debaere

Out in the field I don't listen to anything. I enjoy the sounds of nature. I normally cache on Saturdays, so in the car is usually Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, or Car Talk. NPR rocks

The few times I've been asked I have just mentioned that I was doing a high-tech treasure hunt. So far its worked well. I have yet to have an encounter with law enforcement, but I would definitely tell them the truth. I did print off some documents from geocaching.com that I carry in my geo-bag so I can at least look semi-official to any LEOs I meet (i.e. I'm not lying to cover up nefarious activity).

By far my favourite traditional cache is an ammo can. Followed by a larger lock'n'lock. I personally don't like micros, and I have stopped looking for them.

A friend of mine showed me geocaching while we were on a work trip together. It was something to do on the weekend. I kept up caching because its a) gets me outside, shows me interesting places I would have never seen, or even heard of if left to my own devices, and c) it also tickles my desire to explore new areas. I now use caching as a tour guide when I visit new areas. As an example: I am currently visiting Charleston for work. On Saturday we did the touristy things in the brochures, which was cool and I saw some interesting things (esp Market St. & horse drawn carriage tours) On Sunday I went caching, and found an amazing view of the harbour outside the city, and a very large confederate cemetery just north of the city (lots of old and intricate grave markers and really old trees). I never would have found the cemetery on my own, but it ended up being one of the most interesting aspects of my entire trip.

I have heard stories of folks stealing GPSs from cars, looking at the home coords, and robbing the known empty house. Not sure how true those stories are (heard em from folks, not the police or news reports), but it does seem like a likely scenario. Just some food for thought. I can definitely see posting an email address or unlisted phone number in your GPS, but I would be hesitant to put in my home coords into my GPS and label them as my home coords. Again, may just be paranoia, and I do prefer to look for good in folks in general, but wanted to pass along this caveat. Cheers

Personally I am all about the virtual caches. Some of the caches I've enjoyed the most have been virtuals. I understand they were removed due to an excess of silliness on the part of some cachers posting really nutball things as virtuals. Theoretically Waymarking is supposed to replace virtuals, but Waymarking is all sorts of fail. The UI is pathetic. I find it next to useless and spammy. Its hard to find interesting places without constantly being directed to dreck (no, I don't care about the local McDonalds in every town, thank you. Yes I know there are "filters" to not look for them, but those are horribly broken). Anyhoo, my opinions, others differ . I don't expect this thread will go very far except to spiral downwards into a flame war, but one never knows.

For reference I am not of the Sikh faith. I am Christian (Presbyterian to be specific). I would not have any issues using Christian references (not sure what that would be, but as long as its not derogatory to the faith I don't mind). So I would say it is an OK name. When in doubt go ask a member of the Sikh faith. Clearly you have access to a community of them if you just cross the road For extra points get the thumbs up from a Sikh leader (apologies for not knowing what title this person holds). This way if anyone does get extra sensitive and complains you can come back and say that the leader of the temple said it was ok, and they should take the matter up with him.

These work on other smart phones: Geobeagle for android phones (available from the market) cacheberry for blackberries (30 day free trial) Of course given the nature of this event I would tend to have printed off copies of the caches in question in case of phone failure or lack of smart phones.

I always think of the sizes as: Micro: shot glass size Small: Big enough to hold a sandwich Regular: Big enough to hold lunch, (getting into ammo can terriritory) larger: Pretty much anything it takes two hands to hold, (assuming no handle) Obviously the exact shapes are different each time, but thats the mental image I get when I head for a cache listed with those sizes.

My dog, Bailey, goes caching with me all the time. Its a great way to get a walk and an adventure in all at once.

If they are authorized, why couldn't you mention them here?

I'm 35, my wife is 28, my son is 3mos.

Perhaps you could list this as multiple events. One for the live event, and one for each satellite site. Personally as long as I am going "somewhere" to meet a group of cachers, its an event. The fact that the main activity is watching a remote feed instead of someone live, who cares? Having multiple caches also gives you a better idea of how many attendees you had at each site. I wouldn't allow "I logged in from home" folks tho, simple because they didn't "attend" anything.

My son was a month old when we went caching together. Been several times since then, and he's still < 4 months. Of course at that age it means nothing to him, but its never too young to start instilling an adventuresome spirit in the boy. It does affect the levels of caches I can attempt so I don't go out with him each time, but when I am going for the ones that allow me to bring the kid, the kid comes (and so does Mom for that matter)

I had issues using the GPS on my Sprint Blackberry in Europe - something about needing an active service to use GPS or some crazy thing like that. Everything else on the phone worked except the GPS. My stand-alone GPSs (Garmin Nuvi 360 and Garmin 60CSx) worked no problem. So if your GPS is on your phone, you may not get GPS service. However if its not, you should be fine.

please do not listen to this fool, i have every other type of computer and dell is the best. i know this type of stuff, im a computer wizz I have a Dell 10v netbook, and it is working out well for me. My wife also has one and she loves hers. Dell definitely isn't the best money can buy, but in my experience (current netbooks plus several notebooks from a past life) they are not a bad option. To the OP, you may want to look into buying a used/older notebook. Also keep in mind for 200 pounds your options are extremely limited.

This assumes, of course, that the OP is running an OS that supports GSAK. Not everyone does. None of my devices support GSAK due to the OS. tangental thought: Personally I think the world would be much better off for an online version of GSAK, preferably in a manner that supports importing listings from geocaching.com. We should all strive for the cross-platform solution.

This happens to me from time to time. The site seems fast, then suddenly seems to hang for a long time (wait for minutes - sometimes I'm forced to reload pages). Then it will be fast for a while. This happens from a variety of browsers (Mainly Firefox and Chrome), a variety of OSs (MacOS X, Linux), and many different ISPs. I can only conclude that its the website itself that has issues - probably issues handling traffic (my experience at website administrating tells me that the situation is not helped by them running Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7.0 I am sure- thats just a guess tho so I could be completely wrong. - not trying to start an OS flame war) Anyhoo. If it is occasionally slow it may be the above reasons. If it NEVER works (which it sounds like is happening) then it could be several things, some easier to troubleshoot that others. The quickest thing to check is to clear your browser cache. In Firefox its typically under preferences somewhere. You could also try using another browser (IE in Windows, Safari on Mac, dozens of choices if you use Linux). Any other troubleshooting would require knowing which OS you use, and the specific version of Firefox you are running.

I definitely enjoy caching more than my wife does. I tend to cache to see new and interesting places, which does interest her. Our caching trips tend to be us going someplace new. When we hitt ground zero - she checks out the area, I hunt for the cache. It works out well. She has even found some caches before I have, but its rare

Packing in hot water is probably just going to leave you with a bigger block of ice... if not for you than for the next guy. Hot water does freeze faster than cold under some circumstances (so they say). If you use the water method, make sure its very salty or otherwise treated to keep the freezing point below whatever the temp is that day. Personally I'd pack in a package of road salt and cover the exposed parts of the ammo can with it. Things will eventually thaw. Just bring something to push the salt around the crevasses between the cache and the stump and the cache will come out soon enough.

The second cache I ever attempted was in France along the Belgian border. It was a multi-cache who's first waypoint was on an old hill created by mining leftovers. We walked half-way around the hill and saw no paths, just the step sides of the hill. We decided to climb up the side of the hill - all 200ft of very steep hillside. We needed to go on all fours for most of it - all of it shale type rock. Once we got to the top we noticed a very nice gentle path leading down the backside of the hill. Oops

I have a 60CSx and I was unaware that it had the ability to follow roads. Its been all off-road for me,

You need: 1) premium membership (which you have) 2) My Finds GPX (go to pocket query, scroll almost to bottom, you'll see a button "Add to queue" in the "My Finds" section. You can only do that once a month 3) If you're using Windows, you can use GSAK + FindStatGen macro, or CacheStates (google for them). 4) Alternatively you can use ItsNotAboutTheNumbers.com. 5) Paste HTML into your profile page 6) Repeat every week. itsnotaboutthenumbers.com didn't work for me. It gave me a bunch of divide by zero errors. This site did work tho: http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com/ There are many more if you Google for geocaching stats.

Subscribed. As others on this thread have mentioned I hope it isn't just about the competitive nature of the hobby. Also not a huge fan of the name, but that can always be changed if the idea flies Looking forward to being impressed by this.

Up here in Canada I see mostly lock'n'locks. I've also seen a fair number of peanut butter jars used. Most other containers I've seen (mostly tupperware style containers) tend to leak and result in wet caches. Whatever container you use please make sure its watertight on its own and don't depend on a ziplock bag to keep the moisture out.