The First CircumConUS Travel Bug Race

Status

Gumby was placed into the final cache on 15 Nov 2009 and won the race after only six short years. When the race was set up, the idea was to have a second and third place winner too. There are hardly any racers still in action, so I'm stopping the race with Gumby.

Most of the racers have gone missing since the beginning of the race. They have been removed from the map and their status changed on the racer page.

The last positions tracked all the racers are on the following map and the list of racers is on a separate page.

Position Map as of 20 Apr 2010

Please see the racers page to see each of the 26 racers.

Background

The original idea for a circumnavigating race came from another geocacher, nicknamed SomewhereInND, who has a border state race starting and finishing in North Dakota. Hopefully there will be some lessons learned from the 1st Annual Travel Bug Cannonball Run, which ran in 2003 and the CircumConUS TBs will be well on their way by the time the 2nd Cannonball starts.

For more information about geocaching, please see www.geocaching.com. For more information about travel bugs, please see http://www.geocaching.com/track/. The latter part of that page is a FAQ.

Start and End Caches

EELBOY's event was the release and distribution point for the travel bugs participating in the race. All of the racers were dropped in the event cache and physically mailed to Brad or brought to the launch event. A few pictures were taken at the event, including a group picture of the racers.

Race Rules

1. The travel bugs followed a counter-clockwise route around the US. The required stops were at least one cache placement in the following states: California (starting state and cache), Texas, Florida, Maine, Minnesota, Washington, and back to the starting state and final cache IN THAT ORDER. The bugs must have traced the states in this order, so any skipping of these goal states meant backtracking. All other states and countries could be skipped.

2. Bugs must have been physically placed in a cache in each state visited. No "I was here with the bug" logs, someone else had to retrieve the bug after placement.

3. After the start, no TB racer owners could handle ANY of the racers. The actions of third parties were not under the owners' control. They had a long race to run, so negative interference was not encouraged.

4. After the start, no more than two race bugs may have been placed in any given cache.

5. Racers could not be mailed, shipped, transported, faxed, etc. by cachers or muggles after the race started. Racers were carried from cache to cache by cachers, but grabs sometimes happened when cachers met.

6. The race was due to be over 1 Jan 2005, but none of the racers were anywhere near finishing then, so now we waited until the winning racer reached the finish/final cache, which had to change during the duration of the race due to the cache's disappearance.

7. Disputes were be discussed in the race thread in the geocaching.com Travel Bug Forum.

8. The racers could attach information tags, maps, cinder blocks, etc. to their bugs. Instruction tags were encouraged.

9. Racer bugs had to be dropped into the release event cache listed above by 2 Jan 2004, to be released at the event on 3 Jan. If the racer was not brought to the event, then bug needed to received by Brad before the event.

10. After a bug finished, the owner had to decide if they want the bug mailed back to them or released (with a new instruction tag?).

Awards

• Winner - basic compass and Mini Maglite flashlight (Gumby's owner declined these)
• Most creative or unique TB hitchhiker - 2 TB tags (to continue the good work)

The most creative or unique racer was determined by an online vote during the first two weeks after the race started, so voting ended on 17 Jan. The winner was bazzle's Sunday Drive. Congratulations bazzle! Thanks to everyone who voted.

More Information

The Groundspeak Geocaching Logo is a trademark of Groundspeak, Inc. Used with permission. The race and these web pages are not sponsored by, endorsed by, or otherwise affiliated with Groundspeak, Inc.