Monkeybrad

How about next time, you support the site that makes your gameplay possible. Give me a break, if you cannot afford three dollars a month, then you cannot afford to waste time playing a game. Your time would be better spent getting a paper route or taking advantage of some continuing education to increase your value in the job market. Nothing in this life is free. Premium members provide the capital that allows the Groundspeak team to add enhancements to this site. Don't you like being here without popup ads hitting you all the time. And all of this for less than a dime a day, you can't even save a starving child in Africa for that little. Although, it is unpopular, I am all for a pay to play scenario. I rode on other people's coat tails for a couple of weeks when we first started, just to see if we really liked it. Once i decided i was hooked, I signed up for my premium membership and my wife signed up for hers. I feel like I should pay to support something that adds so much to our lives. It is kind of like public television or public radio, sure you can freeload, but if it provides a service to you, why not pay something for that service. (btw we also pay for those "free" services by donating every year) Here is a solution that won't cost you a dime. How about next time, you pay the ante before complaining about how the cards are dealt. Just my 3.00 a month.... I could be wrong.

The creative containers are what make this game worth playing for me. Think back through the ones you have found, which ones really stick out in your memory? For me it is always the clever containers, the ones that made you get out of the box and play there. i have a couple of these and I always enjoy reading the logs on these especially the finds after acouple of no finds. It is pretty satisfying to find one and realize that you touched it three times before you realized that it was the cache.

By all means reactivate it. I haven't been there yet.

Anybody else find it interesting that you have to register to visit that part of the gocaching.com forums. The room of doom where personal grievances are settled, if you know the password. Maybe it should be called the room of doom where our personal grievances are stated far from the prying eyes of those they are about, and safe from their nonsensical responses.

To answer the original post. Most of the "cooler" caches that I place are members only. When I take alot of time or invest alot of money in a cache, I save it for premium members. I also stock these caches better. I figure premium mebers deserve the premium caches.

I smoke and skeeters seem to like me just fine.

Of course we do, it's only natural. What else are opposable thumbs for?

My personal attack is an answer to the innuendo of CoyoteRed's post. I see that while I was responding the thread has taken a turn back to reasoned discussion which I welcome. I apologize to the viewers of this thread for my flippant reply. i do not however apologize for my statements or take them back. Except for the one about his momma dressing him funny, I have no basis in fact for making that statement, so CR I do apologize for that.

Well said Drat 19. We are on the same page on this one. Now on to the ever popular Coyote Red... Did you read my post? You seem to have a gift for taking things out of context. My statement that stats do not create competition was followed by the statement that human nature does. Art does not create the desire to draw, it is a byproduct of that desire. One could just as easily say that bad news is caused by reporters. The only way you know something is happpening is is you see it or if it is reported to you. Let's not blame the commision of an act on the reporting of it. I notice you didn't respond to the whole blue golf cart jumpsuit ananlogy that was supposed to explain this to you. You state competition can lead to a lack of focus on cache integrity. I agree with you it can, but it does not necessarily. A splinter can lead to gangrene and the loss of a limb, perhaps we should outlaw wood. Why do you feel forced to compete? When you drive down the street do you feel like everyone else is forcing you to race them. You keep saying that you don't want to be forced to take part in this competition. The way I see it, you are the only one trying to force other people to follow his opinion here. I am just giving a different point of view. While we are discussing it, I find this an interesting piece of reverse discrimination. You seem to be saying that people with high numbers are always bullying others, keeping their opinions "shouted down". Do you feel that power cachers opinions are somehow less valid than your own. (btw you could make a clever argument showing the dangers of stats using this). I know you are feeling a little paranoid right now, and i can't speak for everyone, but I am not trying to intimidate you and i have not seen anyone else do anything like that today, No one is talking about cheating your caches. Stats are not an ethical question, how you get them are an ethical issue and I am not quite sure how charisma plays into this. You made a cryptic statement at the beginning of your post, that you hope i am not party to events you are privy to. What are you trying to say? My nose is clean and I resent your implied accusation. I realize that you are still angry over our discussion on the MTGC.org message boards regarding your trolling for opencaching.com. But you might want to re-evaluate things, do not be angry with me because your arguments did not stand up to scrutiny. And while we are on the subject of your pettiness, you might want to quit using your CCCooperAgency story as an analogy for cheating. There are people who read the boards who know both sides of it and your version makes you look like a real a**. If you are going to use the didn't find the cache logged it as a virt story, it would only be fair to tell everyone that she asked you if ti was OK and when you said no, she deleted the log herself. Your responses to her in that matter were as petty and childish as your arguments were over opencaching.com and as your statments here have been. It is a shame that your geocide did not take, but your geocide note was a lovely piece of prose. You certainly were passionate when you told everyone that you were never coming back. May we assume that your level of p[assion on this issue is the same. If so, we'll see you on the other side of the argument in a couple of weeks. I guess you just couldn't go through the day without trolling for an argument. I am glad that you have a forum to express your opinion on, I just wish you would take a little more time and thought when forming those opinions. By the way, if you want to push yourself as a champion of truth, you have to tell it sometimes. A special note for the moderator of this forum: While I do not consider the expositiomn of fact to be a personal attack, to make it easier when deciding on whether or not this post conatins personal attacks, just for the record. I think that Coyote Red is a micro-managing (removed by moderator), whose utopian views regarding geocaching hide a deeper desire for fascist control of this sport. I also think he makes illogical arguments only because he does not have the forethought to work them out in advance. On top of that his momma dresses him funny.

Keystone is right. As far as running the filters after you get your PQ, there are several members of the Middle Tennessee Geocachers Club who can help you with that. Our next meeting is in Murfreesboro on April 24th. A premium membership will also open up some of the better quality caches in the area. Usually, I make my better ones members only. I think I only have one micro that is a member's only cache. Personally, I just hunt them all, that is how I found your Machine Falls Cache, which is awesome btw. I have lived in the area most of my life and I had no idea that area was over there.

Weren't the bombs that they found on the tracks in Spain in clear tupperware type containers?

I like stats. I have fairly respectable numbers. Numbers do not equal respect ( I feel a semantics war coming on). As a high number cacher who runs with other high number cachers I can say positively that we do not run any more risk of compromising a cache than anyone else, unless you are thinking statisitcally, since we do more caches our chance of getting caught would naturally be higher. Actually, we probably are less likely to compromise a cache. We have experience on our side. We are very aware of muggles, we are very discreeet at caches, we have a fairly elaborate set of plans for dealing with muggles in an area to make sure that the cache location is not compromised. We always make sure the cache is hidden back the way we found it. I want the next person who hunts the cache to have just as much difficulty finding it as I did. I think that ity is far more likely that a new cacher would cause the cache to be compromised, perhaps you should propose banning newbies (for the good of the sport, of course). Just because you run hard does not mean you are irresponsible. Just because you find alot of caches does not mean you are missing out on some part of the sport. I see the same waterfalls and stop to take pictures of wildflowers along the trail. If a spot is particularly nice we stop and check it out, if it is not interesting we keep moving to the next one. The only difference I have found between us and some of the more relaxed cachers I know is, we get up early, stay out late and cache all day on the weekends. We also try to pick up what we can during the week. We travel nearly every weekend to cache, and keep the same schedule when we are on the road. Why? We love to Geocache. This is what we do for fun. That said, the stats do not create competition, and even without a leaderboard you will have competition. Human nature drives us to achieve. Everyone has their own view of what that achievement is. i find this entire discussion to be a little ludicrous. Would anyone give any credence to a discussion that everyone should drive a blue golf cart and wear brown jumpsuits? In effect, this is the same thing. People judge you everyday based on things as stupid as what kind of car you drive, and how nice your clothes are. The blue golf cart and jumpsuit model would fix that, right? The only thing to do is to move on play the game (or life) by your understanding of the rules at your own pace, always keeping in mind that you understanding of the rules is not necessarily correct and is certainly not the only one. It would be a shame if the very vocal few were to get their way on this issue. Stats are like money, they are not the point of the game they are just a way of keeping score. It is not a game that anyone is going to win, but there is nothing wrong with seeing how you are doing according to your understanding of how the game is played. BTW I am all for the opt-for-anonymity idea, however, that should be a binding decision. If you want to opt out of the stats portion of the game, you should not be able to opt back in at a later date. If this is not included, it will just become another wrinkle in the caching for position on the leaderboard game. A kind of high-tech sandbagging. I hope that at some point the forums can be more about playing the game and less about how you think other people should play the game.

Congratulations, my wife and I celebrated our first anniversary of caching on April 1st. And for the record, I am still stumbling around stubbing my toes and cursing hiders. I would also like to thank you for your service.

It is my wife she has been holding me back. She has this hang up, she likes to sleep like six or seven hours a night. But hey what are you going to do, for better or worse, you know.

I cannot attest to what she may have told Joe in private, my impression from our conversation at the Cracker Barrel was that she was burnt out. I am sure that the hate mail and forum bashing had something to do with it. How could it not? Even now that she is retiring she gets slammed. All I can say is that it shows alot about the character of a person, when they cannot even allow someone to bow out gracefully. I have been known in the past to argue on the forums, but at least I have had the grace and good sense to keep my dadgum mouth shut sometimes. I find it repulsive that as we try to celebrate the end of a VERY bright caching career some bonehead can't resist taking a parting shot. I am sure that he is very popular at funerals, delivering his "Our dear departed friend, that lying bastard, he's probably not even dead" eulogy. At the end of the day it is JUST A GAME, if you can't let someone retire in peace, without pulling out an old axe to grind, what kind of person are you? I apologize for derailing this thread I am embarassed that I am even dignifying the offending post with a response. But this kind of pettiness makes me mad. EDIT: To point out that even though I quoted briansnat I was just answering his question, he is not the one that made me want to break something.

I lived out off Hiatus Road in the eighties and have played in Tree Tops park many times. I sure wish I was close enough to come to the event. In middle Tennessee now. Hope the event is a success.

It was one year ago today that my wife (Scoot the Frog) and I found our first cache, Big Duck, GC877B. I would just like to thank everyone for participating in this great sport that we have gronw to love. If it were not for you folks out there hiding caches, we would still be spending our time on the road looking for new restaurants and killing time in hotel rooms, or when we are home we would be doing things like taking care of the yard and watching sports. I know that we have a couple of friends who think we have fallen off the face of the planet, because we are always gone somewhere hunting, but we have made many new friends out there on the trail. Geocaching has really added value to our lives and taken inches from our belts. Sometimes (particularly in the forums), it is hard to remember that if it weren't for everyone else helping to support our habit we would be sitting on the sofa asking each other, "What do you want to do today?". For the last year we have known, what we are going to do on any open day, "We are going caching!"

I wish it was a joke. I have enjoyed caching with Lynn on several occassions. I was there last night after we crawled out of that cave. My jaw hit the floor when she announced that she was hanging up her caching shoes. I even made a wise crack about her giving the rest of us a chance to catch up. I felt like a total fool when I looked at her and saw the tears in her eyes. Big dumb monkey, open mouth, insert foot. After talking about it over dinner, I can understand it. She has run hard for a long time, and she says she is just tired. She plans to spend more time with her family and just take it easy. Apparently she has been a little burnt out for awhile, but she wanted to hit her final goal before she took her bow. To answer the question from earlier, the party is still on, we had already set it up. She was going to make the announcement there, but decided that she should give us a heads up, so we would not ruin the party by trying to talk her out of it. I can understand that too. She has made a serious accomplishment, reached the pinnacle of our sport and she would like to celebrate not just her 5000th cache, but to remember a period of life with some of the friends she has met along the trail. The first time I met Lynn, I had 450 finds. I was invited to hunt with her, SBUX, JoGps and Southpaw. I was a little awe-struck to be caching with such legends. She welcomed me in and valued my skills and opinions on their face, not on the fact that I had less than 1/6th of her finds. I have met many other cachers who judge solely on the number of finds that you have, Lynn judges you based on the quality of her character. The sport has lost it's brightest light, but I have found a friend who I will cherish, whether she is chasing tupperware or not. Tonight, I am going to celebrate my friend's achievement, she is undoubtedly the best geocacher in the world.

I was dancing, with my darling, to the TENNESSEE Waltz......

One thing to keep in mind. If you are going to go "Evil" make sure your coords are dead on. We had a local hide a new "impossible" cache in heavy cedar woods. We went after it once it had six no finds, we hunted two hours and did not find it. I logged the no find and asked about the coords. The owner went and checked on the cache, posted back and gave me a hard time. The same situation mentioned earlier, "Just because you can't find it, doesn't mean the coords are off", kind of stuff. We went back, another no find. Another cacher emailed the owner and told them that they were going to hunt it and would the owner like to join them. The owner did and wanted to know why they were hunting in that area. The coords were 380 feet off, in heavy cedar woods. We went back with the new coords and found it in under ten minutes. When he rechecked the cache, he just verified that it was there, he did not check his coords. The real kicker is that when searching the first time, we spiral searched out and when we finally threw in the towel we were less than twenty feet from the cache. Consequently, we no longer hunt this hider's caches until someone else has found them first. No point being the FTHP@TWC. (First to hunt pointlessly @ the wrong coordinates.)

For the record, unless it is pine, you can use a solution of iron sulfate and water. Iron sulfate can be purchased at most garden centers, apparently roses like it. This is will give a weathered "barn wood" look to it. I usually apply it with a sprayer, and rinse it off with straight water almost as quickly as you put it on. May take some trial and error, if you get too heavy handed with it it will give a charcoal grey instead of the more desirable light grey. Try it on luaun first. One big plus is that it is biodegradable, and gives the most realistic "barn wood" look I have ever found. Trying to paint "age" is a pretty complex project, that could be done quickly, but takes quite a bit of skill to make it look realistic. Most folks end up with something that sticks out like a sore thumb.

The game is what you make it. I like numbers. Not because I am competing with anyone else, but because my wife and I like to tackle ridiculous goals. We do not hunt easy caches or hard caches, we hunt all caches. If the next one on the list is a 5/5 and we have the right gear with us, we go after it, if the next one is a 1/1 we go after it. I will have to admit that we have added some twists to keep it interesting. For example, if the cache is less than 500 feet ffrom the car, I rarely take the gps with me anymore, I hunt based on the heading and distance. We also generally save the easier ones to do at night. A 1/1.5 in the woods takes on a new level of difficulty at 2AM, if the moon is full we have been known to hunt without a gps or a flashlight. While we still do a big numbers run every once in a while, we are now more about cleaning areas. Going in and doing everything in that part of the state, no matter the difficulty or the type. There is nothing wrong with being competitive, as long as you play fair and don't hurt anyone. Trust me I am not going to run over you on the way to a cache. I take my time getting there and getting back out, if there is something interesting I stop to look and maybe take a picture. I do not feel like my caching experience is lessened by the fact that I have done several of them. Next week, we will celebrate our first year of geocaching, it has added much to our lives and shown us many places we had no idea existed. The fact that we attack caches with the same intensity that we do anything else does not make our experience sad, we haven't missed the point, we have just been more productive. In my view, the fact that I have been out there playing hard just means that I have seen more of the interesting places that geocaching takes you to, it does not make my experience any more or less valid than anyone elses. Numbers are like money, they are not the point of the game, they are just a way of keeping score. Before anyone slams our lifestyle, we are both gainfully employed, full time in jobs where responsibility is key, we are both active in civic organizations, we do not have kids, we are not super wealthy, we just like to play hard and we have no problem taking off for the weekend with no other goal than to cache as much as possible.

This may seem kind of silly, but I would love to see a premium member feature where you could get all of the caches you have found (including archived ones) in one Pocket Query. I would love to be able to shoot all of my finds onto a map to track my own progress. Even if you could only do this once a month that would be fine. I know that you can manipulate the PQ's to do this, but at this point it would take nearly four full PQ's to get all of my finds, and that would not find the archived ones, it would take over two full PQ's to get all of my traditionals in Tennessee alone. Plus I travel quite a bit and have subsequently cached in several states, the multi PQ method would have to be pretty convoluted to grab all of mine. I am sure that RobertLipe could do this in no time, but it is a little much for a monkey like me to wrap his head around. Not complaining, just wishing. Keep up the great work, I love the new my cache page.

Since no one else has mentioned it, we carry a Geko 301 with us. For power-caching the ability to upload waypoints is a must, maps don't matter on a field unit because the Garmin V is going to get you to the right area, and the compass is well worth the extra money. Our Geko is one of the most accurate gpsr's we own, plus it drops in a pocket and you can forget it is there. All this for $249 on offroute.com

You could always do what we do and opt for both. Cheap pda's (Sony Clie) for the woods, old dell laptop that had outlived it's usefulness in business in the truck. We reformatted the pc and only loaded necessary system software and geo related programs. The fairly clean operating environment helps with the speed problem of an older laptop, plus if someone breaks into the truck and steals it, it is not the end of the world. Mine was an office leftover but i am sure you can buy a five year old dell inspiron for next to nothing.