Big Bang Theory and Geocaching

Howard and Raj have been Geocachers, and they’re sitting with Leonard and Sheldon at lunch talking about something else and Raj let’s it slip that something Leonard said reminds him of searching for a Geocache, and Howard slaps him and says “you idiot, don’t tell him about it!” Raj says “Why not?” and Howard says “we don’t want the whole world to know about it” and so Leonard asks about it, and Raj explains Geocaching to Leonard and Sheldon. Howard says it’s the one thing he does that he doesn’t tell his Mother about. And Raj starts to say something, and Howard says, “okay… one of two things I do that I don’t tell my mother about”. So they finish explaining Geocaching and Howard mentions there’s even a cache on the ISS that he logged.

Sheldon says it sounds stupid, walking around finding junk that other people have left behind, but Leonard says, “I don’t know… it sounds kinda fun – just think, you never know what treasure might be hidden who knows where, right under the noses of people going past it everyday! I’m in, let’s go find some treasure!” And then Howard and Raj look at each other, and then as they leave the lunchtable, Raj says, “No… it’s pretty much junk.”

Scene 2

So the whole gang goes out geocaching. Sheldon, Leonard, Howard, and Raj are standing around arguing because they can’t find the cache. The theories about where and how it could be hidden become ever more complex and extravagant with Sheldon refusing to participate because he is a: outside b: worried about skin cancer and lyme disease and c: doesn’t see the point because the cache wasn’t an incredibly involved five star puzzle.

And then Penny picks up the cache, which had been right in front of them the whole time, and asks what it is. She then says “Oh, that’s what we’ve been looking for? Really?”

The group goes through the stuff in the cache, and Leonard is rather dismayed at the lack of “treasure” in the cache. There is some cheap toys and a logbook, and a trackable. Then Howard says, “okay let’s all sign it.” Sheldon interrupts and says, “What are you doing? According to the rules you told me, the person who finds it gets to log it. Penny found it, therefore she gets to sign it. The rest of us didn’t find it. We can’t sign it.” So Howard tries to explain that there are many ways to play, but generally how it works is that everyone present can log a “find” even though only one person actually “found” it. To which Sheldon replies, “I suppose you think that Watson, Crick and Wilkins all deserve to get the Nobel Prize for their work with DNA, then?” Howard, Leonard and Raj look at each other and Leonard says, “But Sheldon, they all did get the Nobel Prize.” Sheldon says, “Yes, but that doesn’t mean they all three should have!” Sheldon says, “Anyway this is a stupid sport. If I want to go all over the country looking for things other people don’t want anymore (looking at the cheap toy), I’ll just go to a yard sale.”

Scene 3

They are back at home and Sheldon enters wearing an “I heart Geocaching T-shirt” and announces he wants to give Geocaching another try. Leonard is still kinda disappointed: “Uh, I… don’t know. You were right, it seems like a waste of time”. He’s upset that they didn’t find anything worthwhile in the first cache they found, but Sheldon is persistent. He is wearing 3 GPS units in holsters on his belts and has a 5-inch thick stack of paper in his arms: “I went on the website you told me about, and I printed out an itinerary, (aside with a smirk to Howard and Raj: ‘I did a pocket query’) – and did you know that within a forty mile radius of us there are 366 Geocaches? Here.”

He takes from his stack, three stapled packets of papers and hands one each to Leonard, Howard and Raj. “What’s this?” Raj says. Sheldon continues, “Among those 366 caches there are 312 traditional caches, 24 puzzle caches, 22 multi-caches and 7 Earth Caches. And 1 Munzee.” Leonard: “What’s a Munzee?” Sheldon: “I’ll explain it later. I split the 24 puzzle caches up into four groups of six, distributed evenly in terms of difficulty so each of us can solve a quarter of the puzzles.” Howard quickly flips through his packet, and says, “what are these co-ordinates down at the bottom?” Sheldon answers, “Oh, don’t worry about those coordinates, I already solved them all, I just thought you all might like to see if you could solve them, too.”

Then Leonard says, “what’s with the 3 GPS units?” Sheldon says, “Well, in case our batteries go dead, I have backups – this one is a Magellan, this one is a Garmin, and this one is a Bushnell, and we’re only going to use the Bushnell if we’re finding them too easily with the Magellan and the Garmin. Okay guys, let’s go.”

Then Howard says, “Well, okay, but this is a little bit of overkill, usually Raj and me just head out in a random direction and wind up finding 5 or 10 or so. 366 caches, that’s going to take us over a month to find them all.” Sheldon says, “oh, no, here’s the itinerary, we’re going to find them all today. In 9 hours and 43 minutes. Hurry up, we leave in two minutes.” They look over the itinerary, Sheldon has broken down exactly how long it’s going to take them drive to each cache and how long it will take them to find each one. Raj says, “this one here,” pointing to the itinerary, “it says we only have 20 seconds to find it, how can you be sure we’ll find it so quickly?” Sheldon says, “well, according to the Google Maps satellite image, (he quickly flips a few pages and points it out to him) it’s under the skirt at the base of this street lamp in this parking lot. I mean seriously, where else could it be?” So the four of them head out the door, Leonard trailing them and says sarcastically, “Oh, I’m sure this is going to be a lot of fun.”

Scene 4

They are in the car, they all look dazed. Raj says, “I can’t believe we found 354 geocaches.” Leonard says, “I can’t believe we stayed exactly on the itinerary and…” (interrupted by Sheldon’s watch beeping) “…found them in exactly 9 hours and 44 minutes.” Sheldon: “Time’s up, actually we were done in 9:41 – I’m glad I left a little leeway in there, you know what they say – spontaneity is the spice of life.”

Howard says: “I can’t believe we didn’t find 12 of them.” Sheldon says, “Those twelve weren’t there.” Howard – agitated: “How do you know?” “Simple, we went to the coordinates, we looked, we didn’t find them. Therefore they must not have been there.” Raj: “Well, we could have looked a little longer, especially that one, I know I almost had it.” Sheldon: “Which one?” Raj: “The one in the park by the creek next to the Supermarket.” Sheldon: “No on that one, if it was there we would have found it in 2.5 minutes. In that amount of time of looking, we easily would have exhausted all the possibilities of where it could have been hidden.” Howard: “But how do you know that?” Sheldon (annoyed): “Did you even look at the satellite image? I mean, according to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the obvious place for it to be hidden would have been where we looked, in the knothole in the tree on the left. It was extremely unlikely it would have been anywhere else, and mathematically impossible that it wouldn’t have been anywhere we wouldn’t have found it in the first one hundred and fifty seconds. To look any longer would have been foolhardy. Honestly! It’s as if you’re the one who just started Geocaching today instead of me!”

Leonard: “Well, anyway, I’m glad that’s over. Who knew there were so many geocaches in lampposts and guardrails?” Raj: “We could have told you that there wasn’t going to be a lot of ‘treasure’?” Howard: “Well, it’s supposed to be about the journey, anyway, just getting out and seeing nature… not how many smileys you can get in 9 hours and 44 minutes.” Sheldon: “I just wanted to optimize our experience by plotting out the most efficient use of our time. Trust me, you had the optimum amount of fun doing it my way.” Leonard: “Well, even if we didn’t find all 366 of them, I’m sure 354 is going to be a personal record for us that we won’t be breaking anytime soon.”