“What does your food taste like?” Students from Tinker School in Waterbury, Connecticut ask astronaut Rick Mastracchio and get the answer straight from space.
Tag: Extreme Geocaching
Geocaching in Space – Q&A with Astronaut Rick Mastracchio
Students ask – Astronaut Rick Mastracchio answers
On his final trip to Space on November 2013, Astronaut Rick Mastracchio packed along a Geocaching Travel Bug to the International Space Station (ISS). The little Travel Bug connected with students all over the world to teach about space travel, science and geography.
From the Desk of Moun10Bike: How to Keep Your Geocaching Streak Going in the Snow
Geocaching HQ is home to a geocaching legend. His title is Community Liaison to Engineering. His name is Jon Stanley. He’s better known as Moun10Bike in the geocaching world. As one of the world’s first-ever geocachers, Moun10Bike earned his geocaching fame by creating the first of what we now know as geocoins.
Moun10Bike agreed to share his coolest geocaching tips as we head into the winter season here in the Northern hemisphere.
Q: You are working on a geocaching streak. How many days of geocaching in a row are you up to? What inspired you to take on this challenge?
A: On Christmas Eve, my streak will hit 700 days. I want to keep going for as long as it’s fun. The initial motivator was to have a streak that was longer than my longest slump (141 days between my first and second cache finds, back when there were very few caches around). After that, there seemed to be continued incentives that kept me going (e.g. qualifying for particular challenges, etc.).
Q: What is the biggest challenge you face in maintaining your streak?
A: We head back to Spokane and North Idaho during the holidays to be with family, where snow is a much more frequent sight than it is in Seattle. Keeping up the geocaching when everything is under a blanket of white and you’re sipping eggnog by a warm fire becomes a challenge then.
Q: What tips do you have for other geocachers who are trying to keep a streak going in the winter weather?
A: I start off by looking for geocaches that have the “Available in Winter” attribute, although this is rather hit-or-miss as some geocache owners do not use attributes. It does help identify some better ones that were intended specifically for winter, though. What helps the most is looking for geocaches that were found in the last day or two, especially if it recently snowed. This tells you that people are having success at these geocaches despite whatever the conditions on the ground may be.
Q: So what makes for a good winter geocache?
A: Basically any geocache that is off the ground or otherwise protected from snow coverage. Some great winter geocaches that I’ve found were attached to branches in a tree. During the summer, they are many feet up in the air, but are within easy reach with snow on the ground. If a geocache meets these criteria, the geocache owner should be sure to add the “Available in Winter” attribute.
Q: Do you have any safety tips for geocachers who – streaking or not – might find themselves outside geocaching in frightful weather?
A: Dress warmly, be ready and willing to turn back if conditions turn against you, and watch out for ice! I encountered a frozen patch on a trail during an geocaching outing last winter and made a point to stomp across carefully. Despite my caution, my hiking boots slipped out from under me and I broke my arm in the process of catching myself.
Q: But you continued winter geocaching after that?
A: I absolutely did! The break came when I was only a month away from a year straight, so I had to keep going.
Keep tuned in to learn more great geocaching tips from the desk – or trail – of Moun10Bike. What inspires you to leave the warm eggnog and crackling fire behind, and head out geocaching in the winter weather? Tell us in the comments below.
The Olympic Geocacher
Traits like stamina, speed and a competitive spirit transform average geocachers into superstars. For one geocacher, those same traits made him pretty darn good at something else, being an Olympic runner. Ian Dobson qualified and ran as a U.S. Olympian in the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
Now imagine a stretch of freshly published geocaches dotting the rugged landscape of the Central Oregon. There are more than 30 geocaches hiding from the dark summit of a volcanic mountain to the lush green of fern covered gorges. This is no geocaching power trail. Each geocache is part of the custom Eugene Cascades and Coast GeoTour. And each geocache delivers adventures to a unique location, often deep into the tall evergreens.
Ian Dobson trains in Eugene. It’s a runner’s paradise with the hallowed echoes of Olympic legends in each footstep. And thanks to the expanding GeoTour it’s a geocacher’s paradise too.
But what to do though if you’re an Olympic runner and a geocacher? How about finish the first leg of the Eugene, Cascades and Coast GeoTour in just two days? Sure.
That’s exactly what Ian and a team of geocachers did. Ian says the GeoTour was a great chance to explore, “I don’t think there’s anyone who lives here, whose been to all those places.”
The team logged more than 30 geocaches from the McKenzie spoke of the GeoTour in two days. Ian says that geocaching offers a good variety of locations and terrains, and the Eugene Cascades and Coast GeoTour offers not just mountains, but also beaches. The team headed to the Oregon coast and the Florence leg of the tour and kept up their pace. They finished that part of the GeoTour in just one day. The final geocaches were found in the dark, as the team finished at 10pm.
Do you see the puzzle piece Ian is holding in the picture? If geocachers accumulate enough find codes from each leg of the GeoTour they earn the free trackable puzzle pieces. The team will likely be busy again. Another spoke of the GeoTour, through rolling country south of Eugene.
As we have established: you are a superstar too. Do you plan to challenge yourself with a GeoTour, or do you have a geocaching workout routine? Let us know in the comments below!
The First Geocaching First-to-Find in Space
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.
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 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.
