THespos

Just as an update to this thread... Evidently, I missed a tick or two. On Thursday, I found one on my right side, so the little bastard was probably there for four days. I managed to get him off without breaking his mouth parts off, and I saved him in a little jar in case the doctor wanted to see him or test him. Separately, I developed a red rash behind my right knee, around what I thought was a mosquito bite. The doc told me on Saturday that this was almost certainly the "ring rash" associated with Lyme disease. I probably had a tick bite that I didn't know about from an earlier geocaching trip, and now I almost certainly have Lyme. I started on the antibiotics yesterday. Blood test results should be in this week. Damned parasites...

As a follow-up, my GF and I did a thorough search for attached ticks and didn't come up with anything. I think we got them before they managed to bite us. I've only been caching for a little bit, but I grew up walking around in the woods and have had three tick bites that I can remember. I don't remember them ever having been so bad. It would suck if I had to stop looking for Tupperware in the woods just because there are goofy little bugs waiting around to bite me and give me diseases. Anybody know what leads to a good/bad season for ticks? Is something changing about the environment that they're suddenly out there in greater numbers? Thanks, Mopar, for the advice. I don't know that I'll have clothes treated, but I'm going to look around for some repellants containing DEET.

My girlfriend and I were looking for this cache and got to the coordinates. She asks me, "What are these things crawling on me?" I took a look at her shoes and I see DOZENS of tiny ticks crawling around. I look down at my shoes and see the same thing. I'm not exaggerating here. There were literally dozens of ticks crawling around on our sneakers. It was almost like a swarm of ants or something, but I'm absolutely positive they were ticks. We ran back to our car and took our shoes and socks off. They were so infested that we left them there - the ticks were so tiny that they were difficult to detect, and I wasn't going to get them anywhere near my car. We drove home barefoot. I've been on hikes where I've had two or three ticks hanging on to various parts of my clothing at the end of the day, but I've never seen anything like this swarm. Has anyone else?

I hope there's no rule against branded tchotchkes. I am a partner at a media buying agency, so I literally have CRATES of cool stuff from the media (magazines, newspapers, Internet sites, etc.) Usually, media sales reps bring this stuff by the office when they come to visit us, and if I don't get rid of it, it piles up in the office. I've left some of this stuff in caches and I hope no one minds. In my very first cache, I left a 2-AA Maglite flashlight that says "San Jose Mercury News" on it. I've also left swag from GQ Magazine, a light-up Google pen, and a multi-tool from the NY Times.

Aww nuts...I would have liked to have attended, but I'm heading to NJ to hang out with my SO's parents.

Three hundred feet north? No. Two eighty to the west. Goddamned GPS... Stop staring at me I need to put the cache back You stupid muggle

Originally posted by Kite & Hawkeye: quote:I don't think it's necessary or reasonable to make him go back and find the caches again, and how else is he going to get them off his nearest list? I didn't mean to imply that I wanted him to go back and re-find caches. I just wanted to make sure that if he did go back and re-log under his name that he wouldn't be breaking any sort of etiquette rules that I might not yet be aware of. (I'm a noob.) Thanks to everyone for their help.

Originally posted by unclerojelio: quote:BTW, How says it's not a race? I dunno. I've only found three caches. To me, the appeal lies not in comparing how many I've found to that of other cachers, but in the actual walking around in the woods looking for Tupperware. YMMV.

This is a hypothetical that might become not-so-hypothetical soon for me. Let's say I go out and find a bunch of caches with a friend of mine and log our finds on the site. Let's say that my friend decides he wants his own account on Geocaching.com and he signs up for the site. Does he then go back and re-log all the finds that he made with me under his name? Or does he start over from scratch when he joins up on the site? I know it's not a race to log the most finds, but how do y'all typically handle this?

Geocaching is like sex because... ...You're always taking something out and putting something back in. ...It's considerably less fun when you do it by yourself. ...When you finally convince someone to do it for the first time, they suddenly want to do it with EVERYONE. ...You will gladly walk miles if there's even a remote possibility that you'll do it. Even in the rain. ...If you do it too much, you'll be sore and have trouble walking in the morning. ...As soon as you do it, you want to rush back to the Internet so you can tell all your friends about it. ...You have a curious fascination with who was there before you were. ...Both are dependent on being able to pick up signals.

I just started geocaching this past weekend, but I'd like to get involved.

I just wanted to go public and thank whoever invented this cool sport. Over the weekend, I was looking for something to do with my mom. She is going through some tough times, emotionally speaking, and I wanted to find something new that we could both do together. (Usually, the only thing that we both like to do is go to the movies.) She'll be 60 this year, but she stays active by walking around the neighborhood and when I heard about Geocaching, I knew it was something we could do together. On Saturday, we looked up a cache that was in the Pine Barrens near my old high school. My mom and I brought my brother in law and a friend with us and spent a few hours hunting down our first cache. Mom had a great time and so did I. (Not to mention that we got some great exercise and were able to talk about some of the things that have been getting her down, along the way...) Thanks so much for this cool sport. I hope to remain a dedicated participant.