A Geocacher’s Perspective
On Boxing Day of this year I will have been geocaching for 5 years. In that time period I have found my share of caches all over the place. From micros to regulars to traditionals and puzzles, I’ve pretty much seen most of what can be done with geocaching out there. It doesn’t change the fact that I still enjoy the hobby quite a bit. One thing that has changed in that time, is my perspective of the world around me.
As an avid geocacher, I no longer look at the world around me as just the place I live in. Instead, now that I’m familiar with the world of geocaching, I see things from a different perspective. No, I’m not getting all philosophical on you but I am going to point out a few things that I am sure you no longer look at the same way as you did prior to being a geocacher.
Let’s start with a parking lot, say at Walmart or Sobey’s. I am sure plenty of you can remember the first time you ever encountered an LPC (lamp post cache). You would be looking around and around for that little container and having no luck. Then you’d touch the skirt and realize that it moves. The realization that you could lift the skirt up and find something underneath hits you. You may only be searching for a magnetic micro, but somehow the revelation that those skirts move up and down seems like you’ve discovered the atom. How could you have NOT known the cache was under there.
Now as experienced cachers, when your GPS leads you to a parking lot, you immediately dart your eyes to the lamp post that is closest where the arrow on the GPS is pointing. You just automatically know where it will be. You never look at a lamp post or parking lot quite the same way. If you see a person standing near one of them, before you may have thought they were just standing around, but now you’ll be wondering if there’s a cache under that post, or if that’s a geocacher.
Then there’s the casual Sunday drive. I’ve always been someone who loves to drive. I’ll hop in the car and go for a drive. I can’t count how many times I have been out driving and have seen a car parked along the side of the road. Sometimes you’d see nobody around the car, but other times you’d see a person or two entering the woods. Before I was geocacher, I simply thought that the car had broken down and people were waiting for someone to come by to help them. Now as a geocacher, I find myself looking to see if the people standing beside the car are holding a GPS unit. Are they caching? Is there a cache in the woods there?
Last, but certainly not least, I find myself looking at objects and places differently wondering if they’d either make a good geocache container, or a good hiding spot. It seems that since geocaching is a big part of my life, it seems to bleed into other areas as well.
How about you? How has geocaching affected your perception of the world around you?
Funny Zor should mention the LPC type of cache. In July of 2010 I had only been caching for 7 months. Twice Snake9 and I tried to find his now archived cache Green Butterflies – GC21N0A and failed. Then by a stroke of luck we found a lpc cache by paulandstacey, MMM PFN – GC2BDXC .
So on our third try we knew where it was. To quote the log by Snake9 “Duhh!! I never knew you could lift these things up”. So I now look at lamp post and guardrails a little different. Even trees and bridges. And bottles and containers.
In fact the whole world looks different with a hidden geocaching world happening all around. And I also feel the same way when I see a parked car or happen to see others when I am out caching, wondering if they are muggles or cachers.
Things I would never look at before caching now catch my eye. And weridos looking at odd things and popping out of the trees no longer seem as weird. Well, not to me. But to people who don’t geocache I guess I am the weirdo now.
No comments to that statement please.
I have said the same things before and find it funny how our view of things can be altered by our interest. Everything now has to be studied as a possible hiding place or possible container. I have a garage and shed filled with possible geocaching stuff, I even have a piece of guard rail, old broken shopping cart, road sign, construction pylon and dozens of containers that I will probably never use. Someday I will just throw the stuff out but not yet.
Even going shopping is different now. Every aisle I go down I am looking at things and saying to myself “self, that might make a good cache container”. And forget about going for a walk anywhere! I am always seeing good hiding spots even when not caching. (By the way, I have lots of new caches coming out in the next few weeks!)
Paulie
My 9 year old does that to me. “Daddy, if we took the eye out of that toy, and put a container in, it would make an awesome geocache.”
I haven’t been caching for that long yet but everytime I go to Bathurst and see some parked cars or truck along route 11 after Janeville I’m always wondering if they are cachers doing Tracker@230’s route 11 series. Other things I’ll do while getting to Bathurst… everytime I drive by the NB Trail, I will slow down and look as far as I can to see if there are people (cachers) on the trail doing the NB Trail serie. Glad to know I’m not alone haha.
It’s not a secret that I like to hide. I now pay attention at the hardware store, the isles are so much more interesting.
I tail cars that look like they may have a TB magnet or decal.
I slow down whenever I see a car or someone near one of my caches. Or near any other cache.
But it’s the human factor that I relish. I stop and talk to people that I’d never stop to talk to. “Are you looking for a geocache? What, you’ve never heard of it?”.
And most importantly, I’ve met and continue to meet some fantastic people that I would never have met before.
I too look at things different than before. If i see a car pulled over on the road, instantly think is there a geocache there. Dream about doing geocaches, think about them. Stalk geocaching sites. Also remember first lpc cache, went to skirt and grabbed it, it came up, I just about fell over in shock. Also would like to take this time to thank zor and rev and everyone else for the work they did to make this site and the work to run it.