Mr.Benchmark

The problem isn't easy caches. Easy caches are great sometimes. Nice for beginners, and for those who want to increase their find counts rapidly. Hey, they are great for nightcaching, too - I do that a lot and you can break your neck at night on some of the more difficult terrain caches. No, the problem is the overabundance of extremely easy, poorly conceived caches in some areas. If 140 of the 150 caches nearest you had been trivial finds taking you on a tour of every Wal-Mart and Costco parking lot, as well as many of the scenic guard rails in the area, with less than a 50' walk from the car to each cache, would you have stuck with this game? There's a place for even caches like these - but when they are the majority, I think that's a problem. I agree with you about the need for the diversity of types of hides. I'm certainly not one to advocate banning easy caches - this was tried with virtuals, and look where we are today - dealing with almost the exact same problem, but on a much, much larger scale. In my opinion, the basic problem is that the system rewards you for doing the largest number of minimal effort caches, both for the hider and the finder. Not everyone plays it this way, but human nature is what it is, and the current system encourages these tendencies.

I forget about low cache density areas. When I mentioned finding a bunch of LPC's, I was talking more than 10 within a 1.5-2 mile radius, not 50 miles! The poor LPC gets picked on because it can be overused in some places. One LPC I did was really, terrific, though. It had a puzzle with a theme. (The theme was ultimately about insanity.) Once you solved it, the lamp post was on the grounds of a former insane asylum. This was a really fun cache, at least for me. It managed to provide a small adventure - which given that you were ultimately seeking a lamp in a highly urban area was a pretty neat trick. Another micro I did involved a detective story type setting. You were given a clue (this was the puzzle.) You solved the puzzle by interpreting the clue, and then you had to hunt for the micro. (Which was a spy's dead-drop.) The twist was that the coordinates were only approximate - you had to look for a specific graffitti to find the micro. This ended up being a hide-a-key, stuck to a fence post, in a generic park. This isn't bad at all - but the fact that you had to "solve the case" and then hunt around for the right spot to search without your GPS really added a lot to the experience. It was fun, at least for me. (I hunted it at night, which might have added to the experience a bit.) So I mention these because neither of them was cool primarily because of the location, but mostly because of the cache theme. Creativity goes a long way!

If the same technique is repeated over and over locally than perhaps it's quality does get lowered a bit. Unique doesn't automatically equal good either. Anything that's over-used can lower the quality a lot. I've been places where virtually all of the caches I found were LPCs. If substantially all of the caches within a small area are identical, hunting for them can get pretty tedious. (At least that's how it is for me.) I think there are several factors that make for great caches: (or lack thereof makes for lameness) Location. In many ways, this is a game about location. A great location makes a lot of difference to a lot of people. A great location might be kind of scenic, have some interesting history, or have some novel feature or hiding spot. Or perhaps it's the opposite of this and is kind of rugged and forbidding. Some people will enjoy such a challenge. Maybe there's interesting terrain to deal with, or other challenges inherent in the location itself. There's nothing wrong highly public caches either - some of those places, if carefully chosen, can be challenging and fun to retrieve. Many people enjoy a short walk to the cache, although some don't. Creativity. Maybe it's a clever container, or a clever hiding technique. Maybe it's an interesting cache theme, carried over into the location and the container or it's contents. Maybe there's a bit of humor involved. Not every cache has to be a creative masterpiece - it's possible to make something nice using only the basics, and present it in an appealing way. Challenge. Having a variety of different types and difficulties of challenges is a good thing. There's all kinds of challenges - puzzles, clever hiding tricks, terrain based challenges. Some can be difficult, some easy. As long as there's variety, everyone should be happy.

If you've ever been in an area where one type of hide constitutes the great majority of the hides, you might understand the problem. Suppose most geocaches required 10 mile hikes to complete them. Would you still cache? I wouldn't. I can't quite hack that distance. At the other extreme, don't you think it might get kind of boring if all of the local hides are more or less easter-egg hunts - extremely simple caches, all hidden in fairly similar ways. So why does that make traditional caches inherently less lame than micros? It doesn't. I personally enjoy finding nice locations, and I don't care if it's a micro or a traditional. It's quite possible to hide an ammocan in a horrible location that many, if not most will not enjoy. I've found some caches that just sucked bigtime. Indeed, one I adopted was a traditional that was (and still is) in a fairly lame location, in a leaky container, with total crap contents and a post-it note log. (I replaced the container, CITO'd the contents and replaced them with better ones, and put in a real log. It was really, really a lame cache when I got it.) There is nothing inherently wrong with micros EXCEPT: 1. Most people can not hide a couple of dozen ammocan type caches in a day. I'm sure there's someone out there who just slings 'em out super fast - but most people don't. If a person chose to hide all lamp post caches, in most metropolitan areas they could easily hide dozens of identical caches in a day. 2. In many areas, the bulk of the new cache hides are not long hikes to generic or worse locations terminating in crap filled gladware containers that were never water tight, and are on the way to having moldy contents and a soggy logbook. Many would call such traditional caches 'lame.' No, in some places many of the hides are trivial park-n-grabs that involve maybe a 50' walk from the car and a hiding technique that would be pretty surprising if the last 8 caches you just finished hadn't used the exact same trick. It's really is like this some places. It may not be that way in your area - if not - hurray! Micros do not have to be lame. I've done some terrific ones. As I said, any kind of cache can be lame. Sometimes a park-n-grab is a great thing. But areas flooded with hundreds of near identical, fairly low quality caches are not a good thing for this game in the long run, in my opinion. The danger is that after a while, that's all there will be.

This is the central problem with the "micro explosion." New cachers see more experienced cachers hiding many of these, particularly quickly hidden, thoughtlessly placed ones, and emulate this behavior. This hasn't happened everywhere, but when it does happen, it does limit a persons choices for cache finds. That seems a bit rude. I find it interesting that you seem to have the power to read minds. The empirical evidence supports this. The vast majority of the really lame caches I've encountered lately were micros. I think this is only part of the problem. First off - I have nothing against micros in particular. Some of the best caches I've ever done have been micros. They've either been deviously clever, or in locations so astounding that I did not care whether or not I logged a find because I was so amazed at the location. I think there are a variety of reasons why this happens: 1. Demand. Many people will hunt for micros before hunting for larger, traditional caches, especially if a walk is involved. Put an ammo can at the end of a 3 mile hike to a gorgeous lake, and in some parts of the country it will get found once a year. I know you know this is true Brian. Throw a film cannister under the lamppost at your favorite large, discount retailer, and it will be found by lots of people. (I fall into this sometimes, and I actually ENJOY walking around outdoors to caches!) 2. Learned behavior. People emulating behavior they've seen elsewhere. 3. Laziness. As you point out, it's easy to hide certain types of micros. Perhaps that is a factor with some people. But I doubt that's most of it, because frequently the proliferators of micros are busy, busy people who hide lots and lots of caches. 4. Feedback. Some probably desire to increase the number of cache hides they have, in order to get more feedback from finders. I actually think this, combined with #1, is one of the bigger causes of this, at least until #2 takes over as the dominant force in an area. Cache logs typically provide, at least in my area, a stream of emails that say "I enjoyed your cache." Emails that say "your cache sucked bigtime" are quite rare, at least here in Dallas, Tx. (And I suspect they are rare elsewhere.) This constant positive feedback is likely quite addictive to some people. Putting out more caches is a way to generate more of this type of feedback. And most people I know would have difficulty hiking around the park carrying a dozen or so ammo cans, so micros are the way to go if you want to maximize your hides, and hence maximize the positive feedback you receive. 5. Expense. Hiding a traditional cache is expensive, and people don't, as a rule, maintain the quality over time. There are exceptions - some people invariably trade up. But on average, the trend is down. I would imagine some people become frustrated with this. Many people don't trade anyway. So some people probably see a larger cache container as being pointless.

I had this happen to one of my flashlights one time. I'd sprayed down with 100% DEET spray. It was one of those red LED flashlights with variable brightness. I picked it up, and noticed that it was really sticky - the darn thing was melting a bit in my hand! So the answer for me wasn't to quit using DEET, it was just to be more careful with plastic objects when using it. The 3M ultrathon that Brian mentioned seems to have a LOT less impact on plastic. (Which makes sense.) It is a *much* more pleasant product to use, too. 3M is also making an ultrathon spray now. I've tried it and it seems to work quite well too. (It doesn't last as long as the cream, but it's easier to apply.) I became a big believer in DEET after my very first geocaching experience. I went walking through an unmowed portion of a nice city park here in Dallas. (The rest of the park was mowed.) Really, I only went 150 feet or so. But I picked up about 20-30 chigger bites on my legs. These persisted for about 2 weeks, and I didn't sleep very well during most of that time because of the itching. You can also spray your clothing with permethrin spray - it will last for a couple of weeks. It's not technically an insect repellent - it's a contact insecticide. It takes some planning and preparation though - something I never seem to quite manage... (You have to spray it on, wait 8 hours or so while it drys, and then put the clothes on.) You can wash your clothes a time or two before it wears off, once it's been allowed to set in to the fabric.

Just got an inova x0 LED light. This one uses a 1 watt luxeon star LED. It's about twice as bright as a 2 D cell flashlight, throws a similar beam, but is quite small and light. It's LED is regulated, so you'll have 3 or 4 hours of essentially constant light. The battery life is a significant benefit. It will most likely end up being the light I use most frequently. I've tried an inova x5 flashlight in the past, and it's an OK light, but it's really not bright enough in lots of situations. I've also got a pelican M6 xenon lamp flashlight, which is similar to the surefire and streamlights people like. It's a great flashlight, and it's extremely bright - but it only has about an hour of battery life, so on a long hike, you end up carrying lots of spares. You should checkout www.flashlightreviews.com - lots of useful information there.

I guess I agree with everyone else - make the cache accessible to everyone. A well designed and thought out 1/1 cache in a nice location will be enjoyed by everyone. Even if you mostly like to hike, sometimes it's NICE to walk in the park! If you really want it to be handicap accessible, you should consider visual handicaps as well. A fairly common technique here in Dallas is a multi-cache, where the first stage is a small label maker tape with the coordinates to the next stage. (I must have done 50 caches that used this trick.) Nothing wrong with this - except that people with visual handicaps frequently can't read them! I'd never thought about this until I met a local geocacher (who has at least 4x-5x the number of finds I have) who really does have bad problems with his vision. To read one of these labels, the guy will photo them with his digital camera, take it home, and enlarge the coords on his computer monitor. So while there's only so far you can go with this idea because you really do have to hide the cache, if you are really interested in making something handicap accessible, you should avoid inadvertantly making a portion of your cache an eye-exam! (A really tiny micro is a poor choice too for this very same reason.)

OK, I purchased cachemate - looks like a nice utility! Thanks again for the suggestion. I'll just remove the mobipocket doc from my queries I guess.

Thanks for the suggestions. So you sort the gpx file with GSAK and convert them to cachemate format, and then use cachemate on the PDA? What does GSAK do for you that cachemate doesn't? This is sort of mildly annoying - the eBook format was drag-n-drop simple, and I've already purchased the mobipocket reader... (Not that cachemate + GSAK is very expensive - $22, it's mostly just having to learn something new, and converting the files before I transfer them.) Thanks anyway. I hope they fix the mobipocket docs.

I'm also having problems with pocket queries in mobipocket format turning up in a bizarre, random order. So the first cache listed in my query (#80889) is 10 miles S, then the next is 8mi E, then the next is 12 mi W. I get to the closest unfournd cache to my home on page 127 of the mobipocket doc. Is there a fix planned for this anytime soon? If not, what other alternatives are there for getting the cache pages to a Palm OS PDA?

I think that all the proposed user fee ideas are fantastic! In addition to those, Jeremy could add more advertising from GPS and outdoor suppliers as marketing tie ins. The ultimate goal to this would be to take the site public! Yes, an IPO would solve ALL this sites problems. The vast infusion of capital could take this game to the next level. Plus I think current charter and premium members should get a chance to buy IPO shares. Surely GC.COM could hit $150/share in the first day of the IPO. (That slogan "You are the search engine" should be HUGE on wallstreet!)Ultimately, the site, along with Garmin and REI would be bought by AOL or Microsoft, as a hedge against people abandoning time in front of their PCs and going outdoors instead. At that point, Jeremy would probably retire to his multimillion dollar home, and GC.com would hire several of the current approvers to high paying executive positions! Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I was having this really vivid dream that it was the year 1999 all over again... Never mind.

Those don't sound all that lame, at least compared with some I've seen! I don't think the problem is log-only micros - it's caches that are not very interesting or creative. A micro cache with a well constructed puzzle, interesting theme, humorous twist, good location, clever hide, or better yet, several of the above, can be a good deal of fun. A micro hidden inside of a lamp post, just like the other 37 nearby caches, in a generic location is not that much fun to me. It's not the lamp post, or the fact that it's a micro that's the problem - it's the fact that it's just like all the other caches around it. After you've found a few of them, the rest can get kind of tedious. This same can sometimes be true of traditional hides as well (oh look - an unnatural pile of wood out in the middle of the forest, gosh, where can the cache be?), but often even the lamest of these has the charm of a nice walk through the woods to set it apart. If people would be a little creative (doesn't have to be a lot!) about their hides, this would be a lot less of a problem I think.

Is it lame or just easy? Easy is OK - everyone has to start playing this game somewhere, and it may as well be your cache! Also, easy caches are often good for night caching. If the contents of the cache have become rather poor, upgrade them. If the location is really unusually awful, maybe archive it - it's hard to do much about the location. If you think a better cache could be placed there, then maybe that's a reason to archive it. But if you are worried enough about your cache to worry whether or not it's lame it most probably isn't. The lame ones I've found have all been the result of entropy, time, and absentee owners. To my mind, if people are enjoying your cache - it's not lame.

Here's one I took on vacation in Sedona earlier this year, in Crescent Moon Ranch State Park. We were looking for a micro cache, and honestly, when we got there, the view was so amazing that I had a hard time concentrating on finding the cache. Even if I'd logged a DNF on the cache I'd have gone away happy!

There's a big difference between a pound-coin and the $0.37 in change that people usually toss into a cache here. (Usually logged as a "T: Streamlight, L: State quarter and some other change.") A pound-coin is actually pretty useful - you can buy something you might actually want with it. (In this case - a beer.) You can't buy a beer here for a quarter.

I'm really glad DapperDan's cache was grandfathered in, it's a lot of fun! However, I can understand disallowing this generally. Everyone around here pretty much understands the deal with this cache. If there were 30 timed caches around here, though, there'd be the potential for lots of people to look for them after they had already been found, or were no longer in play. (This does happen every now and then with Dapper Dan's cache - someone will hunt for it when it's not in play. It's infrequent though.) It would have the potential to be pretty out of control - it could be quite unpleasant for new cachers.

One of these still exists here locally: Dapper Dan's Treasure Chest VIII The one starting on Friday is worth $100!

Hey, at least a yellow highlighter is potentially useful to someone - provided it works and was new! That doesn't seem so lame to me. Lamest things I've found in a cache: 1. Plastic, disposable fork. Tell me, would you put a utensil in your mouth that had been sitting in a cache outdoors for god only knows how long? And even if you would, a whole new pack of 100 of them costs $4... A state quarter would have been a big trade up here. 2. Dental floss. Because people look for dental hygience products while they are out of doors... And everyone knows that tupperware containers left outside in the rain are completely sanitary. While both items are arguably useful - would you really want to use them?

126 finds, 2 DNFs that were really gone. (And a whole slew that I DNF'd but really were there!) In both cases it was really obvious that the cache was gone. In one case there was a pile of sticks that looked just like what you'd use to cover an ammo can - but no ammo can. In the other case I found bits of other people's geo-cards, and other cache debris - always a bad sign. Both confirmed missing by the owner.

Thanks for the tip on the other portal - on the geocaching.com/wap page, cache lookup by zipcode fails on my Tungsten T3 - when I pick a cache from the search results, it just takes me back to the top level page.

I certainly hope you get to go geocaching sometime soon - it is a great deal of fun. I'd had a GPSr for a long time before I discovered geocaching. I really just stumbled across this site while reading up on technical information on my new GPSr. I guess what appealed to me (and still does) is the idea that there are secret things that exist right under most peoples noses, and most of them have no idea they are there. The very first cache I ever found was a multi-stage cache. The first stage had coordinates to the second stage - they were painted on the side of a parking curb. They were in plain sight if you ever bothered to look there - but you had to know what that string of numbers meant, and how to use them. I was hooked! The second stage was in a park 2.4 miles from my house that'd I'd never visited and had no idea that it even existed. (I used to work less than 1 mile from this park, too!) So I found myself playing a game for people who are sneaky - how can you not love that? You might be surprised about your parents. I am very possibly the least outdoorsy person I know, and I've really come to enjoy this game!

I think the worst hints are the ones that are deliberately misleading. I'd rather have no hint than one that led me down the primrose path. For example, suppose the hint strongly implies that the cache will be ON a certain object, instead of just near it. I think the second worst are hints that require you to read the hider's mind to really understand the hint.

The only "surprises" the selector takes from the cache experience, as far as I can tell, are the potentially bad ones. Most of the local cachers I've met like challenges and adventure, but some of them get quite testy about bad surprises - things that should have been mentioned on the cache page. I use this and I think it's great. Most of the caches in the DFW area where I live are urban caches. Many of these caches you could do wearing a suit on your lunch hour. Some of them are not appropriate for this - really not appropriate! It's nice to know if the cache is going to be OK for a lunch hour. It's not pleasant to go back to your 2 o'clock meeting smelling like creek water! I like to night cache. The crime rate in the city of Dallas is pretty horrendous. It's nice to know if a cache is suitable for night caching or not. (There is a selector icon for this too.)

Possible uses for multicaches: (There's more than these) 1. Use the waypoints on a multicache to guide the finder on a tour of interesting or scenic places. 2. To force the finder to follow a specific path to the cache - either because it's the best way to get to the cache to avoid something like private property or other hazards, or to get the finder to face certain obstacles. 3. To extend the duration of a cache. Suppose your final location is just a quick park-n-grab, 100 feet from the parking lot. Adding a couple of well chosen intermediate stages could turn this into an interesting walk in the woods instead. 4. You have a clever way to hide coordinates in a micro, but no way you can fit a logbook in it. So you make it a stage in a multicache. 5. You can't think of a really unobvious place to hide your primary cache, and you want to increase the difficulty for your finders. 6. You really wanted to place a virtual cache, but it's not going to be approvable as such, so you use data from some interesting place you want to show the finder as an offset to the final coordinates. A classic example of a type of cache that almost has to be a multi is a night cache. Typically you go to a starting point and follow a trail of reflectors by flashlight to the final cache. Well executed, caches like this can be a lot of fun. The main thing to think about when doing a multi is whether or not the cache really needs to be a multi. At a certain point, any of the things I described above can be abused, which can make your cache less fun. Also keep in mind that these can generally take a little more planning and maintenance than other types of caches. Well executed multi's are a lot of fun in my opinion. Poorly executed ones can really suck - and what's worse is that it can take a long time before you realize that your experience is just going to suck!