Magician's Apprentice

Perhaps it was the format that got you messed up...Canadian Postal Codes are as follows: P0A 1B0 - the alpha characters are in caps and it's numeric 0 in the example not alpha O. Hope this helps! Oh and it's a postal code not a zip code..

You mean that some people might actually not think like this...strange...really strange! And here I thought that it was normal to see caching possibilities in everything!!

Somehow I get the distinct impression that it's not Geocaching per se that is 'ruining' your relationship but several things that are much more fundamental. He likes (or at least doesn't mind) getting dirty...this is the SECOND time in a couple of weeks that you've come here and complained about dirty and yuck and such. If you've complained to us this much, chances are good that you've complained a whole lot more to him about it. Two people in a relationship DON'T have to share ALL of their hobbies, maybe this is one that you're better off skipping altogether. If you're determined to go along on geocaching trips, then you can either lighten up and accept that you're going to get dirty, bitten by bugs, etc. or you can take along a book to read in the car while he hunts for the cache OR you can convince him that every second cache has to be a citified one that you can do in heels... But don't be blaming geocaching for some very fundamental differences in what is fun and what's not!!

I found gravel as long as it was hard packed to be doable. This coming from a weakling who made sure that totes of stock were no more than 25 lbs.....read NO uppper body strength whatsoever. If the gravel is loose and more than an inch deep then it is just like mud, ya bog down really quickly. Grass depends more on how deep it is than anything else...that and how smooth the underlying ground is. I could wheel myself around on grass that was kept closely cut but no matter how smooth the ground, deeper grass was very tiring. Our own yard proved to be impassable for me because of the unevenness of the ground. It an old farmyard and has had too many farm tractors, pick up trucks and ATV's run over it through the years. I looked pretty funny trying to get to the veggie garden to weed....course I looked even funnier out there with the hoe too... It's really difficult to predict what IS doable and what's not...upper body strength varies greatly, the capability of wheelchairs varies too....if there's ever a next one I want mountain bike tread!!

I only spent six weeks in a wheelchair. It gave me a fair amount of insight into caching from that angle but didn't make me an expert by any means. I got to sit on the trail a whole lot while my partner went the last 10' to retrieve the cache.... We never chose a terrain rating of higher than 1.5 and stuck to mostly 1's too. In regards to question 1 - I tried the playground thing with the grandkids and the answer was a firm NO. The sand is designed to cushion impact when the kiddies fall down so it's usually at least 4 to 6" deep. I spent their playtime sitting on the firm packed walkway. Even with a strong person pushing would have tired rapidly. Think - vehicle bogged in deep snow or mud. As to # 2 - a lot of caches aren't 'seeable' anyways, that why it's called 'hiding' a cache, so I'd say yes. Maybe the easiest way for someone with full mobility to check to see if the actual hide is doable is to sit in a lawn chair and test the accessibility...either that or borrow a wheelchair and try it yourself. Actually, I'd like to confine a whole lot of people to wheelchairs for a few weeks to improve their concept of 'wheelchair accessible' but that's a whole other story...

The boredom is kicking in already.. Wait three weeks...lol. Seriously, I fell off the bottom step in mid September and broke one ankle and sprained the other. Surgery to put two screws in the broken one and a non-weight bearing cast followed. That not only put an end to driving, I had to use a wheelchair for six weeks cause ya just can't hop on a sprained ankle.. How did it affect my caching...well, for my first trip out I carefully chose only caches that had a 1 or 1.5 for terrain. My caching partner and a friend pushed the wheelchair and I held the gps...lol. Mostly it meant that I had to sit on the trail while they went the last 10 or 15 feet. There was only one cache that I could've found but two feet are faster on grass than a wheelchair and no one gave me a headstart... It didnt' stop the caching, just meant I got to sit around lots while others got the joy of actually 'finding' the cache. Mind you, we live in the bush and cache in the bush..city dwellers may have different results...lol Once I had the cast off and was cleared for crutches and a rocker boot, I found that crutches don't do tall weeds well..I hear I looked like a duck trying to take off...you'll understand when you try it yourself.... Crutches and a cast don't do well going uphill or dowhill on uneven terrain, nor do they do well in mud and deep sand...lol....yep, I've tried it!! The other thing is that you are ever conscious of the danger of falling flat on your tush or face as the case may be, so you tend to be a whole lot more conscious of where you're putting your feet. Because it was my ankles, and I've injured them more times than I have fingers and toes, I'm waiting for TWO ankle braces to arrive...then - watch out world... My best advice, choose the caches very carefully, email the owners if you're in doubt, lift weights so your shoulders won't hurt when you hike 1/2 mile on crutches AND make your caching partners spot you a quarter mile headstart...

Many thanks to the OP for relieving my mind of the guilt that I felt cause I did enjoy my first LPC. As the junior member of a team I rarely get to cache on my own but I was out of town on a business trip, kinda bored, did the same type of thing as the OP...it's called get out there and find a cache....SOON!! I homed in on the parking lot, drove right up to the parking spot beside the post, checked for muggles, and nabbed my very first solo cache. Maybe two hundred caches down the road, I will no longer feel a need to go after an LPC or and signpost or a guardrail, but for right now, they're all cool. And it's not the count that counts, it's the fun I'm having!!

An old country farm remedy is to use Turpentine....yes, I know, it sounds strange but it really does work. I had contracted PI from secondary contact with the ex...got it in some places we don't want to ever have PI... After buying at least one of every remedy the drugstore had, I finally ran into someone who got me to try the turps. We're not talking paint thinner here, but good old fashioned turpentine. Swab it on with either cotton pads or something else disposable. It will feel very cold at first...after about 15 minutes if it is uncomfortably warm it can be wiped off. Repeat 3 or 4 times a day. My PI was dry within 48 hours after suffering for at least 10 days trying all those nice things that didn't work. It's not my first choice of perfume but it sure worked.

If you could jump off the table and make a fast getaway, you didn't need to be seeing him anyways....he was a Doctor of Podiatric Medicine.... but nice try!!!

Try hooking up the whole cable/Etrex combination when the computer is turned off and then booting it up. It's a PITA when you've already got the computer up and running an decide you want to download to the GPSr but it's the only thing we found that cured the error problem for us on my laptop. For some unknown (well except maybe to BillBaby) XP acknowledged the hardware but refused to work with it until we did that!!

I've been lurking for a while cause we had to straighten out the tech problems here. I cache with my worser/better half under our team name but we can't both have a presence here in the forums under the one username... Team Maguc..lol. Finally created my own username so that I can come play on the forums too!! Woohoo! Oh, and he created a monster when he introduced me to Caching!! He had no idea how evil a mind I had when it came to creating caches....

We recently had a the same or very similiar issues when we switched from an ancient PC to our laptops for downloading to the Etrexs. WindowsXP would recognize the hardware but at the same time wouldn't recognize any port. Finally, after much frustration and re-booting/playing/plugging and testing each part of the system it was discovered that the whole thing worked just fine when you plugged the Etrex/serial/USB combination in BEFORE you turned on the laptop. No idea why it works that way and not any other way and it's certainly a pain to have to shut down the whole system so that you can download to the Etrex but it works fine that way.