Reviving my lost Trackables.
BaytownBert 3-15-24
Over the last 20 years, I’ve purchased and in many cases released somewhere short of 150 Trackables (travel bugs). Believe it or not, I still record them at events or when I find them in a cache and feel compelled to move them along. I treat them like hot potatoes, as I don’t own them and am eager to place them. This can be a challenge in itself, as there are now many very small containers.
Recently I decided to see what state they are in and to my shock; I saw I had less than 10 that were still in circulation. What started this is the sad fact that these days I rarely get notified one of them has moved. I decided to recall them and create proxy tags. Seeing this is an arduous task, I compounded the project by evaluating what was on each trackable page and modifying and standardizing them to better represent what I want to present. After all, just like you, I sent many of these out in my Geocaching infancy.
First, I needed dog tags and I got them from Amazon. To keep from posting a long URL, I’ll leave a brief description (Ferraycle Blank Dog Tags Aluminum Tags). I got 100 for .22 each, which is far cheaper than buying new trackables. I then printed out a short description, the trackable code, and the word Proxy on 3 lines and printed them.
Each dog tag came in a small baggie and I used boxing tape to attach the small rectangle of paper on each dog tag. Now all I needed was a small enough hitchhiker to go inside the baggy to make an easy-to-place (MW5E61) trackable. Seeing I oversee the Baytown GeoTour (GT7A), I have a generous supply of wooden “nickels” coins and they easily fit inside the baggie. I then taped the baggie shut and Walla!, I have a cool proxy!
I am a slow-mo long-time cacher not interested in padding my find count, so I will take a few of these with me every time I go caching and drop them off, maybe under an LPC or any place they will fit(!). This is why my hitchhiker has to be very small. You may want to contact your tourism department to get a small token of some kind that will work.
I guess the biggest challenge to doing this is the amount of computer time it took to compile all of this info and for many, find a suitable hitchhiker, but if you are not jaded over the whole missing trackable issue, it is a way to relaunch your trackables and contribute to the game.
