It’s not all rainbows and lollipops being a geocacher. With a great hobby comes a great number of reasons to have a hissy fit and stomp your feet, like a toddler who’s been told they can’t have ice-cream until they finish all their vegetables. Here are some of the very real problems* we face as geocachers on a regular basis.
1. I can’t find my own cache
This is a perhaps surprisingly common complaint among cache owners: you’ve had a report of a wet or full logbook, so you do your CO duty and head out to fix up the cache. Except you can’t find it. You might even be convinced it’s missing and replace it. But then reports of two containers at GZ start coming in. So you look for the original again – and still can’t find it. It’s enough to send even the most level-headed of cachers in to a foot-stomping rage.
2. I can’t get the logbook out
You’ve done the difficult part and managed to find the cache, even though it’s really, really ridiculously tiny (i.e. a nano) but now the logbook is refusing to budge. Perhaps a tweezers would have helped but you’ve forgotten yours. Or maybe even with the help of your trusty tweezers, the log still doesn’t want to come out and play. Why, little log sheet, why hast thou forsaken me?
3. My pen(s) won’t work
You know what you’re doing. You’re basically a professional at this stage, so it goes without saying that your pockets and geobag are overflowing with writing implements. Except when you get to GZ, half of them have disappeared and the rest have decided not to work. Now you have to source a suitable stick and some berries to scrawl your mark on the log. Oh what a world.
4. The muggle won’t leave
Off to the park to get my cache fix: 1/1 magnetic on a bench. Easy peasy. Quick sit-down, grab it, sign it, replace it and get out of there with another smiley under my belt. Except there is a muggle lounging on the bench in question and no amount of sitting uncomfortably close to them or shouting down the phone at an imaginary friend is working to move them on. They have made this bench their home now. So close, but yet so very, very far.
5. I stepped in something icky
The problem with going outside to play is that there is a real and ever present danger of stepping in something utterly disgusting. Dog poop. Vomit. Spit. The horrifying list is seemingly endless. Why us?!
6. I got a tick bite
We might like travel bugs, but geocachers are not overly keen on the type of bugs that can actually bite you and even suck your blood. Unfortunately, ticks (and the accompanying possibility of lyme disease) is a hazard of the hobby that we must live with if we want to cache in the summer. Life is so unfair.
7. I ripped my clothes
I’ll never forget the day a thorn tree mercilessly tore a giant rip in my favourite geocaching jacket. RIP blue jacket – you were too young and cost too much for the fate that befell you. But I digress. Basically, Mother Nature sometimes doesn’t want you poking around in her bushes and just wants to rip you a new…. hole in your clothes. Not cool.
8. A new cache was published near my house, while I’m miles away at work
A ping of your phone. Oooh, a new cache. Wait, WHAT?! An FTF possibility, 500 feet from your front door and you’re stuck in work for another 6 hours. Your co-workers will judge you if you cry at your desk, so go to the restroom to sob in private. Throwing your computer out the window is not recommended, no matter how strong the urge.
9. I can’t find the cache
You just need a quick park and grab to fill a date in your calendar, so you pick out a 1/1 with lots of recent finds and off you go. But you can’t find it. Despite the hint being ‘magnetic’, a thorough fingertip search turns up nothing. You check the previous logs, desperate for hints. Quick easy find… Took one minute to find… If you can’t find this, you might as well find another hobby. You just needed to find one. Just one, measly cache. Why is geocaching so difficult?! I can’t even.
Have you experienced any of these geocacher problems? What others would you add? Let me know in the comments!
Happy Caching!
Sarah
*I know, I know, these aren’t actually ‘very real problems’ but, you know, they are mildly irksome 😉
(Animated GIFs courtesy of Giphy.com)
© 2017 | Sarah Murphy | All Rights Reserved
Hi Sarah,
Nice summary of the daily problems, I’ll go with every item!
Number 3 has been mitigated since I use one of these cool write-even-on-wet-Yaks pens (Uni-ball power tank by Faber-Castell – really recommended)
Number 5 gets even worse if you get your fingers involved… always have an emergency cleaning tissue pack with you!
Number 8 happened so regularly, I’m really getting used to it and a smile appears that at least I don’t have to drive so far to get it, when I’m back.
…one to add: you are doing a multi cache and second to last stage uncovers a formula with questions of something you should have noticed three hours ago or you should have counted lamps, bridges, colored reflectors to find the final!
…another one: you are doing a multi cache and wrote down basically everything you went through and passed by, filled a notebook with so much stuff of tree numbers, colored reflectors, various lamp sizes, just to acknowledge that none of it was important for the final stage!
Greetings,
Hendl
Haha! Sounds like you’ve had a lot of heartache with multi caches 😉
I have a very scruffy rain jacket in the boot of the car. It was a good jacket once, but now has multiple tears. It is relegated to geocaching duties only.
The other problem I have with multis or puzzles – is when I’ve started them, and might even have the final coords – but I can’t remember where I put the info! So I have to go back to the start before I can find the box. I’m learning from my mistakes though and am getting better at remembering to save the details as a personal geocache note.
Ah yes, I’ve done that myself!
Similar to No. 7, poking my eye looking for that elusive cache in a pine tree and then coming out of said tree empty handed except for all the scratches on my arms and neck.
Love theses posts .Thanks