The Robin and Roosevelt Virtual Scholar!

Stick with me on this one, and don't judge me before I'm through with explaining!.......

Before I came over here I spent a weekend with some relatives who are into "Geocaching". In a nut shell, it's treasure hunting with GPS (Global Positioning)! Now, to my fellow bar flies this might not sound like something that I'd usually take much interest in, and in fact, many of you might right now be preparing to have serious words with me when I get home, some might also be planning to hurt me............ BUT, truth be known it's a good laugh...........so there!

So, having enjoyed my first Geocaching experience I came up with an idea to help to raise the profile of the Nottingham Roosevelt Memorial Travelling Scholarship over here in the States.

I've set up the Robin and Roosevelt "Travel Bug", who's mission will be to act as a virtual scholar and travel the USA as far and wide as possible until the year 2046 - the 100th anniversary of the Nottingham Roosevelt Memorial Travelling Scholarship!

In the Goecaching world "Travel Bugs" are small identity tagged items who have the purpose of travelling from Geocache to Geocache. The finder of a Travel Bug takes it home, types in the identity tag number into the Geocaching website online, and is then presented with information about the purpose of the Travel Bug. The finder then deposits the Travel Bug in the next Geocache that they find and so the bug travels around.

Finders of the Robin and Roosevelt Travel Bug will be taken to its own web page, where they'll learn about the scholarship. I've also included on there web references to our visitnottingham.co.uk web pages. The hope is that they will learn a little bit about Nottingham.

You'll see on the right hand side of this page that I've included a link to the Robin and Roosevelt Travel Bug page which will let you see where the bug has travelled to. I've also included a link on there for you to learn a little bit more about Geocaching as well - so go and have a look!

I met up with a whole bunch of Geocache enthusiasts in downtown Chicago at the weekend, and one of them, Paul, kindly agreed to take the Robin and Roosevelt travel bug off me and start it on it's travels (Thanks Paul!) - turns out though that Paul took it to an event over here in Chicago, where somebody quite important in the world of Geocaching took a liking to it!

Jeremy Irish is President and Co-founder of "Groundspeak", the company that administers Geocaching.com. Geocaching is growing rapidly with over 330,000 caches worldwide so Jeremy's started something fairly big in setting this company up!

Anyway, he took the Robin and Roosevelt travel bug off Paul's hands when Paul explained to him what it's purpose was. Jeremy has taken it with him back to the Groundspeak headquarters where he will then send it on its way. We'll have to wait and see where it turns up next.

The photo above is of Paul (left) handing the Robin and Roosevelt Travel bug over to Jeremy Irish.

The travel bug itself is a small diecast metal Robin Hood figure, with a badge of the Nottingham City crest attached to it. You can't really see it in the picture though so I'll try and get somebody who finds it to send me a close up of it.

M