[Az-Geocaching] Junk Drawer Junkies & Competition

[Stephen Drake]

That's what surprised me about the Junk Drawer Junkies cache...  No one
went for it the first day.  And an easy one besides.  It seems like the
norm is for there to be a mad rush on the first day of an easy cache.
(Easy cache defined as drive to with very short hike suitable for all
cars and most people.)

You bring a lot of enjoyment to the hobby with your reputation for being
first.  The Willow Creek Cache that Team Howler put together is a good
example.  With your reputation for being first, I put forth an
extraordinary effort to be down there first, still only beating Mike the
Mutant by about 20 minutes to the cache.  That "race" made the
experience a lot of fun for me.  It didn't matter that you didn't know
you were in a race.  You set a standard and I decided I was going to
beat that standard.

I think that's a good example of why the stats and records are important
to me.  They provide a standard to measure my effort against.  In
reality I'm competing against myself and not directly with anyone else.
It gives me a goal to shoot for.

My grandfather once told me a story about growing up on a farm.  Him and
his siblings would race the neighbor farmer in doing some farm task.
The thing is, the neighbor never knew there was a race going on.  My
grandfather saw the neighbor as setting a standard or goal with which to
beat.

-srdrake

>That's the old Larry. We've had our fair share of being first to a
cache. On
>Junk Drawer Junkies - we waited almost 24 hours after the cache was
posted
>to seek it out. I can't help it if everyone else was slow getting
there. :-)
>No more jumping in the Jeep and racing to a new cache.
>
>However....
>"I'm Larry, and I'm a cachaholic."