East Coast F&L Drops

I’m in Plainfield, Vermont, where I teach at Goddard College. I took the opportunity yesterday to drop Juan TB3P00 in Country View. It’s an aptly named cache. Here’s the view:

Meanwhile, my geocaching enthusiast brother, David, planted Juan TB33P02 in College Woods Cache, which is in Connecticut.

So the breakdown thusfar of where these Juans are:

Juan TB33NWZ started in Port Townsend, WA and is now outside Asheville, NC.

Juan TB33NX9 started in Port Townsend, WA and is now outside Chico, CA.

Juan TB33NX8 started in Seattle, WA and is now 28 miles east of its original location.

Juan TB33P02 started in New Haven, CT and is still there.

Juan TB33P00 was dropped yesterday in Plainfield, VT.

Oh So Wholesome

I am almost nauseated by how wholesome this is, but here’s a really succinct explanation of what exactly geocaching is.

By the way, I activated another story this weekend and put it in the hands of my brother from Connecticut, who promises to plant it someplace on the east coast. Stay tuned.

Juan TB33NX9 Now Near Chico, CA

Just got alerted that Juan TB33NX9 has been planted in ???A Puzzle Cache??? by a geocacher named rubberpaws. This is the Juan that traveled from Port Townsend, WA to Grass Valley California. Now it has traveled 58.7 miles NW for a total of 681.5 miles traveled.

Rubberpaws had this to say about Juan on Juan’s log: “picked this one up and later read it to a few geocaching friends, we all thought it was kinda of stupid, with a total predicable ending, was it suppose to be funny?”

This got me wondering whether how the perceived quality of these stories will affect how diligently geocachers move them along. I wonder if someone who loves one of the Found and Lost stories is more likely to pick it up and pass it along. Will liking the stories influence how much geocachers want to share them? I suppose what I’m considering here is a physical manifestation of word-of-mouth. That said, even though rubberpaws found the story lacking, she (I’m assuming, based on rubberpaw’s profile gallery) still kindly planted it for the next geocacher to discover.

This weekend I also got an email from Nazanne, the geocacher who moved Juan TB33NWZ from coastal Washington state to North Carolina. Here’s what Nazanne had to say:

“I had a great time back in North Carolina. I had time to do some caching and it was really fun to explore some territory that is very different from here. I’m a little concerned that particular cache doesn’t get a lot of traffic so I hesitated before dropping it but I wanted to be sure I didn’t bring it back to WA. Hopefully it won’t sit there too long. I needed a container large enough to hold Juan and it seemed like I was finding mostly micros.

The funny thing was that the day I picked up Juan I had told myself I wasn’t going to pick up any TBs because I wasn’t sure how long it was going to be before I could place them. But I also was in a situation where I was going to have to be sitting and waiting and a story was just what I needed so I picked it up.”

This is exactly what so excites me about this project. The idea that someone can stumble upon a story where they least expect it and spend a couple minutes reading it while sitting on a log. This makes me fantastically happy.

Juan TB33NWZ Moved to North Carolina

Geocacher Nazanne transported Juan TB33NWZ 2363.7 miles east to a geocache called Piercing the Vail, just outside Chapel Hill, North Carolina. So the first two stories I dropped both made their first moves to caches out of state. Thanks, Nazanne!

Juan TB33NX9 Moved to Grass Valley, CA

The very first Found and Lost story has been moved 622.8 miles from Port Townsend, WA to Grass Valley, CA, where it has been placed in a cache called Zed’s Find by a professional juggler named Barry. Barry is the husband of Ann, one of my former Goddard students. Here’s what Barry looks like:

Juan TB33NX8 dropped

I dropped this here this morning with my son, Miles.

Behind the Scenes

This blog has been silent awhile, but gears are whirling in the world of Found and Lost. I just applied for a King County 4 Culture Grant, which would allow me to produce the stories on a bigger scale than I currently can. I’ll buy my own laminator! Just think of the around-the-house uses I’ll find for it. My fingers are crossed.

Chatter on Geocaching.com

I posted a message on the boards at geocaching.com and have been marveling at the response. A number of geocachers with far more experience than me are offering to help spread the stories far and wide. An editor for an online geocaching magazine who goes by the awesome handle TheAlabamaRambler has solicited a piece and I’d love to send him something (though I won’t be sending the actual Found and Lost stories; I’m committed to them only being available via cache). I’m starting to think more about my “mule” program in which I’ll send stories to various geocachers to distribute worldwide. More on this soon.

Another geocacher named Snoogans alerted me to something called GeoWoodstock 8, a convention to be held July 3 in Carnation, WA. Sounds very cool.

Dropped TB33NWZ in Romp Remains II

Just took a chilly walk to drop this here.

Here’s what it looked like on my walk.

Hugo House Blog Love

The Hugo House blog now features a neat-looking image that lives permanently on the right side of the page which links to this blog. Kind of makes Found and Lost look like something involving pith helmets and immunity challenges.

Big thanks to Brian McGuigan. He’s doing an amazing job at the House, with the Hugo blog and with his legendary Cheap Wine and Poetry and Cheap Beer and Prose readings. When was the last time you heard about people being turned away at the door for a literary reading? Yeah, they’re that amazing.