1,000 geocachers volunteered to be part of the first ever major study of geocaching and its effect on health. The 14-month Texas A&M study called Geocaching for Exercise and Activity Research (GEAR) launched in January of 2013. The first set of results from the study were presented on November 5 at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in Boston.
Each of the participants were given devices to track their movement and a logbook to record their level of geocaching intensity. The first results showed the effects of regular geocaching. Researcher Whitney says, “The GEAR study has identified an association between geocaching and improved health.”
Another researcher, Garney, goes on to say, “GEAR participants who report geocaching once a week or more are more likely to meet national guidelines for physical activity and are more likely to report good or very good health status compared to those who geocache less frequently.” In addition, research showed that geocachers reported fewer days of poor physical and mental health compared to state level data.
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These findings are still preliminary, but nevertheless we’re excited about them. The study concludes in early 2014 and final data will be analyzed and presented later that year.
The health benefits of geocaching are often the subject of emails to Geocaching HQ. Have you lost weight geocaching or sharpened your mental skills? Share your stories about improving your health through geocaching in the comments below.
The earned, never for sale, Geocacher of the Month geocoin (sun flare optional)
A geocache owner with seven different geocache types, a couple that teaches boy scouts and girl scouts about geocaching, and a geocacher with five geocaches, each of which that have north of 100 Favorite Points—those are the nominees for the October Geocacher of the Month award.
We’re honoring each of the nominees by featuring them on the Geocaching Blog for their contributions to the greater geocaching community. Each will receive worldwide recognition and a prize package from Geocaching HQ in Seattle. Which of these nominees will be named Geocacher of the Month?
This is your opportunity to help decide who will take home the earned, never for sale, Geocacher of the Month geocoin (at left). Each featured Geocacher of the Month will receive the exclusive special edition Geocoin, a hat and a profile icon. They’ll also receive a certificate acknowledging their contributions, signed by two of the founders of Geocaching.com.
Old Navy – Geocacher of the Month – September
In September, Old Navy was named Geocacher of the Month.
One comment details Old Navy’s near decade-long commitment to the geocaching community, “He has done so much for the Geocaching community and goes above and beyond, whether it’s hiding quality caches or event planning as part of Northern New Jersey Cachers (NNJC) or working with local municipalities and parks to introduce geocaching to so many people. As Geocaching continues to grow in leaps and bounds over the years Old Navy has been there in Geo101 introduction classes to bring new people into the sport.”
Now it’s your turn to help us select the next Geocacher of the Month. Write a supportive comment at the bottom of this blog for the nominated geocacher that you feel should be awarded the title. A panel of folks from Geocaching HQ will then use your comments to help guide the decision of which geocacher is awarded the Geocacher of the Month honor.
Here are your nominees for the October Geocacher of the Month. Some testimonials have been edited for length.
Dr. Christian Janiesch, aka famerlor_dragon, writes, “mic68 has produced some of the finest and best maintained caches in the area of Karlsruhe, Germany, for the past five(!) years. People from afar come particularly for these caches. All of his caches are very family friendly, inspiring, and even include fallback stages if any of the flashing, buzzing or moving electronic gadgets fails. All of his main multi and mystery caches are among the best most of us will ever see in the life as a geocacher. He must have put countless hours into planning, constructing, placing, and maintaining his stages.
It is hard to describe the inner beauty of any of them without spoiling any of it. There is a multi cache about knights and dragons, there is one on aliens and his newest most perfect installment is about a mysterious white woman. All of them are set outside the city and make great walk through the woods and fields of the area. All of his multis have more than half a dozen stages each and keep you busy for 3 to 6 hours depending on your skill in finding and figuring out the ingenious gimmicks he throws at you. I am not particularly good at praising people, but his caches are the reason why this hobby is so popular. His caches are worth a lot more than a 100 lamp post caches. I think this should be recognized.”
Rat & Mushroom Nominees for Geocacher of the Month
Samantha Holt says, “This is my mom and dad, they are both 63 years old. They have been caching for 9 years and have involved our whole family to include the grand kids. Dad lost a significant amount of his hearing about the time they started to cache. Caching has allowed them to continue to be very active and involved with the community and their friends. They love to place ammo cans and unique cache hides. They have held several events to include a sweet-heart event during February. They have cached the states and several countries, to include Spain, Mexico, Gibraltar, Jamaica, Panama, Costa Rica, and Germany. No matter where dad goes he can find a cache! He has taught many people how to cache and how to be a good cacher. Their license plate reads FIGS SL – Found in Good Shape, Signed Log. They have hiked, biked, canoed, drove, walked, crawled, boated, swam, quad-ed, jeeped, rock climbed, and waded through who knows what to get to caches. Rat & Mushroom deserve this award for their love of the adventure and their joy of sharing the caching experience with their close friends and family and whoever else walks up and asks them, “What are you looking for?” They are great people, I love you mom and dad! Good Luck on winning Geo-cachers of the month!”
Kenny25 is a rare geocache owner because he owns seven different geocache types, from an EarthCache to a CITO Event to Multi-Caches. Thierry Schnekenburger writes (translated from French) “I vote for cyril Lhomme / kenny25. He deserves the title of Geocacher of the Month because he is a dedicated and passionate about geocaching and especially about other geocaches. He did not hesitate to organize events for the sole purpose of bringing us together to share moments of togetherness, happiness away from the cares of everyday life.
4 May he organized the flashmob for everyone to have the memory, we thought we would, he did it!
11 and 12, he organized the 5th event “ricolades of the Doubs” with such enthusiasm that it’s nice to see and just for that he deserves the title. This is a great guy!”
Comment below to tell us who you think should be the October Geocacher of the Month. We will be accepting comments through November 30.
If your nominee wasn’t recognized here, please submit your nominations again next month. We’re always looking for the next Geocacher of the Month. To nominate a geocacher, send an email to geocacherofthemonth@geocaching.com and include the following information:
Your name, the name of your nominee, their username
A picture of the nominee
Description (200 or more words) explaining why he or she deserves to be the Featured Geocacher of the Month
Please inform your nominee that you have submitted them for the award. Nominations for the next Featured Geocacher of the Month should be received by December 3.Once Geocaching HQ has received the nominations, we will choose the top candidates and post them on the blog. You will then get a chance to champion your favorite. Our goal is to involve the entire geocaching community in this process so that we might learn from each other.
Rick Mastracchio with the International Space Station Travel Bug
An American astronaut Rick Mastracchio (AstroRM) enters the Geocaching history books. He logged the First-to-Find (FTF) on one of the most exclusive geocaches in existence. It’s a geocache hidden five years ago aboard the International Space Station. The geocache has orbited 260 miles above the Earth since geocaching pioneer and video game designer Richard Garriott created the geocache in 2008.
Signed logbook on the International Space Station geocache
Astronaut Rick Mastracchio’s FTF log reads, “The geo space bug (TB5JJN1) has made it to the Russian Service Module, panel 218. He traveled from Waterbury, CT to Houston, TX to Cologne, Germany to Moscow, Star City Russia, to Baikonur Kazakhstan where it launched on a Russian Soyuz Rocket to the International Space Station. He has traveled around the space station and will continue to do so for the next 6 months. When he is not traveling he will be staying with me in my very small crew quarters. He hangs/floats on my wall and waits for more adventures while I do research and perform experiments here on ISS. Thanks for getting this little guy started Cizzors. Every journey starts with the first step and you took the first step of this one. Rick.”
Mastracchio thanked fellow Connecticut geocacher Robert Cizauskas (Cizzors) who first introduced the idea of geocaching to the astronaut. More than 26,000 geocachers at nearly 1,200 events around the world celebrated Geocaching in Space during Mastracchio’s launch into orbit.
The Travel Bug with hitchhikers to be delivered to schools back on Earth
The Travel Bug is riding along with Mastracchio on an educational mission. He’ll use the Travel Bug as a tool to teach kids back on Earth about geography and science.
The Travel Bug is scheduled to return to Earth when Mastracchio finishes his six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.
The previous Travel Bug Richard Garriott carried to the space station remained on-board the ISS for three years. It accumulated more than 350 million miles as it orbited the Earth. That Travel Bug returned to Earth by one of the last U.S. Shuttle missions to visit the International Space Station.
Watch the video of Richard Garriott’s mission to space. Leave your best wishes for Rick Mastracchio below in comments.
Three things can ruin any geocache. It’s true whether your geocache is a creative hide, a geocache that delivers hikers deep into the untamed wilderness or a fantastical Puzzle Cache with a big surprise twist. If your geocache is soaked through with water, the container is cracked or geocachers don’t know it’s a geocache because it’s not marked, it’s what some people call a #fail.
D2W isn’t a droid from some sci-fi movie. It’s a quick test for geocache owners. To avoid the #fail, check to make sure your geocache is D2W compliant. It should be:
Durable
Water-tight
Well-marked
Are you interested in a seeing a geocache that fits all three criteria? Check this out. Every once in a while at Geocaching HQ we hear the success stories of D2W geocaches. Look at the Geocaching Blog post about a geocache that was lost in a flood and then found, still intact, 30 miles away and three years later. Share your advice for passing the D2W test in comments after this article.
Geocache found after 3 years after washing away in a flood
Isn’t a wet logbook the worst? Or maybe a geocache filled with water is the worst? Or a geocache that isn’t well-marked might be the worst? Or maybe even a geocache that can’t be found because it’s washed away by a flood is actually, really, the worst. Well then Sandra, aka junglehair‘s, geocache is the antidote to all those “worsts.”
She’s found more than 13,000 geocaches and hidden more than 70. She knows her geocaching stuff. Sandra’s knowledge includes using the right container for the right circumstances. They’re containers that are durable and last years. She says those containers are most importantly water-tight. None of that seemed to matter much though when a spring flood washed through Manitoba, Canada in 2010. Even though her geocache named Splashing New York Style was hidden high on the bank of a river, it was swept away. After a string of DNF (Did Not Find) logs, she replaced the geocache container.
Lost & Found
Then the years rolled by, until an email popped into Sandra’s inbox. She says, “I found out that one of my caches that was washed away in a spring flood in 2010, was found on an island about 60 km North of where it was originally hidden.” The story goes, “The cache was found by Rob Bruce, Marsh Manager at Oak Hammock Marsh while he was on a hunting trip in Netley Marsh. He had been camping on the island where the cache was found.”
Sandra says the geocache survived those three years intact and water tight. It was well marked so Rob knew the container was a geocache and he also knew how to contact the geocache owner. The geocache just bobbed along for years before finding a resting place on an Island on the south end of Lake Winnipeg.
Sandra says, “The really amazing part of this story is that the log book and other contents of this cache were still fairly dry inside! It was hidden in a Lock & Lock container (the real kind, not a dollar store knock off).”
It’s a Lost & Found lesson about quality, well-marked, water-tight containers. It’s also a lesson about luck. It helped that it ended up in the hands of a friend who geocaches, a lot. OHMIC returned the geocache, but he happens to mostly find them with more than 15,000 finds.
What are your tips, advice, techniques, tools… well you get it… for placing a durable, water-tight, well-marked geocache?
