Tb Adventures!

[+cyan_blue]

I would like to tell about a very cool adventure that a travel bug of mine just had, and encourage others to tell their TB adventure stories.

 

One of my TB's, Kiwi the Koala, has a goal of going from Pennsylvania to New Zealand. She's gone from Penn to Washington to British Columbia to Waikiki. Presently she is accompanying Bergensteen31, a very new geocacher, to Sydney Australia. He has just posted a series of photos of her travelling to and across the equator/international dateline X! You can see them on her bug page...

 

http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=83942

[+honeychile]

One of my travel bugs, Shooby Dooby just reached her goal by making it to "A Shoe's Throw" cache in California. Her trek of nearly 5,000 miles (23 hops) began in piedmont North Carolina as you can see from the map.

 

Many of my bugs have made longer journeys, but she's the first to reach her goal.

 

Now her NEW goal is to reach Shoe Shine Kit in Florida . . .

 

Ain't geocaching fun?

 

honeychile

[+BlueDeuce]

(Glad to see you honeychile!)

 

It hasn't reached it's goal yet, but I have my eye on this one VC Dan

 

I don't remember how I came across it, for some reason I was viewing caches out west and came across a bug with a goal to reach a location very near where I live. Of course that grabbed my interest. The next week it was picked up and went MIA for 8 months. Last week it was dropped about 75 miles from it's target.

 

It's still a bit too far for me to just drive over and get it, but once it's within reach it'll get the royal treatment for surviving the dangerous world of TBs.

[rescue557]

My travel bug was supposed to travel from New York to California. For some reason, it ended up in Holland!

 

Robbie The Incredible Rubber Chicken

[+Webfoot]

My California County Cacher is about 1/4 of the way toward it's goal. Nothing realy spectacular, but people have really been going out of their way to help towards its goal. It even made a side trip to Arizona before the cachers realized that it wasn't supposed to go there and they mailed it back to me.

 

Not a single picture has been taken, but it sure has received some "cool" comments and the "I wish I'd thought of this" type of comment. So I'm kind of happy with this one.

[+Harry Dolphin]

Lost Bird has travelled 2424 miles in his first hop! Thanks, Winky.

[+ZackJones]

Not too long ago I found a TB called "Shark Bait" and I took this picture of him

 

[+Geo Dee]

The goal of one of my travel bugs, Ancient Elements: Aether, is to travel UP. It has been on several mountain tops and has once been the payload of a model rocket launch. Yesterday, I got the go ahead to have it placed aboard a high altitude communications balloon. It is expected to reach an altitude of somewhere between 70K and 100K feet. I'll edit this post after I get its telemetry results.

[+Planet]

I've been having a lot of fun with Yodadog's Mean Kitty travel bug.

 

You have to read the logs from the start, from the bottom up.

Edited January 12, 2005 by Planet

[+Geo Dee]

The goal of one of my travel bugs, Ancient Elements: Aether, is to travel UP. It has been on several mountain tops and has once been the payload of a model rocket launch. Yesterday, I got the go ahead to have it placed aboard a high altitude communications balloon. It is expected to reach an altitude of somewhere between 70K and 100K feet..

Mark Phillips at SS Recovery Service LLC had this to say about my travel bug:

 

New Contest, The First FTF (First To Find) Shotgun Start, Race to Recover Æther Travel Bug Altitude Record Contest

 

Since I started this project and had my first meeting with a group of Arizona Geocachers at a pizza party in Chandler, Arizona on September 18. 2004, there has been one thing that keeps coming up with respect to this project.

 

Even though I think you have gotten used to and like the idea of having exclusive access to the coordinates for a SOG [skySite on the ground], you “peeps” have said something is missing. You have said that you liked not having competition for a SOG and getting paid to find something that no one else had found. But I keep hearing that a FTF (First To Find) with a SOG would be something that you all might enjoy.

 

Well, that is now almost a reality. I have spoken with Bruce at Space Data and he has agreed in principal to allow me to “launch some goodies” on a few SkySite® Platforms.

 

The first SOG-onaut to make this journey to the edge of space, appropriately enough is Geo Dee’s Travel Bug Æther.

 

Dave’s goal with this TB: Æther is associated with the direction Up. This bug would like to travel between Cape Canaveral, Florida and Baikonur, Kazakhstan where it would have the greatest chances of catching a ride Up.

 

Well I can’t get it in to a “real” orbit (based on planetary mechanics), but I can get our little SOG-onaut higher than any other transport method, except maybe Space Ship One.

 

With a ride on a SkySite® Platform, Dave’s little SOG-onaut Æther will have the distinction of setting the altitude record for any Travel Bug. No TB in history of Geocaching will have even come close to nearing this altitude record.

 

So how would you like a chance to “Log the SOG” that takes this little guy for its record setting flight? Well it won’t be easy. This will be the first SOG recovery that will have the coordinates published to everyone who is a qualified agent via email, on a specific date and time. Then its every “SOG DOG” for themselves.

 

Besides having the distinction of being the first one to recover SOG-onaut Æther, I will be spicing it up for that person as well as the second and third place…… losers ;o) I will have some prizes (undetermined at this time) for each of the first 3 agents to arrive at the location.

 

Now the bad news: the launch will probably take place in Texas. I know, I know…. what about the other states? Well since Space Data’s main customer base is in Texas and that’s where 90% of all launches take place, that’s where we will launch this little guy into “orbit”. Now depending on how well this goes over both with you and Space Data, we will consider doing some more of these types of “things”.

 

I had mentioned in the past about making our own High Flying Coins (HFC) with a serial/flight numbers on them. This would give anyone who found a SOG with a HFC on it, a keepsake that would have its own traceable altitude record, like we did with the High Flying Contest in December. We will consider this if the SOG-onaut Æther flight and recovery goes over well. These would be launched for all SD launch sites, but not be put on every SOG. So you will never know which SOG will have a HFC on it. Again, this is only if everything goes well with SOG-onaut Æther.