What is geocaching?

now going to have a brick and mortar store. Yeah, very proud of her, and you and Jerry are coming to the grand opening, uh tomorrow, and uh yeah, I'm looking forward to the rosemary garlic chicken wings Chef Charles is going to be made. They are delicious. I'll report back to all of you s Y s K listeners and just whether or not they are delicious. I wouldn't take Chuck's word for it, Okay, Um, So Chuck, you know we're talking about today? Yes, actually, let me throw

this out. This is totally unrelated. Um and it's uh just too interesting to not mention I was talking to Ben Bolan, evil mad creator of stuff they don't want you to know, soon to be released hopefully hopefully, uh, and he was telling me he just found out that the average house price in Detroit right now eleven and a half thousand dollars. Really and you just this has nothing to do with what we're doing, you know, but just can you that boggles the mind. Yeah, that's really cheap.

So anyway, after this, we're moving to Detroit. Okay, okay, instead of Detroit housing prices, we are actually talking about geo cashing, right, yes. And I want to go ahead and say that this has been off requested by many many people, geo catchers, I guess, and uh, I just want to apologize and say I didn't save all your names, especially the dude last week. I had a guy that we emailed back and forth like three or four times in a few hours, and he was actually geo cashing.

Why he was writing me and listening to our podcast on his iPhone while he was geo cashing. Think that gets things done. So he kind of feel whenever someone says they listened to us in India when they went on their trip or when they did this I always feel like we're kind of brought along, and I always thank people for bringing us along. Yeah, instead, we're actually stuck here in the studio. Apparently we also cure homesickness.

We've gotten several emails and uh from Atlantins. Yes, and um, I've heard firsthand stories about people who were sitting in airports in India. Um, who would who were who was just totally homesick? And let's listen to our podcast and was cured. That's nice or comforted at least, all right, geo Cashing? Yeah, yeah, you ready, Yeah, I'm ready. All right, let's do it. Let me give you a little background info, chuck. Um, Actually, geo Cashing can be traced directly back to Korean Airlines

Flight double O seven. Really in this commercial airline, Um, this commercial plane was flying I guess in Asia and trapes into inadvertently traps into Soviet airspace and was shot down by the Soviets. I remember that. So as a result, President Reagan said, Okay, we've got this kind of GPS system that the Air Force has been using for a while, but we need to make this commercially available so that this doesn't happen again. Really, so they did. Reagan started

the whole thing. Reagan did. It was well, it was already in effect, but he made sure that this program really went to town. UM. So they started launching more and more satellites UH for Global Positioning system right uh. And they eventually it became available to the public U two airlines, to whoever wanted it. But there was a little glitch, a purposeful glitch in the system. I did not know about this until I read up on this

sounds kind of selective availability. Yeah, basically, they they intentionally made the GPS systems available to the public um off base by a little bit, by about three three hundred feet, because they wanted the military, US military to have the most advanced system to pinpoint a location, and they wanted to get you know, your average Joe just in the general area. And so if you're a Korean pilot, you you give yourself a three hundred foot buffer when you're

flying along you know, Soviet air space. Easy enough, right, But if you, you know, are the manufacturer of onboard GPS system a car, you don't want your customers going you know, Tom, Tom, You're a stupid Like every time you ask a UH for directions right right, So there was a certain limitation by that three hundred feet because you know, turn right three feet ago. It's not not very helpful. But President Clinton comes along and sees the

value of GPS. I like this stuff. Yeah, that's exactly what he said, and he liked it enough so that he issued an executive order saying we need to get selective availability offline within ten years. That was right. It was supposed to be two oh six, but for us it happened a lot six years sooner. Right. So, now everybody thinks Tom Tom's as smart as he can be, and this hobby comes about almost immediately because you could pinpoint location. Strickland says, he wrote this article between six

and not bad. Right. So, so this whole um wealth of handheld GPS devices hit the market, and right off the bat, a guy named Dave Olmer decides to test how well his works. I don't know what model he had, yeah, by hiding uh an item and going and marking its location, then leaving and coming back and see if he could redirect him back there and a test. He left a little little box and went on a website of his

and um said, here is here's a box. Here's the coordinates. Uh. And I think he wrote very famously, take some stuff, leave some stuff. He put a couple of trinkets in there. That's really what started the whole thing. And not only did it start it, it's pretty much the same way nine years later, like this initial geo cash hunt that he created. Uh, it immediately created the model that people follow today. Well, it's a good model if it ain't broke.

You know, it's a pretty basic, simple thing. It's fun. I just realized we haven't actually said what geo cashing is, right, Yeah, I we should probably get geo cashing is when you use your GPS too. It's basically like a treasure hunt. People will leave these cashes, um, you know, hidden in a location, and you and with the coordinates and you get from a website, let's say, and then you go and try and find it, and they have little trinkets

in there you can take. Then you leave your own little trinket, and it's just like a big treasure hunt that anyone can participate in. Sure, anybody who has access to the internet, GPS receiver and very very important a topographical map. Yeah, that would help um. And actually also strict. I have to say Jonathan Strickland, who is one of our colleagues and co hosts of tech Stuff, who you know from Necronomicon. Yeah, yeah, that came out. Um he

he makes an excellent point. You want to make sure that the map that you are using was made after night and the reason being is in that year we switched over the type of data that's used to create maps or to position people, so they're The World Geodetic System of nineteen eighty four was the new convention for creating position and creating maps that's used for GPS. All

that stuff took. It replaced the North American datam System of So if you have a map that was made between nineteen twenty seven and three, your topographical exactly the year before man that was a monumental year. Um, your your map and your your GPS receiver aren't gonna match, and you can run into some problems because your GPS receiver might just say you're getting warmer go in this direction.

It may have a compass. If you don't have one that you can upload maps onto, then you're not gonna know that you're about to fall off a cliff or something because you're staring at your your receiver, right, so your little topo map in your compass will let you know, hey there's a river crossing or like you said, cliff ahead danger. So Dave Olmer hid the first geo cash and a guy named Mike Tigue was the first to

find it. Actually surprisingly there it's almost like this this hobby, this um pastime or I don't know what you'd refer to it as a game. Sport. Sure, I don't know about sport. Well, there's hiking involved a lot of times. I don't know about sport. But so Olmer hides this and within I think three days, two people found it, and yet two people independently of each other. Right, so it was stimmering right into the surface that cash was just waiting a half. It was a market for it,

all right. So they called it GPS stash hunt at beginning now, which is a little clumsy compared to geo cashing. Yeah, and everyone else will not everyone, but someone at some point suggested, is that Matt Stum Yeah, he credits came up with the coining the phrase or the term. It's catchy. It's Casey's cashy. Uh, So you've got your GPS receiver, you've got your topographical map check. I assume you're probably wearing wooly socks. Check. Um, what else? What else do

you need? Well? They advised to take things like flashlight and bug spray, sunblock, um, hiking boots, water, that kind of thing, extra batteries. We should say all this is to assume that you actually want to go on a geo cash hunt, right, and you're not just sitting around your house listening to it. We should also say there's several websites dedicated to this hobby, and that's where you want to go to start finding out locations for a cash right. Um, there'll be links or else they'll be

a list of different cashes their coordinates. Geocashing dot com is the main one. I think. Yeah, and you want to unless you're just really adventurous, you probably want to pick something sort of close to you on your first try, at least to kind of break your cashing hobby in. And some people hide their cashes as Strickling put it with um uh sadistic glee. Yeah, there seems to be that seems to be part of it is uh, because it's no fun if it's just sitting right there in

the middle of the trailhead. Well, not only that, it's probably some schmo who doesn't know what's going on and be like, oh, look something, I don't know what this is. Right. Well, that leads us to an important point when if you are stashing a cash a cache, why that was such a problem with that. My wife's gonna make it only is gonna make fun of me because I do mess

up that word a lot. She thinks I'm an idiot. Um. So, like if your average hiker happens upon this box full of Santana c ds and they're thinking, wow, I can just take the c d someone left these, this is awesome. Yeah.

Or or drugs no, no, no, no, that's one of the things that you are not supposed to put in these acacias because it's a it's a family friendly activity, and they don't they don't want to sully it with the likes of illegal drugs and such about alcohol, keep it clean, no no, no, no. Ok So, so Santana c d's is pretty much what you're gonna find in

a Geokay, well they did. He did say c d s and d d d s or you know, handmade trinkets that you don't want it to be too expensive because you don't want to sink a lot of money into it. But whatever, you should if you take something, you should leave something. You don't have to take something.

But if I think you said if you don't take anything or leave anything, you should write in the log book that's contained and inside the cash and ellen, yeah took took nothing or left nothing, took nothing, but yeah, yeah, um one thing that you're going to find in any geo cash and Chuck you were saying like you should put an explanation and maybe a note. Uh. Strickland also recommended actually labeling it like this is a geo cash,

here's my email or here's my phone number. Because I don't know if you said or not you don't want to cause a pain an well, now I didn't mention. Some people geo cash in cities and actually um and in New Hampshire, I can't remember what town it was. Um, a geo cash that was hidden in a supermarket caused a panic. Yeah, Portsmouth, you know Post nine eleven. People see little metal boxes someplace that shouldn't be they're going to be like, well, there's a bomb stuck to the

underside of like an escalator rail. Sure, yeah, exactly, especially if it blinks or something. And some nerds, some nerve is like, what a great hiding spot, and then all of a sudden the cops are, you know, tackling them. Yeah, um chuck. As I was saying, the one thing that you're going to find in any geo cash is um a log book very important. Yeah, because you want to It's sort of like a wedding thing that you signed

when you go to a wedding. You want to say that you were in any kind of guest book, wedding, funeral, bed and breakfast. You want to add your notes, like what you found or what your experience was, this was cool. They some of them have disposable cameras in them, and what you're supposed to do there is take a picture of yourself and put the camera back in there right. Uh. And some people actually like to um see if they can get based on that whole um taking something and

leaving something. They like to see if they can get their trinkets across country. Yes, Josh, that is what's that called hitchhiker cash. And uh, if if you their instructions on how to get the thing across country. The geo cashers take great pride and playing along and trying to get the st tannas c e D from Atlanta to Los Angeles, let's say, right. And some people also have coins made with some sort of I D on it.

They're called geo coins. It's a type of hitchhiker cash um and it's uh, basically, you find the coin, you took it, you too, you put it somewhere else, and you're leaving. You're posting these on site so somebody can go on and see that their coins made it from you know, Topeka to Colorado Springs so far, and they're like, oh, that's getting close. Yeah, I think I'd love the spirit of this whole thing. It's really I'm gonna try this.

Actually I've never done it. Santana heavy, drug free traveling spirit of geo cash does not get any captures your imagination, doesn't it. Yes, it does. We should also say that if you were going to plant and start your own little geo cash game, that you want to stay away from private land. First of all, Yeah, there's actually some public officials are aware of geocashing and not everybody's hip with it. Technically, Um, the entire state of New Hampshire

is one example. Well they're actually being too outlaw correct. Yeah, and uh I know national parks it's not allowed. Um, some state parks it is allowed. But they say the whole spirit of the thing is to be respectful in the environment, um, not cause a mess, not damage anything. And it's really important to geocashers too that they're looked at in a favorable light. Yeah, they want to be

looked at as cooperative and helpful. UM. So basically, if you're hiding a g O cash, you want to kind of pull your head out of the game and actually really kind of look around, right, not just look for a hiding place, but look at the impact that geo cashier's who come to look for your cash are going to have on this area. So you know, you don't want to put it in that's a good one. UM. Historic and archaeological sites, you don't want to place those.

They're um just basically anywhere where a lot of people tramping. I guess it's probably smart to assume that there's going to be a lot of hunters looking for it, UM, that they're not going to really have a terrible impact on this area, right, I would put one in a tree stand, a deer hunting tree stand and see what that did for you in the middle of deer season. Sure smart, So Chuck, Is it true or not that you will be murdered if you remove a cash? Not true?

But not cool? What about a spanking? You might get spanked that that initial guy who started he might he might track it down on geo, spank you, but convert. Also, you want to maintain your cash, right Like if if you get a couple of logs of people saying I couldn't find this thing no matter what, that's a bad sign. Yeah, it means you should go out and look at your cash. Yeah, you want to be clever about where you hide up. Not too clever or somebody may have, you know, walked

off with it. You want to also keep an eye on your log book because if it gets filled up, you want to replace it with another one. Want to bag it? You want to bag everything and I can tag it zip block so it doesn't get a rained on. You want to double bag the log book absolutely, leave a fact leave a pin and a pencil just in case. Uh, these guys and gals don't bring there's along because the log book is the most important part. Actually this the

second well, I'd say it's a tie. The other most important part is that you logged the stuff on the website as well when you get home, right, so everyone else knows what's going on, and the game continues. It does, and this podcast continues, Chuck, because there's actually variations on geo cashing. This I thought was really cool. There's you know, the straight up geo cash, which we've been talking king about. Um, there's also multi cashes, which are basically there's a series

of cases which are related to one another. So you go to one cash and inside instead of Santana c d s or you know, Dare to keep kids off drug stickers. Um, there are coordinates to another one. It's like a real treasure hunt. Yes, it is, minus the treasure of course. Yeah, well it depends on how many Santana c ds plus they say. The treasure is is in the experience itself. It's not so much about the trinkets.

Like I said, in the spirit of goodness and giving, I see that you're put out by that you want some money or something. There's also letter the letter box hybrid explain that. So that's kind of like a combination between uh, straight up geo cashing and a type of

treasure hunting which is letter boxing. So it's it's like a multi cash, but you have to solve puzzles or figure out hints or clues to the location along with these coordinates, which sounds like fun and the coordinate maybe a starting point or is that a mystery cash that I'm thinking of, Yes, that is a mystery cash, it's not mistaken. Well, it was pretty close to the letterbox hybrid. And then there's a virtual cash with that I think

kind of stinks because there's no lute involved. That's just the location that you're in in in it for the spirit of cashing, well, for the spirit of that and uh ok o yo maa Tana c D Yah, Yeah, I know what I'm getting you for Christmas, santanna' cd. Yeah. And Josh you you mentioned hints and uh and for the puzzle. That's not limited to just the letter box or the mystery cash. It's a lot of times you'll you'll want to include little hints on your website to

to get people there. It's like not only coordinates. Yeah, so Chuck, if somebody wants to go ahead and get into this. Where do you start? Uh? Well, I guess you would want to pick out a location, a general location, And like we said, since you have to manage your your little stash here, then you want to have it kind of close by so it's manageable and easy to

get to. You don't want to have to manage something that you have to scale, like a fifty ft wall to get to, unless you're that dude, knock yourself out. That's right, Chuck. But also you want to start by buying the GPS receiver. Right, that's a good place. And you don't want to just say, hey, I bought my GPS receiver, I'm gonna start geo cashing. You want to test it out a little bit first, And how do

you do that, big boy? Well, I guess you would go to a spot huh ping where you are, right, I know it's called pinging or what we're gonna call it ping ping where you are, and then leave and then see if you can get back there using the GPS. Right. Yeah, that's pretty easy. I'd probably do it more than once too, with a couple of different locations. Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, but once you get started, then you can start a

few hunts, maybe hide your own, meet some cool people. Yeah, spend a bunch of money on disposable cameras, say Tannasy's yeah, it's wide open. Uh we need I guess we need to cover the lingo real quick too. Alright, So if you're out there and you see these letters, like if you're a Texter or you don't know l O L means you'd be mighty confused. Everyone keeps saying law to you. So uh c I t O means cash in trash out.

And that's one of the tenants is that you should kind of like a hikers take only pictures, leave only footprints mantra. So you should like pick up trash along the way and take it with you. That's one. You want to name another one or you want me to do all these well I already talked about TNF TNLN okay, took nothing nothing. There's f t F, which is a big one that's first to find. And if you're the first one to uh define the stash, that's pretty cool. I can tell you a name for us geo muggles.

If just people who don't geo cash. Yeah, so I'd say like nine percent of the global population or geo muggles, your muggles. True and a spoiler and just like you would suppose is a comment that reveals the location on like a website or something. Yeah, and he would want to do that. So a geo muggle would do that. Like any good underground hobby, it has its lingo, it

has its websites. But like you were saying, it's family friendly and um, there's just kind of a cool spirit to it and it's it struck me as very open. I think geo cashing is one of the more friendly UM hobbies around. Yeah, anytime you start a community like this, like the the hash runs that people do, it's cool. You know, it's something that that people can take part in and it's it's a lot of fun. I guess we can. We mentioned Philadelphia real quick. Sure they actually

have embraced it big time. Um. In the spring of oh seven, they they had a little thing where they wanted to promote a little promotional deal the Franklin Institute's King Tut display, and they actually had a geo cashing game that they presented public where you'll go to twelve different sites related to the exhibit, and UM, each site had a stamp and you collected these stamps and once you've collected all of them, then you get a prize at the end, which from what I understand was a

Santana c D Yeah, and a ticket to the King Tut exhibit. So Chuck that it. That is it. And if you want to know more about geo cashing, I gotta tell you Strickland wrote the definitive article on this. He used the geek god tone where was like no drugs you know, I mean, he just he did it.

He knocked it out of the part he did. So if you want to learn more about geo cashing, I would strongly urge you too, even before you go buy your GPS receiver, read Jonathan Strickland's article on geo cashing good start, and also Marshall Brain, founder of the site, and Tom Harris, one of our freelance writers, UM wrote how GPS works really good overview of how global positioning works. UM.

Those are two good articles. You can find them both by typing in GPS into the handy search bart how stuff works dot com and Chuck Before we do Listener mail let's plug what are you plugging? Let's plug the webcast and um the blogs. Okay, Every Wednesday afternoon one pm Eastern Standard time, Josh and I do a little webcast. It's live. It's a live video webcast, just so there's no mistaking it. And it's more newsy, and we cover current events and interesting topics from around the world. And um,

it's fun. We we've we've been getting some. It is fun. It's gotten to be fun. I stop um feeling the urge to vomit right before it every time. You're solid, bro, it's good, so are you, buddy? Thanks? Uh. And then we also have a blog, Stuff you should know. Blog very much in the spirit of stuff you should know, we'd pretty much write about whatever strikes our fancy, which is nice. Yeah, you wrote about a gun toting uh town hall meeting attendee recently and some good debate on

that one, which I figured. Yeah, n I wrote about Gary Warren, the founder of Susy Clubs. So those are just a couple of uh. So that's plug fest oh nine, which means it's time for a listener mail. Yes, before we again do a listener mail. Our producer Jerry had a special request because we refer to the great Ira Glasses our arch and Nemesis, and a few podcasts A Goo I remember, which We've got some response. People are like, what's going on? Guys? We love Ira Glass. We figured

job would be fans too. We do love Ira Glass. Oh, we're big time fans and we love this American life. And there's a friendly ratings war that they consistently win, and so that's why we called him our arch nemesis. But there's there's nothing but love and Ira Glass. If you know we exist, we love you. Thank you for inspiring us. Yes, So what else you got? I got a listener mail all right, Josh listener mail time. We have a couple of quickies here called this one Sarcopenia

um proven. So we had a guy right in said he's been listening for a while now and he wants to say what that we're great? Um. He is a gym dude and he was listening to the podcast at the gym and it struck a chord with me. About six months ago, a little fragile, hunched over ladies started

showing up at the gym. I probably would not have taken much notice, but she was toting around a portable oxygen tank which gave me a deep respect for her tenacity, and a water bottle with a very large straw protruding from it. She shows up on a regular basis and puts everyone else to shame and works hard with the trainer. Since that time, she has become the poster child for reversing the aging process. First she dropped the oxygen tank completely gone. Then she lost her hunch in her back

and is walking up right again. That's awesome. She still has a water bottle with the straw, which has become the only way for me to identify her because she looks so much younger. Thanks for helping me understand exactly how this went down. And that is from Jason Boo. Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah. And then another quickie. This is from

our buddy Danielle in Old Claire, Wisconsin. Danielle and I are pen pals, and she loves that we mentioned Oh Claire and she boygan in places like that, so she she sent us a list of other Wisconsin cities that she bets we cannot pronounce. I'm just gonna put that here, and I'm gonna go ahead and say the first one is okonama walk I think you're way off. All right, you go next Wawa tosa. That was pretty easy. The

next one is out to Outmi. You sound Cambodian. I'm going to try trimpalow I get thesey ones all right. The next one, so it's not easy kiwi kiwani. Yeah, that's not that's not easy at all, all right, uh waukesha. And finally we have why y'all why aw go? Yeah. So then the last one is double dash Danielle, daniel the pin Pals, Danielle take that, Yeah, perfect pronunciation all the way, all the way down the list in your

face Danielle, and Sarcopania. If you want to correspond with Chuck or I, Chuck is actually really good at responding to a listener mail um, and he's made some pretty good friends along the way. So if you want to be Chuck's friend, send an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on

the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you by the Reinvented two thousand twelve camera it's ready. Are you