aka Momster

Well done, kunarion. They look awesome!

I would greatly prefer to send out a "Proxy Tag" over the Copy Tags that say "Keep Me". The copy tags that come now I would never ever send out on a coin. I find them to be utterly useless and don't understand why they even send them honestly. I have a couple of them that at some point I'm going to trash. If/when those bugs go missing if I desire to reuse the number I'll be purchasing a proxy tag to resend them out with. I haven't bought a proper travel bug tag after my initial order and saw that. There were 12 TBs in my geocaching shopping cart and I was hours away from placing the order, when I first read about the change in the copy tags on the forums. I emptied the cart, and ordered geocoins and tags elsewhere to send out traveling instead. But for my birthday recently, my muggle sister sent me some of the new TBs. Luckily, I have a Dremel engraver I use to etch goals onto tags I send out. If the copy TB tag is ever needed, I can easily scratch the offending --keep me-- wording off with the engraver. A file and straight edge would probably do the task as well, Chokecherry.

<snipped> If only it was two years ago, when I was hiking 15 miles/week. Unfortunately, a few bad years has my conditioning down to practically zero. The doctor has decided to not do anything until after the problem bone in my foot breaks off , forcing them to do the surgery. Tomorrow is only day 1 of my most recent attempt to get back into shape in spite of the problem; way too early to place any bets.

Yea...I don't think I wanna list that info for the same reason.... BTW....You live in a beautiful place! I hope someday I can see it for myself. Have friends that have been there...but I have never made it. Hopefully someday! Buka2, I set up a free e-mail account (mine is hotmail, but there are others available) to put as contact information on my caches. Then I set that account to forward everything to my main e-mail address. That way, if spam ever becomes a problem, I can just alter the settings/change e-mail contact accounts. I can't recall having ever received an e-mail through that contact info. We cache in the same general area, so I don't believe your results would be very different.

Good thinking, Fianccetto! There seems to be much less angst posting about proxy travelers in this forum compared to the geocoin section. Personally, I'll move TB proxies as long as I can recognize them as travelers. They can be much more difficult to pick out minus the TB tag, though. On the other hand, I won't move geocoin proxies no matter how well designed. Icons in my profile are my list of geocoins I have seen in hand. If I move proxies, the icons of coins I have never seen will make my list record useless for that purpose. So I choose not to move them. Geocachers' opinions, and the depth of their feelings, about proxies cover a very wide range. There may even be regional differences. If you search the geocoin forum, you can find a number of threads on the subject. Proxies seem to be covered in the TB threads less frequently. Some of the threads include ideas for making quality proxies. A proxy would not have to resemble the geocoin or TB tag, but then it is often more difficult for geocachers to recognize them as movers, rather than just part of the cache’s swag.

My two best 2011-released travelers were purchased in an avroair grab bag. I don't delete previous logs, so they are disqualified from your list. But if I had cleaned their history before sending them out, my two best releases would be: Momster's Sheridan Cnty., Kansas GC Launched May 1, 2011 6874.51 miles Currently active and traveling in Austria. Momster's European Union Geocoin #1202 Also launched May 1. 8392.21 miles Currently active and traveling in the Czech Republic. After reviewing my lists, I realize that many of my trackables sent out in 2011 were copy or returned TBs, and unactivated GC drops. Plans are to thin my collection by releasing more coins this year. Maybe I should activate more dropped coins to end up with a better entry in the 2012 edition?

I ordered the TOL mystery version. It arrived today. It reminds me of a... (tell you later )

Hope this doesn't make you think your forum thread has gone weird , but why did you expect only geocachers with knowledge of the puzzle's subject to want to solve it? While the sharing of final coords is not something I support, why would anyone consider researching the answers to a puzzle to be undesirable? Yes, the smiley is an incentive. But I also like to solve puzzles that cover subjects that encourage research for the answers. Many I have little hope of ever logging for a find, because the cache containers are too far away. I just enjoy learning. One of my puzzle caches is bird based. It is time consuming for solving cachers to complete, but I never expected only cachers with birding experience to log it. IMO, encouraging others to branch out their knowledge into unfamiliar areas in a fun way is a positive thing. There was a maze puzzle that I spent hours solving with a highlighter. Computer savvy folks used programs to get the solution in seconds. They probably enjoyed the satisfaction of solving it their way, and I had fun solving it mine. In fact, I was so thrilled, I drove a 30 miles round trip just to log it the next morning.

It is very likely they never saw your note. Once a trackable has been picked up, it can be dipped into a number of caches and dropped, all without visiting the trackable's page. The mover would not get a notification of your note unless they were also watching the trackable. Normally, cachers don't watch a trackable until it gets dropped, if they are going to watch it at all. An e-mail to the geocacher that is moving your trackable would be a much better method to use to get your preference known.

There are some nice entries in that contest! Thanks for sharing the link. Unfortunately, I have no qualifying photographs to enter. I'm curious though. Is #22 of a very foggy day?

Thank you for choosing my photo mission idea. I'm excited! I have been wanting to take another ride in the balloon, but with the rest of the family. This will be their first time. But months have passed and getting them to commit to a specific date has been difficult. Now they will be motivated to help with your beautiful yanagi coin's photo mission. And I can't wait to get to see your cool coin in hand. It is so detailed, I doubt the photos were able to capture them all. Thank you, Team Yanagi!

Maybe TB2A0GD would be in the running? You would have to ask someone who has been there for the actual size. I have no idea.

You aren't quite alone, there are a few of us out there! The easy to carry camera that is always with me is just a tiny Canon Elph, so the quality of my scenic shots are not the greatest. (Oddly, the Elph takes quite good close-ups for its size.) I make an effort to upload at least one photo per trackable, even if it is just a discover pic of it at an event. Caches get occasional uploads of whatever caught my fancy along the way. Perhaps unfortunately, I lean towards the terrkan78 idea of interesting items, and the owners have more of a chance of seeing pictures of flowers, snakes, fungi, dining spiders or dripping sap than they do of awesome waterfalls and sunsets. 1126 uploads of dubious wow factor, and counting. Although, now that COs can delete photos without deleting the log, my gallery entries may be in danger!

How about photos from 400' above the ground during a ride in the basket of a large orange balloon?

Falling water is a great place to find rainbows. I think Natural Bridge State Park in MA would provide a nice backdrop. Thank you for hosting this cointest. You have designed a truly beautiful personal geocoin. Edit:An ed for that design #2: Oh, good grief! I meant adding the ed to the end of the word design in my post.

3. What “gotcha” into geocoins? The whole idea of finding TBs and geocoins in caches and moving them to other caches was exciting. Coming across the occasional geocoin and getting the opportunity to study the beautiful details in hand especially. It took a long time for me to actually purchase some though. The Celtic Tree of Life tipped me over the edge--I had to get one! Yet hesitation cause me to miss the original ordering of those, too, so my first purchase was a different coin. When the TOL coins were offered on remint soon after, I did not make that mistake twice!

2. How did you “gotcha” geocaching name? When I signed up for the previously mentioned hiking group, the internet names I had used prior were already taken. So I took one of the names we had used on score sheets while playing board games and cards as a family. Since I was hiking during my first geocaching adventure, that was the name I used to sign up for my geocaching account.

1. What “gotcha” into geocaching? Well Layla, I had read about geocaching more than a year earlier and it sounded fun. But I didn't own a gps. During a group hike, one member brought two cache page printouts to try to locate some caches along the hike route from the page information. We looked and was able to find one of the caches from the hint. I returned alone the following day and located the other cache.

Please only request one goal direction at a time. When you want your trackable to begin to journey towards home, just change the goal to reflect the new destination. It is very frustrating to pick up a trackable and have to guess if the owner wants it to visit Washington DC or to begin heading home because they want to pick it up in Arizona four months later. I like to drop trackables while on vacation with a goal that they return to one of my home caches. TB2JZB2 made its way from New York to California in 8 months and TB2JZAP returned from Rhode Island in 14 months. The third trackable released that trip has been wandering for 28 months and hasn't gotten within 2000 miles of home. I haven't given up that one day it will succeed! It does feel great to be able to go and pick up a returning traveler! Good luck with your TB, tuvas.

San Diego cachers are very active in the regional forums section. You will probably get a lot of good ideas if you post there. West & Southwest

Interesting. No matter that trackable owners release with what would seem to be a similar goal (movement), they are a varied lot. Some owners have made me smile with their notes; for other trackables, the owners cause me regret having bothered. Unfortunately, their trackables look the same inside a geocache container. To heck with mission statements; trackable movers need owner temperament cards!

This type of post is the reason I call this TB forum, The Whining and Unrealistic Expectation Forum. No, I understood the point and consensus. Snoogans quoted and bolded part of Gitchee-Gummee's post so I was under the impression that was the post Snoogan's words were being directed towards. They both also seemed to be on the same page concerning the issue. So I was just asking for clarification from Snoogans if there really was a difference of opinion on the issue. Equating trackable movement YOU don't agree with to loathsom human behavior is obtuse. As a trackable owner, I want my TB to keep moving, or be in safe hands. As a trackable mover, I must be pure evil to you. I don't often stock my caches with TBs unless I'm doing maintenance but I do do it. (Yes I said, "do do.") TBs are a trading currency at events and I prefer to move them hand to hand for the most part because I hate being the last finder of a TB before it goes missing in a cache I left it in. Taxing a brain cell to worry about the intent behind the movement of a TB or TBs that probably don't even belong to you is kinda petty and I don't understand whyyy people do this or why they would post about it as if their view of TB movement were law. Snoogans, did you miss the distinction made earlier in the thread between dropping a few trackables into your own caches and harvesting? Or do you truly believe that 25 trackables in a single cache are safer than being spread out among multiple caches? I have had some TBs sit in caches with that many travelers waiting to be moved. It was quite a few months before it got picked up, and only then because I had posted a note to the trackable's page with a request that it please be moved. Actually I think it is you that is missing the point of the thread. The original question was about whether or not it is acceptable to place trackables that you have collected into your own cache. The question has been answered and the consensus seems to be that as long as you are sticking to the goals of the bugs, placing then in you r own cache is acceptabel behavior. Harvesting and hoarding is not acceptable and is a practice that I think most people would agree is reprehensible. I believe that Snoogans probably believes this as well and was simply taking exception to the fact that an earlier post seemed to imply that simply placing a trackable in your own cache made you a leech... No, I understood the point and consensus. Snoogans quoted and bolded part of Gitchee-Gummee's post so I was under the impression that was the post Snoogan's words were being directed towards. They both also seemed to be on the same page concerning the issue. So I was just asking for clarification from Snoogans if there really was a difference of opinion on the issue (between Snoogans & Gitchee-Gummee).

I have long admired this coin, so it was nice to be able to add these to my collection recently.

This type of post is the reason I call this TB forum, The Whining and Unrealistic Expectation Forum. Equating trackable movement YOU don't agree with to loathsom human behavior is obtuse. As a trackable owner, I want my TB to keep moving, or be in safe hands. As a trackable mover, I must be pure evil to you. I don't often stock my caches with TBs unless I'm doing maintenance but I do do it. (Yes I said, "do do.") TBs are a trading currency at events and I prefer to move them hand to hand for the most part because I hate being the last finder of a TB before it goes missing in a cache I left it in. Taxing a brain cell to worry about the intent behind the movement of a TB or TBs that probably don't even belong to you is kinda petty and I don't understand whyyy people do this or why they would post about it as if their view of TB movement were law. Snoogans, did you miss the distinction made earlier in the thread between dropping a few trackables into your own caches and harvesting? Or do you truly believe that 25 trackables in a single cache are safer than being spread out among multiple caches? I have had some TBs sit in caches with that many travelers waiting to be moved. It was quite a few months before it got picked up, and only then because I had posted a note to the trackable's page with a request that it please be moved.

Dang. I missed your sale. My release/drop pile is woefully lean, and I have been waiting and hoping to get some more of your grab bags. What an evening to be offline. Have fun at the Geocoinfest. I am waiting to hear where the next one will be; 2012's event may be in a location were I can attend.