gazzNsam

cheers for the link, basicaly with my new GF we will visit the caches i have done already so she gets to visit them, a lot of the caches arent there anymore tho, but i'm not a mad cacher, only done about 30 or 40 of them if that. it was the travel bugs i was most worried about, tho ones been stolen in south africa, and i thought i had lost another, but finaly got in contact with the person who's had it since may, and she's sending it back to me as its a TB for one of my pet rats who died today, so as i will have it back i'll either bury it with her, or send it back out as a memorial tag.

I split with my geocaching partner recently, found a new geocaching partner, and want to start a fresh with this new partner, i know it;s easy enough to just create a new account and get out there logging caches, but i have 4 TB's on my old user name out in the world, is there any way to get them assigned from one user to another? and if so how do i go about it?

seems this thread has answered a question i had, i have a vinyl cutter at home (only just got it) and we're getting a new car in May, which i want to have as a TB (it's a smart car, so may be small enough to be carried between caches i was going to buy some regular dog tags, and make my own car TB logo up with the dog tags tracking number on my vinyl cutter, but was wondering if that would be against some rules... like you must buy the car TB sticker from a registered seller or something. i want to make my own TB sticker as i want a specific colour to go with the cars colour scheme. and i want it to be a specific size too, and of course as i have a vinyl cutter it'd be silly to take the design to someone else and pay for it to be done. i have an idea for my car and TB sticker... i cache with pet rats, so i was going to put a stripe over the car made of ratties paw prints, and when they get to the back of the car, there'll be a rat sat on the bumper eating something, was going to be the car's logo in his paws with a nibble out of it, but now i'm thinking of having him eating the TB logo, Holding the bug by it's body and nibbeling on one of it's legs, the tracking number will still be below it's rear legs, so it'll be recognisable as a TB to log.

Got into geocaching may last year, made up some travel bugs for my pet ratties, i knew i wouldent be releasing them for a little while, but having my first TB dog tags i wanted to register them so make up their home page and all that. Moving house in July ment we put geocaching on hold, and then winter came put a stop to us going out (have arthritic join problems) when the sun decided to come back out, we got back into geocaching, and we released our ratties trael bugs the other day, but it looks a bit weird that their pages say they were released in July 08, and their first log is march 09. Is there any way to change the release date? or is that stuck as that's the date i registered them, i know it's my fault, i prolly didnt read something, i thought i was just registering the dog tags to get the web page and referance number.

i think the things we enjoy finding the most in caches are foriegn coins/notes, our coins/notes seem boring to us as were so used to them ,but seeing another countries currency is great, My GF loves finding a note with a thousand or million denomination on it, we really enjoy checking the currency conversion rate, to find out it's worth about 2p in english money but is such a pretty note for such a small ammount.

i started geocaching with my nuvi 250W, just downloaded one of the excelent nuvi macros for GSAK, got a list of the caches near me and uploaded them to the nuvi, and went out caching.... driving to a spot near the cach site first with voice directions, then switching it to pedestrian mode to make it track off road, then getting it to take me to the cahce. and at any time i could click the cache icon for the info on the cache that you get with the gpx file. The only bit i didnt like is that the nuvi wont show poi's when zoomed out further than 80 meters, my nuvi easily lasted an hour of caching between charges, and it gets re-charged when we get back into the car with the fag lighter adaptor that comes with the nuvi in the box. cheap enough to get an external battery pack to keep it topped up if you want to do long hike caches iwth it. I recently got a pocket PC with built in GPS, it has tomtom on it for sat nav, which is pretty useless for geocaching, but it gets me near the cache by car or bike, and i can zoom right out and see the caches on the map, which i love, once i go walkabout to find the cache, i switch to geoscout, gives me the compas with the pointer showing the cache direction, topo maps if i have downloaded them when i imported the gpx files, photo spoilers, again if downloaded beforehand, But my pocket pc's gps isnt as sensative as the nuvi, they are both sirf 3 recievers, but the nuvi has a very good antenna, in all honnesty, if there was a way to get a compas with destination pointer on the nuvi, and be able to show poi's when zoomed out, i'd get rid of the pocket pc tommorow.

Well, i'm getting a baby ratty to add to my 'collection' in a couple of weeks time, when she's old enough to leave her mum, but i aint putting her in a cache.... dont want to start rat caching decided to put the branden memorial tb on hold, i really want to find just the right pewter rat figurine, and i think i'm in for a bit of a wait. so in the meantime i've ordered 4 rat fridge magnets, each one is a differen colour/marking patern to match my real ratties... including the little baby ratty that will be living with us soon, So i'll release all the ratties TB's at the same time and have them race each other around the world, Now, should i release all 4 of them in once cache? or in different caches, i dont have any caches of my own, i guess if there was a caching event near nottingham in the next few weeks, i could release them then, but i aint looked yet, but whats the best way to release multiple tb's at the same time?

Argh! where the h*ll is it? "inside the darkness" what kinda clue is that? hehe..FTF! theres some really great pics on here, and i love the monty python ones we travelled all that way and there was No Geocoin! Argh! ere you take this geocoin and the old man, and i'll have the travelbug... also a silly video by Monty Python on how not to be seen! when GeoCaching.. LoL! "This has been Samantha, aka Sam reporting from Nottingham Castle.." "As you can see, Sam is no where to be seen, she is setting a good example of how Not to be seen"

Here's the sort of thing i had in mind Don't think he'd stay in a geocache for too long tho, and he does look a bit like a wild rat, but he dosent act like one at all, he's the softest nicest sweetest thing around.

I geocache on my motorbike, at first i used my garmin nuvi 250w, i got a mount to secure it to the handlebar risers, that placed is out of the rain unless i was stationary, i had planned to get a waterproof case for it when it came out (GPS warehouse have them, not specific to the nuvi, but almost any 'standard sized' sat nav will fit in them, touch through front cover means you can still use it in the box. but i then went over to a pocket pc with built in gps, this i mounted above the instruments on my bike, so it's totaly sheltered by the bikes screen, only way water can get to it was if i rode backwards this also puts the gps in the perfect position to see, the nuvi on the handlebars i had to look down to see it, the pda abov e the instruments is in my line of sight, i also use the pda as a music player on the bike, and have it connected to my intercom, which means i also get instructions from the sat nav through the intercom over the music, I use tomtom to get to the cache site by road, then i switch to geoscout to walk to the actual cache, i prefer tomtom over the garmin sat navs for the better maps, and nicer voices, but i miss the ability of the nuvi to take all the cache details and display it as extra info on the poi screen.... but i also love the tomtom's ability to show poi's when zoomed out, as i like to choose a cache on where it is in relation to me on a map, something the nuvi cant do (80 meters is not zoomed out enough to see any distance between caches) i really wish there was a way to get the cache info into tomtom like the nuvi can do, as at the moment i look up the locations of th caches near wherever i am on tomtom, then have to look up the cache details in geoscout, remembering the cache name or number. But anyway, depends on the bike he has really, if it's a naked bike, then a waterproof garmin is the best, but if it has a place thats out of the weather like under the screen, then he could see if he can mount it up under it, or get a waterproof gps box and bung it in that mounted on the handlebars.

I've just ordered my first tb dog tag set, and i'm trying to find a suitable fancy rat figurine, the reason i want to do this tb.... we were traveling around germany last year, and fell in love with a husky rat in a pet shop in brandenberg (berlin) we got him, and hence called him Branden. we got a cage for the motorhome, and he traveled with us down the old east germany, into austria, switzerland, and halfway back up germany's western side, where he became very ill, and died at just over 4 months old, he's burried in frankfurt, and we were and still are very sad he didnt get to travel with us more or see england. So i want to do a tb as a memorial to him, and have this one travel where he couldent go, i'll put his full story on the tb page, which would be a condnsed version of http://www.kampenwagen.co.uk/branden.htm but i'm worried someone seeing a rat figurine in a cache would chuck it out because they dont like rats or something, i had some calouse people e-mailing me after reading his story on my web site saying it's a good thing he dies, one less vermin rat in the world etc, and i understand some people just cant see the differance between a pet fancy rat and a wild rat (imagine your pet dog, and a wolf) and don't understand how much they bond to their keepers. i would like a lifelike figurine, but maybe i should go for something different? but still rat shaped, maybe a pewter rat, this being the chinese year of tha rat and all that.

Went out and did a cache tonight, logged it and just glanced at my user name and saw it's changed, logged me in automaticaly and all, woohoo. yup we both go caching together, Toffee our springer collie comes with us too, and occasionaly we'll take the 3 ratties too (lionheart, Noogie and Honey) but we couldent come up with a short name that encompased all of us, and all the rat dog related names were in use by people who own those doga that hunt and kill rats, ok wild rats, but i dont want my lovable pet fancy rats asociated with a name that means destruction to them If we split, we'll have to split the cache finds 50/50 i suppose

finaly decided on a new username, just a simple adition of my GF to my existing name, e-mailed the link provided a few days ago, just wondering how long it should take to authorise a username change? i dont want to go bothering the people who handle this as i'm sure they have more importiant things to do, but dont want to keep quiet and find out the request didnt get through.

For me, the fun in the geocaching thing is the imagination needed to hide a box big enough to hold some swaps and a few travel bugs, we've done a few micro's, but dont really like them, will do one if we are going past it, but wont go out caching just to get a micro, and as for nano's..... well i've done one, but that was because it was near a TB hotel, and i just felt like finding it and initialing the log, Tho it really does depend on the terain, in the middle of a city, micros and nano's are about all you can have, but as i go geocaching to get away from the city, i want to find big caches so i can see whats been left for swaps, and then see what's around the cache area, i really like it when the cache owners put in info cards of things to do in the area.

Right now i have the caches loaded into my tomtom software so i can brows a map and see where they are in relation to me, and also i can see any near my route as a drive/ride somewhere, but i cant find a way to get tomtom to offer anymore info on the caches like the garmins can, And i also use geoscout at the moment, just left the pda for almost 23 hours downloading the logs, cache details and map tiles for my 950 caches i have in the area i ride or drive the most... this makes geoscout take a good 3 minutes to start up due to all the data, not helped by it being on a cheapo unbranded memory card, so far i like how geoscout will get all the info off the web for me with a button click, update the caches logs and status off the web without running a new pocket queery, and will get the topo map tiles for the cache areas. but i'm not too impressed by the maps, but that could be due to my pda having a qvga 3.5 inch screen, i'm sure on a 4 inch vga screen they'd look great, but i think i'd rather get some proper topo mapping software that can zoom in and out with layers, i.e. giving more or less detail as you zoom, rather than just magnifying a scan or a paper map. The bearing compas is excelent, but i believe most other geocache proggies do that as well, what i'd really like is a way to integrate the cache data into tomtom, so that i can search for caches on the map, then click them and have the relevent details brought up in another proggie like cachemate.

I've got a ipaq RX5935 pda with built in gps (the pda is great, but the gps is very insensative, takes 20 mins to get a lock, even tho it's showing 8 sat dignal bars, it just wont lock) this thing has tomtom 6.01 built in, and i've loaded a set of tomtom ov2 poi files to it, and the bit i like about tomtom over the garmin is that with tomtom you can view the poi's when zoomed out, with the garmin above 80 meters the poi's dissapeer, BUT, all i have are the poi's names, at the moment i look in the area i'm in on tomtom for a cache, then switch to geoscout and look up the cache, and see if it's one that interests me, then go back to tomtom and navigate there, and go back to geoscout to get to the cache. is there a way to get the cache data to the poi's on tomtom like with the garmin nuvi's? i've still got my nuvi, i just dont like the garmin maps and not being able to view poi's from a zoomed out map of a general area, but i did like the extra info with the poi's after running the gpx files thru gsak and using the nuvi macro to upload them,

When we first took up geocaching, the first thing my girlfriend asked me was if it was safe, she said what if muggers/criminals could set up a cache somewhere isolated, and lay in wait for a person to come hunting it, the mugger would be guarenteed at least a gpsr, most likely a mobile phone too, I said it is a possibility, but like anything in life there's a risk to be taken, if you can't take risks, wrap your self up in bubble wrap and foam, and sit in a banks vault till you die of boredom, Being honnest someones more likely to swipe my pda off it's mount on my motorbike whilst i'm waiting at a red traffic light than lay in wait at a cache site, but when ever we are in woods, i'll be staring at the gpsr, whilst sam is looking around, and she will point out anyone nearby, mainly as a muggle, but we keep an eye on them just incase they have seen the gpsr and have other thoughts. luckily we have a dog, and take her geocaching when we go out in the car, but when we go on the bike, she cant come, i do have 3 pet rats, most people are scared of rats, especialy as one of mine looks like a wild rat, and weighs almost 700grams.. takes to hands to hold him, so i could always train him to be an attack rat.. be hard tho as he's a big softy. I agree with the eye contact thing mentioned above, i was taught to do that with car drivers at junctions when riding my motorbike, makes them think twice about pulling out on you and you know for sure they know your there, and they know you know, and wond do anything silly. I usually cache on the fly, we'll be driving or riding somewhere, and decide to see if there's any caches nearby, or tomtom will show me there's one nearby, but when we make plans for a day of caching, we'll avoid any in the dodgier areas of the city, woods no problems, but there's some places in cities i'd rather not go without a very good reason, and even geocaching is not a good enough reason.

i guess it's just the way things are going nowadays, especialy in england, health and safety is all anyone in power thinks of, it seems there are loads of people employed to go through lists of accidents, and as soon as they find more than one cause that was the same, they have to invent some legistation to get what ever caused the accident banned. i had an accident a couple of years ago, i had a mobile phone in it's hands free kit, my pda runnning it's gps proggy on the dash, the radio playing, my girlfriend talking to me and petting my dog in the back, yet none of them caused the accident, i was distracted by another accident that had just happened on the opposite caridgeway, i know i should have ignored it and concentrated on driving my own vehicle, but it's hard to not be distracted by 3 vehicles slamming into each other by the side of you and one of them heading for the crash barrier and almost over it into my caridgeway. i was distracted for a few seconds, but that was enough time for the people in front of me to decide to stop dead and block the road, so surely accidents need banning then??

Getting a pda with a built in gpsr, IPAQ RX5935, running windowz mobile 5 pro) it has tomtom 6 on it as standard, and i'll keep that to navigate to the cache area in the car, but when i get to the cache site, i want to switch to a topo map. There seem so many available tho, What i want, decent quality that looks like a paper map rather than something that's been drawn in crayon by a 6 year old in art class. all the uk maps stored on the pda, as i travel about a lot in my motorhome, and i never make plans to where i'm going, i just drive in a general direction and see what's there, so i want to be able to stop in a place, look for caches near by, and make a route to it on the pda without having to faff about with a pc and transfering routes with map tiles to the pda. All the paths shown, and if possible distinctions between tiny narrow one man at a time paths, cart tracks, green lanes, tarmacked paths and roads. Obviousely the ability to load the waypoints for the caches on to the maps, and able to see them from a height greater than 80 meters, that's what i really hate about my garmin nuvi, poi's arent shown till your very low down at street level, that's useless to see what's in the area. i really like the idea of these 3d map views, where it can show you the terain in real life so to speak, but that's a luxuary rather than a must have.

Cheers for those suggestions, i like the sound of geoscout, but i've just checked it out, and stopped reading when i saw the price, looked at cachemate, i like the look of that, but he mentioned gpxsonar, saying the cachemate software is for editing everything, gpxsonar is really just a viewer and logger, so i'm currently looking at gpxsonar, the main site is down, so dunno whats happened, it's mirrored in a few places, but is for WM2003, so i guess work has stopped on that project, but from what i've seen so far, it's just what i want for the logging, TB logging, finding etc part of the game, i'll look into what i can use for topo maps, and use the proggies seperately.

I've been geocaching with my garmin nuvi 250W for a week, used the gsak thingy to load the caches as poi's, and the garmin has let me find the caches i want ok, but i've never liked the garmin interface or maps much. So i've just bought an ipaq RX5935 gps pda off eBay, wont get it till after the weekend, Is there a list of usefull proggies for windows mobile 5 to use when geo-caching? the pda has tomtom6 on it as standard, but i'll want to find a topo map that i can switch to for the final hunting stage of the cache, i want something to load the cache details into from a pocket queery, which will give me as much info as possible (the nuvi can only handle about 1500 charecters as it's a bit of a cheat to get the details loaded to display out in the field) idealy something that can load all the info you see on the 'search for a cache' page on geocaching.com, i.e. photo's, click the reveal the hint etc.. so for the photo's it'll have to download them and store them for off line viewing (theres plenty of memory on the pda i'm getting, 2 gigs as standard, and i'll bung a 4 gig sd card in it) I also want to be able to write my logs for the finds there and then, that's the main reason i dont want to be using the nuvi, when i do more than 5 caches in a day, i forget the details to make an on-line log entry better than a tftc.

another Q so soon after my first i know. the other day i was casualy browsing the caches near me, and i think i was reading the logs from other finders, and when i clicked on one of the user names, i got a series of pages with detailed info on it, lots of bar graphs showing just how many caches they'd found, types and so on. yet when i try it again, i just get the page i get when i click my user name, the profile page, where finds are listed as text only... the bar graphs were along the page from side to side, with the graphs rising upwards, was i imagining this, or is it only for certian members, i believe the menber in question had found thousands of caches so maybe that's it, but it was very very usefull to see all that info.

i got a little exited when i signed up to be a geocacher, and just used a name i used to use when i was single. my girlfriend was obviousely a little upset about this, as we both geocache together, but in the exitement of discovering the caches, i/we have logged 11 founds, and have got a Tb and a geocoin in our posession. is it possible to have our user name changed? or do i need to start a new account? i'll obviousely deposit the coin and tb before i do that.... and if the only way is to start a new account, i guess i'll have to go out and re-visit the caches i found so far?? i've seen people re-logging finds on certian caches saying they have changed user names, but as some of them were caches on hold due to problems, they prolly never went back out to the site and physicaly visited it.