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Geek Outdoor Hobbies?
Embedded Geek asks: "My wife and I, in an effort to get more exercise, have recently begun geocaching, which is basically global scavenger hunt using GPS. We have also been active in the Society for Creative Anachronism and my friends are always trying to draft us into paintball. While we're having a blast with all these, I wanted to see if other slashdotters could suggest more geek style, outdoor hobbies that would appeal to a pair of pasty faced nerds like us."
Extreme Croquet seems like a pretty geeky fun game to me. Polymer mallet heads, machiened wickets, physics, geometery and the outdoors. The Connectuicut eXtreme Croquet Society has an interesing site on the subject.
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My wife and I also took up kite flying together. Before you envision some sedate, lazy, K-Mart delta kite flying (though that can be fun as well), we're flying stunt kites, such as these or these. Some of these are made of fairly exotic materials for extremely light weights, while others pull like trucks. It's even possible to go for a ride with them - three-wheel trikes and hard-pulling kites make for some fast trips across beaches and dry lakebeds.
Hope this piques your interest!
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
I've been an Asst. Scoutmaster for my Scout troop for a little over 2 years now, since I turned 18 and couldn't be a Scout any more. It gets me outside, rock climbing, camping, boating, and a lot of other cost prohibitive or hard to get to activities. highly recommended for former Scouts or for someone willing to put forth a bit of elbow grease..
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Hiking (or "taking the digital camera and GPS for a stroll" if you prefer) is another favorite. Four-wheeling and boating are other favorites that allow us to get before-during-after geekiness in (generating custom maps, GPS, digital camera). We also enjoy gardening (geek toys: self-installed programmable automatic watering system, digital camera again, and we're working on "bird feeder cams").
Of course, some of what we get out of all this is that there are perfectly interesting non-geeks to meet (I have the digital photos to prove there really are non-geeks in the world!).
Maybe it's not as passive as disc golf, but lots of geeks still play Ultimate Frisbee. Most people have never played it until they get to college, and, as such, it's a very beginner-oriented sport. If you ever see people playing in a park, they're usually more than happy for you to join in, even if you've never played before.
It does involve some running, but it's non-contact and fun as hell. In fact the most important rule in the game is for it to be well-spirited (and fun). Also, many tournaments involve some wicked partying =)
If you're interested in learning more, try:
What is Ultimate?
The Ultimate Handbook
or find a team near you.
Sailing is plenty geeky. I mean really now, you're powering a craft by wind. There are tons of details you constantly have to consider. Geeks love details, and they love to think.
Should you need exercise, sail on a Hobiecat. On a windy day, it feels like you're going fast, and trust me, when you're leaning out over the water hanging from your trapiese you're getting tons of exercise.
While Hobie's are cool, they're not designed for beginners. A sunfish is great fun learning. Should you want exercise, flip it intentionally. Sunfishes are near trivial to right, and pretty fun boats to sail. (For those who don't know, a sunfish is a tiny sailboat which can reasonably accomodate one or two people for an afternoon.)
If you want to get _really_ geeky you can always start riding the wierd bikes too. Recumbents, Tandem, Tricycles (or any combination of the above) all add to the variation - and there's nothing quite like following a recumbent tandem trike to realise how much road prescence a 4' wide, 15' long HPV can have.
Also have a look at the serious end of Human Powered Vehicles for extreme geekiness. Some of the latest speed machines don't have windows - you use a fibre optic camera to a flat-screen display on the handlebars as that improves the aerodynamics.
At the other end you have the Minnesota groups who race ice bikes on the frozen stuff up there every winter and keep it at the reclaimed scrap end of technology (but with just as much innovation when it comes to finding something that will grip on ice...)
Lots of stuff on the geeky end of bicycling at http://www.ihpva.org
A UK based magazine on the wider aspects of cycling around the world is Velovision
http://www.velovision.co.uk
There's even people who ride unicycles off-road (Muni - mountain unicycle - they call at) and a US company, Haluzak, who have been making off-road recumbents for years.
For interesting extras I've had on my bikes over the years the Air Zound (120 Db+ air horn - pumped up by a bike pump) and the Mountain Drive (extra low gears contained in the bottom bracket - really does let you haul heavy loads up mountains) are my favorites.