How I Got Into Letterboxing.
It’s all my friend Rinda’s fault. Rinda, or Sleepy Whippet as she is known in letterboxing circles, who I know through whippets, came out to have lunch with me at the Roadhouse in August 2003. When we were leaving, she said something about going to Blue Lake Park to find a letterbox. I thought she was talking about the mailing stores, and proceeded to tell her there was one up the road. She then explained letterboxing to me. I think she was looking for Der Mad Stamper’s Blue Lake box that day. I don’t know if she ever found it. I was very intrigued.
A few days later she invited me to go letterboxing with her at Milo McIver Park. My very first box was Clackamas River, by the Paisley Orca. I don’t think this box is still around, sadly enough. We did the “Making Faces” and “Jurassic Park” series that day. I logged 13 finds that day including finding a hitchhiker. I was totally hooked. I even stopped for another one on my way home from McIver.
I didn’t even have a trail name picked out yet when I did this. Or a stamp. I bought a butterfly stamp and just signed in as “Kris.” I’m not sure when I decided on Bookworm as my trail name, but it wasn’t too much later, I guess.
I didn’t carve my first signature stamp because I was too eager to get out there and box, but I had my first sig stamp made for me by Stamp Connections. Here is the image I used:
I conned someone, probably Maiden1974, into carving my second signature stamp for me. I can't find the image at the moment, but I'll post it sometime soon.
My third and current signature stamp I carved all by my lonesome (mostly because my friends that are better at carving than me had caught on to my little trick and made me do it myself). This is the one you will see out and about now. I can't find this image either, so you'll have to meet me at the Live & Breathe event to get it!
I had big plans of changing my letterboxing name here for my 5 year anniversary. I thought and thought and thought to come up with a name that sounded really cool and was totally me. I had a terrific name all picked out…Midnight Flamingo. Isn’t that great? I don’t really know what it means, but I think it sounds extra cool. I like flamingos, I like hot pink, and anytime you put an adjective in front of a word, especially Midnight, it sounds nifty. I carved a stamp for it and everything. And then Mr. Grumpy Pants asked me who Midnight Flamingo was and said it sounded like a porn star name. I’ve rather lost my taste for it now. So I guess I’ll stay Bookworm. I don’t know what my letterboxing friends would call me if I did change it.
Since then, I have racked up a lot more finds. By my count I’ve found 820 letterboxes. Here are my stats as recorded by me:
Placed: 16 (includes travelers)
Found: 820
Exchanged: 289
Hitchhikers: 73
Postals: 152
Cooties: 103
Travelers: 108
Event: 95
Atlas Quest has this totally cool feature that graphs and charts all the things that you’ve entered in to their data base. Not all the stamps I’ve collected are listed on Atlas Quest and I haven’t gone in and added the missing ones. This is really cool, too:
Total unique finds: 524
Total days since first find: 2,006
Total days with finds: 150
Finds per day: 0.26
Finds per boxing day: 3.49
Percent of boxing days: 7.5%
Best day: 54 (October 1, 2005) (this was the Joker’s Wild Gathering)
Most consecutive days with finds: 4 days
Longest find drought: 191 days (This must have been when I had my broken ankle)
There is more cool stats, but I can't get them to copy over in a readable format, and I don't feel like retyping it.
Here are a few pictures of me letterboxing for your entertainment.
This is one from my first letterboxing trip (I think). That's me, my mother-in-law Ann, and Rinda
2 comments:
Bookworm... you forgot to count all the friends you have made during letterboxing. I think that you should just be Wormy.
Bookworm fits you perfect.
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