I’ll have you know that I am the proud recipient of the newest souvenirs of the Wheel of Challenges, the ones for Favorite Fan. Getting the Easy one was, well, easy. I would have gotten that one regardless. A cache a day for ten days would accomplish that. Getting the Hard one was, well, unexpected. I checked my score on the Leaderboard and saw that I was almost to the finish line. How? I hadn’t found that many caches. I went through the caches for which I had gotten points, and the answer became obvious. A caching buddy of mine had given favorite points to a bunch of caches I owned that he had previously found. With a few more days of caching, I was there. I doubt this is what the Mothership intended when they began this challenge, but it has been done. To be terribly honest, it had occurred to me as soon as I learned what the challenge was. And I’m certainly not the only one. Some of my other friends had already mentioned it. I’ve seen chatter regarding it on various fora. And, of course, I’ve used it myself. I have over five hundred favorite points, so I was happy to spread a few around to some of my caching friends. Not enough to send anyone to the moon, mind you. But enough to put a few people on their way. In a few weeks, I’m going to look at the Leaderboard again, see who has gotten close, and give some people a lunar trip to Souvenir Town. And yes, I just mercilessly murdered that metaphor.
For a very long time, I’ve seen similar souvenir challenges and thought they were too easy. This has been the first such that I’ve found truly challenging. Getting a hundred for the Hard one last month was a challenge. I might not have succeeded if I hadn’t gone for a caching run. This case was similar. I thought about making a trip to San Antonio for some higher cache density I don’t have up here in Austin these days but, again, friendship proved to be the key. Something something community, something something teamwork something dream work something.
Geocaching While Black 