Capt Slog

I remember hearing that car airbags have been triggered by mobile phones. A person making a call had the back of his hand resting on the centre of the steering column while holding the phone and keying with his thumb, the air bag went off and broke his wrist (Good, he had it coming is my opinion). So it's likely that they could emit something which could interfere with the aircraft's controls. I think one of the reasons for having everything off in the plane during take off and landing is so that the crew have your full attention. If something happens and they are giving instructions to half the passengers listening to music, then the safety of everyone is compromised. I realise that the first time the plane drops 1000ft in 2 secs, you might just stop listening to Enya and concentrate on something else, such as keeping your lunch below the back of your tongue but you never know.

When placing one cache I deliberately put all the information in the cache notes and didn't bother with anything in the 'hint'. This was done to protect the site. I think a lot of caches are lost to muggles/vandals either because the cover in the area gets flattened or because cachers are spotted whilst looking for too long.

As well as being a Geocacher, I've always been a keen angler. This has seen me wading alone in Welsh rivers at 2am (yes, really!) and usually a long way from any help. I never worried until the day I found a man with a broken leg, making his slow way back to civilisation. These days I carry a mobile phone, but back in the pre-mobile days I attached a whistle to my angling bag so that I could summon help. It's still there, as it will never need batteries, never looses coverage, and helps searchers pinpoint your position.

Been here before, but "Captain's Log, stardate 25-15-04, the Starship Enterprise has just had a total refit; oil and filter changed, ashtrays emptied..........." I'm not a huge fan of StarTrek by the way, just liked the sound of it as a web name. (and for writing to Wogan)

The "most boring cache in Britain", brilliant!! That does have some interest because of the uniqueness of the loacation. I don't think that easy access makes it a pointless cache, not all cachers are super-fit-can-walk-twenty-miles-with-Bergen, there are a lot of young families out there too. I think "pointless" is when there is nothing about the cache site that would make me want to go there again, or walk along the same path in order to get to it. We've found so many places near to where we live that we didn't know about, despite living in the area for more than 40 years, and a lot of these are places which we will return to, to see them at another time of year.

Earlier this year we visited a cache and had too wait for an age for some muggles to move out of the location before we could search properly, they sat down for a picnic near the spot! We spoke to this couple, they loved the countryside, loved to walk when the had the time, and obvously just nice people. I've regretted ever since that we didn't tell them about geocaching, as I think they would have enjoyed it and the "sport" would have benifitted too. This would have meant that I would have probably have had to tell them about the cache they were near and I think this is what stopped me at the time. So, how do new people join us? I found geocaching by accident because I fly kites and GPSr is used by some to find out how fast they are travelling and also how far in a "kite buggy". And have any of you introduced a stranger to geocaching, and if so how?

Ok as long as its not automatic (ie system generated) because sometimes the holder might be keeping the TB with the blessing of the owner. I've kept two for months because I'd arranged with the owners to take them to Crete.

Not a big fan of the micro myself, and I tend to avoid them, BUT "Grandma's Buttons" at Penmaenmawr, North Wales, deserves a special mention here for the ingenuity, location and swaps. Its given us an interesting break in our journey a couple of times, and its one of the few caches where my old mum doesn't have to get her creaking limbs out of the car to take part. What is really annoying with micros is to go looking for a cache having missed the fact it's a micro on the cache sheet. Spent some time looking for a box once only to find it was a film canister. Our fault of course, we should read the sheet.

I can see the point of writing very little in the actual log book at the the cache, there often isn't the time in a busy location. But I like to write a good note in the on-line log because I know how dissapointing the TNLN type of report is. I think it's once you have your own caches that this strikes you. I had one once that read something like........... "Took nothing left mothing, bit boring really" I thought "well thanks very much!" although to be fair I think the cacher was refering to his own entry rather than my cache, as the "bit boring really" was editted out the next day when he realised what he'd said!

We regularly use PMR walkie talkies and own a set made by Motorola and a set made by BT (which also pick up FM radio, which is nice if you like to listen to "I'm sorry, I haven't a clue" whilst caching on a Sunday). The two types pick each other up as they both use the same PMR 446 bands. There are 8 main bands and all have 32 (?) "sub-bands" numbered 0 to 31 (if my memory is right). If a radio is tuned to any one of the 0 sub-bands, eg 1-0, 2-0, 3-0 etc the user can hear all the traffic on that main band, but can only speak to radios tuned to that same 0 band. Transmitting on the 0 bands is not legal in Eire by the way. We've never had any problems with other users on the same frquency, possibly because the power is great enough and there are so many to choose from, but we have had some interesting conversations with nearby garden centres when we've searched for radio traffic! We have all the radios set to the same bands, eg 2-10, 3-06, 4-15 and can then just say "go up/down" if anyone else joins in, though it's not happened yet. They are a great help when the whole family is out in the woods, especially when you have a bored youngest Slog who likes to play solo "wide games".

What do members define as a busy cache? One of my caches "Dead Wait", had 4 visitors yesterday. Now I know thats not a lot compared to some caches, St, Etheldreda's in London is listed as the most visited cache, and in a brief look at the log I counted 9 visits on Nov 11th 2004. But for a little village such as the one nearest to Dead Wait, 4 visits in day took me by surprise. I'm beginning to think that there must be a cache shortage in these parts and need to put a few more down! So, what's your greatest number of hits in a day? Edit:- to remove the URLs of the caches, they came up with me logged in!

Thanks Hokesters, that explains a lot of the problems I had trying to register "Dead Wait" (you're welcome by the way!). I've also noticed that the direction indicator on the cache search page (eg caches from a post code or your home co-ords) is all over the place at the moment. It showed that a cache was SE of me even though its co-ords were defintely SW the other day, and it seems different every time I look. And Nick Pick, I suspect that they've got the E-mail addres wrong too.

Some people we know have just started caching; my mum described what we got upto at weekends to her hairdresser who thought she'd have a go. So this lady found the geocache website and looked up her most local caches. These happen to be mine, and as they are easy enough (for a local) to do without a GPSr, she went with her husband to find "Dead Wait". She then went onto the Geocaching site to put in her membership details either on the 10th or 11th Jan but she's heard nothing since. I don't remember it taking that long to register, in fact I thought it was instantaneous. Does anyone know if there's a problem at the moment or has she got it wrong somehow?

Thanks for an interesting read. A good tale well written. I don't tend to go too far from the car, but I feel I won't be able to use the kids as an excuse for this as they start to get into their teens! I shall take your good sense on board and start carrying some proper gear. Cheers Slog Edit:- oops, forgot. Get well soon.

I use mine in several other places, one of them being writing to Terry Wogan! As for where it comes from:- " Captain's Log, star date 2302.796. The Enterprise is sailing through......etc" I'm not a Trekkie by the way. For the purposes of the net, my eldest son goes by the handle "Chip" (Chip Slog) and the youngest is "Suplemental". I've never considered it to be devious or anything to use the nicks, its just fun.

I don't think phoning a friend is bad. Now if I'd read that they'd "asked the audience" I'd be really worried.

I've been having trouble when accessing the Geocaching website. When I'm typing a report (recently for a new cache, and also on a TB log entry) the page I'm in keeps refreshing and I loose all the work and have to start again. Now I know that there is a time limit on the page for reporting/setting up a new cache and that its around 40 mins, but I was nowhere near that, we're talking of 5 mins here. The only way around the problem, was to write all the entries in Word and then cut/paste into the webpage before it refreshed! I noticed yesterday that the same thing was happening on a TB log entry. Just for the record; I'm on 56k dialup, Win98SE, and using IE as the browser, possibly quite a low version. Any ideas anyone?

A couple of questions. If I pick up a travel bug, how long is it acceptable to hang on to it before putting it into another cache? I have one at the moment that is taking part in race, (Oz Bug Race 2004), I could take this to Crete in August, and so fulfill part of it's brief, but I get the feeling that would be delaying it for too long. What are your feelings on this? Also, is it bad form to pick up yet another bug if you already have a couple in your possession? Thanks

Congratulations! By the way, you're going to have hell of a job replacing the cache

As we cache as a team, the decision isn't just left to me, and there is often quite a discussion between the kids as to what we will take. I do try to "play fair", but admit that sometimes there is an item that takes one of the boys eye's, and afterwards I feel guilty that we traded down. As Summerlightning said, "the value is in the eye of the beholder" but for children, value is not the same as "want". I'm usually relieved when they pick something they consider "cool" and I think it costs less that what we're leaving. Mrs Slog takes a more practical approach to the whole issue, saying that the items are there to be taken and that if they meant that much to the original owners they wouldn't have left them in the first place.

I have a few containers which are the type used to send biological samples through the post. They sound very much like the ones DeputyDawg mentioned, but these are clear plastic. I only got them yesterday, so I haven't had a good look at them but I was assured they were waterproof. If you don't have any luck, get in touch and we'll sort something out (perhaps put one in a cache for you when you next pass through Derbyshire!)

quote: Actually, Sarah has pointed out this looks like a 'holiday cache'. I thought these were not allowed. I'm sure I read something about it in the rules somewhere.

Like others have said, we like the way the cache takes us to somewhere we wouldn't normally go. We've only just started, but we tend to pick ones which are possible to do with the kids; there's no fun in dragging them on a route march. I can see that some want those long walks, just not for us yet. I also agree that seclusion is nice, I want time to read a bit of log when I'm there. I went to Waterfalls Spectacular (GC1873)on Tuesday, panted up the hill to the cache, and the turned around to see the view from the site. WOW! Glad I started this.

I use an old clockwork computer here at work, it sometimes hangs up when I've been on the Net a while. You don't say what you are using, but if you are on Internet Explorer you might like to try this :- Click TOOLS, INTERNET OPTIONS Where it says "Temporary Internet files" click DELETE FILES. I usually select DELETE ALL OFFLINE CONTENT as well, click on OK, it can take a few minutes of disk activity so don't worry. Then restart IE. Netscape etc have something similar. This will remove the stored copy of all the pages you have visited. If you have only a finite area of disk for these files, the computer has to get rid of some old stuff before it can get to a new page, hence it goes slowly on the Net. This is what I believe happens, I daresay its not quite correct and that someone will put me right. PS my PC always works after this, I take no resposibility etc. if yours doesn't, advice offered in good faith only

quote: If you give vague instructions look where they end up! Ziggurat of Ur......! I just love the map on that cache page, really useful! LOL at Bob / golddust1000