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mtbikernate

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Everything posted by mtbikernate

  1. the wife just saw that windmill and vetoed ANY construction projects.
  2. I've not really seen any truly good sig items in my area. I cacher from New England was visiting a friend in my area and did a couple of my caches. She appreciated them so much that she left her signature pathtag with her friend to pass along to me. It's the first pathtag I've seen. It's got me thinking of signature items now and this stuff provides some great ideas for me.
  3. I extended my last trip to visit folks in the midwest so I could hit some earthcaches about the New Madrid fault in Western KY and TN. Even though I already had KY on my map, I wanted to get these caches. I didn't get all of them (there were 6), but I did get some and I added TN to my map and had an adventure in the process. Let's just say I'm glad we drove the Jeep on that trip instead of saving on fuel and taking the Honda Fit.
  4. This is the area of my yard where I plan on placing the bucket. 2011 Spring Gardens by mtbikernate, on Flickr Folks won't necessarily be approaching from the same side all the time, as there's plenty of room for them to go all the way around it. Everything in the mulched area is part of the new landscaping that will contain tall prairie bunchgrasses. When they're mature, they will provide some thick cover. But it's going to take awhile for it to get there. Looking at things more closely, two of the trees are in my yard and could potentially hide the bucket with a rope system, but the lowest branches are just SO high, I don't think there's a practical way for me to get up there to do it (I lack the equipment and experience necessary to climb trees of that sort). Yeah, burying is out of the question. Even though it's my yard, I don't want to set any dangerous precedents. Paving stones won't work in this landscape. The path is going to be marked off by a different color/type of mulch (possibly a synthetic mulch for long-term durability). I don't really do big lawn decorations. The plants I've started in this area are all natives. This sort of thing is the inspiration 2011 Spring Gardens by mtbikernate, on Flickr But mine will have more tall, thick stuff.
  5. Yep, that's the problem. Underspray. That's an idea. I have some spray adhesive from another cache-camo project I could use for this. But, part of the problem with using the spraypaint method for camouflaging the bucket is that the grass will be shades of tan for part of the year, but will put on new growth at other times. Ideally, my "camo" would be more of a structural camo that would physically obscure the container. There's a lot of kids in the neighborhood and I'm sure they'd love to raid a big bucket full of trackable goodies if it was too easy to see when it's nice out and they're playing on the dead-end street. I've already come up with a way to anchor the cache in place to make the whole container theft-resistant.
  6. I placed one on an experimental forest unit of a National Forest nearby. It had a written policy posted online that virtual caches are preferred and do not require permission. I posted that link to the reviewer, and no questions were asked. I needed verbal permission (via the telephone) from a county parks official for an EC at a county park. I got written (e-mail) permission from an official of a private land conservancy agency to put an EC on one of their preserves with a publicly-accessible trail (constructed and maintained by local Boy Scouts).
  7. This is the sort of stencil technique that has not worked that well for me in the past. At least with thinner materials like grass and pine needles. Works great for leaves. Maybe I wasn't doing it just right.
  8. I currently have a puzzle cache in my front yard that has received some good feedback from the few folks who have done it, but I've got a quandary. I've been trying to find a place nearby where I can place a large TB motel since trackables don't do well here, and I want to improve that situation somewhat since my wife and I like trackables. I've been trying to find a location right off the highway for the past several months with no luck. There's plenty of open area, but those open areas, IMO, are hardly suitable for a big bucket cache. My house is close enough to it that it might work, so I've thought about archiving my puzzle in favor of the TB motel, which then leaves me with the difficult question of trying to camo a bucket in my front yard. I've read some previous discussions where folks mentioned hanging the bucket in a tree. That one would be one heck of a challenge to place because the only tree in my front yard big enough to hold a 5gal bucket is a VERY large pine where the lowest branch might be close to 75ft up. I could make it one heck of a challenge for folks to figure out how to get from there, but that's not quite what I'm after. I've read about folks using expanding foam insulation to create a fake tree stump. That's more of an option. However, I want to try to hide the bucket in the landscaping up front and an old stump doesn't quite fit in there. I've tilled up about 3/4 of the sod/weeds up there and have planted rootstocks of a bunch of native bunchgrasses and wildflowers and I want the cache to hide in that when everything has grown up. Right now, however, nothing is more than a couple inches tall. However, once everything is up, it should provide a lot of cover. I have some big bluestem grasses in there that can get upwards of 10ft tall. I have a short little path through the planted area and I plan to make the cache accessible from the path. I have plenty of camo spraypaint, but I have had quite a hard time trying to mimic a grass pattern with the stuff. Any ideas?
  9. Brunton 8099 Eclipse for me. I prefer the mirror sighting type in general (Silva Ranger is also solid). If you travel off-trail for extended distances, you want a compass that has a high accuracy. A regular baseplate compass is fine if you only ever stick to the trail, but go miles off the trail and accurate measurements become very important. I find that having adjustable declination (by a screw adjustment on the bottom, not a scale that requires you to do math in the field) is essential. The 8099 has some nice little extras. I find I like the circle-in-circle design of the compass better than most others with the arrows and lines. Personal preference, there. The little quick reference cards have come in handy for me when doing field work and I've needed to do something in particular, but they can easily be left home.
  10. careful with those ram mounts on bicycles. http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=280805 Most handheld GPS receivers have poor mounts for bicycle use. Garmin's newer models with the metal rail on the back, however, have pretty nice bike mounts. I use Garmin's bike mount for my Oregon 450 on my stem and it's been solid. I mountain bike with this setup regularly, so I'm sure it works even with jumps in the equation.
  11. I buy my Rite in the Rain stuff from Ben Meadows. Wide variety of paper styles.
  12. And Jeremy has already shut it down. Well there you have it. In my book - TPTB have official defined Series=Power Trail. Time for me to never use the attribute and to remove the word "series" from any of my caches and descriptions. precisely. No way I want my "East Texas Earthcache Series" being lumped with the caches that litter the roadsides in the nearby National Forests...although nobody else in my area sets attributes, anyway
  13. 'My Equipment' has had a special name since I was 9 or 10. Not sharing. Mine is called Wally.
  14. I have one that's underwater in a small creek in East Texas. This time of year the creek is running high and the features the EC is based upon are generally not visible. I suppose if someone REALLY wanted to don SCUBA gear, they could do it if they were tethered to the bank so they wouldn't get washed downstream...but the water is quite murky so I'm not sure how much you could see.
  15. OMG!! Did you drill that out by yourself? That looks like freaking granite! How? I'm gonna guess either a hammer drill and lots of broken bits or a hammer and a chisel and a LOT of time.
  16. I have a chirp cache. It was placed pretty soon after the release of the chirp. http://coord.info/GC2HF4P It's been found a few times, and I made it such that folks can find it without having a chirp-capable gps or phone since I live in an area with only a handful of cachers. I wanted people to actually find it. I put the chirp device inside a cache container that's a real devil to find. It does make it harder for the non-chirp folks, but I did it that way because I didn't want joe cacher to find and steal the chirp. I did go ahead and rate the cache for the most difficult find method so people wouldn't feel penalized for not having a compatible gps or something. I'm glad I set it up that way now, because it's close to the university and I know the first stage has been visited by many newbie cachers. That many newbies increases the likelihood of problems.
  17. mtbikermel is a doctor and recognized them, but she rolled her eyes at calling them "medical waste" because they go in the regular trash, not the sharps or biohazard bins. Still...they're trash. what cheap b******* for even thinking to put that stuff in geocaches.
  18. That cache will certainly throw some folks for a loop. Other folks have pointed out that it's not a good idea to obtain materials from parks. That can be interpreted as theft or vandalizing depending on the agency. I have a log in my backyard that'd be perfect for this sort of thing. I made an attempt at making something like this on a bigger scale for a pretzel jar, but had a hard time getting my hands on a suitable piece of wood.
  19. A TB is more than just the number associated with it. The tag is a common thread that tells me that the particular item is a game piece and not just some beat-up golf ball or movie ticket stub. The tag tells folks how to use the game piece. If you could buy a TB number without the tags, nobody would identify their TB items the same way. Some folks would make their own tags, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. But some folks would scrawl the tracking number directly onto the item with a dremel tool...with varying levels of readability. Some folks would write the number on with a sharpie or some other writing utensil that will wear off over time rendering the item untrackable and unidentifiable. No thanks. I'll gladly pay $5 for a set of tags...assuming people actually move the TB. Nowadays, meh. I enjoy moving them myself, but there's a big disincentive for me to release more of my own into the wild. Not a single one of mine has been logged within the past year.
  20. I still post photos. That said, nobody has found any of my 3 Earthcaches since the policy change, so I don't know how the general community is handling them.
  21. Just because cachers should eschew placing caches without permission, doesn't mean the word "eschew" should be used in official communications to cachers. Just like the word "boilerplate". I don't have a limited vocabulary, but I don't recall ever hearing that word before, and I certainly didn't know what it meant before this thread.
  22. 1. Not gonna happen. You're going to have to spend more than $200 to get satellite images. That said, you don't need them, no matter how much you think you do. People did just fine with vector maps for years before smartphones with Google imagery, and they got by fine with paper maps and their GPS before that. Regardless, you'll have to load everything onto the GPS before you go. Most receivers can hold most of the country no problem anymore, and the ones that support satellite imagery can handle a pretty good-sized area so you won't have to do it EVERY time you go caching...just whenever you visit a new area. 2. You have to load caches onto your GPS first, but once you do that, you can still do that. With a premium membership and pocket queries, you can load thousands of caches onto your GPS (depends on GPS model) so again, you can cover a large area. A little planning knowing where you're going so you can run a pocket query for that area will help. 3. I don't use a mac, so I can't comment much, except that I do know that some do. 4. It doesn't have to be an either/or (GPS OR smartphone) process. You could use the phone to search for caches while you're out, then plug the coordinates into the GPS for the one you want to find (for better accuracy). I have an ipod touch and I will do that. I use the gc.com app to search for caches in a new area and then I put the coords into my GPS. My searching is tethered to areas with available wifi, but the ipod can get a rough location for me based on the location of the wifi network I'm on, so it can still do a quick search for what's nearby and show me cache pages and whatnot.
  23. I'll use it the same way regardless, but a lot of cachers local to me won't even post "Needs Maintenance" when the container is smashed and the contents are strewn about the woods. I don't think renaming it will make a huge difference.
  24. A cache owner's behavior absolutely plays a part in my experience with a cache. If said cache owner is unhelpful if I'm having trouble with their cache and I ask for help, the cache owner has a direct effect on my experience with the cache. If the cache owner fails to include some important information about the cache on the cache page, then that cache owner has a direct effect on my experience with the cache. If it was simple oversight and the cache owner rectifies the situation without throwing a fit, that will generate one outcome for me. If the cache owner throws a fit about it, then that will have another. If that cache owner contacts me after I log the cache for some asinine reason like prodding me to give the cache a favorite point, that will diminish my opinion of the cache, and also the cache owner. I already do my best to ignore cache owners who are a**holes on cache pages. For example, I was on a trip and found this on a cache page: That's an automatic skip. In fact, the particular CO responsible for this has a similar statement on most caches they own in that area. So, I had to ignore (manually) every cache by this owner in the area.
  25. no. it takes a regular microsd 2GB max, IIRC.
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