THE NIELSEN FAMILY TRAVEL BUG RACE
	News Archive May 2004 Update April was definately the month for Sputnik as it shot from worst to first in one month. Thanks to some vacation'in geocachers, Sputnik caught a plane and then a cruiseliner to the Bahamas. At five points per mile, Sputnik has opened up a huge lead that will be a challenge for the other travel bugs to close on. Big Bootie made some 'big' noise in the Mountain West as it traveled as far North as South Dakota before landing safely in Denver. They now control 2nd place by less than 100 points. Both Kung Fu Elvis and License to Elvis had a quiet month but expect that to change. Sadly, R2D2 and Easy Rider had no movement at all and ended up with the 250 'dead last' bonus. Here are the current totals: 1st place: Sputnik 11,120 2nd Big Bootie 2,436 3rd: Kung Fu Elvis 2,341 4th: License to Elvis 1,375 5th R2D2 620 6th Easy Rider 250 December 2003 Update Well, the race is over. In a remarkable come-from-behind performance, Thomas passed the 50,000 point mark to win the travel bug race. Congratulations Thomas! Here are the final standings: 1st Place Thomas 50,086 2nd Place T-for-2 48,851 3rd Place Chowda 39,539 4th Place Lil' Bopper September 2003 Update This was a relatively slow month as we go down the home stretch. T-for-2 is still in the while the other three travel bugs appear to be playing for second place. We'll wait and see if anyone can catch T-for-2 before its too late. Rumour about that Little Bopper and Thomas may soon be making trans-continental trips that could catapult them back into contention. Meanwhile, Chowda has left New England for the first time and sun California sunshine may be just what she needs to rejuninate her point totals. Its crunch-time so everyone keep your eye on the prize - someone may be winging their way to beautiful Cleveland Ohio to claim the grand prize before the leaves have turned. August 2003 Update Wow, what an update, things have changed, but it is anyone's race at this point. T-for-2 maintains a strong lead, but it is not a runaway race. The point spread for the other positions is within a couple hundred points. We have seen the first loyalty cross over. Earthling TF, the former Chowda fan has picked up her No 1 competitor, played settlers and uploaded points. Scott C continues to aid Lil' Bopper and he helped it to gain 2500 points by staying overnight in the Planezz, Trainzz and Automobilezz cache. June 2003 Update First of all I have to apologize for the sorry state of the website. Tripod has decided to insert ads at the bottom of all the pages that really messes up the frames. Unfortunately I can't change the website address in the middle of the contest. I may change the design of the site so that it doesn't use frames. But, in the meantime I'm sorry for the inconvenience. The big news in this update is Lil' Bopper who managed to more than triple her score and move into third place after dwelling in the cellar for the past six months. Lil' Bopper's recent rise in the standings comes thanks to "golden cacher" ScottC. ScottC has taken Lil' Bopper on several cross-continent jaunts including one trip from Alaska to Florida and has uploaded several pictures. Lil' Bopper has logged more miles than any of the other travel bugs so far. Thank you for taking such good care of Lil'Bopper! Thomas has also made a recent surge and is closing in one first place. T-for-2 better take a look in their rear view mirror. In all, this is the most competative that the race has been for some time with all the travel bugs within striking distance of one another. We hope that the fun and excitement will continue as we head down the home stretch. May 2003 Update Our travel bugs did quite a bit of moving during the past month and they collected a lot of pictures along the way. All this means that the point totals have changed. The biggest change was for Thomas who slipped past Chwoda into second place. T-for-2 however stengthened its grip on first place and now is more than halfway towards the goal of 50,000 points. We thank all the wonderful geo-cachers who have taken the time to pick up our little travellers and take their pictures along the way. We hope that with the warm summer months ahead all out little bugs will get to travel and meet many more fun and interesting people. March/April 2003 Update There have been quite a few changes since our last update. Most notably, the Crane's Cache was destroyed. Geocacher skovatch was spotted by some civilians replacing the ammo box in, might I add, a fairly innocuous setting. After reporting this to the Cleveland Heights police, a bomb squad was deployed to the cache. Their x-ray of the cache detected batteries, which made the squad believe that they had a live bomb on their hands, so they blew off the lid. They tracked down Skovatch based on his entry in the cache log book and told him that he had been spotted with a suspicous box, and to be more careful next time. We all need to be wary of paranoid non-cachers in these turbulent times. At our last visit to the cache, we found nothing but a hole in the ground. We are preparing to set up a new cache for the other bugs to visit. In the meantime, we are chalking it up to just another casualty of war. In other happy news, T-for-2 has catapulted into 1st place. That knocks Chowda from it's nearly unapposed reign at #1. Chowda and Thomas have been MIA almost since our last update, and we hope that they will resurface soon. Meanwhile, T-for-2 is enjoying the new status of 1st place, but is also basking in the sun and sands of Hawaii. Cacher Z&L'sDad made the RB Nielsen's happy campers. Not only did he log the largest amount of miles in this race, but the pictures on the F-14 Tomcat and SH-2F Seasprite helicopter were exactly what T-for-2 needed to overtake Chowda for the lead. We had no problem giving out the points for "unusual form of transportation." Thank you so much for the ride! Lastly, here are the most recent log talleys for the family geocaches: Cache as Cache Can - 29 logs Cache Me If You Can - 48 logs Caching Toddler, Hidden Tupperware - 38 logs Planezz, Trainzz and Autmobilezz - 45 logs