aniyn

I wonder how the puritans feel about that practice. Since after all, the guideline says that you have to sign the log, and any old scrap of paper tossed into a cache is not the official log.

I don't refill my caches when they become depleted - I'm not going to spend money on things to put in a cache knowing that people will not trade fairly for it. And if cachers are going to trade unfairly then they need to prepare to deal with the consequences of that behavior. And if they care more about the swag than the hide then that's not of any concern to me - I really doubt they're the kind of person that's going to be trading fairly anyways. As a cache owner my responsibility begins and ends with the log book. I don't feel the need to bribe people to come to my caches.

Sorry to see you go. I feel for you on quite a few points - caching alone in particular. That's just no fun.

Because if it were............................................................? Then they would know that they were blowing up a geocache! Exactly - they'd feel bad when their superiors order them to blow it up.

I don't know what alternate universe you live in but the below is from the GC Guidelines. Geocaches can be logged online as Found once the physical log has been signed. Exactly. It doesn't say that they only be logged when you sign though. That entire bullet point deals with ALR's, and it's not unreasonable to interpret that line as being there simply to protect cachers from having their logs deleted on legit finds. I don't understand why people get so wound up about this subject. Geocaching is supposed to be about getting out and exploring the world we live in, not about doing paperwork. Not everyone plays the game exactly the same, and that's something we as players have to accept. It's not a competition, and in the end the only thing that matters is the fun you have doing it. I can understand your irritation about people claiming finds on non-retrieved caches though (underwater, up high), where the intention of the cache isn't completed. But I don't see how some letters on a paper make a difference once a someone has the cache in hand. It's geocaching, not a legal document (or a calligraphy class). The other thing about geocaching is that it's best to tread lightly. You don't really want to PO someone who knows where you've hidden all your stuff. It's happened before, and it's pretty much always more trouble than it's worth.

You should never use a quick charger like that. They ruin the batteries, greatly increasing the self-discharge rate and lowering the capacity of the batteries. An 8 hour charger is a much better choice in the long run. Sorry, gotta disagree with you there, based on personal experience. My batteries last at least a year, and that's all that I'm asking for. I had an 8 hour charger before, and I didn't get any better life out of that. Moreover, if you realize at the last moment that you forget to charge them up, with an 8 hour charger, you're out of luck. Me... I just pour another cup of coffee. Rechargables should last at a bare minimum for several hundred charge cycles. Lasting a year isn't very long at all, even if you used them enough to have to recharge them every day. I'm still using a 6 year old pair of sony rechargeables, and they still work well.

You should never use a quick charger like that. They ruin the batteries, greatly increasing the self-discharge rate and lowering the capacity of the batteries. An 8 hour charger is a much better choice in the long run.

This sounds like a "vacation cache", and shouldn't be published. If you can't regularly do maintenance you shouldn't put a cache there. Try a Waymark instead. Also, didn't GS say they were going to start cracking down on remote caches that go unfound for long periods of time?

Day before yesterday.

Mission 2 went out yesterday. Also, shipping stuff is expensive! Yikes!

Well, I cut out from work early today to send mission 2 on its way, but apparently the post office isn't open on the weekends I'll send it out on monday. Sorry about the delay. I got a new job with brutal hours, and I had the learn how to drop the gas tank off a car and change a fuel pump. On the plus side, I finally found the specialty item I was looking for to send with the mission.

I did 2 caches at around 1 am earlier this year. Just because.

Is your gps set to WGS84 datum?

6 of my 14 caches use recycled containers (paint jars, coffee cans, ect), and 3 of the remaining 8 are recycled from previous caches. 2 of those were other people's caches. One was archived long ago, so it took the container with me, and the other was a second container a CO placed when he couldn't find the original. I found both and combined them into the larger, more accurately placed cache. 15 hides, only 6 purchased containers - I figure I'm doing pretty well.

I'm in a pretty varied area, sandwiched between the Rockies and BC's interior desert, the Okanagan. It's pretty much all mountains, but where I live is pretty special in that we have a small pocket of native grassland. Temperatures swing from -35 in the winter to +40*c in the summer. There are tons of old copper mines in the surrounding area, and numerous black slag piles. The highways tend to take great detours to accommodate the mountains, with towns as close as 25km away being an hour by car. We're also pretty much right on the border. Dangers. Wow, lets see. Rattlesnakes, black widow and hobo spiders. Black, brown and grizzly bears. Mountain lions. Moose. There are so many deer here that our car insurance rates are higher. Various stinging plants, and cacti underfoot. There are also wolves, Elk, and bighorn sheep, but I don't worry about them. What are our caches like? Lots of hill climbing. Lots of ghost towns, and ton and tons and tons of converted rail-grade trails. Overall quality seems to be excellent (compared to the greater Vancouver area anyways), but quantity is lacking.

Mission 2 arrived on my doorstep today, yay! I'll post a picture on sunday, and try to get it mailed out again on monday or tuesday. Bah to working long hours.

I once took an instant Starbucks coffee mix out of a cache. I haven't used it yet, but I will one day (camping season is finally here!)

If it were me I'd just contact GS appeals and have the log reinstated and locked. No argument, no fuss, just done and over with. Demanding longer logs is an ALR, and they're banned under the guidelines that the CO agreed to when they hid that cache.

Nice, that's what I use too. Should serve you well.

bear would be useless in that scenario. if you were lost, how would roomservice find him? Just look around. You can usually see the highway fro where they're filming. I'll actually go with Bear on this one. All the extra help from his production crew would definitely speed things up, plus I'm sure he stays in really nice hotels.

Good to see 1 is moving again. Do we know where 2 is?

I understand that! I hate it when I pull a tick off. Not even so much that they're gross parasites, it's the crawly feeling that has me constantly checking myself for the rest of the day.

I've been called a thief for, as the FTF, taking an item marked as an ftf prize from a cache and not leaving an item in exchange for it. I've always been under the assumption that an FTF prize was a free item left in a new cache to get as many cachers as possible to hurry to that cache, and/or intended to be a trophy of sorts. The counter-view was that an FTF prize is a piece of prime trading swag that the FTF has an option to trade for. This doesn't really make any sense to me, in that as the first person to find the cache they get first choice of all the trade items irregardless. Why would someone mark one item as an FTF prize if it's the same as every other item in the cache? The person who accused me is not the CO, and there were no special instructions in the cache or on the cache page. I guess I'm looking for a bit of self-vindication here. Have I acted improperly? Have I been doing it wrong this whole time? For the record, your comments here will stay here; I'm not looking for ammunition to use in a feud. I take an accusation like this very seriously though, and it's a deal breaker in the friendship of my accuser and myself. That's bad enough, I don't want to make this any worse than it already is. *slight edit for grammar

I believe the proper way to do it is to paint the entire can a light colour, then add a few leaves and/or branches. Spray over that with a slightly darker colour then add more stuff. Repeat until you're spraying black and there's very little uncovered area on the can. Krylon makes the 4 colours for this, and they recommend going tan -> olive -> brown -> black. I use it for pretty much all my caches.