Sunday 31 July 2011

There I was slacking off...

5...4...3...2...1...

...when I realised that it's Elimination Day tomorrow at The Great Travel Bug Knockout, so I'd best get the blog up-to-date!

The big question is: Is the sheep a sitting duck? Mat Smith's Hazards Of Geocaching 2 (The Sheep) Travel Bug went missing months ago, but it's distance travelled of 899.2 miles has kept it out of danger. However, castlegrice's George's Fun Bus 2 TB, which survived by the skin of it's teeth (the chrome of it's bumper?) last month, has been retrieved from the Scottish cache that it was resting in by Spanish cacher urriellu. If urriellu dips GFB2 into a cache back home before the deadline of noon tomorrow it will surely add sufficient milage to pass wemnog's The Skylark TB, which was picked up by cacher a1nnie, who then placed it into this Mega Event, adding 184.57 miles to it's distance travelled, but if it's quickly collected and placed by another cacher... Yes, it's all "ifs" at the moment. More worrying for wemnog must be that Travel Bugs sometimes disappear at busy events...

In other news, Canadian cachers Volkswag took Hediya's Love and Peace (Maan) TB to this cache, then this one, and finally this one where they passed it on to fellow Canadians MaliBooBoo.

Another entry to indulge in some pointless dipping is lgxkls' Hazards of Geocaching 1 - Karon's Knockout Racer, which was retrieved by Slovenian cacher lynx.attentus, who dipped the little bovine into this cache, adding 1.84 miles to it's distance travelled, and then proceeded to dip it into this cache, this one, this one and this one, and has retained possession of the Travel Bug.

Finally, oceanlue07970's Half Hearted TB has been picked up from the French cache that it was resting in by Belgian cacher SOSATO, who has logged an intention to take the shiny little bug back to Tintin's homeland with him.

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Sunday 17 July 2011

Fight! Fight! Fight!

It looks like a little battle brewing between the 5th and 6th placed entries in The Great Travel Bug Knockout, with lgxkls' Hazards of Geocaching 1 - Karon's Knockout Racer TB having been retrieved by cacher superhrac007, who then quickly placed the little bovine into this cache, 2.59 miles away. In response to this, Smart451's Smart Car 10 Knockout Racer has been retrieved by occasional German cacher Svenimateur.

Hmmmm, one has been placed into a puzzle cache, whilst the other has been picked up by a cacher who has only logged 5 finds in the last 9 months. Which situation will prove to be the most beneficial?

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Monday 11 July 2011

Smart Car 10 is hunting beef!

German cacher SuRosis has indeed placed Smart451's Smart Car 10 Knockout Racer Travel Bug into a cache in Germany, this driveby (how appropriate!) in Bavaria, adding 780.94 miles to it's distance travelled, and putting it barely 50 miles behind lgxkls' Hazards of Geocaching 1 - Karon's Knockout Racer cow TB.

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Which entry has more than doubled it's distance travelled?

...the answer is oceanblue07970's Half Hearted Travel Bug, which was picked up from the French cache that it was resting in by French cacher ptittomtom, who then placed it into this cache in the Catalan speaking area of the French Pyreneés close to the border with Spain. This move added 453.57 miles to HH's distance travelled, more than doubling it's milage and moving the shiny little TB up 2 places in The Great Travel Bug Knockout's rankings.

This is bad news for castlegrice's George's Fun Bus 2 TB, which only just squeaked through last month's Elimination Day and now has to travel more than 300 miles to exceed the distance travelled by wemnog's The Skylark Travel Bug, which is made even more difficult by the tiny dinghy tendency to continually make little moves, which of course all add up; The Skylark's latest move added 27.35 miles to it's total distance when cacher Oofy placed it into this Essex cache.

Another entry making a move this week, albeit a much smaller one, was current 2nd-placed entry, Hediya's Love and Peace (Maan) TB which was retrieved by cachers Volkswag, who dipped it into this cache adding 0.56 of a mile to it's distance travelled. They subsequently dipped Love and Peace (Maan) into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 more caches (the last one is a Virtual!), none of which add any official distance to LaP(Maan)'s record due to The Great Travel Bug Knockout's only-the-first-dip-by-a-cacher-counts rule.

Finally, two more entries have been retrieved recently, although neither has yet been placed into a cache; Smart451's Smart Car 10 Knockout Racer may finally be waving goodbye to Sweden after being picked up by Bavarian cacher SuRosis who is planning to take the little white car back to Germany with them, and cooper troopers' the noble traveller TB, which has been snaffled-up by Dutch cacher Schaduw1, who posted the following snap of the tiny TARDIS:


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Monday 4 July 2011

Unhappy Hoppy

No doubt you're all dying from the suspense, but now it can be revealed: the entry in The Great Travel Bug Knockout eliminated on July 1st was fuzziebear3's Happy Hoppy Travel Bug, and somehow I just can't help but think that whoever found the little amphibian resting in it's box experienced something like this...

Ah, a redo of the classic One Froggy Evening, possibly the greatest Merry Melody of them all? Oh, and am I the only one who loved that scene in Mel Brooks' Spaceballs..?

Although we bid farewell to the little green fellow, life goes on for other entries in The Knockout, with cooper troopers' the noble traveller TB adding 257.78 miles to it's distance travelled by being placed into this interesting puzzle/multi cache near Arnhem in the east of The Netherlands.

Another entry to add some milage to it's total is Smart451's Smart Car 10 Knockout Racer TB, which logged another 38.79 miles after being placed into this Swedish cache.

Slovenian cachers Kassiopeia82 dipped lgxkls' Hazards of Geocaching 1 - Karon's Knockout Racer into this cache, then dropped it into this one.

Finally, wemnog's The Skylark Travel Bug continues it's voyage around the caches of Greater London, having been retrieved by cacher Oofy.

Although we're now down to the final ten surviving entries in The Great Travel Bug Knockout things are looking healthy with entries currently available for retrieval from caches in 7 different countries on 3 continents; the U.K., France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Slovenia in Europe, plus Canada in North America and New Zealand in Australasia. Go get 'em cachers!

Scroll to bottom of this page for current official Knockout placings