meralgia

Agreed!! I was afraid that I would be making a lot of boring "smalls" when I invested over $80 in a 10' length of black PVC pipe, tops, bottoms, screw caps, a pair of desert cammo pants, and some beanie babies. The supplies made about 26 caches, and I sighed at the pile of seeminly-xeroxed cache containers. I looked at pile of micros (black-taped film canisters, pill bottles, etc) and sighed again. Boring. Both piles of caches were cammoed well and put out sparingly (NONE went under lampost skirts). They were spread across a wide area and in a variety of spots (in holes, amongst pine needles, at the top of a tree, etc.) so neither pile would be boring. Thankfully the smalls hold a travel bug and some small swag so folks can still trade. I got a log the other day, "You'll want to get into the "Mind of Meralgia"--look for familiar meralgia materials" to find this cache (inferring that if you've done a few meralgia caches, you might know what you're looking for). Over the Winter, I'll be able to cammo some of the cache containers in a more interesting way, but so far folks haven't complained.

When I'm placing, I'm not so concerned about whether Cacher A wants to find easy ones and Cacher Z wants to find hard ones. I'm Hider "K", and it's my choice. I try and cammo the micros creatively to keep it interesting, but sometimes you just don't have that freedom, especially in the urban parks. One of the micros I've placed is rated at a 3.5 difficulty, and I get the best logs from the folks who enjoyed a challenge (some have gone back twice to "beat" it). Other micros have been hidden as a 1.5 difficulty for the folks who are running errands in "good clothes" after work and just want to get their smiley fix for the day. If you think my micro is boring, go ahead and tell me OFF-LOG. Maybe I'll be able to find a better place to place it based on your input.

I have another scenerio: two caches are about 100' (through the grass) off a gravel trail. How hard is it to wheel on a gravel trail? And how many feet are you comfortable wheeling on grass?

Thanks. I rated one of my caches yesterday (GC16JWA)--I know it's wheelchair accessible, but it's completely uninspiring. So I was thinking of the other caches I've placed and wondering if they would be do-able because they're more challenging.

I have spent quite a bit of time in a wheelchair when I was recovering (twice) from my femur fracture after a downhill skiing accident. I emphathize. I know that caches won't be visible, but with some of mine, you have to get on your hands and knees in order to find them. I think you could feel around with your hands, but that makes people a little squeamish--reaching in unknown places. Thanks for letting me know about the inaccesibility of the sand traps; I wasn't sure how well a wheelchair would cope with it. Are there places that you _could_ wheel (and you were pleasantly surprised)?

My big disappointment when I started caching was the lack of caches between my mother and me (a 20-minute drive). That has since been taken care of... ; ) Agreed!

In Latin, "meralgia" is broken into two words: "mer" for 'thigh' and "algia" for 'pain'. It was a neurological numbness and tingling that I had in the early 90's. When I went to the neurologist, he told me it was "just a thing", so I spent many hours researching it to discover that it's an entrapment of the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve (basically the nerve that feeds the skin on the outside of your thigh). Yeah, it was just a "thing" but a pretty annoying one. To avoid explaning all of that, I joke with fellow cachers that "meralgia is just a little less than a pain in the a**." ; ) Oh, and I use a hedgehog as an avitar because I "rescued" and owned one for a year. He was so smelly (and I tired of washing the wheel he used to poop in every night)! Also, I never really played with him much (they're nocturnal and it felt rude to get him out so I could show him off to folks who had never seen a hedgehog before), so I let someone else rescue him. His name was Mr. Hedgie Huff-n-Puff; I named a hedgehog-beanie-baby-cammo'ed cache after him that got muggled. The cache was re-containered, moved, and renamed, "The Demise of Mr. Hedgie Huff-n-Puff.

I have a few caches that I'd like to label as wheelchair-accessible, but I'm not sure if it would be possible for you to access them. My question is two-fold... 1) Where can you wheel? For instance, can you move around in the sand on a playground if there's a ramp to reach the sand? Also, how far can you wheel in the sand (without tiring) once you're there? 2) Some of my caches are within wheelchair-reaching distance but not something that you could see from the vantage point of a wheelchair. Is it appropriate to label it as wheelchair accessible if you have to "find" it with your hands (and not by sight)?

I'm a Christian too and just made a dream catcher for my new cache, "Dream Cacher". It just needs a few final touches before I place it for next Saturday's event.

My word for muggles: "Anyone". At a cache site, I'll ask my son, "Loco, do you see 'anyone'?" He knows exactly what I mean. I don't go out of my way to say, "Loco, be on the lookout for muggles." I'm sorry, but IMHO, the word "muggle" is a little cheesy. However cheesy, it stuck. Good luck trying to change everyone's mind if you do find the coolest word for the "anyones".

Alright--I see where this is going ; ) "Religious" can include pagan too; if you feel strongly about the pagan stuff, go ahead leave it in a cache. Just please don't remove the Christian stuff in favor of the pagan stuff (and vice versa).

I leave the Church coin swag because it's important to me, and I'm guessing someone else may also find it of value. It's like leaving the McToys--even though you as an adult don't want them, a cacher who brings their kids might.

I must admit that I've hidden my share of boring micros. There isn't room for anything bigger in the parks where I'm hiding them. Now that winter has begun its nasty descent, I've had enough indoor time to doctor up the film canisters a bit so they're more interesting. Unfortunately, it will also make them more difficult to find. Would you rather find an un-doctored film canister in a tree (D1) or a film canister with excellent cammo in a tree (D3.5)? What exactly is it about the micro that you don't enjoy? The difficulty? The inability to trade swag?

I do occasionally put out the really nice, silver coins with the "John 3:16" verse stamped on them. I realize that it's not swag that everyone wants so I usually leave non-Churchy swag also. I've never seen a tract or other such propaganda in a cache, but I'm sure others have. A friend of mine had some cool golf pencils personalized with the "Matthew 13:44" verse - ""The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again..." (no kidding!!)

I must say that when my kid has gone #2 in the woods, finding one in a cache is a Godsend!! I generally carry a few on me but do run out from time to time.

After placing a cache, I do it the "hard" way: A.) Walk to the left a few feet, walk to the right. Watch the numbers. B.) Walk up a few feet, walk back a few feet. Watch the numbers. C.) Mark your waypoint. D.) Walk 75 feet away from your cache. E.) Turn around, click "go to", and find your cache. F.) If it's way off, start over at "A". I've placed over 50 caches in this manner. I only had to revise coords on one of them; it was off by only 25 ft.

You must not be a secretary, then!!!!

I'd rather purchase quality swag and cache containers than spend money on a GPS mount!

Yes, 2003 CRV Bwa ha ha. A woman who knows cars (by the windshield wiper stick) AND goes geocaching! Too bad I'm taken!

My question is whether this show is focusing on geocaching as a source of that bad trait. If it isn't and the "good wife" (which is rare from my viewings) is the geocacher, then what are they expected to "fix." I'm guessing they want to find a family from a swanky city whose maid cleans the house (so the wife can't muss her newly-done fingernails digging in a stump to find a cache). I'm sure they want her to see a bug so they can watch her run in the other direction screaming all the way! On the other hand, if the geocaching wife goes to Beverly Hills to assume their life, she may decide that she doesn't want to muss her newly-done nails and decide that geocaching isn't for her after all. It's too bad she has to live THEIR life for the first week.

Sure, and don't forget your geocaching outfit so you don't have to avoid the poison ivy and sand burrs!

I found this little pill or snuff tin... I think it's sterling silver with mother-of-pearl inlaid petals. The engraving on the inside says __paca Mexico. I love it!!! I'm sure it was grandma's knick knack that someone got tired of dusting. I also have a little porcelain turtle from Japan, I believe, that's on my monitor at work.

try those floating key holders. they should be watertight with the rubber o-ring. you just need enough weight on the bottom to keep it down.

poor-womans' GPS mount... just cram it between the dash and the window! BTW, briansnat, is it a Honda?

I have a son the right age, however my husband isn't a cacher so we wouldn't really qualify anyway. He tried it once, got shin splints and poo-poo'ed geocaching altogether. He, however, does do the local triathalon... the INDOOR triathalon. : ( So we don't even qualify as doing things together OUTSIDE. Ah well. I can't imagine my boss would let me take two weeks off of work anyway! ; )