The Song Fight Bulletin Board

For my 5 year anniversary at my company I got to choose a "gift" from a bunch of generally stupid crap, but one was this GPS, which I got, figuring it wasn't something I'd buy myself but I have been intriqued about them. So it sat around (being very un-intuitive and almost useless in NYC) until I took it to Zermatt, Switzerland this week and my brother-in-law turned me on to geocaching.

Today we found our first cache - a weather-proof container hidden somewhere with various items in it. The only way to find it is via coordinates (which you get off the website) and a GPS. You take stuff out and leave stuff for the next party. PRETTY GEEKY!!! Totally cool, too, being totally international and all. Some items are "travel bugs" which have unique IDs and can be tracked around the world. Plus, it kept the kids busy for 90 minutes or so.

Anyone else do this?

roymond wrote:
Anyone else do this?

No - but I have been known to do dorky things with a GPS. I love my GPS

I may look into it.

I definitely have work collegues who would be right into it

My friends and I just started recently; I got a Garmin eTrex Legend and Microsoft Streets + Trips 2005 to keep me from getting lost around Canada, and even where I normally live. But geocaching has been fun. We've only found about 6 caches so far (some micro, some not), a travel bug, a travel panda, etc, and are slowly learning what kind of arsenal we need to bring on such trips.

Good luck! It's a fun way to get geeky people like me out of the home.

Very jealous of your ability to send positions over radio...

I spent a day last spring finding caches around San Francisco with some friends. We had a good time traipsing around on a cloudy/rainy day. I liked the caches that we could only find after solving some simple puzzle. There were also some interesting ones like the one that involved calling a pay phone in the southeast of the US somewhere and asking somebody to read you the lat/long of the cache off a piece of paper stuck to the phone.

my friend rob does the geocache thing. sounds fun!
i always thought it would be an interesting twist to leave a cd of your music in the box and see if someone picks it up. viral marketing?
-bill

HeuristicsInc wrote:my friend rob does the geocache thing. sounds fun!
i always thought it would be an interesting twist to leave a cd of your music in the box and see if someone picks it up. viral marketing?
-bill

Yes, certainly a great idea. I also hear some people leave a disposable camera and whomever takes the last frame has them developed and posts scans.

I also thought of the idea of leaving one of my CD's in the cache. I would add some sercret code somewhere in the CD, and so only by listening to it will they find the secret code. They will email me the secret code, and I'll give them coordinates for another (good) cache. Does that sound like a good idea?

I read up on geocaching after reading Roymond's initial post. You know, someone could make a pretty darn profitable business this way. People pay a subscription to join a caching group, and the company places caches with actual money in it. Like you pay $500 for a year, are guaranteed one cache coordinate per month, and the caches will have a check for $5,000 dollars in them. Trashy, but profitable.

Jim of Seattle wrote: Trashy, but profitable.

Man is that greate quote.

i readed about geocaching in Adventure mag a couple months ago... allready had a GPS so i tried it out. all 3 times i went out it was late at night....and once it was even raining... only found 2 of the cachings thoe...
its greate once or twice, but then is just a lame way to play out your inner indiana jones fantasies..

dre wrote: just a lame way to play out your inner indiana jones fantasies..

And you need an excuse for this?

Jim of Seattle wrote:You know, someone could make a pretty darn profitable business this way.

This is all a production of Garmin, inc, trying to sell their devices, of course.

roymond wrote:

dre wrote: just a lame way to play out your inner indiana jones fantasies..

And you need an excuse for this?

no, but am young and still trying to figure out how i can become the REAL Indiana Jones.. (yes .. belive it or not.. sad really...)