VISITS BY STATOID
In the first two reports I made the effort to gauge the completeness of my TB coverage of a particular nation. For example, Germany has 16 statoids. The first bug to that country was on 24 May 10 and the last German statoid was visited on 27 Dec 11. At this point the coverage of Germany was complete at 100%. This determination was simple.
A completeness designation got a little more complicated with the next country nearing completion, the United States. With the federal district, there are 51 statoids. But, should I include the protectorates and territories like Guam, the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Marianas? Then the analysis really started to get troublesome. How should I sort out similar considerations of less familiar countries like the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal and their far- and not-so-far-flung affiliations?
Yet another complication is the evolving content of the cache location menus at Groundspeak. Using resources from the web, I had identified statoids in some large stable countries where Groundspeak originally had none. Over time Groundspeak added country subdivisions and in a number of instances they were different than mine. So, in the end, a completion status was just too much trouble to pursue. If the reader is interested, he/she can count statoids using their own criteria and do the math themselves.
In the first two reports I made the effort to gauge the completeness of my TB coverage of a particular nation. For example, Germany has 16 statoids. The first bug to that country was on 24 May 10 and the last German statoid was visited on 27 Dec 11. At this point the coverage of Germany was complete at 100%. This determination was simple.
A completeness designation got a little more complicated with the next country nearing completion, the United States. With the federal district, there are 51 statoids. But, should I include the protectorates and territories like Guam, the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Marianas? Then the analysis really started to get troublesome. How should I sort out similar considerations of less familiar countries like the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal and their far- and not-so-far-flung affiliations?
Yet another complication is the evolving content of the cache location menus at Groundspeak. Using resources from the web, I had identified statoids in some large stable countries where Groundspeak originally had none. Over time Groundspeak added country subdivisions and in a number of instances they were different than mine. So, in the end, a completion status was just too much trouble to pursue. If the reader is interested, he/she can count statoids using their own criteria and do the math themselves.
Still, I will mention that, on the European continent only, all of the statoids of the following multi-statoid countries have been visited: the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Switzerland and France. The Irish Republic is complete, as is the UK, including the proximal isles of Man, Jersey and Guernsey. Norway, Sweden and Finland are very close to being finished, and perhaps will be completed by the time this report is finished.
New Zealand is complete and so is Australia, or not, depending on how the statoids are assigned. South Korea, The Philippines and Japan have had visitations but none are complete. South Korea might eventually get there, but it will extremely fortuitous if the isolated island statoids of the Philippines and Japan are all reached in my lifetime. Likewise for China
Only a few countries in South America have been visited and none are near completion.
In mainland North America, the US is complete and Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Belize have all been visited. Mexico is about half covered and Canada lacks only the Nunavut Territory. Much of Nunavut lies within the Arctic Circle and had only a handful of caches the last time I looked, so I am not optimistic I will ever check off that one. However, I had no reason to believe I would ever score a visit to Liechtenstein or to Svalbard, a Norwegian island statoid inside the Arctic Circle, but both happened, the latter perhaps in the hands a cacher visiting the polar bear observatory.
Other unexpected statoids were Almaty, Kazakhstan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Andorra, French Polynesia and Reunion and the Maldive Islands, both in the Indian Ocean,
New Zealand is complete and so is Australia, or not, depending on how the statoids are assigned. South Korea, The Philippines and Japan have had visitations but none are complete. South Korea might eventually get there, but it will extremely fortuitous if the isolated island statoids of the Philippines and Japan are all reached in my lifetime. Likewise for China
Only a few countries in South America have been visited and none are near completion.
In mainland North America, the US is complete and Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Belize have all been visited. Mexico is about half covered and Canada lacks only the Nunavut Territory. Much of Nunavut lies within the Arctic Circle and had only a handful of caches the last time I looked, so I am not optimistic I will ever check off that one. However, I had no reason to believe I would ever score a visit to Liechtenstein or to Svalbard, a Norwegian island statoid inside the Arctic Circle, but both happened, the latter perhaps in the hands a cacher visiting the polar bear observatory.
Other unexpected statoids were Almaty, Kazakhstan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Andorra, French Polynesia and Reunion and the Maldive Islands, both in the Indian Ocean,
The table below shows the 195 TBs that visited 468 unique statoids. A zero in the statoid column means no statoids have been been parsed by either me or Groundspeak when I started this report. The complete release locations are shown in the List of TBs tab.
The highest catalog number to reach a new statoid was TB 1348 for Vietnam in 635 days. The greatest number of days required for an older travel bug (TB 90) to reach a new statoid was 2038 days in French Polynesia.
One of the ways to look at this list is in the context of what was required to reach a particular statoid, or a collection of statoids. For example, to score Tasmania, in Australia, it took 98 of my travel bugs (the Cat. number 98) reach that statoid.
The first country to get complete coverage was Germany, it might be said that it took 446 travel bugs and 716 days (the number of days between date of the first statoid visited and the date of the last statoid visited) to achieve this under the conditions of this project. The second country completed was the United States. The first bug was Cat No 0001 in statoid Texas, on 10 Jan 10, by the writer. It took until 16 June 2011 for TB 599 to visit the 51st statoid (Vermont), a period of 786 days (2.15 years).
The highest catalog number to reach a new statoid was TB 1348 for Vietnam in 635 days. The greatest number of days required for an older travel bug (TB 90) to reach a new statoid was 2038 days in French Polynesia.
One of the ways to look at this list is in the context of what was required to reach a particular statoid, or a collection of statoids. For example, to score Tasmania, in Australia, it took 98 of my travel bugs (the Cat. number 98) reach that statoid.
The first country to get complete coverage was Germany, it might be said that it took 446 travel bugs and 716 days (the number of days between date of the first statoid visited and the date of the last statoid visited) to achieve this under the conditions of this project. The second country completed was the United States. The first bug was Cat No 0001 in statoid Texas, on 10 Jan 10, by the writer. It took until 16 June 2011 for TB 599 to visit the 51st statoid (Vermont), a period of 786 days (2.15 years).