[Az-Geocaching] Geocaching: Team vs. Individual Statistics...

[Joe Brekke]

I think that most teams have someone that is the main "Cacher"  I never kept stats and it is just a guess, but I'd say that about 3/4 of our finds were as some variant of a team, our team being myself, my wife (who rarely, begrudgingly caches with us), and my 3 kids.  The other 1/4 were usually me stopping home on the way from work or something.

Most of the time that I cached in Arizona, I only had 2 children, one of who was a baby and later a toddler, and quite the little dickens at that.

So personally I'd have to say that I disagree with this statement:  Teamwork is easier!  I believe it is MUCH easier for teams to find a given set of 25 caches than for an individual to do so.  

As a lot of you know, I carried that baby/toddler to most of the caches that we visited together on a baby Backpack.  That includes hikes up Camelback, Usury, South, Piestewa, and many other Mts/peaks.  Add in the fact of getting kids in and out of child seats, trying to get out of a park without stopping at the Big Toy to play, changing diapers, trying to find the #&(% cheese stick to try to get him to stop crying, trying to keep him from running off as I got him in and out of the backpack, making the occasional trek to a cache with him walking and having to chase after him as he runs away in between furtive glances in trying to find the cache, Trying to get out of the McDonald's playland after a quick lunch, Letting my 11 year old drive on state trust lands, and silently mouthing a prayer that we all would see our wife and mother again, letting my son run the GPS and backtracking over and over as he "zero's" on the cache, trying to get close enough under some of the branches to the trees without smacking my toddler on the limbs or having him fall out as I stooped over...I can go on and on...and the wonderful thing is that I wouldn't change a bit of it.

That time with my kids was wonderful...my wife worked weekend nights as a maternity nurse when we were in AZ.  Geocaching was a way for the men to get out of the house to allow her to sleep.  We never did that many in a day, I'd say the most we ever did was an average outing for a lot of people, but we had fun doing it.  It gave me time to spend with them and really talk to my now 13 y.o. son.

So I'd have to say it would have been MUCH easier for me to find a given set of 25 caches by myself, but it surely wouldn't have been as FUN...and I hope that is the reason we all do this, is to have fun.

Joe 
TeamBlunder
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