TheAlabamaRambler

As much of his list as is possible in one 24-hour period. I edited my post to make that clearer.

Please, if numbers runs and easy cherry-picked drive-up caches and so forth are not your thing, great, enjoy caching your way, but there is no need to post your objections or negative vibes here! "I don't like numbers runs" adds nothing constructive. A friend posted his caching goals for 2012 in our local forum, which got me to wondering how many of the items on his list could be completed in one day. His list: Find over 515 finds for year (1807 total) Find over 1.5 finds per day Find over 38 in a day Find over 80 in a month Extend 23+ day find streak Extend Farthest North Find (119 miles) Extend Farthest East Find (320 miles) Complete 366 Challenge (8 needed) Complete Fizzy Challenge (18 needed) Attend 20 Events Attend 5 CITOs Find 15 Unknowns (30 total) Find 21 Multis (50 total) Find 15 Earthcaches (25 total) Find 9 Virtals (20 total) Find 4 Letterboxes (10 total) Find 8 Wherigos (10 total) Find 3 Webcams (5 total) Find 85 Benchmarks (200 total) Find 150 Waymarks (300 total) Complete 16 Challenges (20 total) Place 31 Caches (100 total) Here's my list of those that I think we should be able to complete in one day: Find over 38 in a day Find over 80 in a month (day) Extend Farthest North Find (119 miles) Find 9 Virtals (20 total) Find 4 Letterboxes (10 total) Find 3 Webcams (5 total) Complete 16 Challenges (20 total) Add finds to any of the other goals not on my list. I see folks in the various caching forums asking how to plan a cache run from time to time, so I am making the planning phase into a community affair. It's purely an intellectual exercise done for fun and education. I've done a number of planned runs and know how I do it, the point here is to find out how you would and, as a community effort, determine the 'best' way(s) to go about it. Use whatever tools, experience and strategy you like to plan a cache run which accomplishes as much of his list of tasks in one 24-hour period. Work alone or with other planners as a team. The first task is to select a general geographic area which has as many of the various goals as is possible. Since he wants to exceed his Furthest North goal then a route from Birmingham to Huntsville might be the best general area. Then select target caches and plan the fastest route. Target caches cannot require a hike or long search, multis generally take too long and all but the simplest puzzles do too, so let's keep the D/T ratings to 1.5/1.5 or lower. GC14B0Z is on my front porch, so let's use that as our starting point. It doesn't matter if I have found them before because the folks in the car (four of us...I will be the driver and three will hunt caches) probably have not. You won't be able to claim a find but anyone who contributes to the plan will (if they so choose) have their names and ideas listed as Route Planners in the article I will write for The Online Geocacher. Two cache hunter slots are available. If you want to come spend a fun day with us in and around Birmingham AL let me know!

Here's the press release...

File a Needs Archived log for caches actually on or especially in electrical equipment. Let the Reviewer and Cache Owner sort it out. It's almost certain not to have adequate permission. Then you don't have to even get into the safety debate.

Skimmed the book, read Chapter 10. Found it cool that I know most of the folks he talks about and have cached with several of them. The Joy of Geocaching is also interesting if you want to read about the game and more cacher's experiences.

From http://en.wikipedia....ng_at_windmills

Not sure what 'legal' questions have to do with this topic other than to derail it. Placement permission or the lack thereof has zero bearing on safety or on a cacher's risk-taking decisions.

One of my caching buddies broke his arm and collar-bone hunting a cache. Three feet from his car. On a guardrail. He stepped out of the car, swung his leg to step over the rail, didn't lift it high enough, tripped and fell. Yeah, it's hard to act concerned and sympathetic when you're laughing that hard. You have to watch those 1/1's.

The closest I have come to dying in the last five years (aside from near-misses while driving) was at a cache in PA in deep snow. In the summer it would be perfectly safe. The cache is about 20' downhill from the trail in the hollow of a tree which is right on the edge of a 20' vertical bluff over a lake. Summertime, no problem, the worst that would happen if you were to slip over the bluff is you would get wet and have to swim a bit to get to shallow water to climb out. In the snow, however, it was a completely different matter. The slope from trail to tree was fairly steep, maybe a 10' down-slope over the 20' from trail to tree. The lake was frozen over. Slide down the hill, miss grabbing the tree and you fall through the ice. Mostly, you're dead. If you are lucky enough to surface through the hole you made falling in then you can't get up the bluff and you can't swim anywhere... you are stuck in that hole in the ice until rescued or dead. All of this was obvious from the trail. One look at where the GPS was pointing told me that getting this could be very dangerous. The cache listing rated it, if I recall correctly, a 2.5/4. Nevertheless I laid down my crutches and slid down the hill on my fanny, wrapping my arms around the tree to stop my slide. No problem. Nabbed the cache, signed for myself and my companion (who had enough sense to stay on the trail) and it's time to climb back up to the trail. I'm a 300lb one-legged old fart, so I push myself on my fanny with both hands and one foot up the hill... and slide right back down. Oops. Grab the tree. It took about two seconds to realize that I was in deep doo-doo. Firstly, we'd been driving around in a heated car finding fast easy caches so I was dressed for short jaunts from the car - jeans and a t-shirt. In 15° weather. Then, being from the South and not used to snow I thought the ground under it would be frozen and hard. Wrong. It was soft mud, covered with pine straw, covered with snow, and slick as owl manure. Try to slide up the hill grabbing small shrubs, make a few feet progress, it pulls out of the ground and I slide right back down. Hug the tree. There's nothing my partner up on the trail can do, nothing in the car to throw down for me to climb up. If there was a tree branch she could lower to me it would just result in my pulling her off the trail and we'd both be in trouble, and we're way out in a forest far from a town and rescuers. This sux. Man it's cold. My hands aren't working so good anymore. Dig my fingers into the mud, get my heel dug in. Push up the hill. Slide right back down. Love the tree. Finally I have my companion find and toss me a tree branch which I broke into foot-long sections which I was able to drive into the ground and fashion pegs which I used like a ladder to get myself up that hill. My God that car heater felt good. As I thawed out I thought what a stupid pointless dangerous act that was. I swore to never dismiss danger when approaching a cache again. I was lucky. Now, would a 'This One Is Dangerous' attribute have stopped me from going down that hill? No. It was already rated a 4 terrain. One look at the site told me all that I needed to know - it's a snow-covered slope to a bluff over a frozen lake... that tells you all you need to know, and no attribute or warning would make any difference once you've seen that situation. I made the decision to take the risk. It almost killed me. Should Groundspeak be liable for my stupid risk-taking? Should the cache owner? Should the cache be disabled during the winter? Should caches in places like this be banned? Should this cache be archived if I had killed my idiot self attempting it? Of course not. I looked at the situation and I made the decision to go for it. I'm sorry the fellow in the OP died, but it was an accident that could only have been avoided by his thinking "I don't think that looks safe for me". We live or die by our decisions.

D. Don't steal. It's not yours. Put it back and go about your business (this isn't). Your decision to give it back to the owner is also a correct answer.

I find it interesting that in 28 posts no one asked why the cacher was handcuffed. What's the rest of the story? I get checked out by police a lot, especially caching at night in small groups, and we've never had any sort of unpleasantness. I would guess that the cacher gave the cop some attitude. As has been said by LEO above, they can handcuff you anytime they feel the need. What did this cacher do or what were the circumstances that this officer felt the need?

Sorry, Knowschad said "No" I agree with him.

Sorry IMwhere?, had a moment there. Great idea if it hasn't been done already, but you will get better answers in the Geocaching Topics forum, where I expect a Moderator will soon move this thread for you. They give us a special pen forum here in Off Topic because we tend to be a bit too, um, irreverent here to help anyone much.

BZZZZT!!!!!!!!!!!! ON TOPIC ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!! IBTM

I know several former 60CSX owners who are very pleased with their 62. What is it about the 62 that you dislike so much? Slow. Less accurate. More difficult menu system. Compass is all over the place when close to ground zero. When navigating in my car I am often past the turn before the GPS tells me about it. Case is not sealed, when I press the power button the whole side of the unit flexes and creaks. Tech support says don't sweat the small stuff and won't replace it. None of that was true with my 60CSx.

By looking at the video? If you're worried and still want to post the videos, just to blur everyone's faces out of the video. At least in the U.S., if you took it in public where there is no reasonable assumption of privacy, none of that legal stuff is an issue. The issue is going to be personal, and it will come in the form of some very upset fellow cacher that takes exception to the idea. He/she won't have any legal ground to stand on, but that isn't going to make the situation any more agreeable. What he said. There is no 'right to privacy' in public spaces. You can set up a webcam at any cache accessible by the public. It's perfectly legal. If I had the money to spend I would. I think far more would enjoy it than object.

I rue the day I 'upgraded' from my 60CSx to a 62st. The 60CSx was a much better device in almost every way. Wish I had it back. In fact I prefer my Android cell phone to the 62st, it's that bad.

I walk on crutches and so made a 'hands-free unit' of a dash mount and a necklace of coat hangers. This kept my 60CSx about 6" from my chest, always level and always pointed in the direction I faced while moving toward the cache. This made the 60CSx the most accurate of the 7 GPS I have owned. I found over one thousand caches with it and developed a reputation for being the first in a group to find the cache. Excellent device. The advice to calibrate it frequently is good. I wish the 62st I 'upgraded' to was nearly as good.

Here's a great article featuring several geocachers, including my buddy CaverScott from here in Birmingham. http://www.fox5vegas.com/story/15902301/rachel-nevada-cashing-in-on-geocaching CaverScott says in our local forum: I love that he made them drive ahead to be set up and ready...Heaven forbid the TV crew slow them down!

Linky no workee. Try this one. http://onlinegeocacher.com/issue/real_time/article/extreme-geocaching-with-pissedfish

The Online Geocacher is always free. Just sayin'.

Exactly what I was thinking!

PLEASE do NOT do this unless you first visit the cache YOURSELF. Busybody cachers posting 'Needs Archived' notes on caches they have never even been close to cause more trouble than they alleviate. Yeah, no one like a Geocop or busybody, although I can see what drives some people to do it. There are "reviewers at large" (one very active in these forums), but I doubt their main job is to go on clean-up sweeps, or go looking in the listings for obviously missing caches that have no SBA's on them. As far as becoming one yourself, yes, refer to the knowledge books article. And sorry to say, as someone else did, a person with 145 finds, no hides, who has never attended an event, is extremely unlikely to ever get a look at being appointed one. Get involved. Really involved. As long as that doesn't mean posting armchair SBA logs. Both needs maintenance and needs archived logs should only be used in certain circumstances: A. One of the two 1. you have been to the cache and found evidence of a broken/destroyed container 2. You have previously found the cache and on return visit can verify it is missing based on absolute knowledge of how it was hidden For a needs archived log, a third requirement is that the CO has not responded either to an email, or hasn't logged onto the site for at least 3 months months (my interpretation, not Groundspeak's). I once posted a need maint log for a cache I had never found because it appeared a recent fire had affected ground zero. CO sent me a caustic note back complaining about newbies who don't know what they're doing. Later I did go find the cache, and ate crow because I had no idea where the cache was and had no business posting the log. Bottom line, the CO should be given a reasonable opportunity to take care of the situation before we post logs that demand the reviewer take action. I've only placed two NA, and both were after posting a log and emailing the CO to ask about the state of the cache beforehand. After several months of no activity, I did it to save further individuals from going to remote locations in vain. Here is an example of misuse of the NA log: http://coord.info/GC1T2EZ Many folks seem to misunderstand the roles of the NM and NA. There's a thread today in my local forum about the same thing, where a cacher says he won't 'stick his neck out' and file a NA because he fears starting trouble with the CO or the community. Filing a NM or NA should never be thought of as 'sticking one's neck out', and if filing a legitimate NM or NA upsets a CO, so be it. These note types have a purpose and an important role in our game, and when used properly should offend no one. At a high level; Use a Needs Maintenance when you find a cache that needs maintenance. That one is simple. It does not need maintenance just because you didn't find it. Use a Needs Archived when you find a cache or cache site that you believe has permission issues (behind a no trespassing sign, or someone tells you that you or the cache should not be there, etc.), or when you can't find it and there are numerous NM logs over time, or when for whatever reason you think the Reviewer should check the cache status with the CO. Remember that a NA does not get a cache archived, it simply alerts the Reviewer to communicate with the CO to get the cache back into compliance. Only when it cannot be brought into compliance does it get archived, and Reviewers are notoriously lenient about time frames and such. I don't hesitate to use these note types when appropriate and neither should you. We are responsible for policing our own game, and cachers who remind us to do what's right should not be ostracized. It is my opinion that any cacher who gets mad about a legitimate NM or NA should not be hiding caches. On the other hand, as has been stated above, playing Cache Cop by cruising the listings and filing NM or NA logs based on your perception of previous logs is not acceptable. If you do not go to the site and determine the facts you should probably stay out of it!

Why? If they had created a new one you'd just fuss at them for not looking for an existing one. It's relevant, no matter how old. Let it go.