The Uncanny Appeal of “The Streak”

This article was originally published on Cache Up NB. It has been mirrored here for archive purposes only.

In April of 2009, my daughter Megan was born. I had decided to take six months off work for parental leave. As part of that leave, I also decided that for every day I was gone, I would find a geocache. 180 days straight. I finished the streak off with an event and then purposely left the next day to be cache free.

On June 23, 2011, Ma & Pa hid GC2YD1N and it seemed a challenge had been issued to folks in the area. At the time, there were very few people who could actually claim this find. I remember going out to the cache and snagging the FTF and wondering how long it would be before other’s would follow.

As it turns out, it seems that the streak challenges really took off from then. More and more people were now trying to see how long they could go, and see if they could beat some of their geocaching friends. The art of “streaking” really seemed to take over for awhile.

But what was the appeal? For me, it wasn’t about trying to see how far I could go but just giving me an excuse to get out of the house everyday when I was dealing with a very fussy young baby. But for many others, it seems that there’s a challenge to see how far they can go without stopping. I know of several cachers who have broke the 500 day streak point and I find that amazing. If you can still enjoy it after going that long, then kudos to you.

That’s the key. After about 120-130 days for me, it felt like a chore. It was a lot of fun at first but as time wore on, it was more and more like work or a job than having fun. By the time the 180th day hit, I was ready to be done.

So how about you? Have you participated in a streak, and if so, how long and why?