Before I even begin this week’s blog post, today is my 21st wedding anniversary. I want to wish my wife a very Happy Anniversary! I love you, dear (or should I say Gem)!
Now, this week’s blog post.
The travel bug symbol. (click to enlarge)
Whether you are a new or veteran geocacher, you can relate when I say that there is a certain excitement experienced when you find a cache. It doesn’t matter what type of cache, the excitement lies in the fact that you found it. What more excitement could there be aside from that and the fact that the location might be spectacular or somewhere you have never been or seen? How about when you discover a trackable inside? Does that add just that much more excitement? It does for us! We love to find trackables in caches and look up where they have been and where they want to go. We even try to find a way to get them there. It doesn’t matter what type of trackable it is. It could be a geocoin or a travel bug. They are all the same to us. We love finding them! We have even sent some of our own on their way to travel the world. They make geocaching much more fun that it already is.
A travel bug. (click to enlarge)
While trackables may add a bit more fun to geocaching, “un”trackables work to detract from geocaching. What are untrackables, you might ask? They are those trackables that are suppose to be in a cache but seem to have fallen into the great abyss. Nobody knows where they are. They were there in one log entry and gone in the next log entry. They are comparable to socks in the washing machine that seem to go in the washer but never come out. How often have you looked at a cache that says there is a trackable inside only to find it missing when you get there? The result is extreme disappointment and sometimes even anger. Often you wait for it to be logged as perhaps someone got there just before you and retrieved it. You wait weeks and sometimes months and still no sign of it. It is gone.
The travel bug was left in plain site onboard the ISS. (click to enlarge)
It is extremely hard not to get upset over this. People spend money on buying trackables and set them in motion for the sole purpose of tracking their whereabouts and reading about where they have been. Some cachers want it to travel as far as possible and rack up the miles, especially if they are part of a travel bug race. Just recently, I read about the trackable that travelled on the
International Space Station (GC1BE91). It traveled over 350 million miles and made it safely back to earth. Nobody decided to take it or throw it out the airlock, even though it was left out in plain site. Ethics won out! Why can’t the same work for all of the earthly caches out there?
A geocoin.
In the case of trackables gone missing, obviously, some cacher took the trackable and decided to keep it or forgot to log taking it. A small percentage disappear due to being in a cache that has been muggled and destroyed. The majority are simply taken by cachers or never logged. This is, both, an unethical and unacceptable practice. Geocachers need to be more respectful of other people’s property. Trackables belong to someone other than yourself and should be treated that way. I have compiled a list of guidelines, per se, that should be followed when removing trackables from caches.
- Do not remove a trackable unless you have the intention of moving it. Simply write down the number and leave it for the next person.
- If you do take a trackable, log it as taken as soon as possible. With today’s smartphones, you can now do that in the field.
- Never hang on to trackables for long periods of time. Personally, I wouldn’t hang on to them for longer than two weeks.
- If you must hang on to them for extended periods of time (to bring to an upcoming event perhaps), write a note on the trackable’s page that indicates this.
- If a trackable’s goal is to travel the world, never place it in a remote cache that hardly gets visited. Instead, log it as visited. Dropping trackables in remote places causes them to lie dormant for long periods of time.
- Never place trackables in caches that are in high muggle areas. These caches have a high risk of being muggled and the trackable being lost forever.
- If you have a trackable that needs to go by air or you are flying somewhere, try placing or retrieving trackables from a cache located near an airport. In St. John’s, you could use our cache called YYT-TB St. John’s Travel Bug Departure Lounge (GC2X6C9). It is meant as an Arrival/Departure area for caches that need to fly.
With over 5 million geocachers worldwide enjoying this great treasure hunt, the number of trackables that are traversing the globe must be astonishing. With a bit of ethics and common sense, we can all enjoy discovering trackables and sending our own on their way, worry-free. Through being a geocacher in the truest sense of the word, we can keep the “un” out of trackables.
How about you? Have you lost any of your trackables? If so, how many so far? Let us know!
Caching Heaven 
Ugh, lost trackables are the only thing about geocaching that rots my soul. I get so mad when trackables are missing lol. I, myself, have yet to experience my own going missing…only because I only recently set two off into the world. I drove to Bonavista in May, decided I was going to release one of mine at the Bonavista lighthouse because I figured it would be cool for tourists to pick up and move along. Got to the cache, it was supposed to already have THREE in it…ALL gone. So of course I didn’t place my own there. I don’t understand why people can’t be respectful and log the trackables when they’re picked up. Or, if they’re giving up geocaching or whatever, do one last cache and drop them off.
I placed four trackballs around the same time in different caches a couple of years ago. Three went missing right away. The fourth made it half way across the country before disappearing.
I also have a travel bug sticker on my truck. But the only time anyone “finds” it is when I point it out to them.
I have a trackabulldog that was picked up out of a cache and 6 months later still hadn’t been dropped off. I visited the cachers profile and saw they were still caching and logging finds . I wrote politely to them via geocaching.com and heard nothing back. So backtracked their loggs and discovered another cacher had “introduced” them to the sport, so I contacted him via his profile page. I was advised that the finder was a student studying for his finals but when he’d finished he would contact him and advise him of the error of his ways. Not satisfied with that I suggested that the introducer collected the Geocoin and placed it in a cache ASAP. Guess what ? He didn’t reply but the coin did get placed in a cache, worked it’s way back up the country to where I could collect it and is now in my geobag for people to discover when I’m out and about-Alls well that ends well.
I have also lost MAI or AWOL 3 travel bugs one made it to USA the other Netherlands and the 3rd Estonia. All set off from Wales UK.
Thanks for listening.
I’ve taken trackables when on holiday and placed them back in the UK adding 2500 miles to their journey 🙂
When I looked at their logs, the people that took them from where I placed them kept them for over a month which your guidelines say isn’t acceptable — I agree — I’m sure the people that set them free to travel the world must be more disappointed than I was!
I once saw a travel bug window sticker on a car’s rear quarterlight when I was on the motorway — it brought a smile to my face knowing they were a fellow geocacher 🙂
I’ve downloaded your travel bug picture and am going to print my own window sticker as I have the necessary static cling media for my inkjet printer 🙂