Well, since I'm not a forum hound, I only found out about this thread because a fellow cacher emailed me the link.
I guess I'm responsible for this epidemic, although I never even thought it would have such a life of its own when I placed the first one. For anyone interested, here's a little history about them:
When I first began caching in April of '03, I was also traveling back and forth to GA and NC at least once a month for the following 4 months. In order to break up the monotony of the drive, I always looked up caches that were close to interstate exits (a mile or less) that I could look for on my journeys. Now this was WAY before the "find caches along a route" feature that is available, and it took quite a while to look up (via the gc map) potential caches. As a single female, traveling alone (or with my dogs), it was important that the caches be in a fairly safe place, since no one would know of my whereabouts if I stopped. Back then, there weren't anywhere near the # of caches or cachers, so the pickings were fairly slim.
I decided to place the first Off Your Rocker in my hometown of Titusville to give other travelers a safe, quick, and clean place to stop to grab a cache. It was NEVER meant to be a "commercial" cache, but one that even single women, or folks traveling with children would feel safe stopping and looking for. Personally, I have always enjoyed the meals that I've had at these establishments, but I have stopped at many of them while traveling without making any purchase, just to use the restroom because they are generally nicer and cleaner than most fast food restaurants at interstate exits. They also usually have a place where I can walk my dogs without worrying about someone who is up to no good.
Of the dozen or so OYR caches that I have placed, I have never used a newspaper machine to hide the cache. Because of the nature of the business, I have always found a place on one of the antiques displayed on the porch area (and they are either bolted to the sidewalk or to the wall) to hide my cache.
Not too long after I had started putting these out on the east coast of FL, I had several cachers email me and ask if they could use the cache name and put one out at one of the establishments close to them. I thought it was funny that they asked me for permission (as if I held franchise rights to the name) but was more than happy to give my blessings if they felt they needed them.
For the record, these are NOT my favorite type of caches, as I enjoy a long hike in the woods, nor do I consider them a legacy by any means, but they are definitely (IMHO) a LOT more interesting than a lightpole cache in a parking lot of a chain store. Neither of these type of caches require anyone to spend anything while finding the cache, but I have to say that the majority of logs on my OYR caches are favorable. The nice thing about geocaching is that there are many types of caches for many types of cachers, and no one ever has a gun held to their head to force them to look for one that they don't want to.
Just thought folks might like a little insight as to the placements of the original OYR's from the unknowing instigator of this series.
overrover
