MiTuCats

Another plug for Rusty in Michigan, but we'd also like to take this opportunity to thank all cache reviewers everwhere. Without you, there wouldn't be caches to be found all over the world.

Assuming nothing goes wrong with our travel plans, and that the order I've placed arrives in time, we'll be happy to donate the following items to your auction: A MiGO hat (Tan/Tan), a 3" MiGO Logo camo patch and one full set of MiGO Seasonal Patches (one season may be missing, but I think I'll have them all). I'll let you decide whether the seasonal patches should be auctioned as a set or individually. These items may be viewed at the following link: MiGO Store We're also planning to bring you one of our MiGO coins, per my e-mail to you. This will NOT be one of the newer coins that's trackable on GC.com, unfortunately, but I doubt very many people will actually use them like a TB anyway.

Thanks for the info, especially the links. Those have helped a lot to convince him that there is no truth to the situation. He really didn't think there was, but deep down inside he was hoping. We can all understand that. The suggestion of reporting it to the Postal Authorities on the Illinois scam link is a good one, I'll suggest that to him. The Illinois link involves exactly the same outfit, with a slight different twist. I appreciate your quick and helplful input. Only six more weeks until we arrive in London!!!!!!!!

A friend of mine came into work this morning with a letter he had received from London. It looks for all the world like a scam, the letter was hand addressed, and the friend has never participated in any activity that should have resulted in this sort of letter. He's a retired gentleman in his early 80's. It purports to be from the following agency: Prudent Alliance plc Lottery, Management & Payment Verification 24 upper Richmond road Sw15 2ot London England Tel: 044-870-4460-051 Fax: 044-7005806797 I've tried to put in the exact usage of capitalization, number spacings, etc. It is stamped "By Air Mail par avion Royal Mail" among other things and appears to have an actual London postmark for what that's worth. It claims that my friend is a winner of their promo lotto via Web plus Lotto programmes, and claims that he has won $52,940.00 USD. The exact wording of the first paragraph is as follow and looks very clumsy and contrived: We are pleased to inform you of the announcement dated,2nd of June 2005, of winners of the our promo lotto via Web plus Lotto programmes. It then provides a contact name and extension number. Our initial reaction is that they're trying to initiate a scam where the phone call results in a huge bill to his telephone account. Scams of this nature have been running for some time, and are hard to fight since the person actually DID make the phone call. We'd really appreciate a feeling from your side of the big water as to the validity of this letter. My friend is skeptical, but reluctant to pass up this much money if by some chance there's some truth behind the thing. I also know that there are forum members over there involved in government and law enforcement who may be interested in further information. Feel free to e-mail me from my profile if you'd like more data. Thanks for any input you may have!

I had a shot at a White Jeep TB yesteday as well as a FTF log, but I was at the park at 6:15 AM on the way to work. It's heavily fenced and gated (for some weird reason) and the gates don't open until 8:00 am so I figured I was out of luck. By 8:30, someone else had found the cache and claimed both FTF and the White Jeep while I was hard at work. The USA geocoin was also gone from the cache we hit last week. I'll continue to try to bring one with us to the Bash in a Cache in September, along with several Michigan geocoins, and possibly one other very limited edition coin if it arrives in time.

I didn't get a chance to express our shock, sorrow and sympathy yesterday, but our thoughts and prayers were with you all day yesterday and remain with you today. I first heard of the events yesterday about 6:25 AM while on my way to work. At that point, the story was that a "power surge" in an underground station had caused an explosion. Later, as I was traveling to meetings in another town, the true nature of the events became clearer. I'm glad to hear from several accounts that things returned to "normal" quite quickly and that people are back to riding the tubes as usual today. Again, our thoughts and prayers are with you.

We're 55 and 54 respectively. There are days when we feel twice that age, and days when we feel half that age. Usually the days when we feel twice that age occur right after we've done something stupid because we had just been feeling half our age.

I hope this doesn't turn into a double post. It vanished the first time I tried it. Since the Best Half of our team was born and raised in Kansas, and loves sunflowers, we feel that sunflowers (either a scene of a field of them, or a single bloom) would be a perfect choice for one side of the coin. The Tallgrass prairies, the Flint Hills and a variety of other natural settings seem like good choices for other elements. Another possiblity would be a rolling wheat field or one of your huge grain elevators. Those are distinctively recognizable to people from out of state as being Kansas landmarks (at least to those of us with agricultural backgrounds). Definitely, you should stay away from things that seem to indicate that Kansas is flat, which seems to be a common misconception. It really infuriates the Best Half of our team. While she can't deny there are flat areas, the state as a whole is definitely not flat, even though a scientific study a couple of years proved it was flatter than a pancake. If they're made, we'll buy at least two, and I'm sure some other Michigan geocachers would purchase some as well.

Thanks for the link. It looks informative, interesting and amusing. We've also found this one that we've enjoyed perusing in our spare moments: English2American It also overlooks toasties in the food department. We're working on responses to the posts above this one, it will take a little time as we're sorting through what needs a reply and what is simply informative. Certain comments DEMAND a response just to keep the fun going a little longer. Meanwhile, thanks to everyone for the information. Some of it we're already aware of, but much of it is new data that is very helpful in addressing our questions and will be a big help in planning our trip. We realize that with the amount of time we have we won't be able to even scratch the surface of the available wonders in London, let alone England. At that it's much better than the original planning by the travel agent and cruise line who wanted us to arrive the morning of our cruise departure. We objected very strenuously to that! We're hoping to use this trip as a learning tool for a more extensive trip in 4 or 5 years. It will be interesting to see what's happened with Geocaching as an activity by then. Edited to correct position of comment about toasties not being in the food department.

If there's a strong probabililty that they'll be ready by our trip to London Sept. 1-3, we would be interested in purchasing one at the Bash in a Cache event if that's possible. We would also be interested in trading one or more MiGO coins for UK coins at that same event. We could also serve as couriers for Berryzang, AKA Big Red Dog with his permission and bring his coin(s) back to him. Most of the other US cachers I've seen placing advanced orders aren't close to us like he is so it wouldn't be very feasible to try to bring theirs back as well.

As promised (or threatened?) here are some more questions. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. And, of course, feel free to laugh or poke fun at us in the process. I'm sure some of these will be quite amusing to the "natives". Wifi availability? Any idea if it’s the same as in the U.S.? We have a Dell Axim Pocket PC we'll be bringing along with built in WiFi. Any chance we'll be able to use it to connect to the internet in a wireless hot spot? Are there any such places with free access or do they all require accounts and so forth? How do locals carry their equipment? We use a small backpack, presumably that won’t be frowned on, or cause distress amongst the authorities? Would a baseball cap be out of place in the city? I need some sort of sun shade and usually wear a cap, but I don't want to be the only one doing so. If caps are taboo, presumably a hat like Pharisee shows in his avatar is ok? What is a “toasty”? This is of course the most important of all the questions since it has culinary overtones and falls in the province of the Best Half of the team. Does the 16th Century Pub accept credit cards? Specifically VISA. Will the late August Bank Holiday affect us on our arrival on Sept. 1, and if so in what way? We know there is such a holiday but are unsure if it covers the whole week or only until Aug. 31. We're also unsure which services are unavailable during such holidays. I'm sure just as here, there are plenty of folks who are stuck working all the holidays. We’re planning to bring some local currency for immediate needs. Any suggestions as to amount? We’re not sure of prices, etc. and realize we'll be able to use credit cards in many places. Does Ireland use the same currency as England? How long should we allow for a decent visit to Greenwich? We really want to go there, probably by boat from the Kensington area. However, if it's going to eat an entire day, we may want to rethink our plans. That's it for now, we've revised our bookmarked cache list a little (mostly removing caches) and will keep an eye on that as our departure gets closer. We're looking forward to meeting some of you folks while we're over there!

Does anyone in Kansas or the surrounding region know a cacher who operated a year or so back under the name of Beariff? He/she picked up our first TB and never placed it anywhere. They haven't been on GC.com for over a year and e-mails to them bounce. If you know them, please let them know that if they still have our Grandma Bean TB, we'll pay postage to get her back or else we'd appreciate it if they would hand it to an active cacher. Thanks! Ken & Leah (MiTuCats)

We'll keep our eyes open around Michigan, and if we find one, we'll bring it to "The Bash in a Cache" on Sept. 1. I've also posted a request on our local group's forums to see if someone who currently has one will allow us to bring it over to the event cache. We might have to bring it back to the U.S. if that happens, but everyone who attends should be able to at least see and log it. We never found a yellow Jeep TB last year, most of them went MIA and were never logged as being taken from the caches where they were placed. I'm also trying to get a USA geocoin to bring over, a cache that we're visiting next Tuesday shows one in it, but it may be gone before we get there. We've only ever found one of those in the wild, so they must be in pretty heavy demand also.

We actually caught both of our cats sitting still at the same time in the same place. Actually, the orange one was just starting to attack the other one's tail when this was snapped. Since the two cats were part of the development of our name, we felt they made a good avatar. They're also on our sig cards.

We don't remember all the gory details involved in selecting our nickname, but most of it was pretty straightforward. We figured we'd be hitting some caches out of state and wanted a name that showed our origins as a Michigan team, so we put the Mi in the name. There are two of us and we have two cats. We always planned to cache as a team, although we knew there might be (and have been) occasions where only one of us could visit a site when out of town on work related business. Therefore, we added TuCats to the end of the Mi. We can't remember why we used TU instead of TWO, but there was something of earthshaking significance about it at the time. I do remember saying "Besides, T and U are TWO consecutive letters, so that fits" and getting a rather strange look from the best half of the team.

That'd be nice, and it would please some people Hehe and annoy some others no doubt! We'd love it if you could get it set up by September. Then we could add that to our list of found icons while we're there. We figure we're going to have to come back another time anyway to do a REAL visit to London and the rest of the U.K. Maybe you'll have something worked out by then. As far as we're concerned, you SHOULD have some sort of cache type that's unique to the U.K. We can't imagine why anyone would object.

This is a favorite gripe of ours as well. It's rare for us NOT to post some photos of any TB we encounter. Some we've taken to greater lengths than others, such as:Brianna's Birthday Bracelet TB And: Arielbelle There have been three or four others, but these are good examples. One has completed its mission, the other is AWOL in Florida, perhaps swept away in the hurricanes last year. These and similar cases have been somewhat special in that we had learned that the owners were children. They're a lot more anxious to see activity than adults. In both these cases, we had been planning a trip in a few weeks and contacted the owners to see if they wanted us to take the TB along or leave it in another local cache so it might get picked up by someone else. When they've asked us to take the TBs on the trips, we've tried to give them a good photo tour. At the ends of the trips, we've made CDs with all the photos (including many we haven't posted) including both the high resolution originals and the reduced size we've created for posting. We organize the CD with a folder for each cache, and sometimes a folder for the journey between caches. Then we've offered to send the CD to the owner. So far we've had one polite rejection, the other 4 or 5 have been very happy to have the CD. Looking at the photo galleries after we've handled a TB this way, we're often appalled at how few pictures there are other than the ones we've posted. Edited to add this photo. Since Arielbelle's owner was a 3 year old girl from south Texas who had never seen snow, we figured this photo would open her eyes. It's taken in Michigan's Keeweenaw Peninsula, where the average annual snow depth over the last 82 years is 187.4 inches, and the record is 390.4 inches! That's the Best Half of our team near the sign, she's 5' 2" tall to give you some perspective. End of Edit I have a dial-up connection at home, so I often don't post the photos from there. I'll log the TB in and out of caches to maintain the chronology, then post the photos from work during lunch, etc. On one occasion, it took me three hours to log two tbs into and back out of four caches without posting the photos. I can't imagine how long it would have taken with them. Of course, that was a Sunday afternoon. On our own TB's mission tags, we ask for photos. I don't recall that anyone has posted photos for any of our five TBs so far once we've launched them.

Ah, maybe there is hope for a trade or two. I ordered six more of the MiGO coins today just in case. I should have them next week. In case someone missed the link in the first post on the thread, I'll try to paste images here again. This is how I intended to put them in initially.

We'll be out of town with limited e-mail access for the next few days, but when we get back, I've got some more questions to run by everyone since you're such a knowledgeable and helpful group. By the way, I finally noticed that your UK geocoin isn't actually available yet, so I guess it won't work to trade MiGO coins for that one, but it doesn't mean the coins won't be traded for something. We're still willing to leave two or three in London when we leave. As I indicated earlier, one is already spoken for. Thanks again for the info to date! You folks have been very helpful!

Thanks for the map link. That was very thoughtful. I've bookmarked it already, and spent some time scrolling around the edges of it. We both love maps, that's one of the several things about geocaching that we find fascinating. With Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park so close, I can see where there would be a lot of potential for caches nearby. Is this what is referred to in the British fiction as an "ordinance map" or "survey map"? I'm not sure if the two terms are interchangeable or if they refer to different things, like a topographic map versus a street map. We both read British detective fiction, so we sometimes see terms that we don't quite comprehend, although we get the basic idea. Is there a "standard" size to a city block in London, or are they pretty random? Usually, over here the standard city block is 1/10 mile. Not all streets run on this pattern, and there are often alleys within the blocks. The data pertaining to postal codes is interesting. That is much more precise than the basic zip code in the U.S. They've now added a four digit extension in the U.S. to pin things down more precisely. I'm not sure how it's calculated or how much precision it adds to the basic zip code. We both feel some trepidation about searching for micro caches in public places in general, but especially in a foreign country in this day and age. For that reason, a lot of the ones we plan to do are virtuals because we don't know how busy the parks and gardens will be. We've never been really good at stealth in the city. We'd both feel badly if a cache that we visited was found and muggled soon after we visited it. We'd always wonder if we had been stealthy enough. The gardens around Cara's College cache look very nice, but the TB we'll have isn't really small so we probably won't try to put it in there. Thanks again, everyone for your helpfulness. We hope to meet at least some of you in September to thank you in person.

Copthorne Tara N51 29.936 W0 11.523 These coords might help in your search Thanks! It's always helpful to have coordindates for things.

I've done some research amongst the tons of documents we've already acquired dealing with our trip and learned that we are staying at the Copthorne Tara Hotel in Kensington. Here's a link Copthorne Tara This isn't the type of place we would normally choose to stay, it's just where the cruise line put us. It's much more upper crust than we're used to.

We had noticed a dearth of caches suitable for TBs, that's one reason our list contains so many virtuals. Of course, we also love learning about local history, and virtuals are great for that as well. Micros are ok, but can take a lot of time for two half-blind old characters to spot. Our original thought was that we would try to do a direct handoff if we were successful in meeting any local cachers rather than taking a chance on Last Delivery being full. Camley Street Gardens was another that we were eyeing as a possible place to leave the TB, but after checknig recent logs, it doesn't look like this TB will fit, if Mr. Scruffy filled the cache. At this point, we're hoping that we'll be able to find someone to take him off our hands directly, since it sounds like we may be successful in finding someone to talk with.

We're pretty sure we won't be up for much of anything on the 1st, after spending the night of Aug. 31 and morning of Sept. 1 on a plane. That's definintely some weather variability! We, too, get weather changes like this, but they're fairly rare. We'll take the rest of your advice and that of others into consideration and will hopefully at least know what to unpack at the hotel. Our situation is that we have to stick to an overall itinerary established by a cruise line. We've purchased a cruise package which involves relocation of a new vessel from London to the east coast of the U.S. (can anyone say "Titanic"?). It even stops at the last port of call of the Titanic in Ireland. Because we'll be on the North Atlantic in the fall, we've got to plan on cool (maybe cold) weather at least part of the time and bring enough layers that we can stand to be out on the deck at least long enough to walk a few miles a day. We're also going to post on the Irish and Icelandic sites asking for weather advice there as we'll be stopping in both places for a few hours. The cruise line is taking care of all transfers between airport and hotel, hotel and Dover for embarkation on the 4th, etc. They chose the hotel for our accomodations as well. I'll try to remember to post the hotel later, as kbootb asked about it. Nothing I have on hand at the moment gives me that, and I can't remember the name. I think it's near one of the big parks like Hyde Park or Regent Park. I remember checking for caches in the nearby park in February and finding a lot of virtuals and micros, nothing that seemed to be big enough for the TB we want to leave in England. Regarding the concept of a get together, we'll leave that up to you local folks to decide. We wouldn't object, but don't want to put anyone to a lot of trouble. We're both pretty shy people, but have enjoyed the few event caches we've attended. The MiGO group is planning an event cache to meet a cacher from Australia who will be spending a day in Michigan, we're hoping to attend that if I'm not up to my eyebrows in work at the time. I sometimes end up working 16-19 hours a day for a couple weeks straight. Of course, meeting us would just be an excuse for a party, right? The main concern we would have would be if there was a huge demand for the Geocoins we mentioned in our initial post. We know there is a UK coin available, we'd love to trade for one or two of them to enhance our horde of collectible items. One of our MiGO coins has already been spoken for via e-mail, we currently have three more that are available. The source still had a few last week, but they were running low. If there is any indication that several more might be needed, please let us know ASAP so I can try to order more. Also, if you do turn this into an event, are there any avid signature item collectors among you? How many sig cards should we plan on bringing? Teach2Learn, thanks for the tip on the Jekyll and Hyde cache. We do hope to spend some time in the London parks in addition to geocaching, sightseeing and shopping. I'll try to find time to double check all the caches before we come over, but may have to wait until we arrive. It will depend on when my business trip to Mexico is scheduled in August. That's still unclear. I'm hoping for a week or so delay after I return from that trip before we leave for London, but I doubt if I'll have that much time.

Thanks for the link to the weather site, I was trying to search a variety of ways to find that sort of thing and wasn't successful. We, too have variable weather, so we're used to it. We just wanted to know how likely it was that we would need a parka versus a light jacket and so forth. The weather link should give us that data as well as it can be estimated. We had considered going out of the city but were afraid we wouldn't be able to do justice to any place we visited. We won't have ready transportation if we leave the city unless there are modes we don't know about. In the city, we were planning to use the tubes and other public transit modes. Since I grew up in Bath, Michigan we were thinking about visiting Bath, but again didn't feel we would be able to spend the time it deserves. We already realize we couldn't do justice to London in a month, let alone a couple of days, but we thought if we concentrated there we could get the highlights and some ideas for our next trip. It's also unclear as yet what time on the 4th we'll be leaving London, so we can't count on have any time available that day. We'll be on the plane all night Aug. 31, so may not have much energy on the 1st when we arrive in mid-day. That pretty much leaves us two days we can count on, we're thinking of doing the pub thing on Sept. 2.