at sea. He personally felt strongly enough about continuing his streak that he just didn't go.

 

Hopefully the cruise didn't interest him that much (they're not for everyone).

 

If he really wanted to go, but would rather keep his streak going I think he needs to consider his mental health and possibly addictive behavior. 

[+Smitherington]

2 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

consider his mental health and possibly addictive behavior. 

Addictive behavior?  Not me for sure. I just have to get out there. It is FOR my mental health that I geocache. 

[+JL_HSTRE]

13 hours ago, Smitherington said:

Addictive behavior?  Not me for sure. I just have to get out there. It is FOR my mental health that I geocache. 

 

Geocaching frequently for your mental and/or physical health is one thing.

 

A compulsive need to find a geocache literally every day is not healthy. That's either a behavioral addiction or OCD.

 

Edited July 6 by JL_HSTRE

[+The A-Team]

15 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

Geocaching frequently for your mental and/or physical health is one thing.

 

A compulsive need to find a geocache literally every day is not healthy. That's either a behavioral addiction or OCD.

 

There are tons of officially-sanctioned challenge caches that request that cachers do exactly this. There's even a line in the geocaching.com stats for every member that lists their longest streak.

 

Everyone caches in their own way. Some prefer to find caches to fill their Fizzy grid. Some prefer to find non-Traditionals. Some prefer to streak. None of those is "wrong". The cacher in question is well-adjusted and a decent person, and I certainly wouldn't characterize them as mentally ill. This is just the way they cache.

[+barefootjeff]

2 hours ago, The A-Team said:

Everyone caches in their own way. Some prefer to find caches to fill their Fizzy grid. Some prefer to find non-Traditionals. Some prefer to streak.

 

Living in a region where caches are fairly sparse and ones I haven't found even sparser, I have to do a lot of travelling and take what I can get. The only streaks I've done were 7-day ones for the Streak Week promotion in 2019 and the Wheel of Challenges streak challenge in 2023. In the first one I was battling heavy rain on a couple of days and for the second, it entailed a long drive to Sandy Hollow in the Hunter Valley, a train trip to Newcastle, a couple of train trips to Sydney and a ferry-bus-bus-ferry trip to Scotland Island in Pittwater. After that came a 10-day slump to recover before my next cache.

[+MartyBartfast]

I'm not particularly into streaks, I just completed my longest 16 days while on holiday, and on the 17th day when back home I couldn't be bothered to drive 8 miles for a find to keep it going.

But in your situation, if you're able to find a cache every 24 hours during your travel and vacation, then I would probably log the finds on the dates in my home timezone, then the dateline issue doesn't come into it, I would certainly feel that's legit.

ETA: Not sure if you can do that with the Groundspeak app, but you can with others or by logging on the website.

Edited July 7 by MartyBartfast

[+JL_HSTRE]

8 hours ago, The A-Team said:

Everyone caches in their own way. Some prefer to find caches to fill their Fizzy grid. Some prefer to find non-Traditionals. Some prefer to streak. None of those is "wrong". The cacher in question is well-adjusted and a decent person, and I certainly wouldn't characterize them as mentally ill. This is just the way they cache.

 

Honestly maintaining a streak is not inherently bad. It can be a fun challenge or a positive goal that encourages exercise. 

 

It becomes wrong when you start sacrificing things to keep it alive.

 

It's bad when people sacrifice their integrity to it, cheating to keep it going.

 

It's bad when you have to go too far out of your way to find the nearest cache, wasting time and gas.

 

It's bad when start sacrificing other parts of your life to the streak. As I said earlier, maybe this person doesn't really enjoy cruises. But if he does enjoy cruises? If he really would have liked to spend that week with his geo-friends?

 

If he was in danger of losing his job or his marriage because of his efforts to maintain his streak you wouldn't say that's just his choice. If he was missing out on the birth of his child.

[+ecanderson]

On 6/29/2025 at 1:01 PM, The A-Team said:

There's a local who has been working on a streak for over 10 years, and he chose not to go on an Alaskan geocaching cruise with lots of other locals because it had a day at sea. He personally felt strongly enough about continuing his streak that he just didn't go.

Yup.  My own longest streak - not all that long - of 146 days, back in my first year of geocaching, was broken by the first At Sea day on a westbound transAtlantic cruise from Barcelona.

[+TeamRabbitRun]

3 hours ago, ecanderson said:

Yup.  My own longest streak - not all that long - of 146 days, back in my first year of geocaching, was broken by the first At Sea day on a westbound transAtlantic cruise from Barcelona.

 

Ya know, not for nuthin', but if you had planned your world cruise to go the other way, EAST-bound, you would have picked up an extra day and not broken your streak.

 

See Jules Verne's "Around the World in Eighty Days."

[+ecanderson]

On 7/11/2025 at 12:32 PM, TeamRabbitRun said:

 

Ya know, not for nuthin', but if you had planned your world cruise to go the other way, EAST-bound, you would have picked up an extra day and not broken your streak.

 

See Jules Verne's "Around the World in Eighty Days."

Wish it was that easy.  TransAtlantic cruises have multiple back-to-back at-sea days (there just ain't nuthin' out there for long stretches).  Cap'n Nemo had the luxury of setting his own itinerary.  Besides, going westbound (our preference), you pick up an extra hour of sleep 5 times on the way home!

 

 

[+TeamRabbitRun]

21 hours ago, ecanderson said:

Wish it was that easy.  TransAtlantic cruises have multiple back-to-back at-sea days (there just ain't nuthin' out there for long stretches).  Cap'n Nemo had the luxury of setting his own itinerary.  Besides, going westbound (our preference), you pick up an extra hour of sleep 5 times on the way home!

 

 

 

 

Different book, but I get your point. I'd vote for extra sleep. Without sleep, I find myself in a Fogg.

 

("Really," she said. "Dad jokes?")

[+CAVinoGal]

On 6/29/2025 at 1:51 PM, lee737 said:

On 6/29/2025 at 9:17 AM, TheCachingJilljeck said:

I have a consecutive days of geocaching streak going and would like to keep it going as long as possible but have an interesting dilemma.

Clearly you are more ethical than the 'hyper-streakers' in these parts.... good for you! People use all sorts of scams to keep streaks going - spare EarthCaches, challenges, and straight-up delayed logging! None of which are 'streak ethical' in my books, but they do it.....

 

Why do people do "streaks" anyway - challenge caches, personal challenges, other reasons?  If one is doing it for a challenge cache (to get that one more smilie) I get why they "cheat" using the various methods mentioned in this thread.  In their minds, they "gotta get 'em", get that smilie for the challenge, so they finagle things to make it work.

 

If it is a personal challenge, then you are compromising your own ethic if you "cheat" - at least in my mind.  When we (hubby and I) decided to try and find a cache a day for all of 2018, we set some "rules" for ourselves; the challenge was to log a cache every day for 2018.  We only counted caches where we had to go and find a container and sign the log inside, so events, EC's, Virtuals didn't count for us, although they do show as a "find" on the dates we found them.  We made sure to find a "real" geocache as well that we had to sign a physical log every day.  That was a challenge to ourselves, and to "cheat" by some of the methods in this thread would only hurt us by knowing we "cheated" - who else would even care?  We aren't going to try for a streak again - it got to be more of an obligation to ourselves - "How far do we need to drive to find a cache today?" to finish this rather than the fun as we started out - "Where are we going to find a cache today?"  We stuck with it, we got 404 days (all of 2018 and a few days either side, and 404 seemed an appropriate place to stop as a "Cache NOT found" day!)

 

I realize cachers are going to do whatever they feel is "right"; I cache for the experience, because I enjoy finding caches and going for challenges, and some of the side games (trackables, FTF, etc) - and I don't compare myself to others as far as numbers go.  With the advent of Adventure Labs numbers are becoming meaningless - Hundreds of finds just sitting in one location seems bogus to me.  But I admit to recently getting 10 quick finds sitting at my gate at an airport, waiting for a delayed connecting flight.  Something to do....so I don't play for the numbers and I don't put much stock in the numbers anyway.  I enjoy spending time with my husband in a hobby we do together, and we've met some good friends and seen places we wouldn't have found without geocaching to lead us there.  I am totally digressing here...but my point is that streaks are individual and you can define it as you choose.  Some will agree, some will not.  It's YOUR streak.

[+hzoi]

11 hours ago, CAVinoGal said:

Why do people do "streaks" anyway - challenge caches, personal challenges, other reasons?  If one is doing it for a challenge cache (to get that one more smilie) I get why they "cheat" using the various methods mentioned in this thread.  In their minds, they "gotta get 'em", get that smilie for the challenge, so they finagle things to make it work.

 

If it is a personal challenge, then you are compromising your own ethic if you "cheat" - at least in my mind

 

Agree.

 

I did a streak in summer 2007 when we were first caching, just for my own purposes (there weren't a lot of challenge caches back then). It got tiresome when I was in the 90s, when I had to screw up date night with the wife and take the S-bahn a couple stops in order to hunt for the final for a multi by the light of the screen of my flip phone. I stopped at 102 days. But I found at least one cache every day of that streak.

 

There are many threads in the forum about the laughable ways people "keep their streak alive" by "virtually attending" events in another state by livestream, or saving virtuals and earthcaches or challenges for rainy days. Feh. Stop kidding yourself, it's no longer a streak. Restart the clock when you can actually find a cache.

[+smudgepuss]

On 6/30/2025 at 2:45 PM, TheCachingJilljeck said:

Thanks for the suggestions. Everyone has their own priorities but personally I would never cancel a trip like this just to keep a streak going (as apparently others have done). Isn't exploring the whole point of geocaching? Sounds like in all probability my streak will come to an end and thats ok with me. 

 

I did an 81-day streak (which I know in the grand scheme of streakers is nothing!), and was umming and ahhing about when to end the streak.  I think I'm glad that I ended it with a planned end point, rather than it just fizzling out.  I hosted an event, used the star chart I'd made for myself as the log book, and it was a good way to round off the streak.  It would have been a lot better had I not have my phone stolen from my hand in the park on the way to said event, but at least I guess I wasn't in a 'I had to stop my streak because my phone got nicked' situation (ignoring that I probably wouldn't have been in the park were it not for my event...).

 

I say if you can't work out a way to make it work with the locationless cache, pick a date just before your trip to finish your streak, and host a bit of a party event to celebrate the achievement of whatever your streak ends up being.