mortaine

Up to $2.65 now. Mr. Snazz, I think the number of people who actually NEED a high-clearance vehicle compared to the number of people who own a "Sport Activity Vehicle" (they're now acknowledging that there's nothing utilitarian about these beasts) is fairly low. I have no problem with people who own a work truck or a Jeep that actually sees dirt under its tires or who go on 4-wheel drive trails. I do, however, have a serious problem with cell-phone yakking soccer moms* who can't even see all the way around their 20-mpg vehicles when they drive. If your blind spot is the same size as a 4-door sedan, your car is too big for your vision. [*NOT soccer-moms who also go 4-wheeling. NOT soccer-moms who also need the truck for hauling for work. Get it?]

I have a hard time with visibility. I'm a short, pudgy woman who doesn't look like she belongs in an orange utility vest. I only manage to get away with looking like a construction worker on Halloween. So far, my best camouflage is to hold the GPS to my ear and pretend to have a conversation. If someone gets too close while I'm looking intently for the cache, I whine "I guess I've really lost it" to the phone or my geocaching companion, if available. This makes them think that I've lost something valuable, and that I'm going to whine about it and be a pill until either I find it, or my geocaching companion does.

I love history caches! I also wish that more geocachers would learn about the history of their cache location and post it. Exactly *how* did that car get into that tree, anyway?

Good luck. It's hard enough to get a TB to go to one specific destination, let alone to follow a specific route. Best bet is to set it to go to its first destination and include some kind of info that says "when it reaches this interim goal, please email me so I can mail you a new tag with it's new goal" or something like that.

"I'm Gonna Get You, Tuppa"?

I say post the cache and the webcam URL and call it "Go ahead and watch!" And then make the hide REALLY REALLY clever-- something that people will wish they'd watched the webcam to find. If the webcam is set up in real-time, and you keep the archive of finders secured, then someone would have to luck out and be watching the webcam right when someone else found the cache for it to be a spoiler. That's how I would do it, anyway. Let 'em watch. If someone doesn't want to watch a find-in-progress, they can click away. Unlike the photos that get posted to the cache's gallery, the images in a webcam arent' going to stay there forever.

I don't understand.... why doesn't she have her own GPS?

Moose Mob, thank you for making me feel better about gas prices in the Silicon Valley. I was getting very discouraged, because everyone was posting $2.15 prices, and all I could think was "wow, I wish it would go back to $2.15!"

Do an offset cache using coordinates from the ground. To be honest, a cache in space isn't too far out there-- private citizens have been rent space in GAS cans for years....

I have to second the religious pamphlets as being on the "worst" list. They're not as bad as the broken crack pipe we found, but they piss off my husband (a recovering Christian) to no end. There's nothing like getting to the end of a nice, long hike, and finding prosletyzing, lemme tell ya.

It ended up being $2.43/gallon at the pump when I filled up the other day. I drive a hybrid, so the higher prices don't bug me that much. Gas prices don't affect my geocaching at all-- I tend to go during my commute or on weekends anyway, and right now I'm moving, so I don't have time to cache anyway. But even if I did have time, I'm hurting less at the pump than others.

We're up to $2.42 over the weekend. It'll probably be $2.55 or $2.60 when I fill up today after work.

I can't think of a best right now. I suppose the best I've found were things I found early on, when the trading aspect was really exciting. Worst: broken crack pipe wrapped in used, dirty pantyhose.

That's unfortunate. A lot of other people who play the game like TB hotels and create or use them. Jeremy not liking them isn't going to change the fact of their existence. I guess I should be glad that Jeremy is ok with micros.... An attribute really would be the best way to identify hotels-- you could have a couple of attribute options to it: TB Hotel: With Rules Without Rules N/A (i.e., not a hotel)

Wes, it looks like on the cache page in question, the cache owner confirmed you as FTF. The log entry (Oh, look, I stumbled across this...) was probably a joke from the guy's caching buddy.

I bought two sub-micro cache containers on eBay. If you just put them out, they look like the heads of bolts about the size one would use on a park bench. They're well designed for a stage of a multi, but I decided to put in a logbook. The logbook is 1 mm high and needs a toothpick to wrap around so it will fit back into the cache. I haven't placed it yet. I worried about it becoming outright unfindable, so I painted four dots on the cover, corresponding to the four colors used in the geocaching.com logo. I figure this will be sufficient ID for a geocacher, without being too much of an announcement to others. I am sure that, were I to put it out without the paint, people in my area would still find it.

Well... sometimes. But sometimes, oftentimes, kids will feed into each other's negative impulses. I know that I was an absolute monster at one point, largely because a friend of mine and I just brought out the worst in each other. I did things when I was with her that I would never have done by myself or with my saner friends. Had my mother found out about some of the crap I did, she would have set me straight and reminded me of who I really was, and I think MOST parents would, too. Yeah, it's possible that one of the parents is screwy. It's also possible that these kids are 14 years old and being jerky and need to learn from their parents that there are consequences for those actions.

Hahahah-- I've never started a TB in my own cache! Of course it's okay to start them in someone else's cache! Heck, some people never place a cache, ever!

Fratermus, I was hoping that first link would be a picture of your lovely GH! My Hammer is here!

[in the meantime, hope nobody minds if I answer....] Well, checking out your profile, I see that you own 2 travel bugs that you've released. One's in a cache, and the other is in the hands of a geocacher. The cache that the other is in hasn't been visited in the 6 days since you dropped it off. The geocacher picked it up 4 days ago and is still well within the bounds of good taste for holding onto a bug. It's fairly common for travel bugs to disappear without a trace. Sometimes they get traded for trade items. Sometimes they get "muggled" by someone new to the game or not even in the game (yet). Sometimes they go missing and you read the logs and someone will say "took Scotland TB" but they didn't log it. For those, I usually send a quick, polite note asking them to log it and telling them how, in case they're new or unfamiliar with TBs. Most of the time, they don't log because they didn't know how, or they were away from the computer on vacation and only logged their caches until they got home. Bugs frequently go missing and then re-appear. It is not uncommon AT ALL for a bug to stay in a holder's hands for a few months, especially during inclement weather seasons. It is uncommon and considered borderline impolite for someone to hold a TB for more than a couple of weeks without letting the owner know. Site problems like the one you describe are rare; usually that's user error. Make sure you fill out the whole form, including the type of log you're posting for the bug.

I have owned two greyhounds and been involved in rescue. I researched the breed for over a year before adopting my first dog. Greyhounds do not need to walk 10 miles a day. In fact, the greys I had would rather sleep on the couch than go endurance walking. My beloved Hammer (RIP) enjoyed geocaching, but his favorites were definitely the parking lot micros, because he could hop out of the car, pee on the lamp post, and hop right back in again to sleep on the "couch" (backseat). Greyhounds are built for speed. They need no more or less exercise than any other breed. They just do it faster. With a grey, the main consideration is that you not let them off leash-- thousands of years of breeding will not override training if they see something that sparks their prey drive, and they can definitely outrun you. If you want a dog who you can walk in the woods without a leash between you, then don't get a greyhound. Otherwise, they are a wonderful pet, excellent indoors and with supervised children (as with all dogs), and because you usually adopt one who has had a racing life, you get a dog who already knows how to walk on leash, is housebroken, listens to people, and has gotten a lot of their puppy energy out while still keeping the puppy playfulness. The other consideration with greys is that they hog the couch and, if you let them, the bed. And they don't do well on stairs-- they're built to run on a flat surface, and stairs often give them the boggles.

OK, I emailed the LBNA email list; we'll see soon if anyone steps forward. Meanwhile, my web and email hosting service disabled my access today, so if you wouldn't mind re-sending your info re: which letterbox it was in a PM, I would really appreciate it. Ironically, my post came in the middle of Yet Another Heted Discussion about a geocacher finding a letterbox on accident.... *sigh*

Ah, the one that's been missing since September definitely deserves an email to ask what's up, whether it got misplaced over the holidays, etc. The one that's been gone since January.... well, I'd try to track down whoever said that it had been taken by those folks, so you can find out their GC username and let them know about TB logging, and ask if they have any questions about the bug or its destination. Not everyone knows right off the bat what a travel bug is. As always, consider yourself a supplicant when dealing with someone who is holding onto your travel bug. Politeness works wonders. Grovelling doesn't hurt. I have a 100% success ratio with my own bugs so far, and yet I've accidentally held onto TBs for far longer than 2 weeks. I gotta figure karma will eventually catch up to me and crush my bugs like.... well, bugs!

"This lamp post is where Jesus was crucified....." *That* would be a worthy micro!

I feel your pain. I'm sure everyone who has responded, if they have placed caches and had someone else "beat them to it" knows the feeling of frustration and anger-- even if it's not justified anger-- at someone else "stealing" your spot. It's even worse when you've been carefully researching the hide and trying to contact land management and someone seems to jump in without apparently doing any of the prior research that you've done. All I can offer is my commiseration. I doubt the micro owner will archive their cache for you, but I hope you can find an even better spot for your final stage of the multi.