mortaine

Try craft glue, or 527. E-6000 is good, too. I use 527 when gluing magnets to make my marble magnets. But I don't live in an area where freezing is a problem....

*tries to figure out what the points are for* What's wrong with just using your Geocaching.com stats, if you want to keep score?

How about Memorial Day weekend, when us working stiffs get a day off anyway, and could actually go for the 3 days? I know traffic is worse, but... eh. It might be worth it, just to not have to use my very-small amount of PTO.

I don't think I've ever found a golf ball in a geocache, but I don't golf so I would likely not have noticed. If I traded for one, I'd decorate it before putting it into the next cache. Maybe paint it pink or something. I think children probably get more joy our of golf balls than adults.

Tens of thousands of people geocache. There's bound to be a few losers. Anyway, if you think that's dispairing, read about Mount10Bike coins, Jeep TBs, and all the other Coins-- they all go missing, pretty quickly. If you care about it getting lost or stolen or "collected," then don't put it in a cache.

I like to find things that trade evenly or fairly, or appropriately with what I have in my stash bag. I just restocked my bag, so right now I have a bunch of foreign currency (for film can micros), several polished tigers eyes (for same), a small collection of little toys and paint sets, a small rubber ducky, two FM radios (for a really dry and fairly large cache), a micro tape measure, etc. I've only traded for one sig item, a compass. Unfortunately, it doesn't work terribly well, but it's nifty so I kept it. I'm working on my own sig items-- when I have a few hours, I'll be putting them together to put into caches, and they'll fit inside film canister micros (because I do those a lot). I think people like tools and utilitarian things, so I keep my eyes open for these kinds of things when I go stuff-shopping. I tend to look for small items, though-- a roll of duct tape would be hard to fit into 90% of the caches I visit. I don't like: Bandaids or other medical/sanitary items, unless they're actually inside of and part of a dry first aid kit. Sorry, but a bunch of wet band aids is not a trade item. Here's a test: while holding it inside whatever container it's in, spray 1 ml of water on it and then crumple it in your hand. If you open your hand and still think the item is cool, then it's adequately protected and could hold up to a cache. Clothing. No matter how clean they are, your underpants do not belong in a cache. No matter how tired you were of wearing them, pantyhose aren't a trade item, either. No matter how clean they were when you put them in, any clothing item will likely mildew and be gross by the time someone gets there. Stickers. Similar problem to bandaids-- try the wet and crumple method. Most won't stand up. How many times have I gone to a cache to find fifteen glittery star stickers stuck to the insides of the cache and every other trade item in there? Earrings. Unless they are brand new and in the original packaging, nobody is going to want your earrings, especially not if it's one single earring that isn't all that cool to begin with. Earrings go through your skin. There is a body contamination issue. I don't want to share anyone else's body fluids by cache. I certainly don't want to get an infection from a cache trade item. Unless the earring is really super cool and would be appropriately converted to a necklace pendant, I would consider it trash. That said, I might make a new pair of earrings (I make earrings all the time) and leave them in a cache, but it would be up to someone finding them to decide if they were safe enough to take or not. I have access to a lot of adult movies for cheap, so if geocaching ever gets an xxxcache type of thing going, I'd definitely be able to participate. I just don't want to run into another cache containing a pair of used pantyhose and a broken crack pipe.

Well, if it's a TB, pick it up and put it into another cache!

I think it will get stolen. Probably out of its first cache. I thought about it, too. Also, consider how wet a travel bug can get-- will your jump drive survive? In 5 years, it'll be a great idea, and everyone will already have a jump drive and not care. In the meantime, go for a bandycam, or slap a travel bug onto a disposable camera.

Hmm.... where I live, if there's a "live" electrical box, it is either: a) on private property, like attached to the side of a private building or behind a fence, locked, requiring tools or a key to get into, or c) dead, defunct, containing no wires, just a logbook and pen.... I guess the advantage of living in an urban area is that everyone building anything assumes that everyone else out there is an idiot, and protects their dangerous volts appropriately. So, I suppose the rule with an electrical box cache is to look around you and know your area. Would someone need a tool to get into a similar, functioning box? If not, then don't risk training people to go poking around in potentially dangerous sites. I think I've had more close-calls with black widows lurking in the relative peace of a light-post and under bark and rocks (2 at least) than I've ever had finding an exposed wire (0 so far) while geocaching.

I always carry a flashlight geocaching-- it's a small flashlight that just stays in my geobag. But I don't always carry my camera, because it's larger, heavier, more valuable (I don't want to leave it in the car), and far more delicate than a flashlight. Also, I use my digital camera for a lot of things-- I don't have a way to leave a dedicated digicam in my geobag. In the future, if I upgrade the size of the geobag, I might leave a disposable camera in there, for those "you have to take a picture to log it" types of scenarios. But most of where I cache, those kinds of caches are rare.

Yeah-- and their logs, though full of horror stories about the ticks, make me want to visit the cache. Hey, at least I know what to prepare for, and can make an appointment in advance for my Lyme's vaccine....

I look until I'm fairly well convinced I can't find it. I look first with the written cache page, then I decipher the clue (by hand, because I'm lazy and don't want to rely on the PDA in the field). Then I come back with a friend. If we both can't find it (or if I had a friend with me the first time), I log a DNF. This actually led to an "easy micro" being replaced because-- aha!-- it had, in fact, gotten lost between the previous cacher and me. If I look and I think I know where it is but for some reason cannot get to it, I email the owner and say "I think it is HERE-- am I right?" If they come back saying no, then.... well that hasn't happened yet. But I'd probably go back and if they gave me a further clue, I'd use it, or I'd do a second search and, still not finding, log a DNF. Any time I have to return to a cache site, I try and remember if the site needed CITO on the first visit, so I can remember to bring a bag. CITO'ing sometimes helps me find caches, as you clear out an area, you know you've searched it thoroughly.

9 months. I logged 5 caches in 2004 total: three were at the end of December, and the previous two were Feb. 11 and March 8th. At the end of March, I started training for a fundraising marathon, which I completed on October 3rd, with a sprained foot and tendonitis, and it took another 2 months to recover from the injuries. But it's nice to see that I've really picked up since then. 12 caches in February alone, plus my first hide!

I actually thought about this when considering a hide in a local cave. See, you *need* two flashlights to enter a cave. One is your backup, for when you drop the other one. For some caves, you might also need rope, helmets, and other spelunking gear. But for this cave, it's just flashlights and being completely un-squicked about spiders and mud. I wouldn't make it a 5 rating just because you need 2 flashlights, though, because it's not "specialized" gear-- nothing you can't find easily in the average drugstore. I would add 1 to the terrain rating, though, because you really have to BRING those flashlights with you, or you'll never find the cache. If it's an otherwise 3 terrain and it's listed as a 4, I figure people will read the description before they go to the cache site. I'd do the same with a camera, which can also be found in a drugstore. If the geocacher must bring a camera to log the find, then I'd add a 1 to the difficulty-- not the terrain, though. The camera isn't needed for the terrain, but it is needed for the finding/logging part of the cache. It doesn't fit perfectly into the GC guidelines, because the guidelines are just that-- guidelines. If you need SCUBA gear, a boat, a 4WD vehicle, or a fishing pole, then yeah-- that's specialized equipment, cut and dried (I can find a fishing pole in my local drugstore, but not the *average* drugstore). But if you're not quite sure.... just list it a little harder, not all the way to a 5.

I have no idea what "DPM" stands for. I do agree with those who say "give an idea of what the cache is like in your logs" and let other visitors decide that it's crappy. If I went to a cache site that really, really sucked, I'd probably post a log something like this: Oddly, I really enjoyed this cache non-find experience, because it was my first time geocaching with my mother, and it meant she got to learn that they're not all great, and you don't always find what you're looking for (she later returned and found that cache). But if I'd been out on my own or with someone who wasn't new to the sport, we would probably have agreed that it kind of sucked. When I've been to a cache that could be better if it had some owner-attention, or the coordinates were way off, I include in my logs that it needs owner-attention, though I try to be vague, especially when the attention needed is to repair damage that affects the cache's camouflage, and if the coordinates are off, I'll say "we found it about 50' off of where the coordinates zero'ed out. Might be time for someone to re-verify the coords." In critiquing writing, I like to say something positive and something constructive (the "needs work" comment-- it's like a negative comment, only with advice instead of raw complaining). If you don't like the stop-and-grab ones, can you comment on what you do like about that cache? Was it challenging because of muggles? Was it a nice, familiar, easy cache type? If you think the cache sucked, what would you say "needs work"? Look around-- would you have hid the cache somewhere nearby, but better? You might not want to put that in the log note, but certainly email it to the hider so they know what they could do to improve it. But most of all, if you go to a cache that sticks out in your mind as being really good or really bad, post a longer log and talk about your experience, for good or for ill. That log really is your memento of your experience, and it's something that shares your geocaching moment with others. One of our most infamous caches around here is "Call before digging" which includes the log entry from a couple of well-known cachers who found hundreds of ticks on themselves after going into the brush to get the cache, and for days afterwards. The logs for the next month or two are full of tick counts as later visitors mentioned how many they got or didn't get on themselves (it seems Joanie and Marky cleared out most of the ticks when they visited-- most logs following say fewer than 70 per person.....)

How to promote good caches: As others have said, hide good caches, and talk up the good ones through regional clubs, the regional forums, and in the logs. Also: Travel. When I go out of my area, I find new ways to hide caches. I would learned the lamp-post trick on an out-of-area cache. Take this knowledge with you when you come home and use it to be inventive in your hides. Start a newsletter/review forum for your regional group. Promoting good caches means PROMOTING-- talk it up, give it some press. Make puzzle caches that are fun and not impossible-- people enjoy getting another icon in their stat bar. People have mentioned many times that good log entries mean good caches. This is true. Write a story when you log a good find, something you enjoyed. I guarantee, if you write something good and meaningful in the log on my cache pages, I don't care a bit if you Took Stuff and Left Nothing-- your creative and inventive log can be your trade item. Travel Bugs. Place travel bugs only in caches that you enjoyed. People go to caches for many reasons, and travel bugs are one of them. I'm a TB player-- I look for the bug icon when I'm searching for local caches. I like to see what bugs are in the area, where they're going, and if I can help them along. Double for Jeep TB's-- if you get a Jeep, put it in your FAVORITE cache. Someone else will come by to get it and they will have another example of "good cache hide" to remember when they go to place their cache. Promoting the placement of good caches means getting people interested in good, quality caches and keeping their interest. Those people will go on to place a good cache, because they will know what caches they liked, and will use those ideas to place their own. On a tangent: I don't believe that urban micros are ruining the game, and I don't think gc.com should discriminate on finds based on a find being a micro. I love micros. I love them because they are easy to hide in an otherwise hiding-spot-free area. I love them because I have a hard time finding them, even when they're supposed to be easy. I love them because they challenge my stealth abilities when non-geocachers are around. I love them because I have an easy time getting *to* them. Not everyone loves a walk in the woods (she says, scratching at the poison oak covering half her body right now). Not everyone has *time* for a walk in the woods. Some of us take our 1-hour lunch break to go geocaching, and working more than 20 minutes from the woods means urban micros have to be a big part of the game. The key is to stay creative with them, look for inventive ways and places to hide them, and remember the creative placements you liked.

Professional photo labs will develop whatever you send them, unless it's obviously illegal (kiddie porn). Typically drug-store labs won't develop nudie pictures. What you have to be wary of is the ever-growing "let's all be the police" mentality. A girl in a photo lab here in CA found photos of a guy posing with all his guns and pipe bombs and called it into the police, delayed him at the drug store until they got there, and basically was instrumental in him getting arrested. Granted, this stopped the plot, if there was one, to blow up a local community college, but.... vigilanteism turns my stomach. So what happens when a geocacher takes a photo of themselves with their licensed firearm? Shooting a deer in hunting season? Around here, people don't hunt, so the photos would be highly suspicious. Worse, since some geocaches can be mistaken for bombs (hey, if you don't know what an ammo container looks like, you really don't know it's not a bomb), a series of photos of people holding up these suspicious-looking boxes and smiling, intermingled with pictures of, say, the Grand Canyon, or the Golden Gate Bridge.... Next thing you know, you're on an express plane to Guantanamo Bay for "detention." It's not just naked butts and boobies out there, people.

Liberty Nemo made it to the ocean, thanks to my help. Austin's Joke Book is just a few hundred miles from its destination. When it gets there, I'll probably make a trip out to pick it up with my nephew, and we'll help him put together a show-and-tell at school, with a new joke book that his classmates can suggest jokes for. Re-release the bug with the new joke book to send it on a retirement cruise around the country. Or something like that.

Call it a "container inside container" small cache. We found one of these this weekend-- it was two film canisters inside a small box that was very cleverly camouflaged. On the cache page, the owner had described it as a "container in container" cache, so you'd know you wouldn't have room for small-cache trade items, but that you also weren't looking for a tiny tiny cache.

I hate that slogan. I used a seam puller to remove it from my geocaching hat. I need to order a new hat soon 'cause my old one shrunk in the wash (!!), but I'm reluctant to because of the stupid slogan. Yeah, I'm not fond of it, either. Mainly because: a) Geocaching.com IS a search engine, and therefore the motto isn't entirely accurate, and there are so many reasons to geocache.... searching's only one of them. And many caches are only a superficial search anyway. c) Search engine implies that someone inputs a search request and the engine goes and finds the information. In geocaching, though, it's more like someone puts information in, and the "engine" goes out to find it, all on its own. Anyway, it's just a motto. I don't particularly like it, but hey-- I don't have to use it.

*snicker* Just imagining a world in which bunnies don't mingle as often and prolifically as they can!

Yeah, I don't know about that. I think TBs with some sort of goal or guideline are more fun than those with just "take me from cache to cache." TBs that are in a race have a very specific goal and a time limit, which means picking them up might get a little stressful. But you can help them towards it even if you're going the wrong way, if you take them from a very hard to reach cache and move them to something more accessable, for example. TBs that are going somewhere specific can be fun, too, because the person who picks it up may learn more about the TB's destination, or its goal, or might just find out about caches that are more in that direction (for example, I tend to geocache in specific directions, tending more south and west from both my house and my workplace. No particular reason, except that I'm more familiar with those areas. If I found a cache that was heading north, I might be more likely to head north and check out some of the caches that are still very close by, just not in my "convenience directions."

I believe you can just transfer a travel bug from one person to the next. When you log the bug, you just put "grabbed from another place" instead of "taken from such-and-such cache." But if you log it into/out of a cache, even a micro, then the TB's page would update with it's mileage and location, so that might not be such a bad thing. Best solution is to email the bug owner and ask if they mind you logging it into a micro, since you're meeting the other cacher at that micro to hand it off.

Ah, see-- I find the travel bugs are a really fun part of the game. Some people think they're annoying. I find them pretty fun.

Oh, I came up with another reason why someone wouldn't take a bug: it's too big or small. Example: I mostly do small urban caches and micros, because that's where I live. A TB the size of, say, a pay phone.... or even one the size of a Spiderman doll.... will not fit into 80% of the caches I find. If I find a TB that big, I'm likely to leave it alone, because I know I'm very unlikely to find a home for it. Similarly, I've found two TBs that were micro-only bugs; the owners wanted them placed in micro caches. In one case, the owner specifically wanted it placed in a film canister cache (that TB was picked up by a friend of mine and may have been lost). Not all micros are film canisters. Also, not everyone loves the micros-- someone who hates urban micros would hopefully leave these bugs alone and not pick them up out of a cache.