Cornell Finch

I Am Not An FTF Junkie!

Some derision exists within the Geocaching community for those players who only go after the FTF – or First To Find – on a newly published Geocache.

If anyone were to look at my recent logs on the Geocaching Website or indeed the stats on my Geocaching page on this site it would certainly seem that I am becoming one of those hated FTF Junkies.

I, Cornell Finch, do hereby promise that I am not becoming an FTF Junkie!

I fully realise that my track record is not great. I have managed just two caches during 2010 and both of them were first to finds. I would have been daft NOT to go for this morning’s FTF though.

For months I have been thinking about placing a cache near Fareham railway station and never got round to it. Laziness, lack of time, enthusiasm? Call it what you will, it didn’t happen. Now the opportunity is gone. GC23M6M Sidetracked – Fareham was published at 08:47 this morning.

Lazy me was still in bed when the email arrived! I decided not to go for it, got up and dressed and made the tea. Then I changed my mind. 0.2 miles from home? DO IT! So I did.

I thought it would be a great opportunity to test out the Geocaching Application on the iPhone but still grabbed the GPS just in case. I’m glad I did as, although I didn’t need the GPS due to local knowledge, the iPhone was suggesting an accuracy of just 56 feet when I was at GZ, the Garmin eTrex, as ever, completely spot on at 9 feet accuracy.

I grabbed the lovely badge (on the right), signed the cache log and then logged the cache from the iPhone on the way home. I was back and drinking the still hot tea within about 15 minutes.

I really must make the effort to do some of those cache rings that I keep seeing GeoSOM posting about on Twitter and prove (to myself and the world) that I am not an FTF Junkie.

Even though I am…