Geocaching

It's like archaeology but not old and someone tells you where the artifacts are (and still you can't find it sometimes!). Geocaching: the world is our playing field. Yeah I know it's dorky but it's the fun kind of dorky and you get to play outside and look for treasure. There are worse cults to belong to I suppose, plus you can limit your dorkiness to a minimum by not getting super intense about the whole thing. Just remember that every outing doesn't have to turn into an excuse to geocache and just because a new cache goes up on the website at 3am doesn't mean you have to go out and find it at that time! Yeesh! However, it is kind of interesting and fun to know that these things are cleverly (or less cleverly) hidden all over the place and only a few people know about it.

Geocaching has been around for 8 years now, the very first geocache was placed on May 3, 2000, just 2 days after the removal of Selective Availability from the Global Positioning Sytem. The improved accuracy of the GPS allowed for a small container to be specifically placed and located by the public. While geocaching is generally harmless it has sometimes caused problems for local law enforcement, bomb scares and such, when geocachers fail to clearly identify their caches or when they are caught acting shifty. It's a fine line between trying not to tip off "Muggles" (geocaching slang for people who don't geocache - dorkiness clue#1) as to the locations of caches and looking like drug dealers/terrorists. Case in point: the 24-hour geocaching event participated in by a large group of geocachers in Saskatoon this weekend. We were alright during the day but from about 11pm to 4am I am pretty surprised we weren't stopped and questioned. I guess we don't make a very threatening picture even if we are skulking in the bushes in deserted parks at 2am. On the whole I would say great time and I would totally do it again.

Here is a good glossary of terms with all the common abbreviations. Check out geocaching.com if you are curious about geocaches in your area. Join the cult! One of us! One of us!



Above:View from near the first cache we found on our 24hour geocaching odyssey.