Geocaching Goals for 2020

This post is all about geocaching, so if you have no interest, you can stop reading now. I won't be offended.

I realize that this is a little late, but it's better late than never. I don't like the term resolutions, mainly because if you break the resolution, you've failed. I prefer the term goals. You can set goals, but you may not reach them. That doesn't mean you fail, it just means, you're going to work on that particular aspect in the future to improve in whatever area you're working on. Resolutions are almost all or nothing, whereas goals imply partial success, even if you don't meet the entire goal. At least that's how I see it.

In this case, it's kind of silly anyway to say I have resolutions regarding geocaching, but I do have goals for this year. And so I present my goals for this year, none of which I think are that ambitious, especially since I have a lot of free time off in which to accomplish them.

1. Have fun. Why do something if you're not going to have fun? And thus all goals revolve around this one. If I'm not having fun achieving a goal, then it's time to drop or revise the goal.

2. Find at least 100 caches per month, average 125 per month. In the past, I've always wanted to average 100 cache finds per month. Now that I'm retired,  I think I can up that average. Last year, I found 1378 caches and I'm already ahead of last January's pace for the entire month and this month is only half over, so I think this goal is achievable. If I maintain my goal average for the year, then I should have over 1500 cache finds this year which would be my third best year ever.

3. Hide good quality caches. I used to want to hide 1%, that is hide a cache for every 100 that I found. With slightly over 16,000 finds, I'm right at 160 physical cache hides, so I've kept that goal intact. The only frustrating part of that is I can't find my own caches. I wish other people in my local area would hide more caches too, so I could go out and find some locally. I drove down to Corona today to find a couple of caches. That's about 20 or so miles one way. 

4. Hide more non-traditional caches. Geocaching came out with their year end statistics for 2019. Over 75% of all cache hides are traditional caches, a container hidden somewhere. This year, I'm going to concentrate on other types of hides. That doesn't mean I won't hide traditional caches, it just means I'm going to concentrate on the other kinds.

5. Continue to host 12-15 events. I host a monthly coffee event, so there's 12 right there.  Last year, I hosted 4 other events over the course of the year. I'm sure I'll hit this goal, as I've already hosted two events and have two other events already published for upcoming months. I also started a Roadtrip coffee event entitled Webfoot Wanderings (hmm, I wonder where I got that name from?). When I travel with enough advance planning, I want to host coffee events in other local areas mainly to meet the geocachers in that area. In the past, I've hosted events in Iowa and Arizona and have attended events in Iowa and Colorado. It's always fun to meet geocachers in other places. You get hints on local caches and get insights into some of the really good hides in a given area.

6. Attend as many Community Celebration Events as possible this year. Geocaching turns 20 years old in May and in celebration, they have come out with a different kind of event, the Community Celebration Event and have offered them to geocachers all over the world. These events will happen anytime between May 2nd and December 31st of this year. I was awarded one and will be hosting one of these events on the first day of summer this year. I'm planning on attending at least 1 event on May 2nd and possibly two, although that might be a little bit of a stretch to get to both of them on the same day. I realize a lot of people might end up doing this, but I think that a goal of over ten is very achievable.

7. Complete the Jasmer Challenge. This challenge is to find a geocache that was hidden in every month that geocaching has been around, so since May 2000. I'm missing two months, June and July 2000. The closest to my house are both in Oregon. I guess that means there's a road trip in the offing, probably in June to find those two caches.

8. Have fun.  Did I mention that already? Yes I did, but it's the most important goal in my opinion, so I'll bookend it with the other one above around the other goals. 

I'll revisit this list in December to see how well I did.