va griz
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Posts posted by va griz
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I have listened to police and other agencies express concern over caches here in our area.
Really? And there concern was that people were leaving the sidewalk to stand by street signs? The officers that I have seen while caching don't seem to have the same concerns. They seem to view caching as a harmless, if eccentric, activity. I can see them being worried about a container under a bridge or on airport property, but a street sign?
This whole fiasco brings to mind the image of a law abiding citizen walking in to the AG's office to request written permission to sit on a park bench. When they are told no such permit exists, they start calling the police because people are sitting on park benches
Aw come on now, you know that I didn't say that. You seem to be trying to make an issue out of standing next to a sign while disregarding the entire situation. A LEO notices someone crouching next to a highway sign and turns their vehicle around to investigate. Upon further investigation the LEO notices what appears to be a small metal section of pipe with caps at both ends inserted into the sign. What do you think is going to happen next? I predict it would possibly become a story on the news about a bomb squad destroying something that looked like a pipe bomb.
The issue has to do with both the activity and the location. As was posted way above regarding the other cache discussion that jumped on this one - no driver is expecting to see someone rooting around in the area around the base of a highway sign located two feet from the roadway. It's not like there is a big sign saying, "geocache located here" and so someone is going to be searching around the area. Are you seriously suggesting that this wouldn't look suspicious?
Regarding LEOs not having concerns -- I bet that if they knew what was going on, they probably don't. But I've spent about 40 hours riding with LEOs and not a one of them knew what a geocache was until we talked about it. They instead discussed that they were going by an area because they'd had reports of suspicious activity. And then I explained that there was a geocache there. But more than one LEO has described a situation where they were much more concerned by finding someone doing something where they weren't expected to be, late at night and even in areas known by LEOs to be drug trafficing areas. That's just plain stupid, IMHO.
You mentioned police concerns in an explanation of why you investigated this cache. You didn't mean caches that looked like pipe bombs because this cache didn't look like that. Yes, cachers looks suspicious when they are poking around, but they look that way for ALL caches, not just the ones without enough permission. In these forums many have told of the police being called when a cacher was seen at a cache with proper permission. So unless your point is geocaching looks too suspicious to be done in public, I am missing your point. I know it couldn't have been the safety of that cache because you didn't find it dangerous enough to stop looking for it.
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I have listened to police and other agencies express concern over caches here in our area.
Really? And there concern was that people were leaving the sidewalk to stand by street signs? The officers that I have seen while caching don't seem to have the same concerns. They seem to view caching as a harmless, if eccentric, activity. I can see them being worried about a container under a bridge or on airport property, but a street sign?
This whole fiasco brings to mind the image of a law abiding citizen walking in to the AG's office to request written permission to sit on a park bench. When they are told no such permit exists, they start calling the police because people are sitting on park benches
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....... I asked what rules or laws were involved. Both the police and VDOT cited a particular Virginia Code (more on that below) and also indicated that it could also be considered to be trespassing on state property........
Would you be so kind as to mention the code? I am curious how walking on a public sidewalk could be considered trespassing.
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Back on April 18 the cache in question was changed out to be a sprinkler head under the bushes, several feet away from the sign. This little bit if green is located along a sidewalk in a small town. There is plenty of room to park the car at the gas station. Apparently this wasn't good enough because there was a notification tonight that read: "Groundspeak is archiving this cache per an explicit request from the Office of the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Please remove the container with appropriate caution."
So, apparently it's not just signs and guardrails. It includes all the bushes, sidewalks and any area around a road. I guess geocaching will soon no longer be allowed in Virginia.
Heavy Sigh.
From the VDOT letter:
(bold by me)"In order to maintain the safety of our citizens and your members, we ask that you suspend all placement of materials on or in our property."I found that cache a couple years ago and really enjoyed it. I parked in the nearby lot and walked on the sidewalk to the cache that, if anything, is further away from the roadway than the sidewalk would be if it ran straight beside the road. For the life of me I can't figure out what is unsafe about walking on a sidewalk or looking for a cache that far from a road.
I'll join you in a depressed sigh.
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I skew my home coords to be more centered in what I consider my travel zone and there are 202 within a 10 mile radius of that. Where I live is about 18 miles from that center and there are less than 100 caches within 10 miles of that.
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Unless I forgot about one I got my first one Saturday.
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I've meet a few and always enjoyed it. They aren't as dangerous as they appear.
The funniest one, probably to both of us now that I think about it, was at a new cache in an isolated park like location. At GZ, a woman was there intently staring at the ground, poking around, occasionally reaching down to pick up things. The only people I've ever seen do that are geocachers, so I said "found it yet?" as I walked up. She looked at me like I was from Mars and said "found what?" Turns out she was looking for walnuts and had never heard of geocaching.
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A while back we got a notification for a new cache. It was clear from the description that it was supposed to be a parking lot hide at a brand new Walmart. The only problem was the coords put you in the middle of the woods where there wasn't even a hint of a new road, much less a store. I figured it had to be a mistake and even looked for new Walmarts that were directly in line with the coords but didn't see anything close that matched up. Not too long after that they fixed the coordinates, they were off by exactly one degree, so that put it over 50 miles away as the crow flies. Separated by the Chesapeake Bay, it was about 150 miles driving. Turns out nobody looked for it for over a week because the notification is based on the first published coords, so it was a while before anybody realized it was there.
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Unless I am understanding you all wrong, people are replying to a question you didn't ask. I guess the confusion is because a lot of people would love to be able to look up archived caches while you want to know which are archived without looking them all up. That about right?
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Darn double tap
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Since the "placed" date can be set by the whoever submited the cache, it's also possible they guessed it would be published the next day and set the date accordinly.
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.... What a world, what a world.
We're not in Kansas anymore are we?
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What amuses me is the idea that some mad terrorist bomber would:
1. Want to blow up a tree.
2. Would be so forgetful that he had to make a note to himself so he wouldn't forget it was dynamite.
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LOL.
This stuff is so poisonous that the people in the movie Signs were able to defeat the evil invading aliens by splashing small quantities of the chemical on them! Good thing they had some of it on hand!
The hazards of DHMO were well known in the movies before that. As far back as 1939 there was a movie where the protagonist was not just injured or killed, but totally dissolved, merely by being exposed to it. Nothing left but a broom.
Nasty stuff I tell you.
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\snip/
And several times when at a total loss for ideas I allowed the FTF to name the cache.
That's a great idea, I might have to try that.
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I don't have a picture available, but I made a birdfeeder into a "working" cache. I have an old cyclindrical feeder that is made out of heavy plastic (the ones that were made out of two pieces of plastic and came with all the other parts that you had to assemble). After being outside about 5-6 years, the plastic is yellowed and cloudy. (I did the following camo work outside as it is very messy!) I thinned out some Alene's craft glue and coated the inside by pouring it down the sides and turning it round and round at an angle. Then, I filled it with sunflower seeds and let it set overnight. The next day, I poured out the seeds. There were open spaces between the sun seeds, so I coated the inside with glue again and poured in the finer birdseed that has the small grains,etc. Let it set overnight, again. When I poured out the smaller seed, the spaces were nicely filled in. The inside diameter is reduced, but there is still room for birdseed in the lower portion and a small baggie with the log book and a few small items to sit on top. At first, I wasn't going to fill the feeder with seed, but realized a "full" feeder with no seed debris on the ground would be a dead giveaway! It is hanging in the tree at the end of our driveway, with 2 other feeders within 20-30 ft of it (one is identical to it).
One cacher had a DNF because I had just refilled the feeder and there were birds eating out of it when she was there! She said I was evil when I met her later at an event! He He He!
P.S. I tried the camo with a newer feeder first, but it was glaringly obvious that the seed was glued to the inside!
Is the cache in the seed? I'm getting ready to look for a cache in a feeder but I wouldn't dump the seed to try and find it. Others might dump all your feeders in their eagerness to sign the log.
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Here is one of my latest:
That is awesome. I would love to find that.
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Here is one where at first people were having a hard time. I concluded the coordinates must be off and posted a NM. Another cacher posted a NA and the reviewer asked for it to be checked. The owner posted some updated cords and then it was found with the old version. I later found it, and to me the cache is about halfway between the two cords, so both are within about 12 feet. Overall a good cache that fooled a bunch of us. My theory is it is an example of previous logs affecting the way others look for the cache.
By the way, it's been deleted now, but the first log was a find by a now banned armchair cacher who said something like "easy, I am FTF". They logged several finds around the country on their first day caching.
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I think it's interesting that some folks find MORE signatures than online logs -- the opposite of what I commonly find. I'm sure "team signing"is one explanation for those, but I wonder if there's a pattern to cache types or placements are more likely to go one way or the other. My first guess would be that nanos and micros holding just a scrap of paper would be less likely to collect real signatures than caches big enough to hold trade items and a real log book. I do mostly urban caching and of course that means a lot of nanos,
I've wondered he same thing but the only common theme that I can see (at least I think I see it) is Micros and Nanos in "numbers" areas seem to get there share of online logs without a signature. Not sure if they represent a real finder that didn't take time to sign or armchair numbers padding.
The only ones that bother me are the tough hides with half as many sigs as online logs, and the signatures on another creative note that says "this is NOT the log, keep looking".
For what it's worth, the only cache of mine that I've directly compared had about five more signatires than online logs, and two of he online logs were the same cacher.
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Where is the stick I usually use on any dead horse where I need it.
Sticks are dangerous and should be banned
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Since this thread was around last time I had this log on one of my (now archived) caches. He claimed to be a cacher and unfortunately took a Geocoin. Never logged the cache or coin.
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Sounds like system abuse to me because presumably there is no way to verify the find. That said, I have visited archived Virtuals because they were interesting places. I enjoyed it, but did not log it.
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Thanks for the replies, that's good news. What about if the combination was from a sign at the parking coords? I would think that would have to be a puzzle since you couldn't open it without reading the page AND following instructions once you got there.
VDOT and guardrails
in General geocaching topics
Posted
I've found that cache, and as your own photo shows, it is not metal pipe.
OK, we agree I am missing your point. So let's clear it up, why did you call VDOT?