meralgia

Hennepin County--specifically "nordeast" Minneapolis

Here's a pic of my 5' 4.5" walking stick that my father and I "cultivated" when I was a teenager. We went into our woods out back (we had two acres--one was woods, the other was lawn), tagged a bunch of vine-entwined trees and came back a year later. Some were cooler than others. I spent a considerable amount of time debarking, devining, and staining this beefy walking stick. The parts that aren't as dark are rub-off from normal wear and tear.

Hey, kid, you gid a great job playing "decoy" on that last playground cache!

You know, I think I found this travel bug a month ago in a skirt lifter! I can't believe I came all this way on a D4.5/T4.5 to find it again!

NO WAY--she's standing??!! ; ) Don't worry. I'm 35, dressed like a witch with cap and cape (yeah, boring--I know). The secretaries can't do much else for costumes here because we actually _have_ to work! Over lunch, as I approached two fellow cachers at GZ, I put an "official geocache" sticker over my mouth. I was trying to pretend to be a moving geocache, but neither of them "got it".

What interesting timing (I see that knowschad mentioned this cache already)! I'm waiting for my first move of Moving 1 2 3 (GCED59) to be found. Knowschad tipped me off about it on Monday night, and I ran out as soon as I could to find it the same night. My son and I hid it last night around 6pm when it was just starting to get dark out, and folks are planning to be in the field over lunch. It was quite exciting to hide it, which was strange because I have plenty of hides under my belt. I think it's the comfort of knowing that it's a cache you don't have to maintain, so you can be a little more creative about the way its hidden. I originally wanted to hide this in one of the pumpkins I grew--it's the same shape as the cache and green on one side. But my son made the cutest puppy eyes and said that he was looking forward to carving it for tonight, so we hid it differently.

I have a 7 1/2 year old son who NEVER SHUTS UP. I like it sometimes when there is dead air to fill. But on the occasion when we get together with a newly-found caching buddy, I have to snort at him from time to time to keep from irritating the other folks and giving away our stealth. He was born in February (though it should have been at the end of January), so he was difficult at the get-go! Oh, and I made a cache that he would have fit in if he hadn't sprouted like a weed in the last few months!

I don't live in Omaha, silly

it's cute, and you obviously spent a lot of time on it, but how will you prevent it from being muggled... I don't see how this can be called a cammo job when the outside is bright yellow.

I say, "It's a treasure hunt for adults, and the kids can come too". If they ask me to explain more, I will, but sometimes that's all they want to know. Hobo: can you upload the card you carry with you? I think it would be good for me to keep one with just in case the police ask. I don't think telling them that I'm treasure hunting will work as easily with them.

If you are going to make a cache to hold European-bound bugs, be sure to make it large enough. Also, are cachers that visit the cache allowed to take any of the bugs out (which would, no doubt, thwart the mission), or do you plan on taking them out of the cache after they're put in so that you can hold onto them? After my bugs sat for two weeks in a cacher's possession, I emailed them to ask about their plans. They explained that the bugs were going to get dropped at an event in another two _months_. I wrote back and implored them to just drop the bugs anywhere. My bugs had a mission and, even if this cacher was planning on completing a large portion of the mission, that's wasn't what I had in mind when I activated them.

Is there a way that you can hide the cache outside of the building (with permission)? Just getting people to the building will allow them to decide if they have the time and/or energy to donate blood. Perhaps you could write a cute vampire thing in the log and encourage folks to spend half an hour or so at this cache site (without making it sound like you have to spend 1/2 hour looking for the cache)? We all know that giving blood is "good for us", but I agree that requiring cachers to do so in order to get the cache is inappropriate.

Does the acorn leave pigment or just a scratch?

I must say that I'm a little disturbed to see a car cache. It's creative, but I've had my car broken into a couple of times by rowdy kids that wanted to steal a quick buck (and maybe a car stereo if they had time). Once, during the winter, I swear they sat in there and smoked their cigarettes to get out of the cold. It was so smelly the next day. Perhaps your neighborhood is different from ours, and it's no big deal, but it probably wouldn't be welcome in ours (even if the neighbors knew).

I bought a fancy, small pen a little while ago so that I always had one with me. It worked for about a week. I twist and twist, and the little pen inside snickers at me and refuses to budge. Guess I'm back to gnawing down little pencils!

I killed the image tags, now it is just a link.Thanks much! Sorry to bring us off topic. Now, back to your regularly-scheduled, original topic. I've met a lot of wonderful people whilst geocaching--some in person, some only virtually. Of course, I have to remember to avoid telling my mother that I'm caching with a stranger I met via the geocaching website and Groundspeak topics!

uh... that wasn't the pic I submitted... does anyone know how to delete a topic post?

I've got one, entitled "bog log" (GC15YJB), that fit the bill (IMHO). I'm disappointed that more folks don't try looking for it. In fact, I feel terrible that I may have imprisoned the TB because of the cammo (or perhaps it's just lack of interest in this particular TB). Regarding the original question, the altitude on caches is what drive me crazy. My GPS'r doesn't like climbing hills, apparently. It said, earlier today, that I was 20' off when I was standing directly over it.

Note: In this post, "PE" stands for "playground equipment". My fingers are getting tired just typing it. If I weren't a cacher, and I saw a man squat and "spend time" near the PE, I'd think that they were taking a leak or doing something worse. I'd probably call the cops about that instead of someone rooting around the PE. Once, when hiding a cache, I've been asked what the GPS was. I told them, "it's a GPS," and they just said, "oh." They didn't even ask why I was looking under the slides. There was a time, however, when I pretended it was my cell phone and just talked to myself to avoid having to explain anything. Felt like a geek, but it worked! If anyone asks what I'm doing when I'm looking for places to hide them, I tell them that I'm "checking for cracks and manufacturer defects" under the slides. (I've actually hidden one in a park with a huge crack under the slide!) If you're "grandpa" age, you could simply tell them that you'll be watching the grandkids over the weekend and wanted to be sure the PE was safe before taking them there. You don't really have to have grandkids, of course. ; ) What, like in a hollow tree? Oh, that’s original. To be honest, I get tired of tree caches. It’s refreshing to find them in a statue or a train car, but there aren't a lot of those with "good places". Eight out of ten times, I don't find a good spot for a cache on the PE anyway. But since my son plays there, it's always the first place I look; I'm not going to just leave him there and find a better place in the bushes off to the side. When he is done playing, however, we go to the other said corner of the park and look for a spot to hide one. Six out of ten times, we can't even find an appropriate place to hide one and just dismiss the park as uncachable. After all, I really don't want to drive back ten times to replace containers. I already have one in mind that I'm archiving because it keeps falling out of the darn, boring tree. Ah well--I asked for it, right?

Point taken, so I edited all of my playground cache listings this morning.

I take vicarious pleasure in my caches _not_ going missing. It means I did a good job hiding it, and the finders did a good job avoiding muggles to re-hide it.

I lost an old, starter GPS. I really have no idea where I lost it, and my kid and I went back to the spots we had gone to that day (knowing that we had it when we were done with the day's series. Maybe when I move into my retirement home, I'll find that it dropped behind a dresser where I thought I'd set it for just a moment. Maybe it's in the recesses of our car's back seats, never to be found by except the junkyard men. Either way, I upgraded my GPS (that actually downloads waypoints) and haven't shed another tear since.

I've recently gotten into a conversation with another cacher who had this to say on a log note: "Drove up and took a pass on this one. Hopefully there are better places in the park for hides." I wrote another note which says the following: "Greetings. I'm sorry you feel this way. For those of us with children, it's the perfect place. I make a point to put something in the hints field so you know you're getting into a sandy situation." The conversation ensued via email where the cacher insinuated that caches on playground equipment were just not appropriate. > as a parent, what would you think about people milling around your children while they are playing on that equipment if you were not a geocacher? I would think that I should just keep a better eye on my kid. I would never go so far as calling the police unless I saw the geocacher actually approach my kid. If that did happen, I would get personally involved rather than simply call the cops. (I know that this has happened in the past to cachers, and often the cops leave after being given a brief explanation of geocaching.) I also added in the email that cachers have as much right to be on the playground as does a child and their mother. It comes down to personal comfortability, of course, but some cachers feel that they have to leave and not the mother/child team. Playgrounds (where I've placed caches) are on public property, and everyone has a right to use them no matter if you're old, young, man or woman. I know this isn't a new topic, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

found this recently: http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/graphics/expired1.jpg Supposedly it says "time expired". Maybe you could get a laptop headstone and engrave "cache archived" with the geocaching.com logos!

I was disappointed to find a laminated sheet with a color photocopy of the 2006 CITO Geocoin. They say in the description, "This is a copy of the coin so if it gets lost we can replace it. Geocoins can be spendy so I hope everyone understands why we are letting copies travel." Fine, but I was excited to see my first actual geocoin and feel its heft in my hand.