Algonquin Bound

Well, it would be easy to type out the answer for you, but that would spoil all your fun. This code can be easily found on the internet. Since someone near here used the same thing, I can tell you that I was able to find it and decode the message at that time. Try Google or Ask.com. As far as the hint goes, I suspect it is simply a clue for when you are actually hunting for the cache.

Here are the closest and easiest to Pearson. Code Type Waypoint Name Lat Lon PLACEDBY Placed Container Difficulty Terrain GCH31J Trad Not the Airport Hilton N43° 41.151 W79° 36.323 chris-mouse 18/10/2003 Regular 1.0 1.0 GCN65B Trad Carlingview South Micro N43° 41.062 W79° 35.651 MiloBloom 21/03/2005 Micro 1.0 1.0 GCR9YZ Trad Burgers in Plane view N43° 41.745 W79° 37.873 dex4 12/11/2005 Micro 3.0 1.0 GCH6KC Trad Death By Traffic N43° 40.192 W79° 34.479 Tiger-Bleu 07/11/2003 Small 2.5 2.0 GCJRTD Trad Airline Stash Cache N43° 39.475 W79° 36.562 vagabundeos 22/06/2004 Regular 1.0 1.5 GCN65Y Trad GO caching at the Airport N43° 42.308 W79° 38.268 MiloBloom 21/03/2005 Micro 1.0 1.0 GCV3F4 Trad Watching MORE planes from Dixie N43° 39.214 W79° 38.682 MiloBloom 25/03/2006 Micro 1.5 1.0

Please. Do! This is about as exciting as watching paint dry, except that paint is entirely reasonable and doing what it is supposed to do. Ok... I can't hold myself back... for someone so allegedly concerned with privacy and security, why do you use your real name on line? Or, are you really someone else? Okay... enough fun, boys and girls. Let's shut 'er down!

The standings page has not been updated. I know it is early yet, but it would still be nice to see some stats. All TB Racers have moved.

So... Tomtec has on his back: Annie, a stove and a cooler and now Annie's vehicle, with the built-in picnic table, plus he'll have to stop and put it all down, cos Annie doesn't cook. That oughta slow him down enough for me to catch-up. Tankity-tank, tankity-tank. And Annie, the good thing about having such muddy boots is that it makes it easy and quick to just slide across metal bridges.

And I thought I was "Mr. Last-Minute". Some advance notice might be an idea. I was actually on the OGA site the other day, looking for info or links to the chat and couldn't find anything. If it is there, it might be made easier to find. A note through the list-serv e-mail might be a good idea, too - just for future reference. Of course, I'm sure you got by just fine without me and that only a very few people were thinking, "Gee! I wonder where Algonquin Bound is?"

I'm going to try hard to make it, but I can't start until probably around 12:30-1:00pm - too late for the early crowd and way too early for the night gang! If anyone else has been considering this, but can't make it early, let me know. Otherwise, I'll just be playing catch-up, which means I'll likely just see everyone at the "apres event". This works out for me, since my reluctance and the reason I hadn't already jumped on board, was that doing such a challenging cache with a large group wasn't too appealing, yet I'd love the opportunity to see everyone.

Just keeping an eye on things. Of the 21 TBs I moved, only 5 have not moved on from the cache in which I placed them and only one of those caches has not been visited since the placement. Hopefully, with the warmer weather we are now experiencing, those 5 might move very soon, too.

Yup! That seems to be the entire list. The only one I didn't touch was the last one - "Which Way Do We Go by Maxima". Must have been moved before I got there.

My pleasure! Good to see them all moving.

All Travel Bug Racers have now been placed in separate caches (as of 9:00am this morning), so everyone can now claim Ontario as done! I raced around last night, 'til 4:30am, but I was stymied on a couple where people were just hanging around the cache (what are these people doing at that time of night? ), so I had to hide the final two this morning. Good luck to you all!

Just to let you all know my methodology. With the exception of the first racer I placed, which happened to have badges attached and I happened to be doing a brand new cache with a badge theme, the racers will be placed randomly in caches. I have loaded my GPS with relatively quick and easy caches, some of which I have found and some of which I haven't. The TBs are all in my backpack and when I arrive at the cache, I reach in and blindly remove one. If it doesn't fit in the cache (hasn't happened yet), I will reach in and pull out another, until I have one that fits. Most of the caches on my hit-list are regular-sized containers, but some are smaller. Some of you have expressed concern over the difficulty and or multi vs. traditional. Trust me, I don't want to do any more work than I have to and my whole reason for doing this is that I DON'T want to see any racer stranded. Since you are all over the country, you will just have to trust my judgement, in that any multi I might use will be an easy and/or popular one and that if any have a higher difficulty or terrain rating, my judgement is that it will be picked up very soon. Most of the TBs will be placed in the Burlington, Oakville, Hamilton area, where we have a high density of cachers and I will be close enough to monitor any that get stalled and re-move them, or have someone else do so. I have also decided to avoid TB Hotels, since that might be an unfair advantage, or more likely, an unfair disadvantage to any bug dropped there. What happens to them after I place them in their first Ontario cache, is beyond me. I will try to get them all re-placed as soon as I possibly can. Good luck to all of you. I had a great time watching my guy, "Feet, Don't Fail Me Now!", last year and he is still out there.

After reading this thread the other day, then glancing at the race page, I noticed the new rule saying that racers cannot move the bugs, reminding me of my frustration when my own TB got "stuck" in nearly impossible caches for long periods, during last year's race. So, I decided to make the 300km round trip and rescue all the racers. My original plan was to run around the Barrie area and drop them off one at a time. Since I left late, then spent an awful lot of time on one stage of the multi, plus I had an evening commitment that I had to be back for, I wasn't able to redistribute them today. I will get them out as quickly as I can and hopefully they can start racing one another. They will all then, at least have Ontario officially logged! I hope nobody minds.

That answers the log-book part. Thanks cache-tech. Glad to hear that was not a change I had missed. So the only real question is regarding this e-mailing of a code-word. As I said, there were some uses of this in the past, but they were usually for very specific reasons. The question is then, is there a trend toward requiring code-words, or have I just happened to hit a couple of unusual caches in a short time?

This started off as part of my post on a recent cache, but it seemed more appropriate to the forums. What is with this new trend of e-mailing a word to show that I found a cache? I have been out of touch for much of the past year, so I'm wondering if this is a hot new trend I hadn't heard of. Just saw something similar in Florida on a fairly complex multi-cache, where one has to guess to find many answers, to find a micro, with co-ordinates inside, for part of the final small cache. You must still find several other answers, using guesswork again, to calculate the other part of the final cache. Then, having done all that work, you still must e-mail a code-word from the cache within 24 hours, or your log is deleted. So... is this a new trend, or just my bad luck. I have seen code words used for other reasons... in fact, I used them on my Bruce Almighty series. In puzzle caches, I get the reasoning, but on something like this, I don't see the point. The first cache I mentioned above, was put out without a log-book, so maybe the owner did that deliberatley, thinking the e-mail would serve as such, but log-books are required by GC.Com. Or has that changed, too?

If you are in Camrose Alberta, this search should help you. You can also look at some of the people who have hidden or found the nearest caches and e-mail them for some direct help, or to go for an outing with them.

Forgive me if I've missed something, but who are you and under what guise and for what purpose are you compiling this information?

As I suggested, it seems probably the most unlikely place for such a "service". Even "Downloads and Links" would be more appropriate. Personally, I would never have any reason to look under "Sales & Service", but I often look at Downloads and Links, to see if something might interest me. You certainly don't have to be like all the other sites on the internet, or even other geocaching sites, but I just looked at six other Geocaching organization sites, all of which had either Downloads or Links or both, and none of which had either Sales or Service. Ah! Well, if the directory structure is already in place, you wouldn't want to mess with that! So, does that mean they will or will not be posted as GPX files?

As for the liability issue, as well as hiking, canoeing, backpacking, camping, sailing, fishing, speed-boating, wind-surfing, all of which have inherent risks, has anyone ever tried the mountain-biking trails in Algonquin??? I can tell you that my one experience, on what I believe was classed as a moderate trail, left me shaking like a leaf and thankful to be alive. I certainly would never attempt such a thing again on my own. The physical dangers on the trails - huge boulders, steep hills, fallen trees - as well as the physiological demands on one's body, were quite a shock and well beyond anything I would have expected. Having said that, of course I would LOVE to do it again some time, as long as I had a friend or four along with me, with a STRONG preference to any rider who is a qualified MD or RN!

Sales & Service???? Are you trying to hide it, BQ? I know this is ABOUT caching, but it isn't a cache. And boy, do I know that you like to hide stuff in tricky locations, but this is going too far. Perhaps it is time for a Downloads Section. You might even have a download link for a GPX of these files. Just a thought.

Well, The Blue Quasar is the undisputed king of series' in this neck of the woods (Golden Horseshoe area of Ontario). As well as the brilliant Blue Box Series Annie mentioned, I think many of us learned the art from his original Quasy Cache Series as well as the often-frustrating Bluelean Logic Series. Keith Watson's Micro Mania Series needs to be mentioned as well, though, or perhaps because, it too, was incredibly frustrating at times, for an incredible number of people. It also featured one of the most original and clever final puzzles I have seen, to date. As BQ said, though, the absolute best of the best was Flick's GHMCMC Golden Horseshoe Multi-Cachers Multi-Cache. Fourteen caches were hidden by fourteen cachers in a huge geographical area, each containing a clue toward the final. The Stats page alone, is worth a visit. I've been thinking lately that it's time for a follow-up, Flick. I'll be glad to help. Honoured, even!

Once again, Parks Canada has demonstrated ignorance of the geocaching community and the activity in general. Nice work. Perpetuating this inaccurate information on Canada's national broadcasting network is a very serious error in judgement. -TT- cc to rec.activities@pc.gc.ca Late joining the discussion, but I just read this article to see what everyone was upset about. Didn't see anything, so I scrolled up to find this post. The displacement of "animals and wildlife" (like they're two different things) is a bit of a stretch, but surely we must agree that trampling and erosion can be valid concerns. At a recent caching event, I had a late start in the day, so I was able to see a lot of the effects we had on the environment. Harmless geo-trails will of course be created. These probably will have no permanent effect on the spot. However, there were places where the "damage" done was actually quite shocking, to the degree that I wondered whether we would be allowed back in that park. I do believe that many, if not most of us, are environmentally aware and use the areas with care, but as the number of people involved in our hobby has grown, so has the traffic near cache sites and some people just don't seem to care about their impact. Of course, this is not just limited to geocachers. The same kind of "absence of care" or responsibility has been and can be seen in other outdoor hobbies, such as camping or hiking. It is mind-blowing to walk the Bruce Trail, for example, and see how much litter is being left on the ground. I will never understand the mind of someone who would do such a thing, but unfortunately they are out there and we (geocachers) have them too. If the statement quoted is not entirely reflective of the whole truth (people do damage, as opposed to geocachers do damage), neither is it so far-fetched as to invoke one's anger. Is it?

Just wondering who approved this cache and how and why it was approved: Klingon? Cache It seems as though it has never had the complete information posted, ergo it should still be pending approval. Just seems a little odd, to me.

Sue... it seems more than a little inappropriate to be posting someone's complete address on the web. Might I suggest that you delete that post, perhaps just leaving it as Fort Smith, NWT.

I can think of one!