September 8, 2009 • 27 mins
Armed with only a GPS and a sense of adventure, geocachers use their wits to locate containers across the world. Join Chuck and Josh as they explore the history, practice and strange origin of geocaching in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. How you doing? Put some fruit
(00:24):
juice in there? So, Chuck, you are smelling your hand
a little bit ago? What's wrong with you? It was
just I smell like my wife's handmade artists in soap. Yeah. Yeah, yes,
she's having a grand opening. Love your Mama dot COM's
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
(00:45):
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
(01:08):
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
(01:28):
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
(01:50):
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
(02:10):
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
(02:32):
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
(02:54):
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
(03:18):
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.
(03:43):
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
(04:05):
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
(04:25):
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
(04:47):
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
(05:10):
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
(05:31):
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
(05:54):
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
(06:15):
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
(06:37):
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.
(07:01):
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
(07:22):
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
(07:45):
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
(08:07):
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
(08:29):
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,
(08:50):
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.
(09:12):
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
(09:33):
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
(09:57):
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
(10:18):
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
(10:40):
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
(11:00):
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
(11:22):
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,
(11:43):
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
(12:06):
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
(12:27):
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,
(12:49):
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
(13:10):
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
(13:31):
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
(13:53):
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
(14:14):
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,
(14:37):
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
(14:59):
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.
(15:20):
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.
(15:41):
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
(16:04):
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
(16:25):
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
(16:46):
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
(17:09):
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
(17:29):
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
(17:50):
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
(18:12):
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,
(18:33):
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
(18:55):
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
(19:15):
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
(19:36):
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,
(19:58):
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.
(20:20):
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
(20:41):
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
(21:03):
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.
(21:25):
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
(21:48):
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
(22:09):
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
(22:31):
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
(22:53):
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
(23:16):
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,
(23:38):
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
(23:58):
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
(24:19):
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
(24:40):
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
(25:01):
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
(25:22):
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
(25:44):
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
(26:06):
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
(26:30):
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.
(26:54):
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
(27:16):
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
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is
Charles W. Chuck Bryant. How you doing? Put some fruit
(00:24):
juice in there? So, Chuck, you are smelling your hand
a little bit ago? What's wrong with you? It was
just I smell like my wife's handmade artists in soap. Yeah. Yeah, yes,
she's having a grand opening. Love your Mama dot COM's
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
(00:45):
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
(01:08):
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
(01:28):
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
(01:50):
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
(02:10):
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
(02:32):
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
(02:54):
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
(03:18):
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.
(03:43):
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
(04:05):
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
(04:25):
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
(04:47):
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
(05:10):
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
(05:31):
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
(05:54):
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
(06:15):
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
(06:37):
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.
(07:01):
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
(07:22):
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
(07:45):
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
(08:07):
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
(08:29):
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,
(08:50):
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.
(09:12):
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
(09:33):
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
(09:57):
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
(10:18):
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
(10:40):
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
(11:00):
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
(11:22):
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,
(11:43):
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
(12:06):
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
(12:27):
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,
(12:49):
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
(13:10):
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
(13:31):
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
(13:53):
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
(14:14):
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,
(14:37):
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
(14:59):
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.
(15:20):
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.
(15:41):
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
(16:04):
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
(16:25):
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
(16:46):
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
(17:09):
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
(17:29):
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
(17:50):
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
(18:12):
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,
(18:33):
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
(18:55):
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
(19:15):
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
(19:36):
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,
(19:58):
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.
(20:20):
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
(20:41):
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
(21:03):
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.
(21:25):
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
(21:48):
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
(22:09):
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
(22:31):
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
(22:53):
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
(23:16):
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,
(23:38):
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
(23:58):
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
(24:19):
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
(24:40):
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
(25:01):
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
(25:22):
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
(25:44):
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
(26:06):
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
(26:30):
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.
(26:54):
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
(27:16):
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
(27:41):
you by the Reinvented two thousand twelve camera it's ready.
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Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.