Geocaching Goals for 2021

This post will once again, be about geocaching, so if you're not interested, you can stop. Trust me when I say I won't be offended if you leave.

Last week, I reviewed my geocaching accomplishments from the previous year. In this post, I'm going to write about goals that I'm going to set for myself for the upcoming 2021 geocaching year. Nothing really exciting or eye opening, but I want to put them down in writing so to give me something to shoot for. 

1. Have fun - I always put this as my first goal. I'm a firm believer that things that you do in life should be fun, challenging possibly, hard possibly, but they should also be fun. If they're not fun, why do them?

2. Average 100 cache finds per month - Last year, my goal was to find at least 100 per month, and average 125 per month overall. I didn't reach either of those goals, mainly due to the pandemic. I'm not sure how long before I can get in line for a vaccine, which will allow me to take some longer trips again, so I'm committing to just an average of 100 per month. That will put me above last year when I found slightly over 1000 geocaches in the entire year. Granted, the first 500 were found in the first two months, so I was off to a roaring start, but as noted above, the pandemic hit and everything shut down.

3. Hide good quality caches, including more non-traditional caches - This is a continuation of two of my goals from last year. I hid only 5 traditional cache hides last year, but I also hosted 5 events, and hid 6 Multi-caches, 4 Wherigo caches, 8 Mystery caches, and 2 Letterbox Hybrid caches. So I want to continue with this, probably less Mystery caches and more of the other types listed above. Once events are allowed again, I'll start back up hosting them as well, but I suspect that that won't happen until most of us are vaccinated, so perhaps in the fall?

4. Color the grid - If you look at the grid, you'll notice the bottom half of the calendar has all of the dates in a darker shade of green than the top half. There are several challenge caches out there that challenge geocachers to find a certain number of caches on each calendar date, the obvious first one is to find one on every day of the year. The geocaching grid, changes colors at the following number intervals, 1, 11, 26, 100, and I believe 500, but I'm not sure on the last one. Anyway, after the pandemic set in and a lot of outdoor activity was curtailed originally, most of my goals went out the window, so I set up new goals in my mind, one being to get all of the numbers up to at least 26 find per date, since I'd already accomplished 11 per date several years ago. As you can see, I started working on this in earnest sometime in late July. The next date to color is this Friday and Saturday, the 22nd, and 23rd.

This is, in my mind, a challenging goal since there aren't a whole lot of unfound caches close to my house anymore, so I have to travel farther to find caches, either up to the high desert, or east to Redlands, or south into Orange County. I don't mind that, but when there are 4 or 5 days in a row, where I'm going to need to find caches if I want to accomplish this goal, then the logistics of finding areas where there are enough caches to find comes into play. The end of this month, or the months of April and May will be more challenging if I'm going to complete this goal. It's a game though and if I don't complete this goal, it's not the end of the world, but I'd like to complete it on July 28th, which would be the last date I need to color. There are at least two challenge caches south of me that want 20 or 26 finds per date for all calendar dates. I'm close to that, so it would be cool to finish that goal this year, then plan a trip down to San Diego County to get those two caches.

4. Find some caches in new counties - As you can see on the map, I've found at least one cache in every county in California, Arizona, and Nevada, so this will involve some travel, which I'm OK with, once I've gotten vaccinated against COVID-19. One of the goals I had last year was to complete my Jasmer Challenge (finding a cache hidden every month since geocaching started), and to accomplish this, I'll have to travel to Oregon. So I figured, I might be able to accomplish last year's goal and this year's in a similar trip. This is all contingent on getting the vaccine in the near future, but I'm confidant this will happen sooner as opposed to later.

5. Complete at least 2 challenge caches I've already signed - The beauty of challenge caches is you don't have to wait to sign the log until you've accomplished that particular challenge. You sign the logsheet, post a note on the cache page and then work toward that particular goal. Up in Kern County, there is a series of challenge caches, of which at this time, I've only not signed on of them, but I haven't qualified for all of them (got that?), so I can work on any one of those. The easiest to accomplish would be to go up to Kern County and find 17 more caches there. One of the challenges I've signed is to find 500 caches in Kern County. I'm at 483 right now, so once I can travel a little bit more freely, that one should be easy to complete. Then I need to start working on some of the others that I don't qualify for yet.

6. Have fun - As noted last year, and above, I've already posted this, but I just want to reiterate that if it's not fun, then I shouldn't be doing this.

So there you have it, my geocaching goals for this year. Comments on this page are, as always, welcome. Thanks go to my friend Monica, who took the first photo of me finding a cache this summer.

Reviewing accomplishments

This post is all about geocaching, so if you're not interested in geocaching, you can leave.  No, really, I won't be offended.

Last year at this time, I posted my goals that I wanted to accomplish with regards to geocaching in 2020. Just looking back on them, I didn't hit many of the goals, but then again, we all know what hit last year and I'm sure most people who made geocaching goals had the same out come over the course of the year. Still, I wanted to go back and review them to see how close I came and what I want to do in this upcoming year. Obviously, goals are works in progress, so as I reach goals, I'll probably add more goals to the list in the future. I didn't do that last year, mainly because last year was just a plain, weird year.

Goals for last year were:

1. Have fun

2. Find at least 100 caches a month, average 125 a month

3. Hide good quality caches

4. Hide more non-traditional caches

5. Host 12 to 15 geocaching events

6. Attend as many Community Celebration Events as possible

7. Complete the Jasmer Challenge

8. Have fun

So, let's look and see what happened. As you can see, my goals were bookended by the two words, Have Fun. If I'm going to do this, I want it to be fun. And, when I went out it was fun, but it was also different. I've always enjoyed caching with other individuals and outside of the first two months of the year, geocaching was pretty much a solitary event this past year, as it should have been expected.

The second goal was to find 100 caches a month and average 125 per month. Well, you can look at the graph on the right and see that didn't happen. I would be willing to bet that most people's geocaching habits went out the window once the pandemic hit and we went into shelter in place mode, but once we got more information as to how this particular disease works, it became apparent that it was fairly safe to go out and geocache by yourself. I'm not going to keep this goal in place as I have other goals that I want to accomplish that might get in the way of this particular goal. So I guess I'll be playing this one by ear.

Lumping the next three goals together, I partially accomplished that one. Last year, I hid 30 caches, of which only 5 were traditional cache hides. I hosted 5 events before the pandemic hit, so I would have reached that goal easily, and technically, I really did hit that goal, although it won't show on the stat sheet since I've been hosting virtual geocaching coffee events every two weeks since the middle of June.

I also hid 6 multi-caches, 4 Wherigo caches, 8 mystery caches, 2 letterbox hybrids and 2 Adventure Labs. As far as quality, I'll have to leave that up to the finders, but I seem to have seen an uptick in the number of favorite points my caches have been receiving, so I guess that's a good thing.

There literally was only 1 Community Celebration event that I could have attended before everything got shut down (event-wise) at geocaching, and I wasn't comfortable attending at that time, so that goal went by the wayside. I'm sure, eventually, we'll be able to attend events again, once vaccinations take hold and things start to open up again, but I would willing to bet that it probably won't happen until this summer. I'm taking the "Let's be patient" attitude towards events, but once it's safe, I'm hoping that we can have events again. It's fun to get together with other geocachers and just talk about geocaching without having people give you that glazed eye look.

The last goal was to complete my Jasmer Challenge. I feel this one would have been accomplished this year, were it not for the pandemic. For those of you who are still reading along and are not geocachers, the Jasmer Challenge is to find at least one geocache that has been hidden in every month that geocaching has been around, meaning I need to find a geocaching that was hidden in May 2000, June 2000, etc., etc., ad nauseam all the way to the present day. As of this time, the only two months that are still eluding me are June and July 2000. The graph hasn't totally updated as I have already found a cache hidden in January of this year. The plan last year was for a road trip to Oregon. There are caches that were hidden in both those months as well as a cache hidden in May 2000 which I planned to get this past summer. Once again, the pandemic did a number on this goal, but eventually, that goal will fall too, if not this year, then it will become a priority in 2022.

So there you have it. It was fun, some goals were accomplished, while others weren't. In retrospect, I think that because I didn't go out and cache as much, I was able to concentrate more on some of my hides and that, in itself, might have contributed to higher quality caches. I'll need to remember that in the future. I think I'll create a new goal post in the next couple of days. I think if I did it here, the entry would become too large, so it will be better to break it up into two different parts. 

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.