CBT69

"wait till first light"? SLACKERS! I've seen people hit it, on a bicycle on a rails to trails in state game land less than an hour after it was published, a 45 minute ride from the house, at 2 AM.

First off, you should make sure _you_ log the bug as out of the cache, and then "in your posession". ONce you have done that, whenever you log a cache, it will add a box at the bottom of the "write in the log" page that has any bugs/coins in your posession and asks if you dropped them, and if so, highlight the name(s) and it's automatic at that point.

And just how anonymous is it when there's just one find, and just one rating? Well, it's really not that big a deal, actually. The complaint above was that cache owners can (and some, apparently do) delete any negative comments they find in their logs. "Thanks for warning me I had to wade through an open sewer!" goes away on the 2/2 cache. But if I'm gonna put my name on there, it doesn't matter whether it's anonymous or not. If there's only 7 Smileys in the log, but 27 individual (yet screened) reviews that say "IT SUCKS!" it should be a clue, eh?

There's another thread, where several people said they would attempt to purchase them, to then re-release or mail them home, at their expense, depending on the owner's wishes. I wouldn't be too quick to scream "vultures".

And since everyones ideas of what is fun, difficult, etc. varies, it will be about as useless as the rating systems on Amazon, ebay, etc. (edited for errant comma) The problem with Amazon's rating system is it's individual to the review, (I believe). This would be an averaged system, which _might_ give people a better guide. Nothing is going to be perfect!

Agreed. An anonymous "Star" system, like most of the online "review" sites use would be great. Two boxes: "difficulty" and "terrain" that you can do a 1 to 5 and it averages them, and it's not changeable, except by the person who put in the individual rating. Course, it could be spammed, but I doubt that would be a major issue. The issue is, as you said, subjectivity. what is a 2/2 to someone with 1200 caches under their belt may _NOT_ be a 2/2 to someone on their first hunt. (as I found out.)

Well, I have no experience with that PDA.. but here's what I do. I use "Send to GPS" for my Garmin (might not work with what you are getting) and at the same time copy the GPX file into my Spinner directory. once I'm done doing that (either individually, or using the pocket query results), I run spinner.exe. Then run plucker, and update the particular channel (in my case, "geo") then hotsync. That's all there is to it! Ready to rock. (This is a Palm Tungsten C.. YMMV, but it seems fairly straightforward regardless of device). The only vaguely hairy bit is when you forget to clean out spinner for a while, and have like, 300 caches in there that it re-indexes every time.. then you have to clear it out to shrink the file down.

Create a yahoo group that is totally unrelated to GC.Com, and it (and anything) can be discussed there, as well as an unofficial list of "juried merchants" as chosen by those who have good, and bad, feedback about various sellers/traders/whatever.

"cheating" however, implys that you are doing something in order to "win" over someone else. That's the mentality that is apparently escaping me. In Geocaching, you are really only competing with yourself. I still don't see how it's a "cheat" on a totally random hobby that, in reality, has guidelines primarily. I mean, if it's a contest cache or something, then I could see it. But in that case, it would be a totally different scenario.

my .02 is that the only time FTF obsession bugs me is when people clearly violate the stated rules of the cache to get it. "dawn to dusk", the cache goes online at 8 PM in November, and the FTF log is there before 6 AM the next morning, etc. Or they don't use common sense and end up having the bomb squad called in because they are tramping around a building in the dark shining a flashlight all over the place, etc etc. other than that, go nuts! I do think hiding prizes is both a neat idea (especially for those that take some risk or challenge to get into), and an encouragment. But, I look at it the same way I look at puzzle caches.. I'm not real big on most of them, so I ignore em. If it takes me more than an hour to figure out the co-ords.. pretty good chance my name won't be in the log unless I end up team-caching with a puzzler.

That's how I used to play. I started caching the week Dave Ulmer hid the very first Stash. I found it but never signed the logbook in the bucket nor did I mention it online anywhere. I also failed to sign the logbooks and log online for the next few years for any of the thousands of caches I probably found. At some point in 2003 I broke down and started logging both, and it's more fun to me this way so I've kept doing it. Me too. On my admittedly small geocache smilie count (456). I have found 3 memorable caches that had a log written on the paper but never was logged online. The first was someone that signed TATE on a 5/5 near Moose Lake. The second was at PMOGUY's Swimming Hole and was signed by none other than Dave Ulmer "father of geocaching" as he signed it. The third was on a cache on the south side of Odell Lake on a cache that I was going for FTF on about a month after it was hidden. The log was signed by BK who said he never logs online and doesn't have an account under that name. When I logged each of these caches online, I reported the signed name so that the cache owner knew someone found their cache that didn't log online. If everyone who encounters this situation handles it as I did, maybe some who don't log online will start. What, exactly is it going to change? If I find your cache, and sign the logbook, I found the bloody thing. Whether or not you furiously scribble my name out of your book, or make voodoo doll of my caching name and stick pins in it, or WHATEVER, I still found the cache. Seems to me a lot of flibbertygibbing in the wind goin on here. I find caches to find caches. Once I'm there, sign the log, and off, I don't _care_ if the name gets scratched out. They all do when the log gets replaced anyway! Man oh man. Let me ask this. In what way does it hurt _YOU_ that people sign the log and don't sign online? Simply that no one has touched the cache in a while online? Most folks with caches I know wait _until_ somebody posts a DNF or two, or a maintenace needed request, before tearing off across the back 40 to check on their precious. Just my .02, but I think some folk out there (no one in particular) might take this all a bit personally, and ascribe a bit too much "power" to counts. Just go have fun. Do what you want, let others do what they want. Unless they are stealing coins/bugs. In that case, disembowel em and leave them as a warning.

"illegal"? Wow. The cops are gunna come get me? Seems some take this much more seriously than others.. wow.

We've found one of the five humans on the planet that don't know the movie "Rocky"

"no hints at this time" encoded. In the hint box. Saw another that _seemed_ useless till we found it. It was a sucrets box. In the middle of the biggest multiflora rose I have ever seen, and not a stick within 40 feet. Hint was "ow ow ow"

HAHAH! 500$ being expensive? Try medieval recreation! Let's see.. 1400 for a good canvas pavilion. 2K for the trailer to haul said pavilion around in. 2300 for a custom suit of armor. Yearly membership + site fees adds probably another 300 per person. all the accoutrements that are required: probably another 2 grand upkeep/replacement, several hundred a year. Nah.. I don't think you _can_ spend as much in Geocaching as you can in many other hobbies.. even Photography will blow geocaching out of the water. There are 1200 dollar telephoto lenses out there.

Yeah, I disagree. In many cases, being snarky is a reflection on the logger, not on the cache owner.

The one there that you can read the T/N on made exactly one stop. *grrrr*

I have a tinfoil viking helmet custom made to reflect GPS signals back up and confuse the black helicopters.

Local forums also have the possibility that you are going to run into the guy snarking you online and berating him and punch him in the yarbles too.. which tends to keep the vitriol and poison to a lower (but not nonexistant) level.

Shoot them an email first, and (without sounding accusatory!) ask them if they are certain this is the muggled cache. I attempted like, 15 in one day once, found probably 10 or so, and got confused while filling in logs which were which, and had to go back and edit a couple of logs to fix the confusion. It's _possible_ that they were just confused as to what they had found or not found, or picked the wrong cache to enter the data in. Never ascribe to malice what can be ascribed to confusion, until proven otherwise.

Not yet. I just wish, (re, specifically, micros) there was a way to make the ratings system less subjective. A 2/2 for someone who has 1500 caches under their belt is _NOT_ necessarily a 2/2 for someone who has four, yaknow?

I ran up on one years ago, as a teenager. Had a chance to look at him for a while before he decided to head the other direction. THey actually aren't as big as you might think, but I'll bet he _appeared_ 3 foot tall and covered in fire, to you. Glad everything came out allright!

OH! your deer comment reminded me. There's one a couple miles from my house, in a wildlands conservancy, on top of a mountain. On the trail to the first stage, there is a birdhouse nailed to a tree. Draped over said birdhouse is the leg of a deer. Well, _was_ the leg of a deer, now it's bones and a hoof, basically. The rest of the deer is in absentia. Just the leg, on the birdhouse. It's been there at least six months, and when I first found it six months ago, it was already bare bones.

You know, what's funny is there's a nearly identical photo, of two completely different people, on one of the roller coaster enthusiast forums I frequent as well. So watch out.. in the woods, you _could_ be telling someone you love roller coasters!

Whereas standing in the middle of a forest, holding a 400$ piece of electronics to your head to make it look like you are on an important business call, while you stealthily attempt to re-arrange a pile of rocks that weigh 11lbs a piece with your left foot while staring at the sky and whistling makes you look.. dignified?