CacheCreatures

Renegade Knight, True enough. I should have removed the hostile tone from my post. An attack is not what I was after. But Eric does have a point that I agree with. Specifically, lets talk geocaching here and leave the philosophical debate out of the discussion. When I signed up, I didn't read that this site was a democracy. I read that a structure was in place, and if I'd like to be a part of this society I'd have to adhere to that structure. No where did it say that anyone who takes part has a right to demand change. It's just unfortunate that the forums have turned into a battle ground. But who knows. Maybe the battles will better the spot somehow.

Fizzy, does that mean some of the rest of us have a chance at FTF ? Ahh how my wife and I have cursed your name! Seriously though, some perspective is a wonderful thing. Mrs. CC and I only joined a few months ago, and as such have avoided much of what many of the original folks have had to go thru. I've got to say, the current version of GC.com has been an amazing tool to get us going! It couldn't have been eaiser to learn about and go geocaching. Take from it what you can, go somewhere to get what you can't. All the while, keep getting off that couch, keep getting outside and keep seeing what our amazing planet has to offer (before we destroy it). When you think about it in those terms, the website you use becomes somehow less important. Mr. CC

That cracks me up. The forums are the place where the clients say what they want? Lets see the actual numbers. If I had to guess, I'd bet members who participate in these forums makeup an insignificant percentage of all registered GC.com users. And even within that insignificant percentage, there is very little agreement. Much of the time, this forum reminds me of a self defeatist support group. A handful of people kick and scream and convince themselves they are majority. If you sit back and take a look, it can be rather amusing. Thanks for the post Eric. I couldn't agree more with you.

Here is the pic bergie_69 was referring to: Thats a biggun!

The small container discussion got to me wonder... what is the largest container you've found? It seems to me that the bigger the container, the more carefully it must be hidden. Lets see how clever people have been! For us, this cache was the largest. It was a large ammo can buried under a huge pile of rocks. To the cacher's eye, it was pretty obvious where it was. To the muggle eye though, it wouldn't get a second look.

One of the things Mrs. CC and I have come to love about caching is the titles of the caches we are about to find. We really enjoy when someone takes the time to come up with a cleaver or devious title. What are some of your favorites? We've found that cache titles like Root Canal and Tired of Mircos?, where the title is a kind of play on words or hint about the cache, tends to be our favorite. How bout yours?

The smallest we've done was this one, a pill capsule sized container that revealed a piece of paper with the GC blurb on one side and a question to answer on the other. This thing is literally placed among 1000s of possible hiding spots. Fortunately, as we were dividing up the search area, we stumbled right on it. Those Frobro guys are notorious for these! This multi also had a small pill sized container that unscrewed to reveal the coords to the next location. Thankfully this little guy was placed in a local where it was the only thing that could have possibly been a cache. So while size does matter, we tend to think placement has the potential to be far more devious.

Micros: Just like any other caches there are ok ones, good ones and great ones. The creativity that we have seen in most the containers and the placements have been really fantastic. I say keep 'em coming. To be able to get more specific in searching/filtering would be a great feature of geocaching.com, I agree.

We had a fun Thanksgiving weekend. We cached all around our area with a few hikes and some local parks. Then we drove into San Francisco to do a little caching in the city and near the bay. We snagged our 50th find. Hurray. All in all it was awesome having some time off together to geocache.

The revolution has started!

Seneca, while you did give voice to a apparent commonly held believe, I was not (nor did I indent to) attack you. If I've offended, I apologize. I think we should agree that this forum is no place to attempt view altering debates. The point/counterpoint debate could go on for 100's of posts. When I say freedom is off topic, I mean that in my view, freedom has little to do with cache placement permission; what it seemed to me Criminal was talking about. Perhaps your correct though, and that is not what he wanted to address. As for my last comment, it was directed at everyone who shares the view expressed by Criminal (assuming you're viewing the topic of this post as I did). Assume, for a moment that the premise of this post was cache placement permission. In that light, the comments expressed should be of concern. Isn't it my responsibility as a cache placer to understand, to every last detail, the rules and regulations of the placement site? I'm not reading that concern in this thread. I'm reading things like "approval to do as you wish is a given right" and "... [the problem with bringing] geocaching to a land manager's attention is that if a anti-caching policy results, existing caches will be removed. No one wants that to happen." Those approaches have failed miserably in the past, and will fail this time if allowed to be the dominate attitude expressed by geocachers. Please don't presume to judge. You simply do not know me and have nothing to base that on. Besides, the two categories Criminal has outlined are incredibly narrow and demonstrate a shortsighted view. This country is great because we all are allowed (notice I didn't say free) to discuss this and pretty much anything else, without fear of persecution. However we are not free to take an action without first understanding all of the ramifications. As has been so eloquently put, none of us know everything. Therefore, we should make every effort to consult those that know more than we about a given topic. Then and only then are we "free" to make an educated decision. Now, away with the debate and to the cache we go!

Case, point, match. Go ahead. Rationalize all you like. It is because of beliefs like that we will end up fighting to get back what we already have. How can you say your free to do as you please? It sounds like a child stomping around whining that since he can't do anything he wants everywhere, he's going to make darn sure he does what he wants somewhere. As a result, the rest of us will suffer. Do your research. Prove me wrong. Show me any example of this kind of attitude amounting to something constructive in the modern era. On a fundamental level, you have agreed to give up your freedom. Therefore you must adhere to the law of the land and obey the rules you support. Since IMO the freedom issue strays off topic (do some homework, don't take for granted the word, learn what history feels about freedom, understand the philosophical Juggernaut your playing with, realize some of the greatest minds this world has ever seen couldn't say they were free and why, then decide) I won't address it further I will say this: as a member of the geocaching community you have a responsibility to the rest of us. Your actions will effect our ability to enjoy the sport. My guess is you still wont care, and as a result we all will see just how your freedom kills ours.

We just introduced our sister-in-law and her husband yesterday too. We all had an awesome day. They too have been reeled in to the whole idea. I know they are researching GPS units today. CONGRATS on finding an activity that you can do together,is great exercise,something you can make as difficult and challenging or as easy as you want and is an all around good time. Just one more warning to add to the ones that Cybret mentioned is now everywhere you go you will think "Oh I bet there is a cache in that park" or "Wouldn't this be an awesome place to hide a cache?" It rocks! HURRAY and WELCOME!

No one can be told what the smilies are. You either click the blue smile and belive whatever you want to believe or you click the red smile and I show you how deep the smiley hole goes.

= A spring break party = MJ on the run = OK OK the GPS is not a trade item I get it! = The most popular guy on spring break = On the hunt for a cache = After too much time spent reading these forums = The most popular girl on spring break = After spending 3 hours on a 1/1 = After meeting the most popular girl on spring break = The moderators after reading this post

To me, that is exactly why a dialog needs to be opened. How long did it take this country to tolerate differing ethnic groups. Can it be said this country really does? Would the rights of anyone who is not white be where they are today if the "freedom" argument from above was applied. The movement may have started there, but it certainly has evolved into something far more constructive for both sides. Look, I think we need to admit we are different. We are not a typical sport in that we come, we play and we leave. In our sport, we come, we often trample, we find, and we replace what we found. To someone unfamiliar with this, who was never consulted about its validity, this could be infuriating. Am I the only one here who thinks about the possible black side of caching? Drug hideout, cache bombs, weapons store, a lure for victims... If the park officials/legislator were to offer a blanket approval, they'd essentially be giving anyone who wanted it a free pass to potentially do harm (from their point of view) on public land. When you place it there without talking to them first, you only exacerbate this potential threat in their minds. By forcing us to communicate with them, they are undoubtedly sizing us up. Are we terrorists or not. Will we use this for helpful or harmful purposes... To further the above: what would happen to us if a jackass did rig a cache to blow and someone (a child) looses a hand or worse. Now lets assume the cache was there without permission. We absolutely would be shut down (probably by the legislature if the wrong people got wind of the incident). They would be the ones acting first, and apologizing later. Does this sport have the financial resources to do combat in a court of law? PS: The freedom issue raised is inappropriate for this discussion. The kind of freedom that is written about above does not exist (and IMHO rightfully so) in our country. We enjoy conditional freedom. There is a huge difference. Your willingness to stay here indicates you support conditional freedom, and I'd suggest you all learn to be comfortable with that. Edit: Typo

Not to fan the flames but... Why is it automatically assumed that its all about power? Isn't there the slightest chance the park official(s) have a valid and compelling reason for complaining? The fact that they take the time to complain (rather than just remove the cache and be done with it) indicates they might be willing to listen. More to the point: consider the lock picking example. As was said here, picking someones lock = getting shot. Isn't that analogous to placing a cache w/o permission = angry and uncooperative park official? I'm willing to bet that if you knocked first before busting into that persons house, you wouldn't get shot. I'm afraid for this sport. I've seen it before with mountain biking. 20 years ago, so much of this same discussion (albeit not online) was taking place. Bikers exercised their "freedom" and created new trails, went off on their own and promptly got themselves kicked out of most state and national parks. Today's riders are now limited to very select (and most would say boring) routes because of the actions of some who refused to work the system from within. So whats my point... we all agree to live in a society that has laws. That, by definition precludes you from breaking them. The true freedom you have is either to leave said society, or change it from within. You simply are not free (no matter how much you'd like to believe that you are) to disregard any part of it. Knock before entering someone's house, and ask before placing a cache on "someones" land. This F-You attitude is probably why we are even having this discussion in the first place.

Ok, am I getting this right? With the upgrade to the Merigold, Megallen has created a unit that directly competes with the 60 series? Color is not important to me, so its not a key feature. Baro and digi compass are a take it or leave it for me as well. So, with the merigold I would get auto routing and expandable SD memory (and it's available now for less $$?) I've got to be missing something here because if you're willing to give up color for expandable memory, you can have a unit today for around half. Of course, this assumes the MapSend Streets works as well as Mapsource

What do you use as your: 1) GPS? PDA, Garmin, Magellan... 2) Cache notes? Paper, PDA (which one)... 3) Do you plan to upgrade in the next 6 months and if so, to what and why? My answers: 1) Garmin GPS V 2) Paper 3) Thats why I'm posting this I'm trying to decide what to upgrade to for auto-navigation/caching unit. The 16MB of the V is just so prohibitive...

Jeremy, might I suggest you have no need to respond further. Don't justify the inaccuracies and unfair comments with coherent responses. There are rules to this site. They work. If there is a problem, someone has all the right in the world to contact you directly and request a change. You in turn have every right to handle that request in any way you choose. Don't be drawn into a debate here that you cannot win. Remember, you're dealing with people that don't understand your motives in the first place. Sincerely, thank you and all the moderators for what you have done, and continue to do for geocaching in general, and my wife and I in particular. CacheCreatures

Wow, this is kinda sad. Jeremy and the mods seem to be making every effort to keep this a safe open area to facilitate communication about the sport that brings us all together. What is the response? Ridicule, objection, ill will and threats. Frankly those people are the exact reason there never should be an off topic board IMHO. I guess I just don't see why you don't go to yahoo or some other chat site and talk all you want. Last time I checked, you can even create your own chat room/message board. Talk about anything you want there. Here, talk geocaching. If I want to take my family to a park, I expect to abide by the parks rules. I expect everyone else to as well. If they don't, someone asks them to leave. Do they have a right to break the rules? Hardly. If you don't like this, take your business elsewhere. THAT is your right.

While I totally agree with you in principal, in this case I feel that as an officer he should have realized how his remarks would be received. There is a difference between free speech and inappropriate behavior. This lends itself very well to the whole "Roll Model" discussion. Those with authority (in any form) over the majority of us have a responsibility to earn it. In a situation like this, the officer absolutely should not use humor. Consider a different, more serious situation. Do officers really need us questioning every directive they give? Do they need us standing there, trying to decide if they are serious or joking in a critical situation? I don't think so. Rather, they need us to react, respect and obey. It sets a bad precedent to use humor in this way, and the officer should be reprimanded (assuming he was trying to be funny).

Lets talk release date. I've noted a few stating anywhere from days to months from now. Garmin's webside says Q1 '04. Anyone have a more definitive estimate? If so, whats your source?

I love my GPS V. It has the ability to get us close with the car, then get us there on foot. I tried Magellan, but the current mapping software is just so bad... As much as I love it, and as we all know, the problem, the big problem is with the V's 16MB. I don't mind waiting an hour for a download of the maps, but only being able to do 16MB worth is really hard to work with. I live in the Bay Area CA and the 16 covers only about 80%. So, what have you done? Have you bought a different unit? Have you just reverted to paper maps when you go somewhere out of range? Help a guy out here! I realize the 60 is coming out, and that may very well be the answer. But, if possible I'd really like to stick with the V. It just works so well in and out of the car, and I fear the 60 is more of out of car use. Thoughts?

I was out on the cache hunt just a few days ago and had to use my trusty Suunto digital compass watch. Everywhere I pointed it it read the same; SW. It wouldn't calibrate... rotate left, SW, rotate right SW, point over there to that huge transformer 10 feet away that was buzzing like crazy, SW! My head started spinning. Was this the beginning of the end? Thankfully, as I sped to the store to start buying years worth of rations I looked at it one last time and all was normal again. Conspiracy by the Ensure Shake meal replacement people? I'm thinking its no coincidence that they just rolled out their new handy dandy special plastic bottle and now were just hearing about this pole shift stuff? Hmm...