Blue_Ranger

You're right, in American football a player wears the same number for at least as long as he stays with the same team. If he goes to a new team, he might end up wearing a new number, but he might get lucky and his new team might have the same number available to him. Chad Ochocinco might look a bit silly if he ever had to wear a number other than 85. (He actually changed his legal name to Spanish for 85, and there was a flap over the fact that he changed it too late for it to be printed on his jersey the first season.)

At 42, I'm one of the younger people who attend the monthly breakfasts in my area. There are others younger than me, but most of that particular bunch are retired-- and constantly inviting me to go caching on weekdays. I think they do that just to make me jealous. But on the other hand, one of my caches is very easy, and a block away from my town's school. It gets found a lot by kids, often so new to caching that they think the logbook is swag (I have to replace that every few months, after someone has once again taken it with them.) So there's a huge age range, but I suspect the largest group that stays involved for the long run would be 40 and up. And the really prolific cachers? Those would be the retired folks, with lots of free time. And ever notice that the retiree cachers are NEVER seen without their GPSr? Even when we're in the diner having breakfast, as if someone's going to suddenly point out that there's a cache over in the window booth...

I imagine it varies a lot, from state to state and park to park. I have a few in Lakeside Beach State Park in New York, and it was harder to find the manager's office than it was to get them approved. Once I found the office, which was in the back of the maintenance garage, I was lucky enough to catch the manager in. I actually had to tell him what all I needed-- apparently the last geocaches placed there had been a few years back. Thankfully, he didn't want to inspect them, because he would have needed a boat (they're paddle caches) and who knows how long it would have taken him to get out there, or send someone. In my case, they were already in place, because I submitted them to the local reviewer, and the reviewer pointed out that half the series was within the park and needed permits. Also, I visited a state park in New Hampshire, and I don't think they have any sort of permit requirement, because that park is absolutely saturated!

I'm glad to see the change to the "no holes" rule. I've found some really awesome, very popular caches that technically violated that rule, because they were mounted on a post that had been installed just for that cache. It would be awful to see an overzealous local reviewer decide that they all had to go.

Yes, exactly. In fact, when you come across TB stickers on cachers' cars, you'll see that many of them are "TB dog tags". That's because buying a dog tag TB is the easiest way to get a valid code to use. The vendor who made the sticker, or the cacher who had it made, doesn't need the actual metal tag for anything, they just bought one for the code on it.

@Optimist on the run: I really ought to use ProjectGC more often! Sorting them in order like that, you can see where I took 2 geo-vacations, adding several new states and ending with a mega event. And then I noticed something odd, though it isn't important-- it took 2 days for Ontario to show up.

It would be nice to be able to sort souvenirs by something other than alphabetically. Newest to oldest, in the order earned, would really be helpful. For example, this would put the new Mary Hyde souvenir you just earned right at the top, instead of buried down between Maine and Maryland. This would be even more helpful when you know you SHOULD have just earned a new one, but you don't know the exact name-- like the last couple summer promotions, which didn't start with the same couple of words, and are scattered all over the souvenir list.

So THAT'S what a blinkie is! I've heard the term but had no idea what it meant!

Very few people ever find their way into these particular subforums, so I would try the Facebook group "Western New York Geocachers." I usually head east from where I am to hang with a bunch from around Letchworth State Park (which you should try to visit while you're up here!) and I only very slightly know most of the Buffalo area crowd. I'll also send you a message through Groundspeak, in case you've given up on this thread.

I'm not there yet, but many of my geobuddies are over 50. The most prolific cacher I know is pushing 80, and has over 30,000! I've even been kayaking with her.

Just making sure I'm reading the problem correctly-- the motor produces 5.000N, as in "PRECISELY five Newtons," as opposed to 5,000N, "Five THOUSAND Newtons?" Here in the US, we sometimes see packaging, mainly French Canadian, where they reverse the usual usage of commas and periods when stating weight or volume.

Inspiration came to me while I was at work today. I think it will involve elements of several suggestions here and on an FB post, along with something that will be familiar if you've found some WVTim caches. No water though-- fall is beginning already, and I'm in the Buffalo area, don't want the whole thing to ice up shortly after it gets placed!

So I built a storage rack for my kayaks out of PVC pipe. Thing is, I bought more than I needed, and I now have more than 30 feet of 2" pipe left over. Now I'm looking for ideas on how to make a cache involving a whole lot of 2" pipe! An epic fill-it-with-water has come to mind, but water is really heavy to carry-- I wouldn't want to make anyone carry a ridiculous amount. So... what would you make?

Sometimes it gets annoying when you have a travel bug that you really need to get out of your hands, and you keep finding "smalls" that really should have been called micros. I had one, it was the key to a cache called "Find the Key" (Altoona, PA). You had to find a TB that was the key to the cache, in order to open it, and the TB key needed to be dropped again somewhere in the Altoona area. I drove all over, looking for a cache large enough for the darn thing to fit into, and finally found something just big enough to squeeze it in. All it was, was a regular key with a laminated tag explaining what it was.

I just hid a new night cache yesterday. It's in a relatively remote area, and will take you for about a .25 mile night hike, so I'm assuming there will be very few kids along for that particular cache. I've stocked it with playing cards, dice, and pens-- still family-friendly, but mainly of interest for adults.

Elaborating a bit on the ammo can thievery-- around me, they're getting stolen even when they're in the middle of nowhere, and above the free muggle app range. Most of us in my area are starting to go to plastic ammo boxes. They've been working well for us, and the thieves only seem to steal the metal ones. This is in upstate NY, it gets cold but not Northern Canada cold, and plenty of rain and snow. The plastic boxes are holding up well, not getting stolen, and are quite a bit cheaper.

I just had to retrieve one of mine that someone dropped. Not in the water thankfully, but it went under a part of the bridge where they couldn't reach it. Fortunately they messaged me right away telling me what happened and where it went, so I was able to bring a magnet on a long stick and get it back.

I'm considering no longer using real metal ammo cans anymore-- everyone loves them, but some people love them a little too much. They keep getting stolen. The one super-easy cache I still have, I've had good luck with so far, but the rest of mine are higher than the 1.5/1.5 cutoff for the free muggle app.

There's also Geocaching Puzzle Help, a Facebook group. Good bunch of folks, just a few rules: FTF has to have been logged already, and they don't just give you the answer. They will give you prods in the right direction until you get the idea.

I have a cache right in the middle of a little park, in the middle of the town I live in. That park now holds two pokestops and a gym. Recent finders have mentioned stealth is not even needed anymore-- nobody pays any attention at all to anyone wandering aimlessly with cell phone in hand.

I buy most of my stuff locally. Basically the only containers that are harder to find in quantity at a reasonable price are bison tubes. Everything else... I get Hefty brand lock'n'lock type containers just about anywhere, Tractor Supply carries metal ammo cans as a seasonal item for a pretty decent price, plastic ammo boxes from several places like Walmart or Harbor Freight, matchstick containers are a buck each at Walmart.

In a FaceBook page for geocaching in my area, someone put up something very much like the OP. Our local reviewer replied with "I have to get up off the couch", and then a few minutes later "There ya go." A few new cache notifications popped up in my email at the same time.

In January 2015, I, a buddy of mine, and a friend of his I had only met a couple times, took a winter hike to scout out a new campsite. After spotting the perfect spot, we killed a few more hours roaming one of the big outdoors stores. After we got back, we were sitting around the table, using our phones to spot the new campsite on satellite images, then checking out satellite views of other things nearby. We found a waterfall that's nearby, then Doug, the guy I knew only slightly at the time, mentions there's a geocache there. Naturally, that led to "Geo-what?" and showing us geocaching.com. As it turns out, he had only signed up recently himself, and had never actually gone geocaching! Naturally, we now go out pretty much every time we both have the same day free.

Also, physical waypoints have to be 528 feet from the nearest OTHER cache, or any physical stages those other caches may have... but your own waypoints do NOT need to be 528 feet from each other. And there's nothing preventing you from mixing virtual and physical stages-- fill in the blanks with information from a monument here, then find a nano with coords on the next leg, etc.

Personal swag items, like your decal idea, are the one thing that really interests most adult cachers. Once you've been caching a while, and if you're sure you want to spend the money, pathtags are a REALLY cool item to find. It is rather pricey to order your first batch, and even re-orders will still cost about $1 each... you won't be dropping one in every find, that's for sure.