Day 50?

I've been working on the requirements for a challenge cache, the Sydney 100 Caching Days Challenge.  To log a find on this cache, I have to find at least one cache a day for 100 days straight.

Today will be day 50 for me. If I go out to find a cache today.

I'm not sure at the moment if I can be bothered to do it.  There is nothing easy left to find close to home.  Well, there are a few caches that would be easy to do in daylight, but it will be at least 7pm before I can go out and it will be dark by then.  Not good for bush caches or ones near a cliff.

And I will have the children with me tonight.  My most likely target is a puzzle cache in Richmond.  I've solved the puzzle and have the coordinates, and from past experience it should be an easy find in the dark.  But it's at least a half an hour drive from home, so if the kids & I head out as soon as we can, it would be at least 8pm before we're home & I can start thinking about cooking dinner.  Usually when I drag the kids out on these late night trips, we have takeaway on the way home, just so that I can get them fed & off to bed at a reasonable time.  I can't afford takeaway tonight, so I have to cook.

Or I could feed the kids before we go out, then drag them out even later in the cold evening, and have them fall asleep in the car on the way home. Great!

Balance all of the hassles with getting a cache today with the simple fact - it will get me to 50 days.  I will be at the half way point.  I've already had many nights where I've gone out in the cold for a cache, and if I stop today, I will have wasted all of that effort.

Getting a geocaching streak was never a goal of mine, I've read about other people's streaks on the forum, but it always seemed like too much hard work for what is meant to be a fun hobby.  My previous best streak was 10 days, at the end of December 2011 to early January 2011.  I was off work for the holidays, a few new caches were published in the area, so I got a 10 day streak without trying.

Caching stops being fun when you HAVE to go out every single day, regardless of how you are feeling, what else you have on, what the weather is like, anything.  But I'm also extremely bloody minded, and I started this current streak for a particular reason.  That reason still exists, so chances are I will ignore my feelings that it just isn't worth it & go out for just one more tonight, to get to #50.

And my reason for starting the streak - a fairly local caching family who we have had 'issues' with over the past 6 months, deliberately altered the dates on their previous finds to give themselves a '100 day streak' on the official statistics.  We discovered their cheating (so did the cache owner who deleted their logs) & started our own streak just to rub it in to them that we could do it legitimately. Petty maybe, but it will feel very good to actually log the 100 day cache knowing that they can't do it.