September 27, 2004
Rescue Ranger
I might write about the weekend a little later (it was a grab bag of fun, weird, disturbing, failure and redemption). For now, I will announce an addition to the Team Dr. Momentum geocaching family. In a way, there are two additions. Multiple times now, Maggie had accompanied us caching.
However, the other new addition is Chip over there on the right. The Rescue Ranger. This is our geocaching mascot and companion.
Travel bugs (as I previously mentioned) are meant to go from cache to cache. They pass from geocacher to geocacher. But recently I’ve noticed some folks using a travel bug tag in a slightly different way. They don’t actually leave the bug in any cache. They log it on the website as having been put in a cache, and then they log themselves as taking it back.
This is a little weird, but it accomplishes a few things:
- The website keeps track of the distances a travel, from cache to cache. That’s the way bugs are tracked. If the travel bug visits all the same caches you do, that’s an additional record of all the caches you’ve visited and the distances you’ve covered from cache to cache. Sort of.
- Geocaching.com does not let you put a “watch” on another member (for watching that member’s progress). But you can put a watch on a travel bug. In that case, the person watching will get an email every time we (and the bug) visit a new cache.
- Gives the kids something else to get excited about.
- Gives me something else to take a picture of at the cache site.
So, just more goofy fun. If you’d like to watch this travel bug, this is the bug’s tracking page.
Onward!
