Geocoinfest 2013: Part 2: GCs and the O.C.B.

My DNA geocoin

The main reason for driving 300+ miles to Las Vegas was to attend my first Mega event.  Why?  To get this icon, silly! There are only a handful of events around the world each year that qualify for Mega event status (at least 500 attendees) and since I like the concept of geocoins, I figured this was the perfect event for me.  For those of you new to geocaching, geocoins/travel bugs are items that move from cache to cache. Geocachers log the movements of these trackables on a special webpage, so you can see where it is located currently, and where it has traveled around the world.  Some of mine have traveled all over Europe and the Middle East.  Very cool to watch them move!  Here is an example of one of my trackables that I released earlier this year, a DNA-themed geocoin.  You can follow its travels by visiting the page for this coin at geocaching.com (here).

     Another draw to this event was to see a part of Geocaching history.  On May 3, 2000 a guy named Dave Ulmer placed a 5-gallon bucket out in the woods of Oregon.  Using technology available to the public for the first time, he determined the GPS coordinates of where he hid the bucket and posted them on a chat room forum.  Mike Teague was the first person to take those posted coordinates, travel to that location, and find the bucket.  Geocaching was born.  Inside the bucket were various items that were available for trade.  These items included a Delorme Topo map, 2 CD ROMs, a cassette recorder, a "George of the Jungle" VHS tape, a book by Ross Perot, a few dollar bills, a slingshot, and... a can of black eyed peas.  Pretty good swag, I must say.  Over the years, the original cache was destroyed, but people realized the importance of this site and when Ulmer returned as part of a tribute to the site, the can of beans was discovered buried in the dirt nearby.  The thrilling discovery of the original can of beans (The O.C.B.) might be considered the geocaching equivalent of finding the shroud of Turin or the Ark of the Covenant.

The O.C.B?

     I heard that this great relic would be on display at Geocoinfest and I was just thrilled to be able to go see it.  Some of my coworkers are also geocachers, and I was relaying this story to them and shared my excitement about seeing the O.C.B.  I'm not sure they shared my excitement, but nonetheless, as the days counted down, they all wanted to be sure I took pictures of the beans.

     The display was on the other side of the ballroom, and I could tell by the crowd of people that I had found the right place.  When I first spied the relic, I was... surprised, and not in a good way. Imagine traveling to see the Shroud of Turin and finding a tag on it that read, 'Made in China'.  Yeah, it was that disappointing.  Somehow, I expected a steel can of beans that had been buried for God-knows how many months in the damp Oregon wilderness to look weathered.  I expected some rust, some dirt, something to indicate that it had been, well, outside!  This can looked like it was pulled out of somebody's pantry!    A Google image search gave me some pictures of a badly damaged can, which seemed more plausible.  What was this one?  Although my belief in the O.C.B. momentarily wavered, I still signed the logbook, jotted down the tracking number and grabbed a commemorative trading card. I was not likely to see this again, whatever it was.  Here is the website for the O.C.B. travel bug (link).

  After I returned to work, a can of beans appeared mysteriously on my desk (Garbanzo, not black eyed peas... what were these infidels thinking!).  People are now referring to me as Dr. Beans.  A small picture of a can of beans even appeared on the intro slide of a recent company seminar, much to the confusion of the presenter.  Centuries from now, historians will wonder why the symbol of a can of beans appeared so often in scientific presentations in San Diego.  Illuminati, perhaps?  Bean worshipers? And perhaps the most intriguing question... who was the mysterious Dr. Beans?