Wulfster

Use a little threadlock on the bolt before you put on the nuts. You'd need a hacksaw to get it off...

Here's one of the containers after I added the "gasket": I couldn't find the stuff you use for tool handles, but this is called "Liquid Tape" made by the same company. I ran a seam of it around the inside of the lid. It's a little hard to see in the picture, but I also cut a small strip of duct tape to go over the hinge slot and covered it with a layer of the liquid tape. It says that it takes four hours to dry, so I'll run some tests this evening. You could probably use silicon caulk to do the same thing, but this costs about the same and dries faster. (Edited to add the image.)

I found these containers at Wal-Mart after Christmas. They're jewelry gift tins; normally they sell for $2.50 for a package of four, but I got them for 25 cents a package. They're a little sturdier than Altoids tins (although these are also made out of metal) and they seem to close tighter. The smallest ones are the same size as normal Altoids tins. I was thinking about putting some type of seal on the inside of the lid to make them more watertight. I've seen a stick-on sheet of rubber used on the bottoms of things, but I've never seen anything like that in stores. Anyone have any idea where I could find some? I also thought about the stuff you use to coat the handles of tools. It's a liquid that goes on thick and dries to a rubber coating. You could put a ring around the inside of the lid to create a seal of sorts. Since Wal-Mart has it in the tools section, I'll try a can and post the results here.

I've seen a few posts that suggest using Adventure Paper for waterproof logs for micros. These posts said to print it on a laser printer so that the ink wouldn't run when it got wet. I saw some Adventure Paper in a local store this evening, and it's supposedly made for ink-jet printers. It does add, however, that the print will run slightly when it gets wet. It also has a warning to not use a laser printer. Are there two different kinds of Adventure paper? I did a quick search on Google, and they all look like the same stuff I saw at the store.

Here's an excerpt from the official rules: It doesn't mention anywhere in these rules that the picture even has to be of the area of the coordinates. It also says that you can only enter once per set of coordinates and that the winner will be by random drawing.

I've had really good luck ordering surplus pins off of CheapPins.com. I see that they now have a site where you can order custom pins, but I don't know how their prices compare. The pins I bought were top notch (as was the service). They currently have a whole bunch of Sydney Olympic pins for 99 cents each...

They're $3 here at the army surplus store. The 50 cal cans are $5.

Or your Christmas present contains coordinates to a cache. The real present is in an ammo box. (Thanks again OneOfEm and family).

I guess it depends on the cache. If there's little chance of being caught and the hiding spot is comfortable, I like to sit down and take my time signing the log and looking through the items in the cache. Otherwise, I don't take any longer than needed. Yesterday, I found what looked like some type of terrorist training camp in the woods next to a cache, and I was pretty quick about getting done and gone.

I second the comment on JB Weld. That stuff is amazing, and you can find it almost anywhere.

I noticed quite a bit of the fickle arrow on the GPSr when I started out. After climbing the hill on the wrong side of a stream on two different occasions, I decided I needed a compass to complement the GPSr. Now I stand still (somewhere with a good signal) to get the bearing and distance to the cache and use the compass to move closer; just repeat until you're within 30 or so feet and start looking for likely hiding spots. Wal-Mart now carries a pretty good liquid-filled Silva compass. I'd avoid the cheaper ones.

GI Joe used to have an ammo can about this size. I wonder if you can still find them around? If I remember from my childhood, you could even open them up and put stuff inside.

Not really related to Geocaching, but I lost 35 lbs last year (from Jan. 1 to Jul 1) and enjoyed the new me for the last six months of the year. This year I plan on losing another 20 lbs. A couple weekends ago, I was on a trail around a lake (doing a cache) that had been much longer than anticipated. At one point, I got a clear view of how much further I had to go, so I jogged for a quarter mile or so (pack and all). I couldn't have done that 35 lbs ago...

The first sentence of the Cache Listing Requirements/Guidelines is pretty clear to me...

...in biodegradable cardboard boxes. With tissue paper logbooks...

I was using broken McToys, but I ran out; maybe you've even found one. Good thing I have lots of old golf balls...

These are guidelines and the speed limit is a law. Even so, drive 55 and count how many people pass you. They're probably just in a hurry to pick back up the multi-tools they left in caches when the guidelines say we "shouldn't."

Here's The Smallest Cache in the World. I don't know if it really counts though since it isn't really a container...

I must be blind. I thought it was something like that, but I must have overlooked the legend.

What are the asterisks beside the number of days since the last find on the cache pages? I thought it had something to do with my visits, but I see them on caches I haven't found yet:

It's in the options on your GPS (something like "follow roads" or "snap to roads"; I don't have my GPS handy). Before I loaded maps, I'd be close, but never right on the road. With the Mapsource maps, it's very accurate.

One more bonus once you've loaded the maps (in addition to having more detail): the track your position on the map feature doesn't work (or at least it didn't for me) until you load in the detail maps.

Although it depends on the caches (and what you choose to load), they usually aren't quite that big. I get the 500 closest caches to my house with the five most recent logs and it is a little over one meg (once it's in a pdb). You can't, however, load 2.5 MB onto a Palm that only has 2 MB of memory.

You just select the region you wish to upload (using the "Map Tool" from the toolbar), and choose File - Save to... - Serial GPS. You can only store a few zones in your GPS at a time, but it's easy enough to load new ones if you need to. The only negative is that it overwrites some of your base data that ships with the GPS, but you can download it from the Garmin website if you ever need it back.

Amazon is selling the Palm Zire for $39.88 after a $20 rebate. It's not the latest and greatest, but it is more than enough for running cachemate.