SSO JOAT

An additional question about adoptions... There is a cache in my area that was placed by a now banned cacher (yes, many of you know who, but there is no need to stir any of that mess up again). Obviously no one is going to maintain it anymore. Since the owner was banned, I was wondering if we should just let the cache ride as is or go through the process to adopt it? In this particular case, if it were adopted, I would feel zero responsibility to even mention the original owner on the listing. The hide is plain, but could easily be improved by moving it about 20' and doing a little paint job to the ammo can (which is original military markings and all). The banned owner didn't actually "own" the cache to start with. He removed an archived cache from elsewhere (reportedly with the owner's permission), crossed out the original name, wrote his in and dropped it in the woods at the new location. If we (speaking for myself or one of a couple other cacher hiders in the area) were to try and adopt this cache, does the banned member get to be involved in the process at all? Just curiosities mostly. I'm not in a hurry to go scoop up this guy's cache, but just leaving it ownerless seems to be a wasted listing. I guess the other option, since the owner was banned, is to SBA to clear the location up for a new cache listing by someone else.

You got it! There are a few more out there around Valdez that I have my sights set on, but the hurricane force winds and sub-zero temps over the last week have kept me at bay. I might give it a shot over the weekend though. Winds or not!

I'll second LBK on winter caching fun. I went out Christmas morning snowshoes and all and ended up digging down a couple feet to find a winter access cache. Judging the hide, it is probably a good 6' above the ground during the summer! The only way I found it was by noticing the string looped over a tree branch for a makeshift pulley system going down into the snow. Followed the string down to the cache using a snowshoe as a shovel. A number of other caches in the urban areas are much easier during the winter since it's dark and all the tourists have gone back down to America. One can search micro hides in very public spots without muggle worries in the early morning hours.

There is a local cache here called "Sweet Sounds" that is located next to a river in a canyon. It is an ammo box full of music CD's. They are all originals and the cache listing specifically prohibits any copied CD's from being placed in the cache and states that was mandated by Geocaching.com when the cache was published. As for the suggestion to make a copy and then place the original in the cache, that still violates copyright laws. When you dispose of the original, you must also get rid of any copies you made. A personal use copy is only allowed as long as you own the original. Tis the law.

All of my puzzles have had adjustments to the difficulty rating after they were placed. I started with my best guess on how difficult the puzzle is and winged in the difficulty of the hide. Being the puzzle creator, it is hard to judge how difficult the puzzle will be to others, so I watch closely to see how quickly folks solve it. If a puzzle is solved within hours of publish, I might drop the difficulty a 1/2 point if it "feels" like I over rated it. Then I have other puzzles that I figured would be pretty straight forward and they took a long time to get solved with many requests for help, so I bumped the difficulty higher. I currently have an unsolved puzzle that's been out for a few months that I have bumped up in difficulty twice and is now at a 4.5 rating. If it isn't solved by spring, it will probably be maxed out to a 5. Where appropriate, I make note in the listing as to how difficult the hunt is compared to the puzzle.

I'm rather confused. What do any of these questions have to do with the geocaching game? Can sock puppets play?

The straight GPS 76 does NOT have map capability. You'll want the GPSMAP 76 series for that. However, an old 76 for $25 would be a great starter unit. When you're fully addicted and able to run the 76 well, you can upgrade to a new, color, mapping GPSMAP 76Cx or 76CSx and get the Mapsource TOPO '08 to go with it.

Not true. They are both internally and externally different. Just for example: The 76 has a larger screen, is designed for the marine environment, accepts lithium batteries, comes with a larger capacity SD memory card, and uses an internal patch antenna. The 60 is for woodland use, does not accept lithium batteries, and uses an external helix antenna. The 60 also has the poor ergonomic controls located at the bottom so it requires two hands to operate. The 76 has the original Garmin 40-series controls at the top so the unit can be run single handed while you're on the move. As for lanyards, if you hang the unit from the top (like the 60) then it will be upside down every time you pick it up. By hanging a device from the bottom, it is right side up when you grab it.

My 76CSx runs all day on a pair of NiMH batteries without any cold related problems. Of course I always have a second set of NiMH tucked in an inside pocket and also keep a set of lithiums for emergency backup in my gear bag or pack. When not activley being used, I just slide the GPSr into the breast pocket on my coat with the screen facing forward. It keeps sat lock through the coat the whole day. Was just up in the mountains on an all day snowmachine ride the other day and had the GPSr in my coat pocket, powered on, the entire day. Pulled it out to check locations a couple dozen times throughout the day and it was always ticking along just fine with the outside temps around zero. When I got home and downloaded the tracklog, it had perfectly showed every twist and turn I made throughout the day (including the 3 future geocache hides that I spotted along the way). That said, I don't have a GPSr mount on my current snowmachine, but have used them in the past and got best results with an electric "thumb warmer" element stuck on the back of the GPS mount and wired to the electrical system. So, if you were going to have the GPS out and away from your body the whole time (not sure why you'd need to do that) then the hand or toe warmer pad idea should work well. Also, do NOT use alkaline batteries in the cold. They just don't work. Use NiMH rechargeables as they do pretty good in moderate cold or lithiums for extreme cold. And as mentioned, you can't use new lithiums in the newer releases of the 60CSx due to a voltage regulation problem. The "fix" for that is to drop the lithium batteries into an incandescent mini flashlight and run them for a few minutes to drain the voltage off a bit. Put them immediately into the GPSr from the flashlight or the high voltage spike will rebuild. Or buy a 76CSx (or others) that has a volatge regulator for the lithium batteries built in.

Between the 60 and the Colorado.... I would definitely buy the 76CSx as it beats both of them. And if you want to add maps, get the Mapsource TOPO 2008. For pricing, you can hardly beat Amazon.com for any of this stuff!

That is the best tip of all. If you "have" a TB/GC in your possession (or "stored" at home), why would one NOT want it to appear on their inventory? I've only seen the unpublished cache method used by geo-thieves to hide stolen property, so I don't really understand the legitimate need to use an unpublished cache for "hiding" bugs/coins from public view. That said, if you really did need to remove some of your own bugs (e.g. they are in a collection and will never travel), then I'd suggest that the puzzle cache is how to go. Make a puzzle cache very close to your residence, such as in the center of a street intersection within a block or so. The "hidden" final coords at your house and the cache listing can be as simple as a quick note explaining the purpose of the cache to as complicated as pictures of your collection. Publish the cache, then archive it. Now it is viewable, yet won't show up on a search. If someone clicks on the link to the current location of one of your bugs, they'll see your archived cache and not get the unpublished cache error. You can still make log entries to drop bugs as often as you see fit and have the inventory of the cache right on the listing.

These puzzles are what I call "easy": History Search Dmitri 69 Shifting Migrations Cache Flow These I feel are "moderate": Zoinks! Fire Mission These are what I call "difficult": KB Elementary Retreat Stone Pillars But that's just my opinion as I know how to solve them all!

Have gas prices changed? Didn't really notice. But changes in gas prices would have zero impact on my caching. Regardless of a buck difference here or there, gas is still the cheapest energy source available. At least until we all get those "Mr. Fusion" nuclear reactors on our time machines and can just use bannana peels to go whereever we want...

This is a very funny POV... So far, ALL puzzle caches that I've worked out required a GPS to find the cache. And ALL other caches that I've found, regardless of the icon, have required additional skills and tasks that DIDN'T use a GPS to find them.

Just glanced through your list, and the Morse Code one is actually GCTE86. You can naturally get a Morse Code translation via Google. May take some effort to solve it since it uses an audio file, but it sounded to me like it would be easy enough to just start making dots, dashes, and spaces on a piece of paper as you listen to it over 4 minutes and 21 seconds. Good luck with that, or maybe find some "older" person (HAM radio guy) who actually knows MC? I didn't try to solve any of these, but just gave them a quick look over to see what jumped out. So, looking at some of the others, it appears they all use different methods, so there is no single primmer that will assist. But the general methodology to start with is to look at the title of the cache, the published coordinates, and carefully read every bit of info on the page. Look at the hints, also. Usually the title will give some clues. Look for words that are spelled funny (like "Kash" instead of "Cache") and words that are emphasized in some way (italics, bold, etc). These may be clues or even the actual key to a substitution cipher. Puzzle makers generally choose their words very carefully to either assist with the puzzle, or in some cases throw you off track. Realize that the published coords are going to typically be within 2 miles of the actual cache and most often much closer. So in the case of your puzzles, they are probably going to start with N41 W085 and the whole minutes may be pretty close to the published minutes (within a couple minutes one way or the other). Knowing this, look for things in the puzzle that give away the 41 and/or the 85 as the start of the coordinates. One of those word puzzles clearly had these numbers "hidden" within the text. Look for an overall theme of the puzzle. One of those clearly had placed the names of colors all over the puzzle text. So I'd start by looking at that. When you talk about colors, you need to explore numerical values for colors. Look at things like RGB and HTML code values for certain colors used in graphics programs or web editing. Basically, just clue in on these repeating patterns or themes and try to separate that out from the rest to see what you are looking at. While we're talking about separating the clues, let's not forget to always check for some of the simple ways to hide data. Look at the first letter of each key word and see if these spell out anything. If not, look at the last letter of each key word. And don't forget to reverse the letters to see if something was spelled backwards. A very common cipher trick is to write your message out backwards, then encode it by whatever means they are using. Even if you start to decipher it correctly, if you don't recognize that it's backwards it will still look like gibberish and you'll think that's not it. Don't always think that you're looking for numbers. Sometimes you're looking for words and often the numbers are put into words and then encoded. When you have obvious letter substitution puzzles (which one of yours is), you can see the structure of the words and that the letters have been replaced. There are many ways to jumble up the letters, but always start by looking at ROT encoding. The hint on the cache listing uses ROT-13, so you should be familiar with how that works. However there are many variations on the ROT method. Google it to learn more. Remember that "A" doesn't always have to equal "N" as the alphabet can be shifted to any starting position. Also, there are ROT versions with include numbers and ASCII characters, so there are many version. Speaking of characters, when you see a code that includes or is limited to these characters: !@#$%^&*() you'll want to take a look at the top row on your keyboard for the means to change them into numbers. A pretty simple code, but there are a number of twists available on these QWERTY keyboard codes too. I can't provide more info on those other versions since I use them myself. Well, this ought to get you started. There's plenty more, but I don't want to write a book in this forum. I'll leave off by saying that if you Google "cipher" and start reading about them, you'll find all kinds of ways that the letter substitution codes are created, which in turn might help you solve them (and you'll find online tools that will speed up the process). Good luck!

Doubled post... can anyone say, "Mitsuko mis ring bone?"

Let's see.. I could give you some help, but since I own one of them and have only solved 2 of those KK puzzles, I'm not so sure I should. Tell ya what though... "Cellular" and "Tony Hawk" are stupid simple once you get through the "fluff" and see the "real" puzzle. "Stone Pillars" is actually a very difficult cipher puzzle. I've even given hints to a couple who have requested and it still goes unsolved. Message me or email me directly and I'll gladdly provide the same extra hints about which direction to take in getting started. As for the other 3... well I've got a hundred hours investing in trying to solve those myself!

Twelve Travel Bugs Eleven Geocoins Ten Lock-N-Locks Nine Ammo Cans Eight Bison Tubes Seven Caching Buddies Six Log Books Five Pocket Queries Four Wheel Drive Three Space Pens Two Hiking Boots And a Garmin GPS Receiver

Great idea. I'm thinking I'll be stealing this concept. Got the fire tacks the other day and it's been snowing. Time to head out and start building my first one!

The area of which we were talking is a vast wilderness area (~10,000 acres) devoid of such things as "cops" and it is open 24/7. Being Alaska and winter, it's also dark from 4pm to 10am. So one can do a "night cache" in the late afternoon around here... before dinner.

I got some of these and they are very nice. O-ring sealed. The magnets (2 included) are not attached so you can choose how to mount it. If you want it to be magnetic, put one drop of superglue in the bottom of the cache and stick the magnets in there. http://www.cache-advance.com/proddetail.asp?prod=CS%2D00050

Just a thought... it would seem that those sprays would readily wash off of the container and therefore not last long in the woods. So perhaps a good spray of the general area around the cache might help as well. Seems it would also keep them at a bit more of a distance during the "re-training" phase. I was also wondering if one could put some kind of small conatiner inside the cache like a perforated can (Altoids type) suffed with cotton that was soaked with the stuff. If the critters did manage to get it open, the sudden intensity of the fumes from inside might help train them not to mess with such objects. You'd of course have to make such a container in a way that it is not mistaken for swag and it should be clearly labeled as to what it is and what's inside. Maybe even such a perforated container attached to the outside of the cache would prevent it from being washed away so quickly. Just thinking aloud...

Oh, we talked about putting a ring of puzzle cache publish points around his house. But he got himself permanently banned before it got to that level. There's your karma in action.

The BIG question is... are you claiming copyright to this thing or can we all make one?

Oh yes, it's been "looked into". The original coords were actually right on top of his house. When we ganged up and started making his life miserable over being such a low-life, he moved the coords down the road a couple blocks to a soccer field. Rest assured there is no actual cache. All the loot is at his residence.