On February 29th, leap day, Groundspeak (the company behind Geocaching.com) set the goal to double the number of leap day cachers logging a find (on geocaching.com) vs. leap day 2008. Considering the significance of leap day to geocachers, this was considered a fairly lofty goal, but that significance (along with a little online reward) also meant that there was the opportunity to smash the goal too. And smash it we did!
To understand the significance of leap day, consider this; geocaching.com keeps fairly detailed statistics for its members' geocaching activity. These stats will vary from how many caches per day (average) to an itemized listing of caches found on a given day of the year. This last stat is kept on a chart that is referred to as your "grid". Your grid is visible to other members, and therefore something that lends itself to being a source of pride and eventually friendly competition. [Note: geocachers are overall the most welcoming group to total strangers and least agressive that I have met. Friendly competition is truely friendly among geocachers!]
When you have made a find on a given day that square on your grid will go from a "0" with a white background, to a number with a shaded background (as the numbers get higher the shading gets darker). The grid is a very visible way to see what days you have not found any caches. The longer you participate in this activity the more shading you will see as the white squares disappear. On the grid of the most active cachers, the box for leap day may be the last remaining white box for years!
I love to geocache! I will do it by myself, I will do it with my family, I will do it with strangers. Heck I would do it in a box and with a fox... One thing I don't care for, however, is geocaching in the snow. The difficulty is amped up so much by not knowing if the actual hiding place is buried or not (on the upside you can often find footprints leading you to the beacon easily!) The only other thing that will make me avoid geocaching is wood tics, and that is reflected in my grid! When I discovered my grid last fall, I had no shading in the months of January, February, and one shaded day in July, three in June, August and December. As I said, I don't like the snow or wood tics!
Even though I have been very slow with my caching activity lately, I made a mental note long ago that I was going to get fill up that one very vital white box, even if I had to call in sick or do it in the dark. As (bad) luck would have it, on the evening of February 28th, the state of Minnesota was hit with our first very major snow storm of the extremely dry winter. The nature of the rain falling first and turing to ice covered by snow, even made my kids school district call for the first snow day in over 12 years! Until the plow came down my street, my little Civic was not taking me to any geocaches that day. To make a long story short, my plans for making this my biggest day ever went unrealized, but after three frustruating DNF's I was at least able to make sure my geocaching activity was able to add to a record setting day!
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