It's not about the numbers...or is it?

I am still fairly new to geocaching. Well it still FEELS like I'm new compared to most of my caching buddies. I'm still under 300 finds in a year and a half. Does my find count matter? Well in the grand scheme of life, no, but in my mind it does.

While I enjoy caching as a way to take me places and enjoy time in the great outdoors with my family, I am a very competitive person at times. Coming into the game late there are so many people with a huge lead on me and there is no way I can ever be in the top cachers in the country list. So what's a gal like me to do? I find other ways to compete.

One of the ways I satisfy the monster of competition in my soul is to challenge myself. I set goals to reach certain milestones by the end of the year. My first 6 months caching, I challenged myself to find 150 caches. December 30th I was out with the entire Royal Bug Family tracking down the 16 caches I needed to reach my goal. I did find a bunch of micros that day, but we also found several small parks in a neighboring town that we didn't know existed. My kids, who normally aren't happy with a day with mostly micros, had a ball that day making sure we reached my goal. My goal for 2007 was to reach number 250. I was 5 short on New Years Eve, so we headed out for a quick run! In three hours we grabbed the 5 caches and saw a pink elephant!

I also satisfy my need for a win by using the site It's Not About the Numbers to record my cache stats. I can push myself to get a higher average terrain or difficulty rating or something as make sure I keep my status as one of the top 10 wordiest cachers in Kentucky with my average log length. I'm sure it's silly to most, but it keeps me happy!

I found one final way to make caching a "sport" for myself. I realized that a good friend I met through caching was fairly close to me in the numbers game. He's not a big numbers person, but he has humored me with a challenge. Whichever of us reaches 499 first, picks any cache in the continental US for the other to take us both for cache number 500. At the time I wrote this blog we are at 253 (me) and 252 (him). I don't do a lot of caching in the winter and he's currently stationed in Iraq for 3 more months. Come warm weather though, the race is REALLY on!

Maybe after I win this competition, I'll make my next goal to complete the KY Delorme Challenge. Yeah...for me, the numbers keep me caching.