Thursdays

Well, it's Thursday again. That's the day of the week, when I don't go caching. I'm not sure why this has happened this year, but for whatever reason, it's becoming more of a joke to me than anything else. The last time I've been caching on a Thursday and actually found a cache was December 11th, 2008, almost 6 months ago. I don't know what it is about Thursday, since it's usually an easy day for me to get away from work and look for a quick cache and dash if the need arises. I've also had four weeks of vacation time during those past 6 months where I could have found caches on a Thursday yet didn't. Next Thursday, is June 11, the last day of school, a minimum day and exactly 6 months from my last Thursday cache find. I think I'll go caching after work that day.

Lies, Damned Lies, and...

Mark Twain popularized the statement, "There are three types of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics." As I looked at my calendar for the month of September, I knew this particular month would be a lean month. Things have conspired to keep me from getting out on any kind of regular basis to do any kind of geocaching. I was lucky enough last weekend to get out with my friend Chaosmanor and find seven caches, otherwise my streak of finding at least 10 caches per month would end at 34. As it is, looking at my stats, my 2 year streak of finding at least 20 per month is in serious jeopardy and with only three more days this month, I would be willing to bet that it's dead. Yeah, I could go out later on today and possibly again tomorrow to get those elusive 9 caches to save the streak and further the stats, but would there really be a point in that other than to keep a streak alive?

I also thought back over the month. Was it a frustrating month? I'd be lying if I said it was. One weekend, I chose to stay home and rest. I really did a couch potato imitation in front of the TV that weekend watching a lot of football. Another weekend, I chose to grab some flags and dashpoints in some of the other GPS Games I play and not do any kind of geocaching.

Last weekend, I went caching both days, Saturday with my youngest son and Sunday as noted above. The Tadpole and I found three and were quite happy with the finds as were Chaosmanor and I on Sunday. I went out caching today and had 5 DNFs for a variety of reasons, mostly muggles in the nearby vicinity, but there were other things that caused them as well. I'll post about one attempt separately. The walk was nice, so it wasn't a frustrating day. More on this as well in another post.

I guess the stats don't show everything. There are a lot of month out there where I found a lot of caches. There are also a lot of month where I didn't find very many at all. The more important part, I think is that I had fun doing both. This month was slow, next month might see more cache finds or maybe less. It's all a game anyway, isn't it? The stats pic just shows my caching per month over the time I've been caching. Click on it to get a bigger image if you'd like to look at it in depth. At a quick glance, you can see September on the far right of the graph. It was just a slow month, that's all, and that's fine. The statistics aren't going to lie on this one.

Slowdown

I went back to work today, spending most of the morning in teacher meetings. It was a good day overall as I got my room ready for students to come back to school next Monday. For whatever reason, the months of September and October have traditionally become my "slowdown" months for caching. Because I'm off in the summer, I tend to find a lot more caches during that time as opposed to other times of the year. If I were a betting man, I would have bet that I've found more caches in August than in July, but the graph proves me wrong.

What I have noticed over time is the big drop off in September and October. With the exceptions of those two months, I've found at least 115 caches in every other month. I know I don't have any holidays during those months, but neither do I have holidays in February, yet the numbers for that month are high in comparison. I suspect that I'm in the "let's make sure that everything is running smoothly" mode at the start of a school year and I don't have time for much caching. In my opinion, that's a good thing. Starting out the first of the year on a good note is a good thing for a smoothly running classroom. As the year progresses, I have more time for extra curricular activity because the classes are running smoothly by that time. It takes time and effort to do this, so I'll not quibble that the numbers are like that. What it also might mean is I might not have as much time to post in here as well. We'll see what happens over the course of the next two months.

Graph was taken from stats generated from INATN.