fly46

Plato, Missouri. They sorta nailed it this year.

So Texas and Seattle have moved and I wasn't given the memo? As somebody who knows at least one person who makes that decision, I can tell you that GeoWoodstock goes to the place that can best put on the event. The factors that they're looking at are more than just somebody jumping up and down and shouting "pick me" - can the area *hold* that many cachers, for instance, does it have the infrastructure to handle that type of event, does it have the cache saturation in the area to make cachers want to go there, etc. The last thing anyone wants is somebody to register for GW, travel howevermany miles and find out that the closest lodging is 50 miles away, there are 9 caches in an hour radius, one porta-potty for every 2500 attendees, etc. Does it suck that certain areas of the population have to travel farther? Sure. But would it suck more if everyone had a bad time? Absolutely. There is *a lot* that goes on to putting on even a small event, and the bottom line is that the people that decide are trying to do what's best for the event.

Yes, perhaps naive to hope that caches can stay family-friendly for everyone, but I can hope. There are enough competing and confusing messages all around us that there's no lack of opportunity to bring up sex, politics, and religion. But still, I'd prefer that my son's first introduction to sex NOT be a nasty close-up in a cache. So I will continue to remove inappropriate materials from caches as a courtesy to other parents. Your implying that religious items are somehow not "Family Friendly" ? Oh dear mommy! God loves me, i'm frightened! God bless you! (Hope that didn't offend you) Finding myself in the somewhat odd position of defending a post by Narcissa, I don't think that was the point she was trying to make. How could you not read that from what she wrote? She finds the material objectionable and along the same lines of sexual content in a cache. How exactly should I being reading it? I don't care what religion you are. I don't care how you worship it - on your own time. But relgious TRACTS are propoganda, simple as that. I had no problem explaining to my 4-year-old niece that the thing hanging off my arm right after my grandmother died wasn't a bracelet, it was her rosary. But a "TICKET TO HELL" left in a cache is a whole different story.

According to Groundspeak guidelines.... We're not allowed to have commercial caches that tell you to support a specific business. We're not allowed to have caches that promote a special charity. Why are we allowed to promote our religions? AD5 - my issue isn't that it's religious material, but the kind of religious material. Like I said before, I wouldn't be offended to find a rosary or a magic wand, but its the stuff that tells you you're going to wherever or you need to find god/allah/buddha/bob the talking frog.

DNFs have two purposes for people other than whoever can't find it. 1. It lets the cache owner know there might be an issue. 2. It lets other finders know there might be an issue. With that said.. Many cachers mistake notes for DNFs.. Consider: For the love of Bobb, do not log a DNF if you didn't look for the thing! I swear, if I get one more DNF that says something like "I got here and there was a muggle so I didn't look" then I will scream. If you didn't look and you still want to post a message, it's a NOTE, not a DNF. If you look for something for 5 minutes, get bored, have to pee, run out of daylight, whatever, once again, it's a NOTE, not a DNF. If you try to get towards the location and the road is blocked by a gate/hobo/ambulance/dead squirrel and turn back, it's a NOTE. With that said, a DNF is this: You've spent a significant amount of time looking for a container, based on what type of cache it is - if you're looking for a lightpole micro and you're there for 20 minutes, it's a good sign to DNF. If you're in a high brush area in the woods and an hour has gone by, you can DNF. If you find what looks like a half eaten baggie after a 30 minute search where the only good hide location for a peanutbutter jar was the now-empty hole in the tree, it's a good sign that you can DNF it. Now, if I were to DNF and log that DNF on tuesday, go back wednesday and nothing had changed, then there's no reason to log the DNF again. But if you DNF on tuesday, go back 28 days later, 15 people have found it and you DNF, feel free to log your DNF, make a joke about your frustration, and then email the cache owner for a hint. Or, if you DNF on tuesday, go back on thursday, three more DNFs have been logged and you now find swag on the ground, something has changed, your log will be important new information, and I'd like to see it again.

I think that if you're still a part of the caching community, then you're an active participant. I don't often have a cache partner, and I find the community most of the fun of this sport. Yeah, I'll go out and find a couple here and there - my last find was an earthcache in KY, since I'm working on leveling up in the Earthcache Master's Program - and I still do cache maintenance - just today, in fact. But I'm not getting big number runs like I did before. (I hit 600 in August of 2006 with Cumberland Cliffhanger, I'm only at 750-ish now) But I still go to events, I still consider the MTGC folks some of my best friends. Forum participation is irrelevant. Whoever you're quoting is saying that people who can keep the forums up and contribute to the community while, say, they're at work or at home cooking dinner for the kids, aren't valuable to the community in other ways. How many times have I offered advice to a newbie that has then gone out and made a valuable contribution to this sport?

Oops.. forgot to answer the second part of your question - Many caches have been offset where you go to coordinants and then do something with a compas instead of your GPSr, so that would be perfectly fine. (I should also add that as a non-letterbox enthusiast, I'd be happy to find a sticker in a cache. But I think you need to worry more about the letterbox people in this case.)

I think that the Letterbox enthusiasts would be really dissapointed to find stickers. Rubber stamps should be pretty easy to find, if you just want to buy one stock, or you can make your own out of a very hard eraser.

Okay, so I just did cache maintenance on one of my caches. Opened the container to find the usual degredation of stuff - you know, the assortment of plastic crap that only a kid could love. Whatever, I expect that. So I pulled everything out, and I was checking all the paper stuff to see what needed trashed out, since there was a little dampness in the container (it sat under 3 feet of snow for 3 months). And, then I found it. Slightly larger than my signature business card was this paper religious tract type of a thing. SERIOUSLY???????????????????????????????????????? You know, caching is a family sport and it's played all over the world by all different types of people. I want this to be a fun hobby. But stuff like that really bothers me. Like, really, really, really. I'm cool with people who want to put symbols on their signature items or geo coins. I'm even cool with people who want to use a religious item as swag - and by that I'm talking, mini buddha, a rosary, whatever. But when you're leaving cutesy paper goods to convert people to your beliefs, I think that crosses a line. I don't want the business card for your pastor, mapquest directions to your sinagogue, coordinants to your high holy tree. We get enough religion salesmen door to door, we don't need them in our caches, too. The same goes for politics. I once found a paper that said "following [politician] is like being in the special olympics" aside from that being extremely degrading and rude on all sides, it's another thing that doesn't have a place in a geocache. Can we please remember that this is an open, family sport?

I have a simple request. I have a lot of stuff on my watchlist that's been there for years (and I'm sure I'm not the only one in that boat!) It'd be so nice to be able to just click through a bunch of checkboxes and be able to do a mass delete. Deleting them one at a time just takes so long that I don't bother to delete them, even though I still get a ton of emails for caches I no longer care about. (At least the emails I can mass delete!)

Am I right that the Twitter thing only works if we update via cell phone? I'd like to see the availability of Twitter updates if we manually log on the site, too.

I haven't posted in these forums for two or three years (literally since before the forum redesign...) but I feel the need to log in and reply to this post. When I was at GeoWoodstock 2, we still had rules that allowed us to have multiple events at one time. Along with woodstock we had three different cachers have their 1K parties. I couldn't tell you even remotely how many caches those people have now, but it was cool to get to celebrate a milestone with them. Aside from very random (and infrequent) coolness, let's look at this from the perspective of the cache owner. I've hidden 35 caches. I put time, money and effort into each placement - even if it's just a P&G in a guard rail. The fun, for me, in hiding caches is seeing the logs that I get when somebody finds it. Yeah, any cache owner, no matter how good the cache, probably has a generic TFTC or cut and paste log somewhere. Yeah, they're boring. They probably even suck. But even the worst cache will occationally get a really cool log, and it's totally worth it just for that. I had a light pole micro between a hotel and a waffle house and one day my log said "It's been said that Nashville has a cache in every lightpole, so we lifted this one just to check, and couldn't believe we found a cache there." It was funny and it totally made that cache placement. My entertainment value aside, logs tell me whether or not I need to check a cache, do maintenance or just let it be. If it hasn't been found in months, I'll go check it. After three DNFs, I go check it. If every log says "found the cache, everything was dry, nice job" then I know I'm good to go for a while. If people don't log my cache online, I don't know if there are problems. Even if I checked on every cache every day, there are issues that I may never notice but a cacher who isn't that familliar with a certain area/location/spot/whatever could point out to me that I actually need to know. As for your worry about the numbers, most of us don't really care about them. Sure, it's cool to be scrolling through a cache page and realize somebody's about to hit a milestone, but other than that, I'm pretty sure nobody goes up to other cachers and says "OMG, you're only at 59 caches? What a loser!" Remember, we all started at zero and we all had to go up from there.

A cache at your B&B would probably be okay... Note, I said PROBABLY. Ask GC first.. Although it does sound a bit commercial. If you are allowed to hide such a cache, you might want to keep in mind the nature of your visitors - both for business and pleasure - and mark the cache page and keep the cache away from the building if possible. Just an observation from personal experiences. As for leaving stuff in caches, I've found coupons and stuff before, but usually ripped, torn, expired, wet, etc, and in all cases ended up trashed out.

One prob with fiberglass... I know one cacher quite well that can't go near the stuff. Maverick9750 is deathly allergic to it. I'm sure he's not the only one.

What you're asking reminds me of one of my favorite cache posts. "Coords put me in middle of parking lot. Owner better check" Okay.. I'll check... the sewer grate in the parking lot where the cache is stuck. ten to one the cacher parked in the spot with the grate and couldn't find it because they were on it. Another time I've had coords posted "yours were off... " and it turns out I had fat fingered a number and it caused my cache to be shown in the middle of the interstate instead of at Cracker Barrell. I was glad he pointed it out, and I used his to fix my cache page.

Were your spots tiny blistery patches roughly the size of a half dollar? The spot on Mav's forehead before was about half an inch in diameter wide, and slightly longer. This time it's a little smaller. Unfortunately for us, the clinic we went to (which is what you *have* to go to if you don't schedule an appointment) is led by a doctor that never leaves his office unless the PA decides to admit ignorance and ask for a second opinion. She charged us $120 for a visit that consisted of her walking in the room and saying shingles and being done with us, then gave him three prescriptions that totalled $200+... One was a $117 version of neosporin. The walmart brand is a larger tube for $3. He got the prescription for the shingles meds, which he took all of, and we said screw it to the prescription pain stuff and the neosporin crap.

Yes, but migranes hurt like heck, too, and in hindsight, it looks like what we thought was shingles was poison oak and a migrane. At least the more I've looked at it. For the record, he had a shingles prescription and popped about 20 Advil in three days because it was cheaper than the pain pill prescription. I've surfed a number of nasty disgusting gross pic sites and aside from leaving me nauseus, shingles looks less and less like what he had. I was really hoping that someone around here had suffered through both so they could tell us for certain the differences. Any caching doctors around?

I've always hated the less than an hour attribute, Markwell.. And your example shows why.. Because every three year old I've ever met would tell you there's quite a difference between 10 minutes and 59 and, well, 59 minutes is still less than an hour. Personally, I'd like to see a "takes less than 5 minutes" button and a "takes less than 30 minutes button"....

Well, he had chicken pox as a kid. Another cause of shingles is MASSIVE stress and between moving 500 miles from the only area he's ever known as home, a number of other issues, finding a job, etc.. etc... there are a lot of stressers in his life. But the more and more I see of poison oak, the more and more I see his rash being poison oak and not shingles. ps.... wimseyguy.. Mav's not exactly a kid... He's more like in his 30s.

Maverick is a very unhappy frog right now... Seriously, though, a few weeks ago - after a happy weekend of caching, he got a rash and a headache that felt like a migrane.. it got horrible, so we finally took him to the doctor. I looked at it before we went and it looked like it could possibly be a spider bite (note, I've never seen a spider bite on anybody, but I saw two little dots and the rashy thing was blistering.) The Physician's assistant - who was a jackass to him the entire time he was there - took one look, said it was Shingles, and was done with it, giving us a massive bill and a massive list of prescriptions. This past weekend, we had a rousing three hour hike through weeds and brush and everything else on Saturday and then on Sunday he was getting a headache and saw a simelar spot appear on his head. Today at work, one of the guys looked at it and said that what he had today was Poison Oak. His prior rash never turned purple like Shingles is supposed to do before it goes away. And the two look the same. I could show a number of gross pics that make you all want to hurl, but I'll spare you. Anyway, my questions are: Is there anyone here who has had both? Or known people to have them? Or anything like that.. that can tell me the differences? According to what we were looking at, both Poison Ivy and Poison Oak are caused by the same thing, so how is it possible that you can never get poison ivy but get poison oak repeatedly? Note that the two breakouts are both on his forehead above his right eye. How does one prevent getting such a thing? Yeah, yeah, I know not to touch the plants, but we were in the woods at dusk and leaves just kinda looked green, etc.. When you're in shrubs up to your chest, you can't exactly tell what all is around you... Any help would be nice.

I think it sounds like a good idea, too, but I want to second the bubblewrap idea. Granted, the bottles in question survived 90+ years in the ground, being used, etc... but my luck would be I'd find one, trade for it, get it home, and discover that when I accidentally dropped my pack at the cache after.. I broke it or something.. Bubblewrap it!

Fly46 would like to participate... Fly46 would also like to be post office #46... The question is.. Is that possible? Can one, if it is not already taken, reserve their own post office number?

Davis - thanks for the long paragraph... But it's best to remember Geocaching rules - ALWAYS make sure the land manager knows what's going on and gives permission for the cache you're planning to place. Some places give blanket permission and then no further contact is needed, some places give permission by permit, but they all need to know what you're up to.

I dont' like the idea of this cache for a number of reasons, most of which have no further need to be discussed... However, I agree with a couple points brought up at the very beginning, too, and I want to reiterate them.. Legality aside, I see a number of opportunities for cachers to find the cache, pocket a really nice $10 prize, and completely ignore trading or talking about it. If $3 can go missing from a cache, then a really nice $10 prize - or 15 of them - can seriously dissapear just as quickly. Also, I'm not sure how many people would be interested in such a game. Seems to me like it could drag out for quite a while. Interesting idea in thinking outside the box, but I've already paid enough to play between my GPSr, travel bugs, caches, swag, etc... I'd skip this one if it were in my area.

Reminds me of the time I logged a TB into a virtual cache. I was trading bugs with another cacher, and at the time we traded, we were at a virtual - or, well, driving by it with the virtual owner. So, I logged the bug into the virtual and left it there for the other cacher to pick up. The owner was so confused to see a bug "left" in the cache! It took me a couple emails to fully explain to her what I'd done! LOL!