The MacMedic

Agreed, great category idea. I wish I had suggested it.

Greetings All, My cache 100 Miles to Boston (GCGNHK) was muggled last month and the container taken. The contents were left on the trail side and recovered by another cacher who sent them to me. A travel bug that was in the cache was recovered as well and I now have it in my possession. In the process of getting to me the bug put on a hundred miles. I am putting the contents of the cache in a new container and going to rehide the cache within the next 2 weeks. Should I just put the TB into the recovered cache and ignore the milage it put on getting to me? Should I drop it into a local cache and immediately take it out again to keep the milage close to true? Should I just drop it into a local cache and leave it there to continue it's journey? Any thoughts? Regards, The MacMedic

Hey, I'm a paramedic. Hours of boredom where I can do whatever I want punctuated with moments of being busier than I can comprehend. The MacMedic

Jeremy, All things considered if you got the drugs out of an area where kids could find them you did save lives. One less OD for my colleagues and I to deal with. Good job. The MacMedic

Sorry, thought I was trying to do something nice. I didn't know a single failure to find meant that it was gone. Since the owner had moved rather than abandon it that I wasn't going to be being out of line to offer to take it over.

The Rocks and Marshes and Fields, Oh My! cache was recently archived. I live about 20-25 minutes away and would be available to adopt this cache if noone else closer is interested.

True, Tupperware or similar could still be exploded but since you can X-Ray through Tupperware and not through an ammo can the chances of that are less. At least in my area, the bomb squad robot xrays the object early on in the investigation.

I'd love to add benchmarks. Please?

Exactly! Why plant a bomb in a tree in the middle of nowhere??? (nowhere important strategically I mean) It wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility that someone doing something, shall we say, clandestine, might want to place some potentially lethal devices on the approaches to their lair to slow down approaching law enforcement officials or competitors? Sorry, but sometimes things designed to kill, hurt, or maim are placed because someone is just plain nuts. Strategic value doesn't enter into it at all. All in all? Wires coming from a cache are a really, really bad idea.

Whether I am wearing Nomex or Kevlar, I am going to handle suspicious packages that I am dispatched for as a hazard to myself and to my crew. I would wager every emergency responder in the country is going to handle dispatches for suspicious packages in the same way. Uploading coordinates and expecting that an emergency crew has either the time or the resources to cross reference that the suspicious device is either a geocache, a letterbox, environmental monitoring station, or high school science project sounds plausible... unless you have ever worked public safety. To suggest that "their only excuse will be stupidity" is an insult to every one of us in public safety. Standard procedure for my department is when a suspicious package is found that it be left alone and the police be called in to handle. As for my own stupidity? Criminal needs to understand that my goal when I go to work is to go home again in the morning and that means my safety is Job #1. If something looks suspicious it is until proven otherwise. The only way to minimize the possibility of a cache being viewed as a suspicious package is to think twice (at least) about what is placed and where it is placed. Let's face it, placing a cache or letterbox near the county courthouse is just begging for trouble while a micro in the same location may be less likely to be seen as a threat. A little common sense goes a long way and means that we can enjoy our sport without alarming the rest of the population. Just my 2 cents.

I agree a high-vis vest would be great for the Benchmark hunters also. Those of us who spend a lot of time near roadways. An excellent idea. Between caching and benchmark hunting I have had some close calls even when it isn't officially hunting season. As long as the vest or VOMP were of good quality and tastefully done (can blaze orange be tastefully done?) I would buy one without hesitation. The only thing I woudl add would be some scotchlite trim so those of us who hunt caches and benchmarks at night or twilight show up then too. Regards, The MacMedic

Greetings All, First time Geocacher here getting ready for my first foray into the field. In my full time employment as a paramedic documentation is king and I am trying to figure out how much documentation people keep of there searches. I understand logging in at the cache and I understand logging my find online. My questions is do most people keep their own records of their searches? If they do what info do they keep? Is there a standard format? Am I just being too anal? What is the usual practice in the Geocaching Community? Thanks, Harry