woodsters

Well i just read last night part of another thread about yet another cache that was denied because it was considered a "vacation cache". I will admit that I did not read the whole thread (it was eventually locked) and do not know the correspondance between the cache placer and the approver, but it did bring up some old thoughts on the issue that I have argued about before. I also noticed some comments from some the cachers that have reinterated what I have discussed before. First of all, I am 100% against a cache being placed without being able to properly care for it. Whether it's placed 100 yards from where the owner lives or 1000 miles. Secondly, there is no distance defined of how far away a person can properly maintain a cache. Thirdly, there is no set timeframe that a cache must be maintained. I have not seen it written where a cache owner must go to their cache in certain intervals to check on their cache whether it's been posted it needs it or not. So what you have is, people telling others that they can't maintain a cahce because it's a certain distance away. One factor that Ii have seen mentioned that is used is they (approvers) check to see if the person cached in the area. Well they might of, but that does not , mean they will return or that they know where the best places to put a cache is. On top of all this, you have fly by night cachers that come through and place a cache or tow and never to be seen again. Doesn't mean the caches are bad or not worth finding, it's just a fact that they are unknown with no finds and their caches are approved. Then you have people with numerous finds and no bad reports of not caring for a cache and they get denied. I think there should be more emphasis placed on those with a little positive history on finding and placing caches, and allowed. I would recommend possibly a quota to be reached by newer ones before placing caches. Something with a timetable as well that shows they are not a cache dumper to never return again. I believe veteran cachers that have sweated and searched for caches will gain more of a gratitude when placing a cache, whether close or far away and will know that they are responsible for it and meet the agreements that are required. Otherwise make the guidelines a little stricter to meet these invisible rules that are subjectively enforced differently throughout the regions. This is not a slam on the approvers at all. It's just some thoughts that it would be much easier and simpler across the board, as well a little more fair.

I agree with Mopar. This is a listing service and they (gc.com) do not own the caches. They can make requirements that have to be met to be listed, but once again they are not responsible for them. The cache owners are responsible for the caches. Just as each and every one of us are not responsible for the maintenance of other peoples caches. Mopar mentioned the fact that the cache may be listed elsewhere. If it's removed because it's archived or not allowed on this site, does not mean it's not being used elsewhere.

Wait... you ...EXPECTED to make the list? I'm on another list of his....lol

Yeah it would of been an education of her seeking me medical treatment. I was nearly on top of the snake earlier and didn't even see it. When I called her over to see it after I did, it was her idea to leave. I don't like snakes either and so I was obliged to leave. Education: yeah I wish I had a gun to shoot it. Or better yet, education on how to aim better. or perhaps an education on proper cooking a snake.....education...geez.

Wish we had the camera with us. I looked in the area several times and never did see him and then went down to within about 9 ft or may 8 of him. Never saw or heard him. Was looking for the cache, didn't see it and came back up (on a foot bridge) looking around and readjusting to make sure the gps was not acting up. I then looked down again and there he was. I looked right at him. He was like the one in the picture about but a little darker on the brown, but not by much. We were not prepared for this. We (wife and I) talked about it later. Ihad the cell phone in my pocket amd she would of never come down into the area where the snake was especially with our 2 yr old daughter with us. It was in an area(business area with nicely professionally landscaped area) that you would not even expect it or at least it wouldn't be on your mind. I emailed the owner of the cache and let them know and they posted a warning on the cache page. People found it this weekend, but with no mention of the snake.

We were doing a few caches this afternoon and was going after a bonus one in this business park area. It was a beautiful place. Pond, water fountains, geese, landscaped area, timber rattlesnake....what?! Yep we came across what appeared to be 9and we are no experts by any means) about a 3-4 ft Timber Rattlesnake. I came within about 9ft of it and didn't see it until later. We stopped our search for the bonus cache right there and left. When I got home I looked at the clue to see if we were in the right area and we were dead on the area. The snake was located apparently where you had to go to find the cache. So beware when looking around for those caches and especially before reaching to get one.

We do not!

Glad I got missed, I guess? I still believe the vacation rule thing is/was biased and opinionated. There is no way to control it and no need to worry about it. Deal with it as you can and or may. There will thousands great "vacation" caches and many more ones that aren't classified as "vacation" ones that will go a miss far sooner. Or the fact they will be improperly placed or placed with very little thought or knowledge. Just like I mentioned before about how people placed caches without any finds. Now I see there is a thread about that and some "oldtimers" are now speaking up about it. And for the record, I never told anyone how to do something. I have suggested ideas that might be better. I've also stood behind what I say. I'm not one just to sit back and accept every little thing. If I feel things are wong or could be better, I will speak. Not my problem if people don't like it.

I carry a scorpion daily for work duties and it's by far better than any maglite. I've used maglites for years and until I became familiar with streamlight, I thought they were good. The scorpion is rechargeable and puts out a very beam of light. someone mentioned the minimags and handsfree. They do make a clip that can go around your head I believe that will hold it. There are some good options in this law enforcement catalog... http://www.galls.com

I second the ones that Top Cat placed in the one park that connect to each other.

Yep sounds like things are the same. Well except it has probably been a little quieter with me gone. So who filled my shoes in the meantime? By the way, for those who visited my website, I wanted to let you know that I took it down. Working the 2 jobs and not being able to put the time into the site and especially not having the time to really get outside myself, I figured I would just drop it. The domain name was coming up for renewal next month, so it came at a good time. Who knows, I may do another one sometime later.

Wanted to say hello to everyone. Haven't been caching for a couple months as I've been wrokiing too much. Hoping to hit a few pretty soon. Any new changes I should know about ?

He probably thought it over more and realized that there is no benefit. Granted, I'm not a techie, but I do know a few things about business. I can't think of a single good reason for Jeremy to do this. I also can't think of a benefit that I (as a paying member of GC.com) would receive. You, my sir, have hit the nail on the head. It's not caching, it's ca$hing! This would all still be a hobby site if Jeremy would of done that. Plus you lose the control. I can see it from both views. On Jeremy's side- He can control what is acceptable and what is not. At least on his site. He can easily control things that are not good for the caching community due to feedback he receives from outsiders, like park rangers and managers. If it was just free information going out and coming in with no control, then you would have people posting things under his website name that are not kosher with the outside world. Then add the cost of the bandwidth and other things as mentioned before. On the other side- I actually see no benefit really of sharing information. If a couple sites want to and are willing to take on whatever responsibilities behind it then fine. There is no stopping from anyone building a site to challenge gc.com . You just are going to have to list your own caches. Now with that said. I'm a fence post sitter on this one. I would more or less like to see where people can have their own site with their own creativity and a central place where people can list themselves there.Of course the problem I can see quickly is caches on maps and things like pq's we have now. I'm sure someone could figure out a way to work it all out. Mainly don't put a website behind a cache, but a person instead.

I know I'm late on this one, but you really didn't give enough information. What kind of bike and pedals do you have? Do your pedals require a special clip to lock onto? If you are talking about a regular mountain bike with regular cleat type of pedals then I would go with a hiker. Whether a low cut or a normal hiking boot, would be up to you. Personally I would go with a regular size hiking boot. Main reason being low brush, rocks, and mud to just name a few. The normal size boot will give your ankles a little more protection. Plus you would not have to worry as much about puddles as you would with a lower sized boot. It also depends on the area you ride in. When I did a few MTB races a while back, I wore tennis shoes. They worked fine, but I did not do much hiking in them.

Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater.... Obviously it's someone who knows the lingo for the area (MEFF?) or they are copying something someone else wrote. Either way, I would find it hard for them to find that many caches in less than a month. Not impossible, but as you stated, all logged within a 24 hr time period. This is where cache owner maintenance comes in. You emailed them and they didn't reply. I would report the situation to TPTB and then after they saw it and under their guidance, remove the logs. I wouldn't remove them just yet. Give TPTB a chance to investigate it. If it was just one or two finds, then i would just delete them. Since this is 181 caches, I would leave it for TPTB to see and figure out.

Who said anything about stopping? lol It's just a fact of today's world. Things are tighter and people are more alert as well as paranoid. But it has nothing to do with freedom, rights or not being scared. At anytime, any of those can change. Do what you are able to do today and hope that you can tomorrow. Be smart about it and aware of your surroundings, what you are doing and what it may appear you are doing.

I have to disagree with Bons. I too did 4 yrs (plus another 4 inactive). My brother did 6. My father did 21. I think that is irrevelant though. Every able bodied male of a certain age could be called to defend the country. I've worked LAw Enforcement, Security and Corrections for many more years than I was in the military. I too protected at those times. I have developed a more keen sense of security and safety than the average person. Should we be worried about people seeing us look suspicious? Yes. We are suspicious and sneaky when we are out in the woods and don't think anyone is looking, but we are just to make sure. I have to agree that you have to use good judgement when placing a cache or searching for one in a metropolis area. Not everyone is openminded about this type of thing. If you ever worked a police desk or probably even a 911 phone line, you would know how many calls are actually made for suspicious things. Mostly by the paranoid and/or the elderly. They do not understand and don't want to understand. They see someone with a device and that is looking suspicious. They see them place or remove and then replace something, all the better. They call the police because they are doing what they are told to do. Similar thing was happening in Atlanta in 1996 after the bombs there during hte Olympics. People are still reporting bookbags being left behind all the time. On freedoms. You have to look at and see what freedom you actually have or think you have. Yes some may be restricted from time to time and in certain places. It's for reasons. Get used to it. It's still 100% better than living in some other countries or under their dictator. Your freedom is restricted every day and more of it is getting restricted every dy. Not just by the federal govt, but by your state and local govt's as well. If you did your 4 years then you will realize that some things are necessary to do or to refrain from in order to continue protecting this country we live in.

What do you mean you can't see me? I'm wearing all black, in front of that black wall under the light at night ....what do you mean what light and all you have is a black screen? Oh i'm sorry the power did surge there for a few seconds, must of taken the picture then.

It's like the game of Battleship...hit and miss...if you are lucky, your thread will stay afloat for a while...every once once in a while we will hear someone jump up and yell "you sunk my thread!" . Fire in the hole!

Not a movie, but saw something similar to caching on a PBS channel a few weeks ago. It was talking about Churchhills auxillary force of villagers he had when the germans were going to invade england. They would pass secret notes around and hide them in things that people use for caches today. Like fake bolts and etc. They had one thing a telephone pole that marked the pole with a number. Behind the number was a tube into the wood. They would hide notes in there for the next person to pick up to move along. If the number was upside down, then there was a note in it, if not, then it was empty. A lot of other neat stuff too... Edit: Mistyped what I was trying to say. I initially put when England invaded Germnay and meant to put when they were going to. The show played it like it would of happened or like it did happen actually. The hiding places for the notes were to pass the information on to the radioman, which on this show was the minister in the church and he had the radio hidden in the pulpit. Here's a link about those secret auxiliary forces. http://www.warlinks.com/pages/auxiliary.html

lol Johnny Vegas, I thought the same thing. I mighyt have to get some Woodsters Outdoors ones made up. This is perfect now that we started playing Disc Golf too.

CR....the problem is people that don't care. Mainly cache owners. I for one think there should be more stringnet rules placed on cache owners. I don't like the feeling that a cache owner does not care enough for the finders of their cache to try and keep things honest. At least for the honest cachers. I don't care if it's a traditional cache and someone places a spoiler in the online log or if it's a virtual and the owner is not responding to emails, it's wrong either way. But alas, there is nothing that the few of us that feel that way can do. I've owned 2 caches. I took very good care of them. I went back periodically whether they needed it or not to check on them. When I realized that I was moving 1000 miles away, I started looking for someone to adopt them weeks in advance, to ensure they were in capable hands before I left. If I had not found someone to adopt them. I would of archived them. It all falls on the cache owner. There is no official cache police. The cache owners have to police their own and should be doing so.

That's usually how an account would be validated Radio Scout, by email. Simply clicking on a link or replying to an email like some listserves do. On my message board, I get people that never successfully complete the validation process. I just usually let them die off or sometimes, if they put in an erroneous email address, then I will get an email bounce back at a certain address. At that time, I will normally just delete those that are waiting in the authorization mode that do that. An account does not normally take a whole lot of space, but if you prune out the bad ones, then it will free up some. Not to include the emails sent out every week with the updates.

Watch out, webcam caches are on the verge of extinction...Codeword caches now, webcam and virts tomorrow....

Wetter than Sparky Watts. Don't read those words "May not" in a positive note. Read it as "won't be" or "should not be". One persons justification is no better than anothers. Things start to appear and become biased when you will allow for one and not another. Personally I have no problem with codeword caches. They have their place. If codeword caches are being banned, then so should virtuals from that standpoint. But they are still being allowed. I have no problem with any variation of a cache. Seperate them in the findings as they are now. No problem. People don't have to do them if they don't want to. Grandfather clauses are rediculous as well. If a persons cache does not meet the current standard, then they should be afforded the opportunity to upgrade or update it to follow the current. Consider it cache maintenance. Then you do not have to worry about when such and such was made a rule and will eliminate these debates and frustrations.