outlaw169

Don't be too discouraged. It honestly takes awhile to train your eye, and develop your instinct. My first time out, I went to 4 different caches before I actually found one. Since then, I've gone back and found the ones I missed before, and I was surprised that I'd missed them. Have faith, my friend!

I live downtown in my city. Most of the caches near my home are micros, since it's harder to find a good hiding place for a regular size cache. Many lightpoles and parking meeters have metal skirts covering the base, and those are favorite places to hide a cache. Magnetic caches under benches and trash cans are also good places in the city.

Cool! What if you actually took a real nickel, and milled off the back, and then put your engraving on that? Timwould's right. You really COULD take orders for something like this. I'll bet a lot of avid cachers would buy. You might have just come up with a new home business!! Jason

I don't have a dog to take with me, but Welcome to the game, anyways. A family of cachers in my area have a tracking bug on their dog's collar for others to log when they see him. Just an idea for ya.

We've all seen caches damaged by animals, taken away by high water, and some blown up by bomb squads. I think I have a new first..Sunk by an iceberg! http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...a7-3838168ea55a When the river broke last week, due to a warm spell, the large chunks of ice floated downstream and got shoved onto land at a bend in the river. It pushed over trees, and smashed the container! How were your caches destroyed? Do you have any cool stories? Post them here! Jason

I think I'm going to take a page from that book. I just sent an E-mail to my Police Chief and asked to talk with him about it, and what we can do to prevent this from happening in my area.

Been there before! more than once have I rushed out the door without bringing ANYTHING with me! As for HPG-Hermit's yellowjackets - I can relate. I stepped in a big ground nest once, goy my foot wedged, and got swarmed pretty badly. Sadly, this was shortly after crawling across a creek dam over the rocks. Getting back across in a BIG hurry didn't work out quite so well!

Sweet! maybe they'll let me borrow one for a few hours! LOL!

Yea, I know I didn't correctly use the term "Darwin Award." It was more intended for humor. You're right, Doc. I could have just bought a new biner, and since then, I've bought a few of them. But, as skisidedown said, it's just the principle of the thing. By now, the steel pivot pin and spring are probably rusty, so even when (yes, i said when) I get it back, it's probably no longer safe to use anyways. I went back with goggles and my SureFire, but no luck. We tied my rope around a heavy rock, and dropped it off the edge of the bridge, about where I think the biner hit the water so we could use the rope to get down to the bottom faster, and have "Ground Zero" to start from. Then I took my mini-Maglight, clipped it to the rope, and let it slide down to the bottom so that, as we got close to the bottom, we could see some sort of a glow. The water is murky, and you can't see see much more than about a foot in front of you. But the deeper I go, the thicker it got, and the bottom was nothing but brown with rocks jutting out of it. After about a half hour of 30-second intervals of searching, I gave up. But I'm going back as soon as it warms up! I have an small video camera that runs off a 9-volt battery, and I've devised a waterproof container that it fits into, and looks through a small glass window. The camera can see in infrared, and has a bunch of IR lights on it, too. I'm gonna weight it down and lower it into the water so I can look around. When that doesn't work out like I think it's going to, I'll come up with something else!! Yes, this is dumb, and yes, any normal person would cut losses and give up. But D@mnit, I want my biner back!!!

I agree that there will always be false alarms. But I think we can minimize them by making sure we put labels on our cache containers. With the invention of the Lock 'n' Lock, it's easy to find a good solid container that you can look into and see what's inside. It stands to reason that a clear box that's got a label on it, with a link to the website, is less likely to be blown up than an unmarked ammo can.

So I went back, but still no luck. I tried a magnet and fishing line, but that didn't work. THen I remembered that the biner is aluminum, not steel. So then it was diving down with my mini-maglight. Can't see a thing. Off to the store for some swimming goggles. But the light it still too dark to really see anything! Off to the store again to get some new batteries for my SureFire. Now if I can't find it with that, then something is wrong. It was getting late though, so I'm gonna go back tomorrow. I got the cache placed today though!! Jason

I was out with a friend of mine, placing a tough cache at a bridge over a small creek. As I was going for a higher difficulty.terrain level, I brought along the rappelling gear, planning on going down the side of the bridge. I tied up the rope, harnessed in and got everything ready and safe for my decent. I would be using double-strand of 7/16 inch rope and a figure 8 descender to make my way down. So I walk up to the edge, unclip my carabiner from the descender to I can wrap the rope around...... .......KERPLUNK!!!!!! There went my ONLY weigh-bearing biner, right out of my hands, and into the water below! Now this makes me mad, and as this is a pretty small creek, I figure it's not too far down, and I'm going in after it. I wrap the rope through the descender, TIE the descender to my harness with some rope, and drop off the edge, stopping myself a couple of feet above the water's surface. I lower myself a few more inches and stick my foot in the water, but can't find the bottom! my friend finds a nice long board. and drops it end-first into the water, where it dips completely below before bobbing back up again! This water is deeper than I thought. So here I am, hanging at the end of a rope with my tailfeathers in the COLD water, trying to figure out what to do. I want to set up a prusik climb so I can get back up the rope, but I don't have my carabiner to hook up to the rope with. I finally figured out how to do it, but not before I ended up completely in the drink, and I spent a half hour before I finally got my tail into the air! In hindsight, I've found that the water is about 7 feet deep there, and I could have dunked in there if there was more light. Tomorrow, I am going back for my biner!! Your turn. What darwin awards have you earned in your caching days? Tell your best stories here! Jason

Violence is always a last resort to me, and I avoid it as much as I possibly can. But, as has been mentioned, there are bad people in this world, and they do bad things. The choice isn't always mine to make. It would be nice if no one would ever try to harm another. It would be wonderful if bad people would just stop being bad. Nothing would make me happier than telling such people to 'Stop it' and have them listen to me. I can't expect that, though. I wish I could, but I can't. And when the wolf comes to the door, I can either let him hurt me and my family, or I can stop him. I choose to stop him. Retired LTC Dave Grossman wrote a little something entitled "On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs" and it is something that, in my humble opinion, should be required reading for anyone trying to gain understanding of such a topic as this. I will quote a small part of it... -----The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours. Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, "Baa."----- I hate violence, and I pray that it never comes before me. But IF that day does come, I will be prepared for it.

My sidearm is like my wallet and my keys. If I don't have it on me when I walk out the door, something just feels wrong to me. The only time I leave it at home is if I'm going to the post office, or out to dinner and think I might have a drink or 2. "There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men." -Edmund Burke

2 wheels for me! Most of the time, I'm caching on my Buell. More fun to have your hair in the wind, and bugs in your teeth! Jason