There was just a short story about geocaching on the Discovery channel. Basically, geocaching is using a GPS to hunt for a location in the wilderness. The location of caches all over the world are listed on a number of web sites. Think of it as a cross between a treasure hunt and hide-and-seek. I’ve never been on an actual hunt, but it seems like a pretty cool idea. Check out geocaching.com for an FAQ and a search engine to find the sites near you. While I already knew the basics, it was still an interesting story.

The thing that rubbed me the wrong way about it was they kept calling geocaching a sport. It seems that calling something a hobby or a fun activity is a bad thing. A hobby is child’s play, but the same thing re-labelled a sport is somehow suddenly worthy.

The way I see it, a sport is a game or activity in which teams or people compete against each other and the results are obvious and quantifiable. That means a time, score, or distance. I find this a very useful guide although there are exceptions. Figure skating? Nope, it’s an art form, an artistic expression. I don’t feel that figure skating or ice dancing belongs in the Olympics at all. If they belong there, why isn’t ballet a summer sport? It isn’t and it shouldn’t be.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to lessen figure skating or geocaching in any way. I just think they’re completely mislabeled.