Geocaching - 2012 and 2013

This will of necessity be a very short post. Geocaching, while I claim to have not lost an interest in it, was not much of a factor in spending my free time last year. After 558 caches in 2010 and 327 more in 2011, I started the year at 885 and ended the year a paltry 40 caches later at 925.

Along the way, I did add some additional geography, notably the state of Texas in January, Washington DC on the family trip in the summer, and several upstate New York counties during the Adirondacks trip with the guys. It does seem that caching while traveling was about the only caching I did.

This year, I intend to get back out and do some more of this, hopefully with a daughter or two (or a brother) in tow. I know that Dave would be more than willing to take part in some hiking/caching trips, as this is the kind of caching he likes to do, and we can get outside, get some exercise, and kill two birds with one stone. The greatest enjoyment I get from gecaching continues to be the fact that it takes me to places, and allows me to see, more things than I would see otherwise. I love collecting new geography...

As for goals in 2013, I will be as vague with this as I was with my miniatures hobby goals posted earlier this month. This ties back into something that my wise older brother mentioned in a blog post of his at some point; I have chosen this year to have "intentions" and not "goals." Goals seem very specific and beg to be measured. Goals can almost become a burden. Intentions are more an expression of where your heart is at at a given point in time. So I have intentions.

• Simply put, I want to be more active than I was this year (which could be rephrased as being active at all).
• Going into 2012, based on prior history, it was inconceivable that I would not reach the major caching milestone of 1,000 finds. But to quote Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride (with regards to "inconceivable")... "I don't think it means what you think it means." I managed to come up way short. I will not come up short again this year. I don't know how far beyond 1,000 I will get, but I will get this milestone. I promise myself that much. If I could get 250-ish finds and end near 1200, that would be a fine year. Anything beyond that would be a bonus.
• I have this "collecting" thing about getting new geographies. I would like to add a few states and some new counties in the local area. The guys trip for this year is leaning toward Maine, so that would seem to be a no-brainer. Perhaps business travel will add a state or two. Some road trips in the summer to Jersey, Maryland or Delaware beaches would add some counties.
• In relation to the silly statistics that cachers keep track of, I would like to fill in some of the empty dates on my calendar (the ultimate goal being a find on every calendar date in a 366 day year). 2012 was a leap year, and I did get a cache on February 29, so that is not something I will have to wait until 2016 to deal with. I begin the year with just short of 260 dates; I would like to get 20 or 30 more. This would require judicious planning of "on the way to work" and lunchtime cache finds. In this case, the fact that I have been only an occasional cacher in 2012 should help. New caches have been placed that I have not been paying attention to or have dealt with.

The most important thing by far will be to get back to making this a fun part of my limited spare time. I still have the interest...I just need to make the time.