2010 IGO Travel Bug Race

Get your Travel Bug tags ready.  We are going to put on a year long Travel Bug Race this year to help celebrate 10 year's of geo-caching.  It's kind of hard to believe it's been ten years already since they have shut off the "big blue" button and giving us access to use the Global Position Satellites.

Launching the bug's this time will be different.  Instead of the owner of the bug putting it in a cache within a two week period, the bug's must be mailed to me, and I will be putting out a set of caches, the number depending on how many bugs get entered into the race.

You can mail the Travel Bug's to:

Tape worm
2401 25th St. S.W.
Cedar Rapids, Ia 52404.

There will be no geocoins allowed in this race but we will allow the newer tags that do have icons, such as the cache-kin's bugs as an example.  I have to have the Travel Bugs by April 29th, 2010, and I will have the new caches published on the weekend of May 1st, 2010.   All of them at the same time.   This way nobody knows where the bugs are 'til launch time.  The race will go on for one year and end at Midnight of the same day the caches are published.  Here's the rules for this race:

Rules for the year long 2010 Travel Bug Race:

1.  You must be a member of IGO and provide your GC.com username to participate in the race.

2.  To sign-up, send an e-mail with your GC.com name and TB reference number (TBxxxx) to "tbrace@Iowageocachers.org".

3.  Each person may enter only one TB into the race.

4.  TB must be a Travel bug tag, trackable on GC.com and start with 0 miles. I will allow the new tag's that do have icons as well, but no geocoins.

5.  I have to receive the Travel Bug by April 29th 2010 and will place them in one of the starting caches.  I'll be taking a "group" photo of the TBs and place them in new caches as the starting points to be released on the kick off day.

6.  Race will run from 12:01am May 3rd 2010 to 11:59pm May 2nd 2011.

7.  TB description page must have a link to IowaGeocachers.org home page and list the Rules for Movement during the race.

8.  Rules for Movement:

1. Owner can not move their own TB.
    
2. A cacher can only move the TB to one consecutive cache.  Examples of this rule are listed below.

• No "dipping" is allowed.  If a cacher drops it in a cache, they can't pick it back up or the mileage and the unique cache visit don't count.
  
• A cacher can have their bug dropped into the same cache more than once, but it will only count as one unique cache.
  
  
• TB can not be mailed to another cacher.
  
  

9.  Any “illegal” movements will be removed from the totals before being posted on the updates page.  The TB owner will be notified of the removal via e-mail.  In the case of one being snail mailed, the bug is disqualified.

10.  Race participants can not impede the movement of another racer’s TB.  If a cacher holds another racer's TB for longer than 14 days, their TB will be disqualified.  Moving it to a remote cache is okay, but then yours may end up someplace worse.  So play nice.

11.  If a TB goes missing, one replacement is allowed.  The owner will be allowed to launch that after given permission by the overseer of the race.  If it happens to go missing a second time, then the "stats" on the bug will freeze, unless one of the two happens to resurface again; in which case it will start right where the "stats" were frozen. 

I will be providing the html that you can just copy and paste it on to your Travel Bug.  I will also be making laminated card's with the movement rules and to tell a cacher the bug is in a race and attach one to each bug.

Please stay tuned for the HTML which I should have very soon.  The prizes are yet to be determined, but most of all this get's IGO's name out there and we have some fun watching the bug's move all over the world.  If you have any questions please feel free to send me a PM or there is a forum thread going in the Travel Bug area.

Parabola