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Strapped-4-Cache

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Posts posted by Strapped-4-Cache

  1. Mods, it won't hurt my feelings if this thread gets moved. I couldn't find a better place to post it.

     

    I recently picked up a copy of "The Last Englishman" by Keith Foskett, which documents his trip along the Pacific Coast Trail. It's a pretty good book, and the author does a great job of describing the scenery and character s in his book.

     

    HOWEVER, I came across a passage in the book that referenced geocaching. The author made a brief attempt to describe geocaching, but failed miserably. Quoting the passage (emphasis mine), "A geocache is an item or items hidden in a specific location and most often buried, so that others cannot take it of wild animals happen across it. The coordinates are saved, usually by means of a GPS, so the owner can find it whenever they choose to. Elk had buried many of these along the length of the PCT the previous year, with staple contents that included canned meat, alcohol and pipe tobacco."

     

    I can only imagine what park rangers would say if they come across this description and now think they can find such contents in a cache placed by a member of this site or another. I plan to write the author to ask that he re-define the term as a "personal stash" or something similar in order to distance it from what I have come to appreciate as a family-friendly hobby. What would I tell my kids if they found such contents in a cache we found???

     

    Just spreading the word in case others would like to point out the error in the description to the author as well.

     

    - Mark (S-4-C)

  2. I can vouch for the starter kit going quickly. Between passing out several to friends and setting up trades, my initial order was gone quickly. I've already placed a reorder and have several more trades pending the arrival of that shipment.

     

    I feel that I have received good value for the money I paid for these tags. True, they're not actual coins, but I have no problem with that. As a collector of many things, I find it nice that this item comes in a consistent size and can be displayed easily. Gimme a corkboard and some map tacks and I'm set.

     

    As noted earlier, the tracking seems to be for an owner of a profile to be able to see where *any* of the tags may have been found instead of being able to track the progress of any one tag. The mapping feature hasn't been set up yet, but they are bringing up new features for owners quite rapidly considering this is a rather new concept and everything probably has to be built from the ground up.

     

    I've only experienced a couple of glitches and the problems were addressed shortly after I sent a message. Only one issue hasn't been resolved yet, but it is minor and I'm not worried about it.

     

    About the only drawback for me has been attempting to set up trades with people who want to use the tags as a signature item and are not interested in trading tags. About the only way I might be able to get those tags would be to post trade requests on these forums. Someone might run across one in a cahe and be willing to trade one I want for one of my own tags. It could happen.

     

    Ramble, ramble, ramble. I've gone on too long. Short version - I'm happy with the tags as both a trade and sig item.

     

    S-4-C

  3. Mushtang,

     

    I remember doing that cache on a very chilly Saturday morning. It still remains one of my favorites, and I was sorry to see it archived.

     

    I just wish my tracklog of the GC guy would have turned out better than it did. :unsure:

     

    S-4-C

  4.  

    But I can not for the life of me lay my hands on a Moun10Bike coin. Maybe next year. I even had a chance Saturday to win one of the 2 were available at our challenge event....but alas we did not get enough points.

     

    :ph34r: :ph34r: :ph34r::o;) ;) ;) ;) :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:<_<:unsure::anibad:

     

    I will not give up........

     

    Wait a minute...

     

    I have a coin that you *don't* have? I can't believe it! The world must be coming to an end!

     

    Honestly, I think Moun10bike just had mercy on me and made a trade because he know how badly I wanted one of his coins. It sits proudly at the top of my display.

     

    S-4-C

  5. Oddly enough, I tend to agree with most of the comments on this thread.

     

    I've purchased a set of Pathtags as an affordable sig item, mainly because I can't seem to raise enough $ to allow me to have a true coin minted. The Pathtags are a great affordable option, but I wouldn't feel right in calling them coins. I wouldn't feel right in trading one for a true coin unless someone else prompted the trade (which I doubt will ever happen).

     

    As an aside, I've seen some of the designs for the Pathtags on the site and now I wish I'd created a design that was a bit more dramatic. Compared to the others mine's rather plain. Guess I'll have to begin working on a Gen 2 version... ;)

     

    S-4-C

  6. Dear friends,

    It's been a while, but I haven't forgotten all of you and your cute little thingies! No, I never did hear from Paul, but I thought I'd update you on a fun turn of events... two weeks ago, I did a Google search on jobs in a certain National Park, found something interesting, e-mailed the contact, and within ten hours of that Google search I was packed up and on the road to........

    North 63, 32', 12" .0; West 150, 58', 49".7

    (I only know these coords because this place is so remote that they're posted on the office wall in front of me for emergencies.)

    So, if you're ever hunting down a cache in this neck of the woods, drop me a line! (Just be on the lookout for grizzlies, wolves, and mooses out here in my new back yard!)

     

    Take care, you wonderful peeps, you!

    Jeanette

     

    DiemCarper:

     

    Re-reading this thread and now learing about where you have landed a job reminds me a little of a book I recently read. If you can get your hands on a copy, it's worth the read. Here's a link: The Last Season

     

    Yeah, it can be a bit of a dark read at times, but the book really helped me to appreciate the life and work of a backcountry ranger. Although that's not exactly what you're doing right now, the similarities are still there. I don't think you have to worry any about being too isolated, though, since you can access the net and spend a few minutes connecting with civilization once in a while. I like being alone, but I have my limits. :laughing:

     

    Best of luck in your new job. I hope you thoroughly enjoy it and the beautiful scenery around you.

  7. I live NE of Atlanta, so I'm not sure if I'll be anywhere near you while you're in town. I'm fairly free any time after about 1:00 p.m.

     

    I'll send a PM with cell # in case you're in the area.

     

    Now I've gotta go through my collection to see what trades I may have available...

     

    S-4-C

  8. There's nothing wrong with remanufacturing a game to appeal to another audience. In the link above it is noted that the games can be geared (no pun intended) toward driving and bicycling enthusiasts. If this game works along the same lines, it's just set up to appeal to geocachers.

  9. Nice picture, but I see one thing you may need to work on.

     

    The Groundspeak logo should be square. I don't think you'll be officially allowed to use the logo as it's shown.

     

    The Leatherman (Gx) logo may be able to be used instead.

     

    My $.02, from reading the regs regarding using the Groundspeak logo.

     

    Hope this helps,

     

    S-4-C

     

    **D'oh! Beat to the punch by seconds!**

  10. Nepi,

     

    I've only logged one cache in China, and it was a Virtual as well.

     

    There didn't seem to be a problem with having a GPS, but I was in Shamian Island where there's almost more Westerners than there are locals. I met an officer who made me turn back because of a police issue in the area, but he didn't even blink at my having a GPS with me. I returned later to get the required information.

     

    Hope this helps some. I have no idea what it's like in the less touristy areas of the country.

     

    S-4-C

  11. Just saw this posting on eBay this morning: eBay Treasure Hunt

     

    No current bids yet, not surprisingly. As stated in the listing, the auction is just for the first part of the map. The "treasure and the adventure you find" is the seller's gift to you. Of course, the seller never actually says what the "treasure" is, just that it's worth it's weight in gold. For all I know it's a nano cache with a grain of gold dust in it.

     

    Sounds intriguing, but warning bells are going off.

     

    Caveat Emptor.

     

    S-4-C

  12. This picture isn't as nice as some of the others, so I apologize. Getting a clean pic was rather difficult, especially of the back side due to the reflection. Macro pics are not my forte.

     

    Tracking number intentionally blurred.

     

    Habercacher.jpg

  13. It seems that I can't stay ahead of the geocaching community for cache ideas. A couple of years ago I started thinking of setting up a hide based on a text adventure like Zork only to find that one had already been placed. GCJY6B, The Adventures of 1Geocacher proved to me that the idea was a good one, but I never managed to have the time to set up a story and work on the code for a local cache.

     

    Fast forward a couple of years to find me working on a story line and perfecting the code for a cache in my area. A random glance at the forum topics this morning shows me that I'm not the only one looking to set one of these up again.

     

    Glad to see this variety of cache appearing. I really enjoyed the hours I spent playing and mapping out those old Infocom games. If life will ever let me have the time to finish the debugging I may finally be able to place my version of one of these. The basic storyline and mapping is the easy part - it's the evil puzzles within the game that are the hardest part for me to set up and have work properly. Of course, coming up with "cameos" of local cachers is also proving to be difficult.

     

    Good luck on making more games in the future.

     

    S-4-C

  14. How was the container (above) used? I can't tell if it's to be hidden as a signpost or as part of a boardwalk, or...

    Sorry for my blindness. I can tell a good bit of work went into it - I just don't understand how it's hidden in plain sight.

    S-4-C

     

    Edit...

    Nevermind! I went to the cache page noted above the last post. Like I said, I'm blind. :anibad:

     

    Very well done.

  15. First, I have to comment on your nick. I thought I was the only Strapped out there. For convenience I've taken to abbreviating mine to S-4-C.

     

    Back to the topic. I enjoy and have placed puzzle caches as well as a few easy hides. I am by no means prolific in my hides, though. About a year ago we had someone in my area who decided to start placing boatloads of micros throughout the area. His hides soon began to consume PQ content and shrink the area that a PQ would cover due to the volume of the micros he had placed. His containers were inventive and he had chosen some good (and not so good) locations to place them.

     

    The easiest solution was to implement the "ignore" feature or to filter PQs for micros only, having a second PQ for all others. Although you may not want to see or work on this cachers hides, they have still been placed and other cachers may enjoy hunting them. There's no rule that says you have to find every one in your area.

     

    If the person placing these caches has managed to use up all of the viable spots to place a cache then I might be inclined to start a dialogue with them. However, the area I live in is far from being saturated even with as many hides as are already out there.

     

    Hopefully the advice you've received in this thread will have helped. There's too many caches out there to get bent out of shape over a few that you don't like. Chase down the ones you DO like and ignore the rest.

     

    Regards,

     

    S-4-C

  16. Another idea I've had (and I'll quit geocaching if this hasn't been done by someone already) is a video game which you need to beat to get the coordinates (or the coordinates are somewhere in the game). You'd want it to be platform-independant, so something Web-based would probably be easiest. I've seen a lot of online puzzles, but I'm talking about a FPS or RPG or even a just a text adventure.

    Here's another along that theme: The Adventures of 1Geocacher. I've been trying to work up a similar hide out here, but life, as usual, has managed to get in the way and has pushed the work to the side for a while.

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