Geocaching and #GetToKnowMe Challenge

Good morning everyone.  Continuing west, we stop at the west coast of Canada, and the province of British Columbia for it's oldest and most favorited geocaches.  The oldest cache is 'Treehugger (BC's First Cache)' GC1DD.  Hidden in February, 2001 in the Vancouver area, it has been found 1,669 times and has received 482 favorite points.  The geocache with the most favorite points is also in the Vancouver area.  'CPC (Canada Place Cache)' GC3WQYC.  Hidden in September, 2012, it has been found 4,939 times (the most found geocache in BC), and has 718 favorite points to date.

There has been a challenge that is slowly making it's way around.  If you watch any geocaching YouTube content, you may have seen your favorite vlogger do this challenge.  It's called Get To Know Me.  The basis behind this is for the audience to get to know the creator a little better.  This challenge was started by Jason of Geo_Dudez.  You can catch the initial challenge here > #GetToKnowMe  Jason came up with fourteen questions, seven personal and seven geocaching related.  He challenged three vloggers in hopes that they would do the challenge and they would in turn challenge three other vloggers.  I have watched Joshua, the Geocaching Vlogger do the challenge as a live chat > Geocaching Vlogger, Cache The Line also did a live chat and a condensed version after his live chat > condensed version.  Cache Canada also did a live chat version > Cache Canada.   Adventures With Dan did his challenge as part of his podcast (also a live chat) > Adventures With Dan.  The Aussie Seemyshell did a quick live chat >  Seemyshell, and Kneel More did a straight video > Kneel More.

So far, I have only seen the video creators nominate other video creators to this challenge.  What about us bloggers?  We're geocache content creators too.  Instead of waiting for a blogger to be nominated, I decided to take the challenge myself and get the bloggers involved.  I want to give a shout out to Kneel More since I used screen shots from his video to capture the questions.

I am born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.  I did live in two different areas of the city.  My early years (up to age 12) I lived in an area called Weston.  It's sort of central Winnipeg.  One day, my parents had the bright idea to move the family to a different part of the city.  This would be Transcona.  It's about the furthest East in the city as you could get.  It was like moving to a completely different city.  New school, new friends, new everything.  Since then, I spent one year living in Calgary, Alberta with my future ex-wife.  I loved living out there, she didn't..  I came back to Winnipeg.  Since my separation, I have bounced around the past five years, living in different parts of Winnipeg, and even in the town of Beausejour for seven months.  Because I have bounced around so much, I now list my address as parts unknown.  Mostly because I never know when I'll be moving again or where I'll end up.  

I have had pets.  When I was younger, we had budgies.  Since then I have had two dogs (corgis) and fish.  My boys had one dog that passed away tragically last year and currently have a husky mix that I love and miss now that they don't live with me anymore.  My girlfriend, SM66 has pets that I have grown attached to.  Two dogs, a poodle and a yorkie/poodle.  I have had people tell me that I should get a cat.  I have never owned a cat.  I have been given the green light by my landlord to have one if I choose to do so.  We shall see.

My favorite activity as a kid was riding my bike.  I was never one to stay in the neighborhood and ride the same streets over and over.  I would explore.  As I got older, I would go anywhere in the city, or outside the city.  The major parks was always a good destination.  Another favorite activity would be listening to the radio.  I still do to this day.  When I was younger, I would wait until after the sun went down.  I would slowly move the AM dial and try to pick up radio stations from other places, mostly somewhere in the States.  I haven't done that in years.

My first car was a 1986 Chevy Chevette.  That was a great car.  It wasn't fancy, but it got me to where I needed to go.  One day, I got into an accident and the car was written off.  That was a very sad day.  I wish I still had that car today.  Can you imagine the mileage on it if I still had it?  Thirty two years of driving and all the geocaching adventures I've been on.  I'm sure the odometer would have been flipped around a few times by now.  LOL

This is a tough question.  So many good movies.  I still laugh at the jokes from the movie Airplane.  "You better tell the captain we have to land as soon as we can.  This woman has to be taken to a hospital"  "A hospital?  What is it?" "It's a big building with patients, but that isn't important right now"  Other movies that I like are the Star Trek series (I'm a bit of a Trekkie), Back to the Future series, Shawshank Redemption, and the list goes on.  I can't pick just one.

Another tough question.  I like to read biographies so there's a few famous people that I wouldn't mind having a conversation with.  Mostly it would be either musicians, actors, or sports figures.  The late Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip, Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman of the Guess Who, Paul Stanley of Kiss, and the list goes on.  Who wouldn't want to meet Tom Hanks?  How about a celebrity geocacher?  Hugh Jackman, Wil Wheaton, Kenny Wallace, or Melissa Joan Hart.  Can you imagine having a geocaching conversation with Hugh Jackman?

If I could learn to do something during this time, it would probably learn to play an instrument.  Either a piano or guitar.  I've always wanted to play the guitar.  I love music but I don't play any instruments.  I'm sure air guitar or the guitar you get when you play Rock Band doesn't count.

I first heard about geocaching around 2004 maybe.  I was doing a different hobby, money tracking (Where's George/Where's Willy) and the topic of money being placed in geocaches came up in the chat forums.  It wasn't until 2013 that I heard more about geocaching from a neighborhood dad while taking my boys to school.  While out on a family outing in early August, 2013, I accidently found the final to a multi-stage cache.  I was hooked after that.

What do I enjoy most about geocaching in my area?  That's a hard one to pin down.  The people that I have met and created a friendship with that I otherwise would never have met.  Another aspect would be some of the creative geocaches that some of the hiders have put out.  Trove Chasers and JAB007 come to mind.  I highly recommend finding their caches if you happen to be in this neck of the woods.

As much as I like to find gadget caches that were hidden by Trove Chasers or JAB007, I'll take an average cache in an amazing location.  There are so many awesome places on this planet to see and geocaching can take you there.  The sunrises/sunsets, the landscapes, the weather formations, the whole planet is our gameboard and there is so much to see.  Even roadside attractions, museums and other points of interest.  I see it as a two for one deal.  You find a geocache and see an amazing location.

Honestly, I'm proud of all the goals I've accomplished.  If I had to pick one, it would be the zombie streak as we call it around this neck of the woods.  A daily streak that lasts a whole year.  Three hundred and sixty six days.  I did that in back to back years.  I almost went three years non-stop, but pulled the plug on day 1010 (a nice binary number).

This will sound strange but I don't really have any goals at the moment.  Coming from a person who had yearly and monthly goals all the time, I haven't really set any goals since last summer.  Overall, like any geocacher, completing the D/T grid or Jasmer grid is always a goal, but I think that completing the North Dakota county challenge is probably more doable and realistic than the Jasmer or D/T.  Hopefully when the world returns to a somewhat normal again and the border opens up, I will look at working on the county challenge.

I have been asked this before and my answer remains the same; anywhere.  I would love to go coast to coast across Canada.  See more of the States, and go to countries anywhere in the world.  I would like to do this with SM66 at my side.  It would be about finding geocaches in amazing locations and creating memories.

I have so many memories from geocaching, from the places I've been to, the gadget caches I have found, to the people I have met and geocached with.  I can't pick just one.  Some of those memories do pop up in my blogs.

That's my edition of the Get To Know Me Challenge.  I will now challenge other bloggers to take the challenge.  There are plenty of bloggers out there.  Geocaching Jangie, Shorty Knits, Running Bereaved, Geocaching Junkie, Geocahing While Black, and the list goes on.  I challenge all of you.  If you are a blogger and I didn't name you, don't think you're getting away.  I nominate you as well.  That's it for this week.  Until next time (hopefully my June Cache Crate will have arrived and I'll be discussing it's journey to get to me), be safe, be happy, wash your hands, wear a mask, and have fun.  As Casey Kasem would say "keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars".  Peace out.