paleolith

Um ... OK. Seriously, it sounds like the main problem is that you are uncomfortable doing something you don't normally do in these places. (I'm blowing off the issue of actual danger, trusting your judgement of your street smarts.) You probably already realize that with so many people doing different things in the park, one more won't stand out, so I won't preach that line. If you start to feel uncomfortable, just put your GPSr up to your ear and start talking. Say something like "oops, I think I just took another picture of my ear". Will anyone think it's odd that you are wandering around aimlessly when you are on the phone? Even more advantageous, they will avoid interrupting your "conversation". But I'll say that discomfort looking for a cache with muggle eyes around isn't just a female thing. Edward

Absolutely! After all, it's not about the numbers, it's about sitting in front of the computer talking about the numbers. Edward

Some possible issues. First, yes if your body isn't accustomed to it, then you will get hypoglycemic reactions in the 80s. The lower limit for normal is stated as 90 for good reason. A well-running body will start releasing several hormones below that point to 1) force the liver to give up some of its stores, and 2) make you feel even hungrier so you will eat. Since epinephrine (aka adrenaline) is the primary of these hormones, the sensations of a low are similar to the fight-or-flight response. Second, many diabetics notice that fast-dropping bg will cause hypoglycemic symptoms, and this is recognized by the medical community. I personally have never noticed this. However, again, low bg is not the only condition which causes the body to release the hormones which cause the symptoms. Third, type 2 diabetes is often associated with reactive hyperglycemia. In fact, it's quite common to have symptoms of reactive hypoglycemia in the years preceding a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. Normally you eat food, your beta cells release insulin, your bg returns to normal. The way reactive hypoglycemia works is that the beta cells release too much insulin, and bg drops below normal. Why this happens isn't clear -- maybe bg goes too high or stays high for too long as a result of the developing insulin resistance and causes the beta cells to overreact, or perhaps the beta cells just have a demented response. No one really knows, but the link between reactive hypoglycemia and diabetes is clear. Edward

While I basically agree with all Vinny says, I think we have to remember that geocaching IS a technological game. You need to be able to operate a GPSr and navigate the gc.com web site (which is not one of the easiest on the web). Yes, some cachers get by without one or the other or both (some find caches only by Google Maps, some go out with others who have a GPSr), but those are fringes. Hiding a cache adds to the technical responsibility. The guidelines are explicit that you are responsible for maintaining the cache's web page as well as the cache itself. If you aren't capable of doing that, if you aren't capable of setting up an email address only known to gc.com and never revealing it otherwise so that you can receive email related to your cache, then maybe you shouldn't hide a cache. Is this fair? Neither is life. Yes, it excludes (at least partially) many very intelligent people who don't want to deal with the technological aspects. I may be excluding from appearing in plays because I'm incompetent at acting, even though I'm reasonably intelligent. Etc. There's a place for everyone, but there's no one whose place is everywhere. Edward

The recent thread on NPS Policy includes a link to the recently published policy document. Since you are talking NPS, it would be a super good idea to be thoroughly familiar with this document before making contact. Very like you will then know more about the policy than the local land manager, so be prepared to do some explaining and to give them time to study. If no other caches have been placed on lands in their jurisdiction, then you need to offer to help them develop the local policy. (Basically what the document says is that caching on NPS lands is now local policy, and provides some guidelines and resources.) Edward

I have replaced five caches recently, including two yesterday, all very old ones (5+ years old). In three of the cases I had the owner's consent and thanks in advance; in the other two cases the owner is long since MIA. The "consent" cases varied. In one case the owner has been visiting annually but the problem was noticed since his last visit. In another case the owner is now absentee but still responding to email. In the third case the owner is active but probably too busy to visit the cache. In all cases the caches should need very little maintenance going forward, as I replaced the containers with ammo cans and none have had any muggling issues. The MIA cases were pretty easy calls. They were old and popular and in good locations. I also replaced them with ammo cans. I figure that when I've fired enough emails at the owners with no response, I'll request non-consensual adoptions and then try to find permanent owners. (I won't be in the area permanently.) I threw out nearly all of the swag in 3 of the 5, about half in the 4th, and kept most in the 5th. In two cases I replaced the log book. The condition of the contents didn't really leave any question about what to do. There was no chance of misidentification in any of these cases. In all but one case, there was adequate identification still legible (though in some cases slimy ), and the remaining case contained a log book (albeit underwater) and fit numerous posted descriptions. Had there been any doubt about the ID, I'd have been a lot more hesitant. OTOH, I found a 6-month-old cache yesterday which was poorly set up (by a 0-find 1-hide cacher) and already has a hole in the container. I added a ziploc freezer bag and a stash note. No way will I go to the trouble to do major fixes for that cache. BTW ... ammo cans are heavy. I carried one on my back for over five hours yesterday. Edward

Probably isn't waiting any longer, since it was in a "clear plastic" container. Well, you can make anything long. I could hike from DC to find a cache in CA. A 2000 mile hike! I've been to Throop Peak, and though you *can* hike that far and that high, you don't have to, not as long as the highway is open to Islip Saddle. Edward

You are within the gray area as far as both gc.com and geocaching convention is concerned. Make your own rules within this area. Personally I would log a find in case of either being directed to a cache or being unable to sign a wet log. In fact, particularly in these cases, since it's important to make a report on the condition (though of course in the latter case I would also log NM). Now, if I don't actually find the cache, I don't log it just because I found the location -- even though for me visiting the location is the important thing. Edward

The cancerous spread of selfishness is negatively affecting the world. Case in point: SUVs. Hikers cut switchbacks. Bicyclists run up the sideslopes and slide through turns. Equestrians ride on muddy trails. Politicians make promises they can't keep. Personally, I have ... well, I don't want to talk about it. Let's just say that I belong to the human race. Heck, I have good friends who drive SUVs. The horror. Good people do bad things. Edward

As long as it's based on voting, of any kind, your Cache of the Month is going to be a popularity contest, period. If you want to really highlight interesting and creative caches, you have to put the power into the hands of one person or a few, who take recommendations and then evaluate. Obviously this doesn't sit well with a lot of people, due to the parallels with government power. But you have a choice: make it democratic or make it outstanding. Remember what Churchill said about democracy. Edward

I have used screen capture software, followed by pasting into an image editor (I use PSE) and printing from there. Roundabout and time consuming but it works. Edward

Far and away the most frequent mistake I see is using soft plastic (generally polyethylene) containers in locations exposed to direct sunlight. You are lucky if these last a year. If the location never, and I mean NEVER, receives direct sunlight, then polyethylene is good for several years. Polyethylene also, as previously noted, is highly susceptible to being chewed on. Even when the plastic does not actually crack, it often deforms so that it cannot seal. Polycarbonate withstands both sunlight and chewing, but you have a lot fewer choices. Nalgene water bottles are all polycarbonate these days. (When Nalgene came into the hiking market some 25 years ago, they sold polyethylene water bottles. Mine all died long ago just in storage. Some other Nalgene products are still polyethylene.) In my kitchen I have a Rubbermaid container whose bottom part is polycarb, but the lid is not; it would not last in the sun. I do wish that someone would make containers similar to ammo cans but constructed of polycarbonate -- all clear polycarb except for a flexible rubber seal. Including some in sizes smaller than regular ammo cans. Cookie tins and similar items rust. Always in my limited experience. Even in southern California. Some reused food containers last pretty well, others decay immediately. I haven't figured out how to predict. The assumption that because something holds water securely, or keeps water out when submerged, means it will be waterproof as a cache container is NOT TRUE. Outside, a container will be subject to a lot more changes of pressure and temperature, which often compromise a seal which performed well under more benign conditions. Go by what others have learned. There was a thread a while back showing that Kodak-style 35mm film canisters (the most popular kind) leak like a sieve. The Fuji-style aren't perfect but stand up better. Of the caches I've placed, I used ammo cans for six. (I like hiking, so these are fairly remote.) I placed one that had to go in a space too small for an ammo can, and a previous cache in the location had been constantly wet, so I used a container from The Waterproof Store. Nope, it wasn't cheap, but it seems to have made a lot of finders happy. I've also replaced the container on several old caches, and used ammo cans for all -- these were caches that had already been around for 5+ years so I figured it was worth a container that would last. Edward

This is NOT correct. The ADA (American Diabetes Association) recommends AGAINST using HbA1c for diagnosis. The reason is that HbA1c has been found less reliable for diagnosis than FPG (fasting plasma glucose), and not even as accurate as random blood glucose when symptoms are present. HbA1c is good for monitoring known diabetes. It is definitely true that it's easy to miss diabetes based on a single test, which is why I recommend that anyone at risk gather a lot more data points than the doctors normally ask for. Edward

I've had type 1 diabetes for just over 40 years. Almost 15 years ago, I edited, and wrote most of, the FAQ for the Usenet newsgroup misc.health.diabetes. It's still posted biweekly to the newsgroup, and is available at a number of archive sites. (Unfortunately the best known archive site, faqs.org, inexplicably stopped updating about four years ago and almost all FAQs archived there are out of date.) Usenet? Before the World Wide Web, it was the second reason people got on the net, after email. Now it's best known as Google Groups. In an earlier day, this forum would have been a newsgroup. But I digress. To respond to many of the posts at once: I agree with others that a type 2 dropping to 50 mg/dl (which if anyone outside the US and Romania is reading this, is about 2.2 mmol/L) indicates an urgent need to adjust the treatment. You do have one misconception. You say Going low (in the range encountered by diabetics) is uncomfortable but not dangerous in and of itself. The main danger from hypoglycemia is trauma resulting from loss of coordination or consciousness. You say you drive a lot, so going low while driving should be your main concern -- you are in far more danger on the road than in the wilderness. Even should you go unconscious from low bg, eventually the drugs will wear off, insulin levels will drop, bg will rise, and you will regain consciousness -- as long as you don't have an accident in the mean time. You may have the mother of all hangovers, and should you lose consciousness during severe/cold weather, the danger of being out in that weather is greatly magnified. This is not to say that you should take hypoglycemia lightly, but you should not live in terror of it either. (Of course, sufficiently low bg WILL result in brain damage and death. It's just that without a major overdose of insulin or other special circumstances, this serious a low doesn't happen as a result of diabetes treatment. You only dropped to 50 mg/dl? Piker. All long-time type 1s have gone at least down into the 30s. I've measure myself under 30 a couple of times.) Yesterday I spent six hours with a large group doing trail maintenance, and then declined the ride back to the meeting place, electing to hike and geocache my way back, alone and only seen by maybe a dozen people in five hours. I got back to the car 2-1/2 hours after sunset, a great full-moon hike. Part of the moonlit hike was on easy and familiar trails, part was on a rough trail I'd never seen before. I put on my headlamp at dusk but didn't turn it on until I did a bg check about an hour and a half later. I felt no more danger than I would have without diabetes. I was a lot more worried about my feet, which were not really happy doing a long hike in the boots I wear for trail work. I have taken far more difficult hikes in far more remote locations. OK, yes, I plan more than I would need to without diabetes. I carry more food than I would otherwise -- yesterday perhaps two or three extra food bars of various kinds, plus glucose tablets. All my diabetes stuff fits easily in a small stuff sack, which is where is always lives except when I'm in one place and it sits on a desk or counter. Two kinds of insulin, two syringes (one in use, one spare), vial of test strips in use and a spare vial, vial holding used strips, bg meter, finger sticker, pen, log book, and a vial of glucose tablets. Takes some thought at first, then becomes routine. I have far more often had to be concerned with adequate water, staying warm and dry, comfortable footwear (you can get seriously trapped if your feet hurt too much to walk). Guess what ... those are all the things that all hikers have to think about. Really not that different after all. When I hike alone, I make sure that someone knows where I'm going and when I'm expected back and when to call SAR if I don't show up. This is no different from what I would do without diabetes. I am lucky in that I have no diabetic neuropathy. There is evidence that a susceptibility to complications is inherited and is independent of diabetes itself, and it seems that my susceptibility is low. If you have any diabetic neuropathy, then you will need to pay a lot more attention to your feet, to the point that you realize that monitoring your bg was the easy part. If your doctor has not done a filament test on your feet (aka LEAP test), insist on it. There is a self-test described on the US HHS web site but personally I would recommend having someone else do it -- doctor or nurse -- because it's too easy to skew your own results. You've had diabetes long enough that you could have complications already. (Sadly many type 2 diabetics are diagnosed because of complications involving permanent damage, such as neuropathy or a heart attack. Luckily the symptoms you have described are transient.) Source of sugar: realize that "sugar" is a category, not a single chemical compound. The sugar in your blood is glucose. Table sugar is sucrose, a disaccharide; during digestion it decomposes into half glucose and half fructose. Fructose, despite its name, is not the only sugar found in fruit. Of critical importance, though, is that fructose does not raise your bg (that's blood glucose) at all. As a result, table sugar (or milk, whose lactose is half glucose) is only half as effective, per calorie ingested, in raising your bg compared with glucose tablets. Most of us don't need those extra calories. The Wikipedia article on disaccharides might give you some ideas. Starches break down into pure glucose, and so although they take longer, they end up raising bg just as much as glucose. This is the source of the well known phenomenon whereby white bread raises bg quite a bit more than table sugar. Much sugared soda/pop is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. You can look up the details, but in practical terms the effect is much like table sugar: you ingest about twice the calories to get the same rise in bg. (My wife prefers the flavor of the "artificial" sweeteners to that of sugar. I put "artificial" in quotes because there's nothing natural about processed concentrated sugar. We think of soda as either "regular" or "sugared" and we don't buy sugared.) The usual recommendation for treating low bg is 10g of glucose, wait 15-20 minutes. If it's mild I'll use 8g (two tablets); severe, up to 20g. Waiting can be hard. It's especially bad in the middle of the night; many times I've been awakened by low bg and eaten 700 calories when 50-75 calories and a little patience would have done. And yup, I'm in the category of those who don't need the extra calories. Candy bars are a really poor source of glucose, since the calories in candy bars are predominantly from fat, which isn't worth beans in terms of raising bg (literally -- beans raise bg but rather slowly, fat doesn't raise it all all). Note that as a type 2, your pancreas is perfectly OK, at least initially. Type 1 and type 2 are totally different diseases linked by the common symptom of elevated bg and the sequelae of that elevation. Type 1 is loss of insulin producing capability. Type 2 is, at least initially, a failure to use insulin properly, along with (usually) a variety of other metabolic issues. Due to this insulin resistance, type 2s often have elevated insulin levels. At least in concept, type 1 is simple -- we still don't know what initiates the autoimmune response which destroys the beta cells, and replacing the endogenous insulin with exogenous (injected) insulin is harder in practice than in theory, but in concept it's simple. We do not yet have any such conceptual understanding of type 2; we only know that even in concept it is far more complex. (At later stages of disease most type 2s do lose some or most insulin production. The reasons for this are just as unclear as everything else about type 2.) So since the primary problem in type 2 is failure to use insulin properly, the ideal treatment is to increase insulin sensitivity. In part this is a happy situation, because the single best thing to increase insulin sensitivity is ... ta-da ... EXERCISE! Not so happily, but effective, the next best thing is controlling diet and (much more difficult) reducing body weight. Then come drugs. Sadly, the cheapest (and therefore most prescribed) drugs -- the older sulfonylurea drugs such as gyburide -- merely goose the pancreas into producing more insulin. In a type 2, increasing insulin levels tends to lead to weight gain. Metformin mainly inhibits the liver from releasing its stores of glucose -- makes the liver more sensitive to insulin. This is helpful but the effect is mostly limited to the liver. The newest drugs, Actos and Avandia, actually make the entire body more sensitive to insulin, and are thus the best line of drug treatment. Their cost is high and therefore insurance companies and especially HMOs hate them with a passion. Their interests are, to say the least, decidedly different from the interests of patients. On vision: it has been frequently observed that rapidly changing bg can cause major vision problems. This means that very often bringing bg into control initially results in poorer vision. Luckily this problem (unlike diabetic retinopathy) reverses quickly when bg is stabilized. Once you have verified that the vision problem is not retinopathy, the treatment is to keep bg stable and wait a few days or weeks. (And all type 2s should have an exam by an ophthalmologist upon diagnosis.) Drooling Mongoloid says This is potentially a very poor choice for several reasons and is a good argument that the old beef and pork insulin should not have been grandfathered with OTC status. (All new insulins since about 1970 require a prescription, including probably 99% of the insulin used in the US today.) First, treating type 2 with insulin often results in weight gain, which makes it harder to control bg, so you take more insulin etc etc. Second, the link between Actos and liver damage is extremely weak, a one-in-a-million risk -- compared with the one-in-five or so risk of heart or kidney disease from diabetes. Given all the things that can cause liver damage, saying Actos caused liver damage in a particular person is impossible. Yes, there is a very slightly increased risk in the population, but it's incredibly tiny compared with the risks associated with diabetes. Heck, the most dangerous part of taking Actos or Avandia, by far, is driving to the drugstore to pick up the pills. Monitoring: I have often recommended to people at risk for type 2 that they not depend on the doctor's tests. Instead, get a monitor and strips (which are OTC as long as you pay out of pocket, in the US insurance coverage will require a scrip) and do a fasting test once a week. Or a postprandial test once a week; the thinking is moving toward the postprandial numbers being more important for diagnosis. For someone controlling type 2 with exercise and diet, pick one day a week and test before and 2 hours after each meal. If you see 110 or higher fasting or preprandial, more than once, or over 150 postprandial very often, step up the monitoring and if possible start watching your exercise and diet more carefully. Over 120 fasting or over 180 postprandial (more than once), call your doctor and report your results immediately. Some will say oh, don't diagnose yourself. I look at this as collecting a great deal more information to help your doctor with a diagnosis. The information your doctor normally has available is very thin for detecting the initial onset of type 2 diabetes, when it's easiest to treat. Myself, I have one of the new continuous monitors (the Minimed Guardian). The technology has not reached that point of being reliable. When it's good, it's very very good, but when it's bad, it's horrid. In any case, this is much more useful for a type 1, whose bg can swing much faster than it does in most type 2s. For my own diagnosis story, I was very lucky. I had none of the classic onset symptoms, but a urine test during a pre-college physical found glucose. That set off a chain of tests and initiation of treatment. For many years I had never had any symptoms of diabetes itself other than blood and urine tests. After 25 years I developed a bit of macular edema in one eye, which remains my only real symptom of the disease. ironman114 quoted a pharmacist's explanation of the drug actions. Unfortunately the pharmacist had it wrong (or didn't speak clearly) about metformin. Metformin acts mainly on the liver, making the liver more sensitive to insulin and thus less likely to dump its glucose stores into the bloodstream. The new drugs, Actos and Avandia, act somewhat as the pharmacist described, making the whole body more sensitive to insulin but not lowering bg directly. The pharmacist was entirely correct that the sulfonylurea drugs (including glyburide) mainly stimulate the pancreas to release more insulin; the pharmacist could have added that although this can bring bg under control, it can also cause weight gain. Anyway, get out and find some more caches, and take the hardest hike or bicycle ride that you enjoy while doing so. (But only as hard as you enjoy -- push too hard and you'll just end up quitting.) Make a few basic preparations, and then figure that the benefits from physical activity far outweigh the risks. Which -- back to this point -- isn't much different from the case for anyone else, just that the benefits are amplified. Edward

I have this recurring fantasy that I've just finished rehiding and I'm sitting down to rest when along comes someone holding a GPSr. Me: Oh, hi. Geo: Um, hi. (Holds GPSr to ear.) OK, gotta go now dear. Sorry to interrupt. Oh, that's OK. Just out for a walk. You? Yeah, great day. I love this spot. Could sit here for hours. Ah, yeah, lovely place. So you're just hanging out for a while? Yeah, I guess. Not in a hurry. Doing anything in particular? No. Just muggling. Um... muggling? ... What's that? Oh ... muggling? That's when you pretend to not know about the cache or caching and see how nervous it makes the cacher. hasn't happened yet ... Edward

I use mini-gel pens, Staples brand. I can't say how they act under adverse conditions, but they are small enough and cheap enough (about 12/$4) that I can carry a handful and replace dead pens and leave them even in small (though not micro) caches where there was previously no writing implement in the cache. They are capped, which should provide a little (though not total) protection from leakage. The cap reverses to make the pen longer and easier to hold while writing. A lot of my log entries say "took a picture, left this pen". Edward

It won't stop them all. But it might stop 95%, just as requiring a photo seems to stop about 99%. I'm not after perfection, mostly just not having to wade through trash. The feedback we've received on this thread from three people much closer to that community than you or I, is that most of the armchair cachers think it's OK because they learned caching that way, not because they are trying to perpetrate fraud. The historical perspective which you gave earlier in this thread (that armchair caches were at one time not in violation of the rules and were grandfathered when the rules were clarified) supports this position. OK, make it an owner option, an attribute. Would take significantly more effort to implement, but since it appears (based again on the history that you've provided) that armchair caches were grandfathered at one time, this may be appropriate. Or the message might say that logging a virtual cache without visiting is not allowed unless the cache owner says so in exactly these words ("this is an armchair cache", or "it's OK to log a find without visiting the physical location"). And if I owned any virtual caches, that's exactly what I'd do. (Anybody got a virt they want me to adopt? ) I'm not sure what rules are broken. There are guidelines on cache owners The Geocaching FAQ says "Virtual caches - A cache is actually an existing landmark, such as a tombstone or statue. You have to answer a question from the landmark and let the "cache" owner know as proof that you were there." While that's the wording I've been saying is too wishy-washy, it is clear to native English speakers: answering the question is for the purpose of proving that you were there, not an end in itself. I don't care as long as I don't have to wade through their logs. Let them say they have found 10,000 virtual caches, I don't care. But when I open a cache page to read some entries from previous visitors, don't make me sift through fifty armchair logs. Don't make me investigate which logs are physical visits to figure out how popular the cache is. (I started this after noticing that Rocky Oaks had suddenly become a great deal more popular than in previous years.) Yeah, I know, I'll have to wade through some TNLNSL entries, but I have seldom seen them take over a cache the way the armchair logs do. Having an "armchair" attribute would resolve this too, since I could filter those out and never look at them. Can't do it. Raise the barrier, and anyone who wants to climb it will find a way. If there are armchair cachers determined to defeat the system, they'll find a way. They can share information far more easily than we can track what they are doing. But the evidence presented here is that most (most) armchair cachers are not determined to beat the system, just playing a conflicting game. That's why I don't think bulletproof methods are needed, just practical ones. If we were only talking about making sure new virtuals were written to make it clear that armchair logging is not allowed, that might be sufficient -- but there are no new virtuals, and many virt owners are no longer active in caching. If we could do non-consensual adoptions to save the good virtuals whose owners are not maintaining the web pages, that might be the solution (I'd be glad to take on a few) -- but non-consensual adoptions of grandfathered types are not allowed. Catch-22. Edward

Putting "the Germans" into a single class and assuming they all think alike is just as silly as assuming all Americans think alike. The German speakers who have posted here, cezanne and widdi, obviously agree with the majority sentiment here and not with the armchair loggers. Edward

Ambrosia, As you say yourself, those are the listing guidelines. Personally I do not expect someone to read the listing guidelines for virtual caches unless they are listing a virtual cache, and since new virtual caches are no longer being listed, there's not much reason for new cachers to read that section at all. In other words, that section puts a burden on cache owners, not on finders. As has been pointed out earlier, this is at the end of a long document which is only available in English. Also, correctly interpreting the phrase "verify to the cache owner that he was physically at the location" requires pretty significant ability to read idiomatic English. Of course the meaning is plainly obvious to you and me (as native speakers), but I doubt I'd understand it clearly if it were in German, even though I studied some German back in the Middle Ages when I was in college. And that's if I managed to get that far in the document ... took me maybe 15 minutes to read it and study it fairly carefully, but it would have taken me hours in French or days in German, and a couple of semesters in any other language. By telling cachers to read the listing guidelines, you discriminate against those whose native language isn't English. That's why I am advocating more direct and practical approaches such as a prominent notice on the cache page or the log entry page for virts. This follows the standard CHI (computer-human interface) principle to provide information exactly when and where it is needed, not off in some document that you were supposed to read last year. There's also a statement in another document to which I linked earlier (the main FAQ I think) which more cachers shold read, but it's even more wishy-washy and is also far down in a document avaliable only in English. And it still does not provide the info when and where needed. I don't think it's practical to tell people to read a long document in a foreign language before they go caching. Heck, a lot of native English speakers won't read those documents. Some people who like outdoor activities don't like reading. No big surprise here I hope. That's just the diversity we have in humans. And that's why we have that CHI principle. Edward

Thanks, widdi, for the additional perspective. I do think it helps to understand how this situation arose. Don't apologize for your English. It's a lot better than my German. I agree it's not just a German problem. But at least on US caches, nearly all the armchair logs come from central Europe. Are you seeing a much larger number from Americans on German virtuals? I know there are Americans doing armchair caching -- some have been cited in this thread -- but most are European based on what I see in the US. If gc.com had a category for "online research cache", I wouldn't have any problem with that. I would ignore them, and I'm pretty sure that Groundspeak won't consider them, but they would not affect me in the ways that armchair logging of virtual caches affects me. It sounds like it would be a good idea to start searching gc.com for caches that explicitly allow armchair logging, and post SBAs to them, to make it clear to the armchair logging fans that this is not allowed on gc.com under the current rules. Edward

These have a thematic resemblance: Federation Urban Micro 8 The Federation MUST PAY Edward

Well done! Edward

Won't last a year if exposed to direct sunlight, especially at latitudes less then 35 degrees. Might last several years if shaded. In hot, dry climates, the natural plant materials will often last longer than the synthetic ones. Opposite in wet climates. Edward

Which is why I think gc.com needs to change the presentation instead of taking the position that every virtual cache owner should monitor the armchair loggers. It's not just one or a few virtuals, it's nearly every one that doesn't require a photo posted. And I wonder how long it's going to be before the armchair loggers start using Photoshop to make the photos ... Edward

The trouble is that this problem has apparently grown to massive proportions. A link was posted to a virtual with (IIRC) a couple of hundred armchair logs. The one I linked to initially had about 25 armchair logs before the owner changed the requirements. It's one thing to put the burden on the owner for normal traffic (which I agree with). It's another thing when there's a widespread and somewhat organized misunderstanding which is being tacitly condoned by gc.com due to inadequate descriptions. Also, many virtual owners are no longer active in caching, since virts are necessarily at least a couple of years old and a great many cachers don't pursue caching any longer than that. So the onslaught of armchair caches sometimes gets ignored, to the detriment of a virtual cache which would otherwise be healthy. Edward