As our volunteers get familiar with the process of scoring goals, I thought I would post a few announcements.  First up, the February Bonus Goals have been posted under the MONTHLY BONUS POINTS tab.

Next, we have two new sponsors.  First up is GC SOFT. GCSoft has created a variety of nice Geocaching Software to fit different purposes. I am currently beta testing their Traveller Tracker. While a nice program for keeping track of movements, because of the unique nature of our scoring system it may not be useful for keeping score. So far, it has been helpful for keeping up with when TB’s have moved and basics about their movement.

However, beta testing their software isn’t the only reason they are a sponsor. They have also donated four $5 gift certificates towards purchases on their site and 10 licenses for their Coin Logger Assistant. For anyone who has a collection of geocoins, that would be a nice piece of software to have.

Another sponsor is GEOTEES, who has some cool geocaching themed t-shirts. They have sent me a geocoin, two bison tubes, and a micro cache container, along with two Large t-shirts. The t-shirts are:

Last of all, Sleepynow1 has sent us a cool Help for Heroes geocoin, honoring those who have served in the line of duty. It is a pretty cool looking coin. You can see some information about the coin, along with pictures, at UKgeocachers.co.uk – Raising money for Help 4 Heroes.

With regards to how the scoring will work, volunteers aim for the last day of the month, but their own lives also need to carry on. Not every volunteer will get done at the same time. Now I’ve improved on the system I was using last year, including the ability to quickly spit out COMPLETE rankings as opposed to just the top ten. With everything going on, it may take up to a week to get all the results turned in and the rankings updated online. As usual, I will make an announcement when this occurs.

I’d also like to remind everyone that you may see occasional “Official Race Correction” notes on your travel bugs. If you see one, it is most likely because your TB suffered a dip. If you feel there is a mistake, you should first contact the person who is scoring your travel bug, which would be whomever posted the note. They are the one who is tracking your bug. They should be able to help you and if you happen to present it in a way where they need assistance, they will contact me. Rest assured that I have provided all scoring volunteers with a guide to help ensure that everyone knows how to score, and everyone is on the same page.

And I’ll end by giving a shout out to our volunteers for taking the time to help with the race. With 94 entries this year, it is making managing the race considerably less stressful than it was last year. They deserve a big thanks.

TripCyclone

Just a quick update to let people know what’s going as we work on the first month of the 2010 race.  Right now, we are getting things put together for our scoring volunteers.  This includes a guide to help get everyone on the same page for scoring the race.  We are also working on getting a contestants page up like we did last year.  And last of all, I have some prize announcements to make this weekend.  We have some cool items that have shown up recently and I can’t wait to share them with you.

I hope everyone is enjoying the race so far and getting some good movements on their bugs.  Remember that race updates are planned at the end of each month, with an official update on the site coming during the first week of the following month.  Also be sure to check in on the last day of each month, when we will post the Monthly goals for the following month.

TripCyclone

I know I said I was closing the 2009 Race last night.  I had one more thing to do.  This is a quick announcement that all pages related to the 2009 race have been consolidated and removed from the tabs listed above.  However, they are still available to look at.  Just go to the tab labeled “2009 RACE DETAILS” to find links to the respective information.

Included with this is one final page that lists the final rankings for the 2009 race.  If you want to see what rank each item received, and the points for each, you will find it there.  The contestants page, which had the graphical links to each item, has also been updated to properly reflect the final points.  Again, you can link to it through this new 2009 page.

Thanks for all the support.  NOW we can officially say the 2009 race information is up to date, released, and closed.

The rules and standings tabs will be updated soon to reflect the 2010 rules and standings (well, the standings page won’t have anything until the first update).  That reminds me that all updates will be performed once month at the end of the month.

TripCyclone

5th Place

Yesterday, I announced the official winners of the 2009 Great TB Race.  Tonight, we announce what they win.  Each announcement will include a small detail about that item’s travel, a list of awarded prizes, and a picture of the prizes.  We’ll start with 5th place.

Our fifth place prize goes to YoungOohRah, who owned WoolyBugger.  Wooly suffered a late game loss when the cache it was last placed in got muggled.  But thanks to the movements by Wooly’s various carriers, he had racked up enough points to keep him within the winners circle, despite some last minute jumps by several racers.  For finishing in 5th place, YoungOohRah will win

• 1 red lanyard labeled Geocoins, donated by CoinsAndPins
• 1 Turtle Travel Geocoin with attachment chain, donated by CoinsAndPins
• 1 2008 Kansas Sunshine coin with blue petals, donated by TripCyclone

4th Place

Our 4th place winner is Mr. Skully, who’s KIMO the Turtle travel bug has been bouncing around Europe since March after making a huge jump from California all the way to Northern Switzerland.  Currently, KIMO is awaiting pickup in Ireland, stuck in a rarely visited cache.  For finishing in 4th place, Mr. Skully will win

• 1 blue lanyard labeled Benchmarking, donated by CoinsAndPins
• 1 Geocaching Tie Tack, donated by CoinsAndPins
• 1 Acme Cache-O-Rator geocoin, purchased with a donation by Truscott
• 1 Missouri Hawthorne geocoin, donated by Larry739

3rd Place

3rd place goes to Bosox Art, owner of All-Star.  All-Star truly became an all star by the end of the race.  As of October, All Star had been much lower on the standings, not even close to the top ten, having suffered a few lengthy delays in more than one cache (just those two caches totaled about four months!).  But thanks to a pickup by the right person in October, it earned a surprise jump to from just outside San Francisco to Santiago, Chile…all the way in South America.  By the way, a verified visit to Cabo San Lucas didn’t hurt.  Then, still barely scratching at the bottom of the top ten list, it made another jump only two weeks later to Germany.  This late game action by All-Star knocked two people down and earned it the 3rd place spot.  For it’s unexpected swing into 3rd place, Bosox Art will win

• 1 nano cache with spare log, courtesy of rjholland
• 1 Where’s My Bailout geocoin with attachment chain, donated by CoinsAndPins
• 1 mini-Compass Rose geocoin with attachment chain, donated by CoinsAndPins
• 1 small Lock-n-Lock cache, loaded with logbook, stash note, swag, 2 geocaching lapel pins, & 1 GeoJellies geocoin (obviously, Bosox Art can do what they want with the pins and coin ), donated by USYoopers

2nd Place

Coming in at 2nd place is OversizeOregon, whose TB Hummer earned 205 points more than our 3rd place winner.  TB Hummer was the clear leader in November, in line for winning the race before getting passed up with a late jump by our Grand Prize Winner.  It’s last logged interaction with a cacher was in early December, which contributed to it’s loss of the top spot.  But TB Hummer had some excitement during the course of the race.  In June, it was picked up by a cacher in SouthEast England and wasn’t seen for two months.   Then, in one of the larger jumps in the entire race, it popped back up in INDONESIA, over 7700 miles away!  Then, in a stroke of luck, it got picked up 30 minutes later by another cacher (NOTE: As far as I’ve been able to research, and I spent time on this, it was pure luck and this wasn’t a group exchange.), then taken back to Europe, this time to the Netherlands.  This single trip to Indonesia earned over 15,000 miles.  And based on the logs from the cache visited, it was EXTREMELY lucky, as it was archived less than a month later due to problems.  For finishing in 2nd Place, OversizeOregon will receive

• 1 nano cache with spare log, courtesy of rjholland
• 1 Contryguy geocoin, donated by Contryguy
• 1 Chiro geocoin, donated by Dr. Neal
• 1 My Traveling Two Cents geocoin, donated by CoinsAndPins
• 1 Out on the Water geocoin, donated by Eltada
• 1 American Cacher gift pack, including 1 geocoin, 1 magnet, 1 patch, 1 lapel pin, 1 screen cleaner, 1 pencil, 1 Rite in Rain logbook, some muggle cards, and 1 Geocache Sticker (each labeled American Cacher), donated by Landsharkz

Grand Prize

Our Grand Prize winner is Solan109, whose Swedish Nerd is the only racer to get over 600 points.  With a November position of 2nd place, it was coming down to a heated race between TB Hummer and Swedish Nerd.  It was TB Hummer’s lack of movement the last month of the race that helped Swedish Nerd pass him up.  But it was the jumps that really helped.  In March, a jump to Nevada pushed Swedish Nerd’s mileage past 1000 in a single jump, then it moved on to California soon after.   Three months later, after visiting several caches in the L.A. area, it made a leap across the states to Connecticut.  But it wasn’t done yet.  A few days later, it was picked up again.  This time, the leap would be across the water, landing in the United Kingdom a month later.  Once again, it spent three months exploring as it visited caches around the U.K., before getting picked up and bounced to an event in Ontario.  By now, it was sitting around 7,500 miles.  It still wasn’t done.  While at the event, it made it into the hands of a couple with some travel plans.  Two weeks later, it ended up in Sydney, Australia with a single jump that was 2,000 miles higher than TB Hummer’s largest single jump, only a few hundred miles short of making a 10,000 mile jump.  This leap was just before the November points update, helping place Swedish Nerds in 2nd place at the time.  It sat there for a few weeks, then, while TB Hummer was preparing for a long layover, Swedish Nerds made a cross continent trip to visit Perth in Western Australia.  This jump was enough to catch up to TB Hummer, setting up the final results to be a close race.  Then, just as Swedish Nerds were hanging the Christmas stockings, it was picked up.  This time, it traveled back across the continent to the Australian state of Victoria, Southwest of Sydney.  It is there where Swedish Nerds now rests, celebrating his winning move in the final week of the race.  For becoming the Great TB Race’s 1st Grand Prize Winner, Solan109 will receive

• 1 Free Personalized Geocaching decal, donated by Debbie Does Dallas
• 1 $15 Gift Certificate towards a purchase at Cache Advance, donated by Cache Advance
• 1 Cache-A-Maniacs geocoin, donated by the Cache-A-Maniacs podcast
• 1 Travel Ingot geocoin with attachment chain, donated by CoinsAndPins
• 1 Space Shuttle geocoin with attachment chain, donated by CoinsAndPins
• 1 Republican Mountain geocoin, donated by CoinsAndPins
• 1 Sextant geocoin, donated by CoinsAndPins
• 1 Limited Edition, Member’s Only Nebraskacache geocoin, donated by TripCyclone
• 1 Geocoin Club Member’s Only 2nd Anniversery geocoin, purchased with money donated by Michigan Cacheman
• 1 Geocoin Club Member’s Only World Flags geocoin, purchased with money donated by Michigan Cacheman

As you can see, the total prize pool was quite extensive.  The Grand Prize winner seemingly won a larger list of items until you take into account the sets that were included in the 2nd and 3rd place prizes, which I did not want to break up.  Our sponsors really helped widen the prize pool well beyond what I originally imagined.  The estimated value of the entire list is $225.  WOW!

Prizes will be going out over the course of the next week.  Two prizes will be traveling to locations in Colorado, one to Central Missouri, one to Norway, and our Grand Prize is going to Sweden.

I’d like to thank everyone who participated in 2009.  I did not expect it to take off like it did, which was a big factor in deciding to hold a second race.  Thanks to our various sponsors and donators.  Without you I wouldn’t have been able to award the prizes above.  All of the race participants would probably like to thank all of the cachers who helped move the travel bugs.  Okay, maybe they might not thank those people that resulted in MIA.

In the next week, the 2009 race details will be consolidated into a single page to clean up the site a bit for the 2010 race. I encourage people to check out some of the various travels our racers made to read about some of the interesting experiences they had while traveling.  For example, one travel bug seemed to repeatedly suffer from dipping problems, despite it being stated clearly on the page and my repeated “Official Race Correction” logs.  Others had some cool photos, visits to interesting caches, and in the last two weeks of the race we even saw a few travel bugs that were long deemed lost make surprising returns to the race.  One disappeared for almost eight months before getting a few last caches in.

For 2010, we have changed the race a bit, adding new goals and including the new Monthly Goals.  The prize pool is already up to $150 and we are working on creating a much quicker system for updating points.  And we’ve added a subscription link at the top of the column of links on the right side of the page.  Through this option, you can sign up to receive e-mails when posts are made and keep in touch with what’s going on with the race throughout the year.

With that, we close the first chapter of the Great TB Race and wish a good luck to all the racers in 2010.

TripCyclone

Swedish Nerds by Solan109 with 630 points

It has been a long and exciting year, full of jumps, dips, surprises, and dashed hopes for some.  After all of that, I get to the part everyone has been waiting a year for…the results.  I’ve tried my best to keep up with the race and those that have followed have likely realized just how massive an undertaking this has been, well beyond what I had originally expected.  Thanks to what I’ve learned, and to the generous support of our readers and contestants, the 2010 race should go easier.

Before we get to the results, I want to give a thanks to everyone who helped out in some form or fashion.  Many helped with early rule changes and some support in trying to get the Checkpoint Cache system up and running.  Several cachers offered up their caches for just that system, which was abandoned for 2010.  I also got some help from a few cachers in late 2009.  For those who didn’t know, my system crashed in October resulting in the loss of all race files.  Thanks to ernbob, n2froggie, and want2bemore, the very intensive job of reestablishing the scores for all 81 contestants was quickly achieved.

And the prize pool.  The prize pool ended up being larger than expected, large enough that I am splitting it up amongst the top five contestants instead of just the top three.  This was a result of generous donations from many cachers who participated in the race.  Their names are listed on the 2009 Prize Pool tab at the top of the page.  I want to give another mention of some of our sponsors in 2009, who each have links on the prize pool page as well:

• Cache Advance
• Landsharkz
• Coins & Pins
• Cache-a-Maniacs Podcast
• Debbie Does Decals

In November, the standings seemed to have some clear winners for the race.  But in the time since, the results were shaken up more than expected.  NOT ONE OF THE TOP FIVE RACERS IN NOVEMBER MAINTAINED THEIR POSITION!  In November, the top five were (in order): Oversizeoregon, Solan109, Mr. Skully, YoungOohRah, Larry739.

With that, I would like to present the winner of the 2009 Great TB Race:

In second place:

TB Hummer by OversizeOregon with 597 points

In third place:

All Star by Bosox Art with 392 points

In fourth place:

KIMO by Mr. Skully with 378 points

And our last prize winner, finishing in fifth place:

Wooly Bugger by YoungOohRah with 341 points

But, what about the other people listed in the top ten?  Did any of them stay in the top ten?

6. Fly Away Home by entogeek with 317 points

7. Raisin Man by Larry739 with 310 points

8. Cape Cod by bmlussier with 297 points

9. Sugar Free Trick or Treat by geojosh1 with 280 points

10. Greetings from Sweden by Ettfemtiofyra with 274 points

So everyone give a round of applause to our prize winners, listed in bold above.  Prizes will be split up accordingly, with pictures of each prize package posted tomorrow.  Come back tomorrow to get the exciting news of what each of our winners will receive.

TripCyclone