WalruZ
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Posts posted by WalruZ
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There are many geocachers who have never seen me in any outfit other than what's pictured below.
Nice hat.
I saw vests at my local surplus store when I was looking at ammo cans. I might go back and look at them more closely. The issue I have is that summertime in CA can get pretty hot. What does one look for to minimize the effect of having another 'layer' on?
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This is the CACHE I was referring to.
I'm not a big fan of the puzzle caches, but a cache like this in my area would be found pretty quickly by at least 4 people. There is a sub-group of puzzle fanatics who prefer them over all others. check out the puzzles hidden by fizzy - i couldn't find the listing for one where he encoded the coordinates inside the unused portion of a .jpeg file.
That said, I'll try them if they've bumped up to the top of my nearest list. I did this one only because there were mild hints in the logs.
But, like a previous poster, I would prefer a nice hike. Light-pole/seat-post micros are not what got me interested in GeoCaching. The views from Flag Hill yesterday was great. That's what makes me get up and ask "where can I geocache today?"
Oh, I have tried to get revenge though. My son and I hid LeChuck's Frenchmans treasure recently. It is at a nice overlook.
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god have mercy on us if these people ever figure out how to use their computers...
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Would you feel that way if you were severly handicapped?
probably. If I were sereverly handicapped, I'm not so sure that crusing around in parking lots looking for same-old same-old magnetic micros under light pole skirts would be all that great. A micro or mini (1/2 cup size) in a park with good access and paved trails would be much more pleasant.
Again, it has less to do with size and more to do with location.
-- uh, caches I mean. Only caches.
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There's one in my area, Wait Until Dark that gets rave reviews. The only reason I'm waiting is because I want to go with a group.
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I've exchanged a few emails with a WSJ reporter who contacted me a few days ago. Below is the text of the last one (excuse any formatting issues). His last question for me was "is there anything new to write about geocaching?" -- I figured I would ask here. I intend to forward the replies back to him, so please stay serious and on-topic. Try.
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Thanks! I did some additional research in the WSJ story archive, and actually found a story. That´s too bad, since my chances of writing about GeoCaching are not as large anymore because of that. But the story (below) is two years old. Since this is a newspaper, we can however print new stories, if something interesting has happened. So, except for that the number of GeoCachers have grown, are there any new techniques, approaches or some other funny thing that I can use to convince my editors? [text of previous article in 2002] LEISURE & ARTS Pinpoint GPS Spawns a Global Treasure Hunt By Susan G. Hauser 1,036 words 19 March 2002 The Wall Street Journal A20 English (Copyright (c) 2002, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) Portland, Ore. -- GEOCACHING, the international pastime that got its start in a bucket hidden in the woods here, has reached (at last count) 111 countries. There were a mere 105 countries involved when I went cache hunting for the first time on a recent Saturday morning, but things happen fast in geocaching, which is what you'd expect from a sport based on satellites and the Internet. The official Web site, www.geocaching.com, hails this as "the sport where YOU are the search engine." All you need is a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver (which costs about $100 for a basic model), Internet access to learn the longitude and latitude of the caches, and the brain of a dog. If you can behave like the type of mutt who leaps without looking, runs full tilt into hornets' nests, rolls in manure and scares the stink out of skunks, then you are cut out for this wildly popular sport. The reward for putting one's safety and sanity at risk is accolades on the Web site and a collection of silly toys taken one at a time (there's an honor system here) from caches hidden by fellow geochachers deep in the woods, high in the trees or even buried in sand at low tide. I owe my introduction to geocaching to an otherwise intelligent young man, Ben Higgins. He is happily employed as a software engineer, but on the weekends -- well, actually every spare waking moment -- he can make a tail-chasing hound look downright catatonic. He has located and logged more caches than any other hunter in the Northwest. On the morning he took me along, his total rose from 214 to 217, which is nothing really, since he's accustomed to finding up to eight caches in one day. With me following at a safe distance, he lumbered through the woods to find two separate caches. At a third location, he scrambled up a tree in high winds just to be able to sign his name in the cleverly secreted logbook. Some guy back East holds the national record with about 450 finds. But Mr. Higgins's number is impressive because he's been active just eight months in a sport that's nearly two years old. It came into being when somebody set out a cache on May 3, 2000, just two days after the government began permitting civilian-owned GPS receivers to pick up more accurate satellite signals. Previously, only the military could pinpoint exact locations; signal degradation prevented civilians from zeroing in closer than about 100 feet. The new sport's very first cache, just a bucket containing a logbook, was found outside Portland on May 6, 2000, by Mike Teague, using his GPS receiver and coordinates posted to an Internet newsgroup. A few months later Mr. Teague and Jeremy Irish, a Seattle Web developer, launched www.geocaching.com. Mr. Irish continues to maintain the Web site, currently the official hangout of hordes of geocachers seeking more than 14,000 caches hidden around the world. Mr. Higgins has put 21,000 miles on his truck by driving to cache sites. On the day I joined him, he added another 40 driving west of Portland into the Coast Range Mountains to find the first cache of the day. After we parked along the highway, it was a hike of a couple of miles into the woods before his GPS receiver indicated that we were close. The cache, which turned out to be a plastic bin containing trinkets and a logbook, was hidden in the crumbling remains of a rotten stump. I would have continued hiking, oblivious to the waiting cache, but Mr. Higgins's trained eye spied it. "Sometimes you find it right away," he said. "Sometimes you walk around for a half hour sticking your hand down stumps." Inside the cache were toys, knickknacks, lottery tickets and various other offerings. To play fair as a geocacher, one must put back as many prizes as one takes. Mr. Higgins took a toy alien for himself, and I chose a small jewelry box. He replaced those items with a box of crayons and a pack of baseball cards that he pulled from his backpack. He made an entry in the logbook, noting the date and time that he came across the cache. He said one is expected to write at length on noteworthy features of the hunt. He wrote about the beauty of the birdsongs we had heard as we hiked deeper into the woods. "People are missing so much!" he said, expressing his bewilderment that the woods were not full of nature-loving geocachers. Through his new hobby he has come to know western Oregon and the Portland area better than most denizens. "Oh, and I finally know where all the nude beaches in Portland are," he noted. Sadly, his former girlfriend broke up with him because he didn't share her love of hiking. That was before he came to associate physical activity with high-tech obsession. "All I needed was a GPS receiver, and I wouldn't have complained," he said. Since his conversion to geocaching he has tried to win the hiking ex-girlfriend back. But she kept on hiking without looking back. At 24, Mr. Higgins is the youngest of the 50 or so active geocachers in the Portland area. "Most of the people I know want to go partying," he said. "They're not into hiking out in the wilderness and looking for a Tupperware container." The second cache was hidden just off a path in a city park -- easy pickings for Mr. Higgins, who could save his strength for the third cache. It was strapped to a tree trunk about 50 feet off the ground. Mr. Higgins climbed the tree without mishap, which made this a breeze compared to the time he tumbled down a forest embankment, or the time he got lost in the woods after dark with no flashlight. But he'll keep on geocaching unless things change. "I might get a new hobby," he mused. "Or a girlfriend."
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I like caches that take you someplace or show you something. I don't really care as much if it's a micro or a regular or a huge. Never mind cache sizes. Enough with the Parking Lot Micros!!
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Huh. I live about 1/2 hour N of Markey. 94536 - 723 within 20 miles.
we've done this before, recently. If I expand my radius to 30 miles I get 1383 caches.
at 100 miles I get 3571 caches.
an interesting statistic is to expand your search radius. If I put in 200 miles (or 300, or 400) I get 4080 caches. If I scale back to 125 miles I get 3839 caches.
ok, so if you assume from that that the database query stops at 4080, how much distance does it take for you to reach that limit?
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One place I have seen TBs 'wait' that is justified is airport TB hotels. Other than that, imo anyone who sets up a TB themed cache is responsible for making sure TBs don't languish there.
How long were these TBs in the 'Jail' for before they 'broke out', anyway?
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Latest about mountain lions, for anyone who might be concerned.
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Oh, by the way. I advise not putting one of your stages on the wrong side of a river by accident - unless that's common in your area.
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I think that the "is it worthwhile" test also applies to multicache stages. A monarch tree, a peaceful pond, a good view, yadda. Other than that, all that matters is the total length of the hike. You want to make sure it's not so long that someone can't lick the whole thing in one day.
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think park visitor center shops. I've had great luck with replica arrowheads 50c each from a local shop. they're in a tiny plastic bag with a slip of paper that has the park name on it. they're always the first thing taken from a cache after i visit it.
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oops! Posted it twice!
Yeah, is it just me, or is there an echo in this thread?
Anyway. you forgot lazy, as in, "HOW many miles?" I'm not suprised that people think urban caches are sort of weird - I mostly do them to get them off my nearest list. But the long hikes in the regional open-spaces are fantastic - and most newbies I know hear about this and blanch. I get a lot of "um, not today" responses.
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Any park that has a ranger devoted to handing out $160 tickets for walking through the woods has a funding problem - they have too much.
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Your GPS can either 'see' a bird or it can't. I doubt it's having math problems - that's what it was designed to do.
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Also note that you don't need to have anything in particular working on a mac other than your web browser. You can do what many people do. Find a cache of interest on the web site. copy down the coordinates. enter them into the GPS by hand. Go find the cache (the part you should be spending most of your time doing). return to the web site to log your find. whalla. no complicated software or nuthin, and a good time was had by all. Entering coordinates by hand is not all that bad.
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I just feel like whining today, and apparently this is the place to do it.
Whine
There. I feel better now.
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what's even better about the son having his own account is that it makes him do more writing, something kids don't have to do enough of these days. (grumble, grumble, swing cane, kick cat...)
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1. I have a geko that has worked fine for me, 168 finds and counting. I went caching awhile ago with someone who has over 3K finds (yes) and he uses a 201. I recently looked at the yellow etrex which is about the same price and realized I would rather stick with the geko a little longer because the geko is smaller and easier to just carry in a pocket. AFAIK there are no GPSs under about 100 bucks, but the return on investment is very high - I have gotten WAY more than $100 of entertainment value out of my GPS.
2. Tell you wife that this will get you much needed exercise. You'll loose weight. You'll muscle up. You'll increase your endurance. [
] -- what wife wouldn't want that!3. My son likes caching with me. It gives us time to talk, something that seems to happen more when you're tramping down a trail. We also place caches together. We talk about the what and why of the hide, and we work on the descriptions together, and we monitor the finds, which is fun. I also have him (age 13) log his own caches, which means he does some writing. On top of that, many caches are hidden in edumacational sorts of places, you know, parks with wildlife centers and interpretive centers and that sort of thing. On top of all that, geocaching is still somewhat 'cool', and you'll score points in the 'cool dad' category.
4. when you get the GPS save all the original materials. If this doesn't work out for you for any reason, you can sell it on ebay for about 75% of what you paid for it.
-- but you won't.
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go to www.google.com and search for Make Fake Rock
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I would recommend placing those items in fairly easy to get to, kid-friendly caches, if you know what I mean. Putting that stuff at the end of a 8 mile hike (uphill both ways, like I did today) would be, imo, not such a good idea.
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I went and looked at GPSs yesterday. That cobra is the size of a brick. I have been considering upgrading from my geko, but I'm seeing that the other models are noticably larger - not huge, but i wouldn't be as likely to stuff them in my pocket as I am with the geko (wimpy and featureless as it is, i know.)
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When you spot the cache, you just keep pretending to look for a couple more minutes as you move away from the area, then call out "hootie hoo!"
I always wondered about this. Couldn't you just look for awhile and then hootie-hoo and sit and have the others find it for you?
] -- what wife wouldn't want that!
EBRPD Banning Geocaches?
in West and Southwest
Posted · Edited by WalruZ
The local org, which is sort of loose, is BADGES. Their next event is April 4. I think the immediate problem is that those most concerned aren't sure what the best thing to do is. sit tight? write letters? send emails? phone? drop by to chat? organize a group meeting? attend one of their public meetings as a group?
The developments are of particular import to all bay area cachers - the east bay regional park district has an enormous amount of parkland stretching from the sacramento river down to milpitas, and from the bay east past a line from Mt diablo through livermore. I would venture a guess that from 1/3 to 1/2 of all caches in this area are on EBRPD land. Geocaching is what has connected me to these parks and I for one won't take it's elimination passively.
I've started this thread in the main area asking for advice.