The Beneficial Side Effect – People & Geocaching
When people are first introduced to the sport of geocaching, typically most folks get excited by the prospect of being able to use some piece of technology to go out and find something that most other individuals don’t even know is there. How many new cachers have you met that seemed to get a thrill out of the fact that they seem to be “in the know” and part of an almost secret society that knows about these containers that are hidden everywhere. There’s always this thrill of being able to find something that most don’t know are there. The thrill increases as you are able to find those caches which seem to be “camo’d” in plain sight. It adds a certain thrill to the game.
When you describe the hobby of geocaching to folks who don’t know anything about it, you typically give them the spiel about how it’s a sort of high tech treasure hunt that combines technology and the thrill of the hunt. Questions come in about how it works, whether or not you actually take the container with you, and what the “point” really is. However, when describing geocaching to others, how often do you include how much of a social activity it really is?
One of the things that I have come to learn over the course of the few years I have been caching is that geocaching is not just about going out and finding plastic containers in the woods. It’s also largely about the people around you and the caching community as a whole. This doesn’t apply only to our own region here in New Brunswick, but everywhere in the world.
Whether you are in Moncton, Fredericton, Halifax, Edmonton, Toronto, New York City, Chicago, London England, New Zealand, Warren Pennsylvania, or any other community in the world, you’ll find cachers. You find these people who all share this one common interest that binds them together. You can be half way across the world, pull your car over to a guard rail, and someone else can come by and instantly know you are a cacher and you immediately can connect with them and share your love of the sport.
How many times have you run into other cachers while out and about and it’s led to interesting conversations, or even maybe a new friendship. All because you were looking for some silly container that was hidden for no other reason than for people to find it.
When introducing someone to the sport of geocaching, how often do you mention the fact that cachers group together on many occasions to go on a group hike, meet for breakfast, or just hang out and play some poker with good friends. How often do you talk about the larger group events that bring in such crowds? Things like the Fundy Hike events, the Bye Bye Winter Bash in Fredericton, or even the annual Moncton Race for Cache event? On a larger scale, how about things like GeoWoodstock where people from literally all over the world converge on a single location for no other reason than to share their love of the sport of geocaching with people from across the globe. As of this writing, the last GW had 2,468 Attended logs on their cache page. That’s almost 2,500 people coming to one spot all because of geocaching.
Speaking purely for myself, I’ve never been someone who has been comfortable just walking into a crowd of strangers and introducing myself. Once I get to know people, I’m fine, but that “breaking the ice” part of meeting new people is very intimidating to someone like me. The first event I went to was Rev Slippery’s GSAK potluck in Riverview back in April of 2008. I didn’t know anyone there and didn’t know quite what to expect. Ironically enough, Rev’s inability to get the internet working in the room, and my winning of the door prize sort of brought me out of my shell a bit and all of a sudden I found myself a bit less shy and meeting some new people.
Now, more than three years later, I’ve attended over 100 events, including 13 of which I have been the host. I’ve met countless cachers from literally across the country and beyond. I’ve gone on some awesome caching trips with some new good friends I’ve made, participated in some large group hikes on some trails that I didn’t even know existed, and have participated in active debates amongst cachers both on this site as well as many others. It’s that sense of community and the social aspect of this hobby that I really wanted to write about.
A few weeks ago, Moncton’s largest geocaching event finished up at Centennial Park and I found myself looking around and seeing the faces of so many cachers who were interacting, talking, laughing, and enjoying themselves. None of these people had found a single cache during the day’s activities, but here they were, all together, in one place, enjoying each other’s company. Even folks who had chosen not to actually race were in attendance just because they wanted to come out and enjoy being around other cachers. In seeing these people together, it made me want to sit down and write a little bit about how social geocaching really is.
I think during the course of trying to “get the next find”, many cachers forget about the fact that perhaps the single biggest benefit that geocaching has, is it’s ability to bring people together. Yes, there are plenty of people who cache but do it on their own and choose to remain outside of the community, but most cachers at least at some point decide to make the jump and attend their first event, and learn that it’s not all about the numbers, and finding the container. It’s about sharing your passion for the sport of geocaching with others who feel the same way.
How has the social aspect of geocaching affected your life?
It’s sad to say but almost all of the friends I’ve made since moving to Fredericton are because of geocaching. the lunch time runs with people from other offices to the events i enjoy hanging out and sharing my love of this hobby.
another cool aspect is that I’ll be in Regina on business next week and threw out a post on their Facebook page within hours I’ve already made arrangements to go on a cache run one evening with a cacher from the area.
Where else can you do that?
Great write up Zor. Well done. It likely would be a good newspaper article showing another aspect of geocaching.
We have met many wonderful cachers and have made a lot of friends.
I think the social aspect of geocaching is one of the best parts. I think that is why I think it is great when a few people in Ottawa solve our ML caches and go out on the weekend with the geomob to get them. I feel the same when a group of Moncton area cachers go out for a ML series that only 1 or 2 of them have solved. Strangely it bothers me a little when someone uses a program to solve the puzzles aand then tell me how easy they were.
In addition to the great people we have met at events, we have met many cachers in many places while searching. I will try and find my list of such encounters and post it. For example, two QC cachers knocked on our door the other day and came in and had a nice chat. We had communicated with them by email a few days before when they had asked us questions about caches in the area. Turns out they are close friends with TAZ30 from Riviere du Loup who had come to our place a for the ice walk in 2010
Ma and I have gone out many time with other cachers to attack an area or a series. I love reading the stories of local cachers who go out together or even take a few day caching trips together.
The social to me even includes reading cachers adventures. I love it when (mrs)Cookers spends 2 paragraphs explaining how whe crossed a ditch for a cache behind a mall.
Anyhow, that is it for now. I am sure you will get tons of responses on this
Zor, I remember that event, thanks for getting the WiFi up for me and you won an ammo can for your efforts. I am probably one of the most social cachers around, I must have found 75% of my finds with others. I have gone to 96 events and hosted 17. I love events, love group hikes and really love the weekend trips I have taken with some of the best people I know. I never laugh as much as I do when out caching with the geo-buddies. Many of the discussions can’t be repeated here…lol. One of the most popular social aspects of caching were not mentioned above, the naming of other cachers and play on words in titles of hides for some of our friends. There are many “A Hike for” caches, a bunch puzzles put out for individuals to enjoy or annoy and some titles have hidden meanings for someone or a group in the “know”. I like different events as well, I don’t make an effort to go to the breakfast anymore, been to about 20 of them and don’t feel the excitement for them anymore. I would really liked to go to geowoodstock but just can’t justify the time and money to go as geocaching to me is still an activity not a passion even though I spend too much time and money on it already.
Really nice write up. It’s true that geocaching is way more than looking for caches. Even tho we haven’t cached much compared to most people here, I remember occasions that you mentionned in your post. We made friends with a couple from Yarmouth NS when we arrived at a same cache location. We have still been in contact with them since. I’ve also had the chance to meet up with cachers from NB and it’s always nice to be able to put a face on a nickname.
On my end, thanks to this site because I wouldn’t get much geocaching talk. It’s sad that the hobby hasn’t picked up more than this after the CMA 2009 event that was hosted in Tracadie. There were some really active cachers that stopped for one reason or another.
Looking forward to attend an event in the Moncton area pretty soon, my last one was the Ice Walk so it’s been a while.
Here is an item I posted on another site last spring about encounters we have had with cachers.
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We had one of those strange caching encounters this Spring and it reminded me of the posts that were made on the old MGA site about strange coincidences involving geocaching and interesting encounters. So I would like to list a few right now and I may add more as I remember them. This list does not include the many encounters with local cachers while caching around here, as there are much too many of those.
*So here is the one from this Spring. We were on our way to Ottawa and stopped at a Timmy`s in Riviere du Loup (RDL) for a bowl of soup. It is still very much winter there and was about minus 10 C and there were snowmobiles filling up at the gas station nearby. Two small scooters pulled up at Timmys and two young teens got off. Before they even removed their helmets to come in, I mentioned to Ma that one of them was the son of TAZ30. MA said it couldnt be. When he came in and ordered, we kept looking at each other and finally I asked. Sure enough it was him. We had met him at an event that he attended in Quebec city with his family, last spring.
*We had first met TAZ and his other son a few years ago when we were caching near the ferry terminal in RDL. They were passing by and gave us help in locating one of their caches. We were pleased to meet them as we had always loved the quality of their caches. In February 2010, TAZ and his wife and young son drove down to our place to take part in our Ice Walk. Very nice people.
*Last summer we were stopped along the shore around Cocagne Cape in our daughters van with Quebec license plates. We were looking for a cache. A local person was walking along the road and thought we were tourists. He welcomed us to the area, explained about the beaches,etc., and asked where we were from. We smiled and said we were from Grande-Digue, and that we were geocaching. He said his brother from Drummondville was a geocacher. We said that must be MARMAD a cacher with whom we had been communicating and had just missed meeting when he came to NB the previous year.
*Late last fall, we stopped in Sussex to find a few caches when we had been caching in the wilderness past Adairs. We decided to take a break at MacDonalds as there were caches nearby and we also were hoping to see Marilyn the manager. She had been the manager of the one in Shediac for many years and then had gone to the one at Magnetic Hill where Jim52 often hung out. Jim told us that she had transferred to Sussex. Sure enough, she was there and she came out and hugged us. We had a nice chat and she mentioned that one of her sisters was into caching but couldnt recall their caching name. We found out during a discusssion at a Freddy event, that her sister was Mrs Viking43. What a coincidence.
*A few years ago we were caching in Green Park in London. We had problems locating a LPC. A gentleman walked up to us and presented us with the cache he had just signed. He was a professor from Oxford.
*Last July we were in Ottawa for canada Day and attended a free seniors breakfast event sponsored by the city. I had found a few caches and had a gps around my neck. One of the other persons there was a cacher and spotted the gps. We had a nice chat.
*A few years ago we were doing the Easy street caches in Florida. It was a rural road with film canisters placed on the ground next to fence posts near the road. After a while we found it easier for me to drive and MA to find the cache. At one point, when Ma was out of the car, a car heading in the other direction made a U-Turn and parked right behind me. I immediately locked the car doors. It turns out it was a cacher named Doughball. He took us to find an interesting local cache. Here is photo of him and Ma.
*Last Spring we took a 3 week caching trip on our way to Ottawa. We were signing a log at the side of the road in the Eastern Townships of Quebec when a truck stopped and asked if we had found it. We introduced ourselves and they immediately knew who we were. They knew we were bringing Bernie the travelling geocache to Ottawa, and asked if they could sign the log. so we had to dig the ammo can out of our car trunk for them to sign.
*On that same trip we were bringing a TB belonging to Ottawa cachers Petendot. We had picked it up in NB and noticed that Petendot were going to be at some of the Ottawa events that we would be attending. We introduced ourselves when we got to a breakfast event, and gave them their TB. After breakfast we spent the rest of the day caching with them. It was a great day.
*Ottawa cacher Puppyjinx and his family happen to be best friends with our daughter`s family, and this is only a coincidence. Natasha introduced us to them. We happened to be going to Disney world at the same time as them and spent a day there with them.
*One day when I picked up my car at the local garage, I was mentioning geocaching to the owner (which he knew about because of my GEOCACH license plate). A young person who worked there joined in the conversation, saying that he was aware of a cache in the woods across the street (ours) and that he had seen a cache attached to the side of a bridge over the Shediac River (ours) when he was diving off the bridge.
*We met a non cacher while looking for a cache at the dam near Riverside Albert. He said that we must be Ma & Pa. Turns out, he was Wayne, the brother of cacher Saulba with whom we had done a CITO event in Moncton. He now caches under the name Waymorejean.
*I once met Canuck Thistles and Finn who were looking for our Guy`s Back Cache at frenchie`s in Shediac.
* A few years ago we met two cachers at a local event, Coach Eagle from Montreal and her niece Coach Wolf. Tiger Tracker had been caching with Coach eagle on some of his trips to Montreal. Two summers ago they found some of our caches in Shediac River area. One of the caches was attached to the outside of a bridge. One person in their group found it by hanging off the side of the bridge. It was Coach Wolf`s uncle Pierrot. The name and the stunt sounded familiar and sure enough it turned out that Pierrot and his wife were part of the regular group that I play poker with. I again met Coach wolf when she showed up during one of the poker games. Over the last year, Pierrot and his wife have been telling me about Coach Eagle`s mom Claudette and how sick she was. I then got an email from Tiger Tracker informing us of the death of Claudette. When we checked, we discovered that Claudette was a wonderful lady that we had met on a 10 day cruise in the Carribean, many years ago. We had spent many wonderful evenings with her and her husband on the cruise ship.
Well said Zor… well said!
Some of the best things in life are right in front of us but we never recognize them!
Thanks for reminding us of the best benefit of geocaching!
Well said Zor. Like you, I also find social gatherings where I don’t know anyone difficult. I’ve always had difficulty making friends or socializing in general. Geocaching has definitely pulled me out my shell. I’ve met some great and wonderful people through this hobby, and have made more friends in the past 4 years than I did the last 15 living in Fredericton.