Mosaica

Excellent --thanks for the feedback. I was thinking along the same lines but wanted a reality check :-) ../Mosaica

I asked several weeks ago about the protocol involving posting logs for several of the virtual caches I'd done, and learned that for the most part it's fine to post a log at the same time as one sends email to the owner --unless the cache page specifically asks the finder to get confirmation first. Two of those caches asked for email before posting to the log, and I sent email to each of 'em, twice now, and still haven't heard back. What are my options at this point? Thanks! ../Mosaica P.S. O the Fun I'm having :-)

I'd like to add to Geocyclist's query about warm batteries. When I finished recharging the 12 I got yesterday, they were HOT, not just warm. Is that, uh, cool? Doesn't damage 'em? ../Mosaica

If I were a two-legged person, I'd set my heart on one of Lafrog's hiking staffs. He carves them over the winter and then sets them out as FTF prizes at the caches he hides. They sound beautiful, and they have a FROG on 'em. What's not to like? ../Mosaica

I took the advice given in this thread to look at the deals at batteryspace.com, and I just got my fabu new battery charger & 12 AA NiMH 2250 mAh batteries. I found a coupon online even and got a splendid deal. Thanks! Question for the smart battery geek people: Is it best to charge the batteries and then store them until needed, or should I charge as I go? Maybe there's no difference, but I was curious. One funny thing. The charger arrived with one set of instructions.. in Danish. How'd they know I'm a native Danish speaker?! :-) If anyone needs their instructions translated, lemme know .. ../Mosaica

Ah, coolio. Thanks, Stunod! ../Mosaica

I've done several virtual caches recently, and I emailed the owners the night I finished 'em. I haven't heard back from the yet (that's okay, maybe they're on vacation or something), but can I go ahead and post my found log before I hear back from the cache owner? Thanks! ../Mosaica

Yay! Thanks for your replies. As soon as the weather gets bad again, I'll be doin' some loggin' :-) It's too pretty today not to go out and play though. Cheers! ../Mosaica

I've been going out caching for the last couple of days, trying to see if various ones are doable. Several of them look promising, but not until the ground is drier & harder (like august & september) so I can either wheel the last bits or butt-scuttle without feeling like I've been mud-wrestling. I'd like to submit logs for these visits, but I'm unsure whether to log them as DNFs or notes or simply wait until I approach them again in several months and log either a find or DNF then. In each of the cases I'm thinking of, I didn't actually fail to find the cache, I just looked at the last non-driving bits and decided to actually tackle the last bit in drier weather. But I had some fun adventures & took some nice pictures, and I'm leaning toward logging them. Maybe there's precedence which dictates logging one or the other, in which case I'd like to know, but if not, I'd still welcome opinions. Thanks! ../Mosaica

Ahhh, thanks. That's pretty much what I figured, but I wanted to make sure. ../Mosaica

Great --putting in the day of the week helped :-) Do .loc files get processed faster than .gpx? I was thinking that if .gpx files have much more info, they might take longer? The first file arrived less than ten minutes after I edited to add the day of the week, and it sent the default .loc file. I quickly discovered I wanted the .gpx, so I edited my query, and it's been over an hour now. Not complaining, just trying to understand it all! ../Mosaica

Argh! Thanks :-) ../Mosaica

I just submitted my first pocket query, and I've installed Cachemate, and MacCMCConvert, and I'm wondering.. I did this as a one-time query --how long until the file(s) is/are sent to me? Also, with Cachemate, what's the point of Mobipocket? Very newbie-y & tired to boot. Forgive me if this should have been posted elsewhere. ../Mosaica

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. The scrollbar is my FRIEND. Thanks, all :-) ../Mosaica <-dork-meister

Hrm, I just had a thought.. I'm writing up the tale of my second cache hunt to post over in that The Hunt / Unusual forum, and it occured to me that even there I might need to be careful about spoilers. Is this correct? What is the ettiquete for posting stories about finding caches? Thanks! ../Mosaica

I can see my own logs, but say I find a benchmark I want to go find, and I want to see logs that others have written about it? I've poked around looking for an answer, including the faq, but no luck yet. Thanks! ../Mosaica

Mosaica . o O ( this is clearly a man unfamiliar with my butt ) :-) Actually, I might be one of the minority who would prefer not to see a handicapped or accessible icon on cache descriptions. I've been reading (and reading and reading) much of the discussion that's gone on about this, and after reflection I think I'd prefer a system that's useful and informative to all humans, rather than one geared specifically toward handicapped humans. As many folks have already said, words such as `handicapped' and `accessible' and even `wheelchair-friendly' are practically non-useful because of the range of abilities present in the larger human community (that is, which includes various disabled people in it). I'm looking, in these early days of my geocaching adventures, for a number of clues: the terrain rating is helpful (but only in a limited fashion because of differing abilities). Even more helpful is a good description of the general location (distance [roughly] to cache, woods, downed trees, gullies, streams, etc). And most useful are the responses I get to queries which I email to the authors of the caches I go searching for. Since I'm more often in my kayak than in my chair, I'll often email to ask, for instance, if a given cache is reachable from my boat, or if I need to disembark and scuttle some distance on land, etc. Anyhow, my 3 cents worth. I'm in a place right now where, while I value the usefulness of a disabled parking spot as much as the next gimpy chick, I'm sick to -death- of anything that seeks to confine me in any catagory, including that of handicapped/disabled/differently-abled. ../Mosaica

Oh, right. Thanks! I'd done what you described with another coordinate (44 39.807) and gotten 48.42 seconds and didn't know what to do with the .42. So the above would be read `forty-four degrees, thirty-nine point eight oh seven minutes' and would render as 44° 39' 48" in the hhmmss format, right? Coolio! So, if you're using a hhmmss format to look at some map product, how can you use the extra precision given in that leftover .42? Would it be considered as a, oh, a milisecond or something? ../Mosaica P.S. I remember a word from when I was younger --stunod seemed to mean `very drunk' or `very stoned.' The donuts aspect never occured to me. Is there some connection?

Okay, very basic question here: Take the following set of coordinates: N 43° 29.534 W 072° 26.411 The longitude is the first bit: 43° 29.534 and the latitude is the other bit: 072° 26.411 Right so far? I can use these numbers in conjunction with my GPSr fine. The part that is confusing me is the last `seconds' part of both lat/long. I'm trying to teach myself about the difference between degrees presented as hrs/mins/secs and degrees presented as a decimal number. The way we use them here at gc.com looks like a hybrid of the two, with the hours & minutes being pretty clear, but the seconds being somehow, er, decimal-y. How can you have more than 60 seconds? I'd like to say that I'm a very precocious 7 year old, but I'm afraid I'm just a dumb 39 year old with large gaps in her education :-) I did search the forum & check the faqs, but no luck so far. Help! Oh, also, do any of you have a super favorite book/manual from which one can learn all about coordinate systems, using maps & compasses, orienteering, etc? Thanks! ../Mosaica

Thanks for the excellent posts! And boy, that forum search function sure is handy. I've spent most of yesterday reading the results of searching all forums for the term `handicapped.' Wow. The drama! Many of the issues that I've been pondering have already been delved into, and the discussions have been fascinating .. RN: I'd be glad to hear more about your handcaching project. Feel free to email me regarding it. Miss Pye: woo! Great essay over at Today's Cacher. Flask: Yay, a VT cacher :-) Your name comes up often as I search my area for caches. I've taken the approach you suggested for nearly every cache I've done so far (writing the author of the cache to ask for more details) and mostly I have good results from that. Thanks for the invitation to relate a caching tale --I will! I'll post one over in that The Hunt / The Unusual forum, as that seems the place to do so. Pto: I found the list you pointed me at a while ago --more info is cool. The list for VT did list one (the first one) that's actually in Alabama though. I love to travel, but that one will have to wait :-) Chris S: I love your pal's ingenuity, not to mention his cool tires. My chair is a piece of junk, and I'm not likely to get a new one for a while, but I'm going to explore getting some alternate wheels. Other than the specific wheelchair/accessible information that I've been reading, the one topic that leapt out at me was the LNT (leave no trace) discussion. For each of the caches I've searched for so far, it's this issue that's caused me the most anxiety. I'm a self-professed tree-hugging liberal uber-conservationist type, and since I need to get out of my chair and scuttle along on my butt to get to the caches, I've been worried: my butt-print is substantially more, well, substantial than the foot-prints that most two-legged cachers will leave. Each of the caches I've searched for have been in wild & wooly forested areas, and while I work hard to erase evidence of my visit (I scuttle out backwards, using a branch or twig to disguise my, er, butt-prints.) I've actually come to some peace about this during the past couple of weeks. I believe that while I do leave more of an impact (even with my twiggy disguise attempts), a single good rain/wind will generally erradicate my traces. While I still hear the internalized chiding voices of super-dooper-uber conservationists in my head saying: you're defiling nature with all your galumphing, I've decided that -I- am actually -part- of nature, and that it's Okay for me to be engaging with it, even on my less graceful terms. Still, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, for some cache owner to get mad at me for even trying. Anyhow, I try to do my part --I'm used to picking up trash while out in the wilds, but it's amazing to find what is clearly cacher-trash out there! At the one I'll describe over in the caching-tales forum, I found SEVEN cigarette butts right at the spot where another cacher had clearly sat and written in the log book. As a former smoker who's been field-stripping cigarettes since she first learned how, it irks me to see people just leaving their stubbed-out butts around. Plus, these butts were so out of place that they were a clue. A stinky clue! On a more humorous note, at another cache I found a perfect curl of pencil-sharpening shaving on a stone a foot or so from the cache hiding place. Maybe it's because I'm looking from a sitting position, but that pencil shaving really stood out, and I knew I was Real Close Now :-) ../Mosaica

Do any of you recall any previous threads dealing with any aspect of geocaching from a chair, or by other physically challenged folks? I'm interested in everything from the practical to the subtle. Otherwise I'll have to start a new topic and just talk to myself :-) There are all sorts of interesting bits associated with my early experiences, both challenging bits and super-coolio bits, and I'd like to discuss it all. Thanks! ../Mosaica

I searched for a number of benchmarks while on vacation in Maine. I've submitted one log, and I just wanted a bit of feedback & guidance as I proceed.. For the log I submitted for OB0483, I chose `destroyed.' Having read the description carefully, having visited the site, and having spoken with the local conservationist responsible for this area, I am pretty certain that I've got this right, but I do want to check. I noted in the FAQ that one should be cautious about using the `destroyed' option. Now I have two more benchmark logs that I'd like to make. One seems, to me, to be clearly destroyed (the rock ledge upon which the benchmark was located was blasted away at some undetermined point since the benchmark was last recovered in order for the landowner to build a driveway.) The GPS reading I got seemed particularly accurate, and the written description indicated to me that I was correct. The second case is less clear. In this case, the benchmark had been in the ground in a school yard. The school was torn down in the 1950s, and now there is a dismal-looking brushy lot with lots of tree stumps & a small trailer. I reckon that it's -possible- that the benchmark is still somewhere in that lot, perhaps buried under dirt, rocks, fill, etc. So that one I'm inclined to log as `not found.' I'd appreciate any advice & guidance! ../Mosaica