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Oh, my! >BLUSH< Ya'll are too kind! Thanks much for your kind words. It's reward enough to hear so many have enjoyed my work. As to those of you seeking a copy: email me with your snail mail address and I will send one out to you. I will also have a stack of them with me at the spring picnic, so catch me early in the day, or take your chances on the prize table's luck of the draw. The DVD movie is a slideshow of my photos over 3 years of caching Indiana set to a fun soundtrack of caching related songs, and it runs about an hour. Since I took the music from my CD collection, I feel I can't sell these discs for fear of geting sued for the music royalties. But I will keep giving them away for as long as I can feasibly afford to do so. Since production is about .75 ea, and postage is under $1, I'm good for a time! Grins, -2q

Here's a great shroom I found last weekend inDecatur IL: Shaggy Parasol (I think)

Oh, I just noticed the giant puffball pic isn't there. I'm not at home, so I can't imbed the pics here. I can only send links. I was going to link it here, but can't find it. I'll send it from home this evening.

Ohh, I LOVE mushrooms! they are so beautiful. But I am not confident enough in my amatuer identifications to eat what I find, so I leave them where they are and just photograph them. Here is my webshots page of my best mushroom pics (Indiana and Illinois.) If you click my user ID, you'll also find albums of geocaching pics too. Mushrooms of Indiana But I did take that Giant Puffball mushroom home and eat it. Yowza! No mistaking that for anything else! It was 42" circumference and 6.5 lbs! Took it to work so others could helm me eat it. Fried up strips of it in butter, and made a lovely puffball chicken soup.

Here's my lost GPSr story from last year: Link Last Sat, my Garmin died. It's been eating batteries at an increasingly alarming rate; I knew it wasn't long for this world. Finally, last Sat I stood in a sunny open parking lot. My geep was inexplicably in night mode, and though it said it was seeking satellites, the bars for the birds were a flat line. Not a twitter. Monday, I called Garmin and described the symptoms. He said he could see that this was a re-furbished unit that they sent me last Nov to replace antoher non-working unit. He said never mind that te re-furb only had a 90 day warranty. and never mind that the original receipt for the purchase was almost 2 years ago. He said 'A GPSr that can't seek birds is just a paperweight.' And then he told me he'll send a replacement in the mail in 2 weeks. Free. Again! Gotta love Garmin.

Wow. You all must be rich folk. Try this link for quality vests at good prices. I bought the safari vest for $40. I like that one of the front pockets is big enough for a water bottle, and the neck is padded sweat and absorbant, so it handles the weight distribution well. Vestmate Super nice people there too! ( and no, I don't know them!)

Just a note to say Thanks again, Blue Deuce. Recalibrating the compass seems to have solved the disappearing arrow issue. Didn't have time to really test it, but a quick check showed the arrow at close range, and it wasn't there before. Will cache this weekend and check it out, but it seems OK now.

since when is geeps shorter than GPS? Maybe easier to say, but 5>3 all day where I live... Tried to reply ad mu ISP went down for a half hour. Sigh. Geep; not geeps. Subtle, I know. Like anything else with too many syllables, GPSr is a tad clumsy to type and a bit long for conversation. It's just a nickname.

I use paper, but am poor and cheap. Toner is expensive, and paper is landfill, so I cut and paste the cache description, delete the junk and can often fit 12-20 caches on both sides of one sheet. If all the caches are in one park or tight area, I'll start with a GC.com map. I click 'identify,' so that all the caches have numbers. I copy/ paste that list, map and all to a Word document. The I visit each cache page, copy whatever I want from the desciption, paste it into the list on Word and I'm done. In the beginning, it took some time, but now I've been working it so long, I can do a full day's cache games in 10-15 minutes. Which is less time than it would take my old printer to print all those full pages. PDA? I'm sure I mentioned that I'm poor and cheap.

Yeah, checked the pointer; it was right.

Thanks Blue Duece. The batteries were fresh. It did 'bake' for the 2 hours I cached on Saturday, and 3 more on SundayI didn't think about recalibrating the compass; will try that.

Last year, my sister gifted me with her Etrex Vista C. She'd had it for a few months, and said she didn't have much use for it. She's very outdoorsy, very athleticly inclined, works in IT so she's a techno junkie, but doesn't cache. Bizarre, I know, but what's a sister to do? But hey, if it means you want to gift me with a high-end GPSr, well, have at it! The geep was always squirrely, and getting worse, but by the time I gave up on it and called Garmin for help, it was a few days past warranty. That's fine, they said Send it in anyway, and we'll repair it and have it back to you in two weeks. So I borrowed a geep from a friend (Thanks again, funsparkles, your Legend worked great, and it was so sweet to be able to trust the arrow again.) and sent it in, all cynical and prepared to wait a month or two and pay almost as much as a new unit would cost for the repair. But 2 weeks to the day, I received a package from Garmin, and when I opened it, I was amazed to find, not my repaired geep, but a new VistaC replacement. No bill. No bull. (OK, it's a re-conditioned unit. I know this because it has maps in it for North Carolina, but that's OK, I easily replaced them with my Indiana area maps.) So, after working with this geep for a weekend, I am chagrined to note that the arrow just disappears from the screen. When I first hit GoTo, the arrow is usually, not always, there, but it disappears. Feet still fall as I approach the cache (after walking in a circle trying to determine which direction will cause the feet to drop.) But it was thickly overcast, under dense canopy. I still found the caches OK without the arrow, but now I'm wondering if the lack of arrow was a result of poor signal lock due to interference, or is this geep also squirrely? I'll have to wait for a sunny day and try again to see if the arrow stays without all that cover. But I know that if I have to send it back in, Garmin will be as good as thier word and I will not have to spend money on a new geep. Who else does that?! What other company says, sure we'll repair it or replace it free, even though you've used it out in the world in all kinds of conditions for more than a year? Gotta love Garmin.

As I understand it, (and I could be wrong) Doobies didn't find the cache, he found the FTF 'prize'. The actual cache is too small for the FTF prize, which is evidently just a paper with a designed stamp from the cache hider. The coords for that prize are supposedly in the Shelter II cache, but Doobies found it while seeking the cache. Wonder if he'll give it up to the real FTFinder.

My neice, on her first cache hunt:

This one's got you both beat! by Bad Majec

I work in the education dept at the American Red Cross, and I handle retail sales as well. Please check your Local chapter for class listings. Or you can even take a class online. The FA class online can be found here. If you live in the Indianapolis area, you will also find our in person classes listed there. The online FA class in completely done online, and you will receive a certification card in the mail a few days after you finish the class. You will see CPR classes offered online at that link as well, but please be aware that you still need to take the manikin skill session in person after you finish the online part, and for that you need to be local to Indianapolis. Or you can contact your local chapter for complete classes in your area. For those of you in other countries, I'm sure you can find the International Red Cross, or Red Crescent Society for your region online, though I am not sure if they all offer such training. Some may be disaster services only. You'd have to check. If you want FA kits or face shields you can find them here: breathing barriers and FA kits Also, look in the 'S' listings for discontinued sale items. This link is for our Indianapolis office too, but we will ship nationally.

I did one like this in Carmel IN. don't want to be more specific, as I don't want to spoil the surprise for others. But I know that the woman with her small child on the nearby swings must've wondered about the nutcase laughing in the bushes. I enjoyed the humor of it.

O how I love mushrooms! Check out this link for my pics of mushrooms found while geocaching around Indiana. Some are doubtless edible, but I am not cinfident enough in my amatuer identifiactions to risk my life and liver on a dare. so I just shoot them and leave them where they are. Mushrooms of Indiana photos

I had a cache I named Nice Swag Cache. The description said the idea was to thank the local cachers who hide caches for us to find, and asked traders to keep the spirit of gratitude in mind when trading. The cache is still there, but 3 months after I placed it I renamed it, since the nice swag was all gone. cache page It's OK. A few of the cachers I wanted to 'thank' got nice items, as intended. Since trading 'nice' is subjectve, and means different hings to kids and moms and truckers and programmers, I knew it was only a matter of time. Still, I was surprised at how little time it took. It's still an excellent location, and the hike itself is trade enough for a deserving cacher.

Mine is an aspen sapling that I picked up in Colorado about a decade ago. I whittled at it, sanded it, and clear-coated it. Then I mounted a ball compass in the top. Love that compass! whenever my gpsr has trouble averaging under dense canopy, that compas still knows which way is up. Aspen is a good choice: very lightweight, but strong. Not to mention, a pretty blonde color.

Glad to see this thread today. Little help, please: I found a Texas geocoin, with a four digit number on it, but when I put that number in the travel bug tracking frame it says it does not exist. Am I supposed to put something in front of or behind that number? I have already placed the bug in another cache last weekend, and want to track it, but can't see how. All I have is the 4 digit number that I found on the coin.

I know that this cache was featured in the forums before (last July) but I figure many haven't seen it, and it fits the topic. I didn't find it in July 04. Do Not Find This Cache

Hey, Jeremy: As long as we're updating the front page, how bout we take off the 'April 16th Is Cahe In Trash Out Day' item. It's nearly a month over date, and to new visitors will make it look like gc.com doesn't update the site very often. Just a humble suggestion...

Lost 72 pounds and kept it off more than a year and a half. Walking helped alot, and caching helped me keep on walking. Here's my before and after pic. As you can see, I'm not skinny yet, and at the rate I'm going now, maybe never will be. But I'm much better than I was 72 lbs ago!

OK, I checked out your bookmark list, and I like what I see, but how can I see all the other bookmark lists? It says I can view them, but when I click on the 'view all bookmarks' link, it takes me to a membership info page. where is the link to see and search the lists? I trolled around the gc.com pages and site map. Couldn't find them anywhere.