Travel Bugs Changing Hands?

[Two Humans and a Dog]

I have noticed on several occassions that some people or teams seem to "hang on" to travel bugs for a very long time. While they do get to travel, I think it would be more interesting if they could only be carried "once" by any given individual or team and not nearly "indefinately". Yes, sometimes they might get stuck in one area for a little while... But hey, that's fate. Let the bugs be "free"....lol

Edited December 11, 2003 by Two Humans and a Dog

[+bons]

I'm thinking Slash's owner is likely to have a problem with that...

http://www.geocaching.com/track/track_detail.asp?ID=18059

[+Team GPSaxophone]

Some people keep a bug as they travel a long distance, logging it in and out of caches on the way. Ultimately there should be a 'destination' where they will drop off the TB and let someone else pick it up.

[+Webfoot]

The Cucamonga Railroad Cacher ended up in one person's hands for about 9 months. It's an HO size caboose so it won't just fit in any cache.

 

The person who had it is also a good friend of mine so we communicated frequently about its travels. Eventually, the bug got placed in a cache, but not without some very interesting travels.

 

I think the key is communication with the owner or whoever has possession of the bug at that time. You could send emails to the person asking them to set your bug free, but then it might not get the ride that it seems to be getting right now. And who knows, perhaps that ride is the ride that prevents the bug from disappearing off the face of the earth because of a plundered cache that the person didn't put it into.

[+Metaphor]

I did just this with "A Lions Journey for Sight". I picked up the bug in Delaware, but knew I would be going overseas in about a month. I emailed the bug's owner, and asked if it would be agreeable to for me to hold on to the bug for a month-long tour with the ultimate goal of ending up in Wales. He agreed and the bug traveled with me to an event cache in the Catskills, then to Central New York, then on to Lake Ontario before returning to Maryland, logging several caches and posting pictures along the way.

 

I also picked up a bug "Shamu" which had been in the hands of a traveler who logged it in multiple caches, retrieving it immediately, and ultimately dumped it after a long period of inactivity. The owner thought it had disappeared until I found it sitting with no entry log in a cache.

 

If you're going to hold it as a traveler first, I would ask first, and keep the owner clued in to your plan.

[+MissJenn]

... I think it would be more interesting if they could only be carried "once" by any given individual or team and not nearly "indefinately".  Yes, sometimes they might get stuck in one area for a little while...  But hey, that's fate. ...

One way to let people know what you prefer is to make your thoughts perfectly clear (nice but clear ) on the TB's page.

 

Feel free to write a paragraph about this very thing right there on each TB's page. That way, at the very start, they at least know what the owner would prefer.