I'm thinking of doing the centrum challenge...

[NativeMainer]

I'm looking at either Sunday or Monday (the 19th or 20th). I'll be doing caches in the Portland area (I will be crossing over into South Portland, Westbrook, and Falmouth).

Any hints, tips, tricks, encouragement, discouragement? Cheer me on?

[squirrelcache]

Plan your route thoroughly ahead of time, re-routing takes too much time. Don't spend too much time at each one, looking for something that may not be there. Don't travel very far to get em', on wheels or foot. The cover of darkness is a Great time to hit the muggle areas. Remember your timeline and stick to it, it's harder to make up lost ground. Do Not take off too late.......learn from others' experiences....... Have Fun along the way!

[NativeMainer]

I'm working on the route planning right now. There's a nice concentration in Portland and the surrounding area that I haven't hit yet.

[NativeMainer]

Oh, and some of the caches that I'm planning to hit are puzzle caches. I'm making sure that I solve the puzzles beforehand and mark them in my map.

[Ekidokai]

Make sure you set up more than a hundred. Depending on your track record you may have to pass on some. Have a bunch planned out to make up for any that you have to pass.

[benandtina]

Goodluck! I agree with planning out extra. Ben and I are doing the DeLorme Challenge and the best advice we've been given was from Hollora. She said to make sure we have extra caches planned for each map in case we end up with a DNF. We've had to rely on our backup caches for several maps

Let us know how your 100 go. At some point Ben and I would like to try this out, but I'm not sure if we'll get the chance any time soon.

[NativeMainer]

I was definitely planning on the extra ones. Sometimes my success rate isn't all that great.

I've got a DeLorme street atlas of the Portland area. I've been marking out geocaches (and some of the puzzle caches that I can solve here at home). I'm also writing the route out on a WordPerfect document that should (in theory, anyways) be easy for me to follow.

I used to be a pizza delivery driver in Portland and South Portland, so I know some of the little shortcuts around town.

[benandtina]

Does your GPS let you plan routes and optimally re-order them? I have a Garmin Nuvi 750 and it will optimally re-order up to 25 locations to give me the best way to hit each point. I've found that using that feature is usually a lot easier than trying to figure out routes on my own unless I have a specific scenic drive I'd like to take or something. Unfortunately, I don't know of any software that will do something similar

[NativeMainer]

Right now all I have is a Garmin eTrex (the yellow one). I'm trying to save my pennies up for a 60CSX and maybe a Nuvi 200 series. But I also want a couple of camera lenses. First, our budget is a little tight, but things will improve a bit when we have a tenant for our empty apartment.

[bsstacey]

Here's a good Traveling Salesman Problem solver for google maps: http://gebweb.net/optimap/
It can plan a nearly optimal route for twenty waypoints, do the best you can by hand then enter them into this thing twenty at a time with at least a five waypoint overlap. Write down the route, and follow it.

Spend no more than four minutes searching per cache. At the four minute mark get back in your car, regardless of how close you feel you are. Time is your enemy.

Plan a set of at least 150 caches. We had a success rate of 89.3%, we searched for 112 and found 100.

Try to search for the easiest, quickest caches you can. Don't plan anything harder than a 2.5 unless you have reason to believe that you will be able to find it quickly.

Have the phone numbers of a bunch of local cachers on speed dial, you may need a phone a friend.

Take food and drinks with you.

Have back ups of all of your data. While we were doing the Centum in New Hampshire Dan's Nuvi lost its mind, I had to reload all of the caches from my laptop...good thing I brought it.

Plan to be finding your first cache at sunrise, and bring some flashlights with you. It gets dark sooner than one might think.

Lastly: Have fun, we sure did.