The Travel Bugs

The family pets travel bug

The winter elf travel bug

Geocachers will occasionally use these items called trackables. There are a variety of trackable items. The travel bug tag as seen above, geocoins, cachekins, and so on and so forth. These items are typically placed into a geocache to be moved to another geocache and the tracking code is entered on the website as it happens. As the trackable owner I then can see every place that my items have gone and see the mileage they have accumulated in their travels.

I have a few trackables in the "wild" as it's called. I have one geocoin that I use simply to track my own mileage cache to cache as I do them. I have the two items pictured above. I have another elf like item out with a promotional expedia tag on it but it hasn't moved since I placed it. And I have a couple Pink Yime geocoins. I got two. One to release into the wild and one that other people can "discover" as they meet up with me in my travels. Some people are as interested in collecting the unique icons of many geocoins as they are interested in finding geocaches.

I keep my trackables simple. Some people put these complex missions on their trackables wanting to get to an end point by a certain date. They thusly become upset when that trackable moves in the wrong direction. Some people get horribly emotionally attached to their trackables becoming upset if they get stolen or lost (which is not unusual). Or if they are not logged in and out of caches correctly. I take the stance that once in the wild this will not be an object I see again. I bought it for the enjoyment of others and for my own personal amusement to see where it ends up. I'm not completely indifferent to the outcome of this object but I don't let it ruin my day.

And so far it's been nothing but enjoyable for me. I put together my pet travel bug after finding the key chain in a cache before a trip to Yellowstone. I had to have something. My old, arthritic dog was not able to go to this special pet geocache so I grabbed that and thought I could send it out symbolizing my pets. In some strange, sad irony the night I got back from Yellowstone my dog had a stroke and had to be put to sleep. It was heartbreaking as he was my old man and had been through so much with me. I watched my travel bug moving around over the next weeks filled with some sense of sorrow over what the bug signified wondering if I should change its significance to something more applicable to my dog or keep it as is. I kept it as is with many special memories of my old man with it. I watched bug as it went from Wyoming where I left it to Ottawa, and then to of all places around the Mediterranean. My bug saw the Vatican. It saw Bernini's angels. It saw Greece and Italy. And then came back to Canada and started drifting toward where I had memories and loved ones (which is where it sits today). I had hoped it would go back to Slovenia and see the places I saw but where it went was so much cooler. And I felt better. I look at and think what a life the old man had and what a life this bug has had.

The winter elf is somewhere up in Alaska taken there after a flash mob event where I sent it off with the person running the event. I sent that one out with no significance and just to travel to cool places with the hope that pictures will be taken of it in cool places. I can't blame anyone who doesn't take pictures though as I'm not always the best of photographing bugs while out (although I did get a bee travel bug with a live bee last summer).

I've moved a small army of these traveling items. Geocoins and travel bugs alike and occasionally go to their pages to see where they're ending up if anywhere. Or if they have just simply vanished off the face of the earth. Sometimes new cachers take them and fall out of the hobby and suddenly these items vanish. Or they're outright stolen. Or they are destroyed in any number of ways a cache can be destroyed. But it lends itself to some sort of connection to a community when you work on the honor system and keep these items moving. Some of these things have travelled thousands of miles and it's just amazing knowing they have passed hand to hand or cache to cache.