Tequila

My 2 cents. On the first day, I went to the oc.com website simply to secure my caching name. That proved to be a challenge in itself. Then I accidentally logged a find on a cache that I have never visited. Neither the CO nor myself can delete that log. Deleting an erroneous log would seem to be a pretty basic requirement of a site. Apparently not. I have not been back since and have no plans to return in the near future. Garmin apparently forgot the old saying: “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression”. I had really hoped that Garmin would create an environment that would extend the caching experience into new areas using things like Chirp and Wherigo type adventures that didn't require log books and containers. With control over their GPS firmware, Garmin could build technology that would emulate a virtual/Wherigo type environment and offer alternatives to the gc.com caching experience. Instead it would seem Garmin decided to simply offer an alternative listing site. And, as we have seen elsewhere, that doesn't work. Even the mascot looks like a beta attempt to create something simply because the other guy has a mascot. My advice to Garmin: Pull the website. Apologize to the user community and come back when you are ready for prime time.

No offense, but, I have too much respect for our local reviewers and the contribution they make to geocaching to dignify that with a response. .

How can they research what their users want before they have their own users? LOL. They could have sent an email survey to the thousands, millions of customer that have their GPS units.

I wouldn't get too excited about it. It would appear their website was designed by the same team that developed the Colorado. .

Yep. Some prankster could publish the entire E.T. power trail on opencaching.com. The containers and log books are already out there. Now you know why we need reviewers.

Now we know what happened to the team that developed the Colorado. This post gets my vote for post of the day. LOL Always wondered what they did with the guys who created the Edsel, I mean Colorado. Nice to see Garmin believes in keeping a tradition alive.

Then the terrain rating will probably be 5.

0430 Sunday works for me!!! Congrats on the final cache and completing the challenge.

You can rename items. And if you used URWIGO, it has a simple to use Random function. You could create a 5 or 6 variation random statement and in each of the flows change the names to different sequences. You would also have to assign some sort of flag to the correct item and test for it. A lot of extra coding but it would come close to being truly random.

That is where my money is.

We have joy.

I am a huge supporter of Wherigo (I own 20+, most in Canada) but I doubt Wherigo represented much of a catalyst for the Oregon. Paperess caching would have been the major purchase reason. I would also suggest that the crappy performance of the Colorado resulted in more Oregon sales than Wherigo. I agree with this. In fact I would say Garmin "owns" the market. Which makes one wonder how much additional sales can be driving by owning a competitive caching site.

Actually, Groundspeak (Jeremy and Elias) owns the patent. .

Good point. They don't have to put out millions of containers to create caches. Maybe they are going to focus more on Wherigo, virtual and chirp type caches. And that might complement GS very nicely. One real disadvantage with Garmin is they are a publicly traded company with constant pressure to post increasing profits every quarter. Investing a few million dollars in an opencaching infrastructure would stick out and could negatively impact the stock price. Of course, this could be just pressure to get Groundspeak to come to the bargaining table for a buyout.

This happened to another cacher and myself. We planned a day long trip from Toronto to Buffalo to Dayton Ohio to Grand Rapids Michigan to log four fizzy challenges in a single day. Started at 0500 and finished at 2200. Unfortunately, the Ohio Fizzy cache was AWOL. Without even thinking otherwise, we logged a DNF because we did not find the cache and we did not sign the log. But we had a lot of fun visiting the areas along the way. Logged 3 fizzies which felt pretty good. Next day we logged a whole bunch of Wherigo's. Great trip.

Dirty underwear from each team member FedEx'ed to northernpenguin.... We have worked off worse scent articles. My favourite is chewed up bacon. Tricky getting the hound to smell and not eat. Alternatively, you could just walk the 100 metres to the road, stick out your thumb and hope a bus load of Tropicana girls stops to pick you up Good luck on your quest, can't wait to read the logs!!! Hmmmm. Tropicana girls?? Bloodhound?? Tough decision. .

Avernar and Team Northbound: Good luck on your weekend trek. Weather for Noranda looks reasonable for this time of year. And if you do get lost, Quebec has some excellent SAR teams. If you want Tequila and I to come find you, we would be happy to ask Lisdowney to ferry us up in the Hummer. Please leave the following with northernpenguin: (1) Photocopy of your boot print. (2) Scent article sealed inside two Zip-Loc bags. (3) Large chunk of 4 year old cheddar cheese as a reward for Tequila when he finds you. A coke for me would be nice too. On a more serious note, drive safely and most of.......have fun. Tequila and Tequila

Nice Quiz!!!! I hope as time goes on, you will zoom out. Otherwise we could be here for awhile.

Absolutely. I own more Wherigo caches (25) than anyone else in Canada and I have lent my unit to many cachers so they could experience the Wherigo. Wherigo enthusiasts are quite passionate about it and I strongly believe we will be the saving grace of Wherigo. Already two independent builders and one independent iPhone player exists. Wherigo caches take a lot of effort but you can do so much more with a Wherigo than you can with a standard cache.

You can find pretty much everything there is to know about every GPS in this forum.

This log doesn't bode well. Take climbing gear and warm clothing.

TRAK makes a Garmin compatible Ontario topo that is 1:10,000 which is the most detailed I have seen. It is available at Radioworld and other stores.

When HFreign and I found that cache, I found a pickle jar full of marijuana.

Feel free to close this thread. It has served its purpose. Thx.

Sometimes we don't. If you research the Oklahoma City Bombing (obviously not the same situation as this missing person case), you will find that over half of the civilian K9 search teams retired from SAR shortly thereafter. At the time, civilian/volunteer teams did not have the same access to CISM(Crititcal Incident Stress Mgt) as professional teams. In the years since, a lot has changed in SAR and as Doug pointed out above, CISM is a key component of most if not all SAR teams. Having said that, there is nothing quite like the euphoria of being part of a group that finds the missing person alive. For me, there is the added thrill of being able to see a dog doing what it was bred to do. If you have never seen a bloodhound work its way through whatever, and lead the team to a small child curled up under a tree in the woods, you are truly missing something. Specifically a Fox 40 whistle. Do NOT carry a whistle with a pea inside it. They tend to malfunction in cold weather. A lot of SAR teams and police forces hand out Fox 40's at school programs. Another wise idea is to leave a photo of your boot print on the dash of your vehicle. It can help SAR Techs to eliminate tracks.