(L)Earn Your ABC's Challenge

This cache is at the coordinates, but additional requirements apply. Please read on.

This cache is placed on a lot of vacant land adjacent to the old historic Robertsville School building. Robertsville School was a one-room school house built on the northwest corner of Union Hill Road and Tennent Road in 1832. It served as a school for the few children of this sparsely populated area in the 19th century. School records from 1885 showed that 43 children attended Robertsville School at the time. The original building was also used as a place of congregation for the local Methodist community, which was to later organize into the Robertsville Bible Church. There is evidence that the original building still stood in 1910, but in 1912 it was replaced by the existing structure. This new 1451 sq ft building functioned as a special education school for a few years, but is now used only for administrative and support services of the Board of Education. In the late 1960s, the then rural area was transformed into today's suburban community, with the construction of 1167 new homes. Such significant growth called for a new school, and a new Robertsville Elementary School building was built in 1968 about 1000 feet down the road, and is still functioning today as a school.

Schools such as the old Roberstville School are the kinds of places where we learned our ABCs. And when we learned them, we learned them in order. We all learned and can sing "A B C D E F G ... H I J K L M N O P ... Q R S ... T U V ... W X Y and Z". In that order. No one learned "P W N G L R E M V ...".

Alas, when we started geocaching, odds are we found caches named in any random order. In fact, my first 9 cache finds did start with "P W N G L R E M V". Your order was surely different.

Your challenge for this cache, if you should accept it, is to find caches starting with A through Z in the proper alphabetical order. You have to earn this challenge in the same order that your learned the alphabet.

Before you log this cache as a find you must meet the following requirements:

• Have found a cache starting with the letter A
• On some date after that, have found a cache starting with the letter B
• On some date after that, have found a cache starting with the letter C
• ...
• And finally, after all those letters, have found a cache starting with the letter Z

1. Only the first character of each cache name will count. Caches whose names start with non-letters (digits, space or special characters) cannot be used towards this challenge.
2. You can have any number of cache finds between your qualifying finds. So you can find E C U Y A D 3 D M K 8 ( C A B J S 9 M Q - D C L M B D E ... you can count towards your challenge the A B C D E that are in bold above. Other cache finds in the sequence are simply discarded.
3. You can only qualify one letter per caching day. If, on the same day, you find a cache starting with A and later that day find a cache starting with B, you cannot count the B. You have to earn your alphabet slowly, one letter per day.
4. You must demonstrate that you meet the challenge. You can do that by including in your log the list of qualifying cache GC codes (and preferably also cache names and the dates you found them), or by including a publicly accessible bookmark list of your qualifying finds.

So just how hard is this challenge? Well, it depends on how you approach it. If you are a dedicated student and go deliberately and methodically about it, relentlessly in pursuit of your goal, it will take you exactly 26 caching days to get the 26 letters. If you go about it carelessly just picking up caches in whatever random order they may come at you, by the laws of probabilities you will eventually meet the requirements but it will take a lot longer. Just how long depends on how many caches you find per day.

• If you find 1 cache per day, you will likely meet this challenge after 2861 finds
• At 2 caches per day, expect to meet after about 2875 finds and 1438 caching days
• At 3 caches per day, 2888 finds in 963 caching days
• At 4 caches per day, 2902 finds in 726 caching days
• At 5 caches per day, 2915 finds in 583 caching days
• At 10 caches per day, 2986 finds in 299 caching days
• At 50 caches per day, 3677 finds in 74 caching days
• At 100 caches per day, 4712 finds in 48 caching days

Disclaimer: these are not hard numbers. I am not saying that if you find one cache per day you will have met the challenge on your 2861st find. I am just saying that, given the distribution of letters in cache names and assuming a random order of finds, at 2861 finds you are more likely to meet the challenge than not. Some people will, by pure luck, meet the challenge sooner, others later.

So you see, it pays to work methodically towards the goal. Random caching will get you there, eventually. But you can get there in as little as 26 finds if only you set that as your goal and aim for it. Geocaching veterans with 3000+ finds probably meet the requirements already. For the rest of us, it pays to work on it with purpose and determination.

To make your life easier, you may use this checker to analyze your finds and find if you qualify (or how far along you are).

About the cache:

Cache is a lock-and-lock container that has a log book, pen, and some alphabet-related items. It is starting out pretty full, so room for items is limited unless you trade.

Cache contains 26 magnetic letters, A-Z. I encourage the first cacher (FTF) to take the A, the second cacher take the B, etc. I will replenish after the 26th cacher.

Congrats to sant74 for the FTF