tripechatter

Groundhog day is February 2nd, and it’s supposed to give a pointer to the future. On that day, someone wrote: “If you are ever thinking of placing a cache on Dartmoor, don't use an ammo box. These used to be the containers of choice for letterboxers, but now the Dartmoor rangers actively seek them out and remove them, possibly because of the use of the moor by the army and the potential for a box with live ammo to be left behind after firing exercises. I suppose the same applies to the Dorset coast and Salisbury Plain and any where else the army have free rein.” …and a couple of days earlier Tim and June had written: “New cachers are welcomed and we expect mistakes from them.” I simply thought that, looked at in juxtaposition, those two posts illustrated that relying solely upon rules of procedure, however comprehensive, was going to give you lots of grief, sooner or later and on a continuing basis, so long as what you leave might be regarded by others, rightly or wrongly, as unwelcome, even occasionally. But none of you seems to get it, and your moderators tell me that as an outsider I can’t possibly know what I’m talking about, so I’ll be off, and wish you all luck.

I suppose I’m a llort, the opposite of a troll, an interfering old git with too much time on his hands, posting where he doesn’t belong, to be constructive, not destructive. Now seems a good moment. I’m a country lover and have followed your threads with interest and something very plain and simple occurs to me. I hope you’ll not bother wasting good debating time by attacking me for saying it as I’m both impervious and irrelevant, but instead that you’ll give my ideas some thought. My only authority for saying anything is that perhaps an outsider can see the wood for the trees when it’s less obvious to those more closely concerned. So here goes: Geocaching as it stands will ALWAYS be in trouble, because of one very simple and rectifiable problem: the caches themselves. It is those alone that are at the bottom of ALL your problems, and those alone that need rectifying. You say that the main fun of your sport is the thrill of the chase and going out in the countryside. So 99.9% of what you do is totally praiseworthy, totally simple and totally without opponents. So just imagine, if you could rectify the cache problem you’d have zero problems. Setting aside how you do it for a moment, the result would be: No more access problems, anywhere! (Consider this: you are an agent for a major landowner; people come to you and say “can we leave stuff, we have very tight rules”; you ring you’re insurers and say “can I say yes?”; they say: “but there’s an unquantifiable risk here; sooner or later someone will break the rules, we’re dealing with human beings. When that happens, and harm arises, as it will in one of a zillion conceivable ways, it will be you, Mr Landowner that will have opened us up to the Third Party liability. So no, you must not give assent, even if they say they’re all saints. OK, you’ve had some recent success, but if you’re realistic you’ll know it could take just one bad egg, one blaze of publicity and it would all fall down. And no sport can regulate against one bad egg. No need for irksome rules! (Why would you need them, when everything you are doing is seen as praiseworthy and risk-free?) No more of this endless quarrelling. (If you check the threads, almost every harsh word is related to cache problems). No bad publicity or accusations of littering! (Bear in mind, though you may regard the ModAnts as unjust and unpleasant, they only reacted because they became aware of you. How many more episodes like that are you going to face from other groups and interests who suddenly discover you? They too may be wrong and unjust, but do you want to go through it all again and again?) No fear of being regarded as anoraks or concern that you’ll be laughed at on television!How many innocent passtimes have that sort of worry hanging over them? Only yours! (I have to tell you, as an outsider, that it’s the fact that your caches contain “Woolworth’s treasure” that is the sole reason you strike people as geeky. They find it hard to equate this with grown-ups. Please don’t be offended, I’m just telling you the truth). So I ask myself, since you probably know all this, why do you persist with the form of your caches? The only explanation that I’ve seen is that it’s to give extra fun to your children. Well, fair enough, but apart from the fact that not all of you have children, I still wonder why you can’t do that in some other way. You seem to be paying a heavy price for having a “treasure” aspect, when another approach would give the kids just as much fun. As to how you should change the nature of your caches, that’s up to you, and a matter for debate. You could go down the “virtual” route, but I can quite see that something might be lost there. Or you could change them physically. The options are endless…a simple brass disk that people replace with their own? How would that work? (I don’t know, it’s up to you!) A biodegradable wickerwork box that disappears in a few months? (why should you bother with monitoring and revisiting caches? Where’s the fun in that?) containing a password so people can prove they’ve found it, and another for the kids that can be used to buy sweets in the local shop (if they show their geocaching ID), where you’ve deposited a fiver? Yes, I know, I know, the money would run out, but so what, it’s a hard world, kids have to learn that! And think how keen they’d be to get to a new cache before anyone else! Maybe that wouldn’t work but there must be thousands of possibilities, surely you can all come up with something? When you do, I might join!!! (Under a different name!) I love the outdoors and the thrill of the chase. But not yet, it’s too complicated, causes too much hostility, seems to drive nice people to quarrel or argue, and is just a touch geeky.