Melrose Plant

If you look at my sign-up date, you will see that I have not cached during a summer. However, I did my very latest find in shorts, as I wasn't really sure whether I was going when I left home. I don't think I like it. Urban-type searches excepted, but those are very rare around here. Since I work construction, I can't wear shorts on the job anyway, no matter how hot it is, so I'm used to it. As I often tell people, comfort is overrated. I am often not understood at all on this point.

Since I just got my real job back yesterday (which is a blast--I wouldn't do it if it wasn't fun most of the time), my goal is to be able to go caching at least once a month, provided there aren't any new caches in my immediate area. Also, I would like the inspiration to do a few more good hides. I've had a cache ready to go for weeks now, but no place to hide it. I won't just stick it anywhere. It's got to be good. Or at least better than my first nine efforts (plus one adoption). OK, I'm being too hard on myself. Not ALL of them were lame.

Our first find has been archived as well, which is a real bummer. I've got to look around the house for our first trade item. It was a Noo-noo keychain (from the Teletubbies), and I'm sure we still have it somewhere. On a brighter note, I was able to adopt our second find when the owner moved out of the area, and it is one of the oldest caches in Iowa. I also found my first Travel Bug in that cache. We had our second find the day after I got laid off from my job. Finally, yesterday, 106 caches later, I was called back to work. This will put a crimp in the geocaching time, but will be much better for the wallet!

Yes, the ticks seem really bad this year. We've never had a problem until this year, and they seem to be everywhere. Somebody asked about the dogs, and I seem to have had success with a product called Frontline. It comes in a small plastic phial, and you just put in on the dog's back in one spot, making sure they don't mess with it. Somehow, it spreads to the entire coat and renders any tick that bites the dog quite dead. Kind of scary sounding, but it seems to work. This product must be applied monthly and is available at your veteranarian, and, I'm sure, online. I think the best way to go is to check yourself and your children carefully every day. Ticks are very slow creatures, and it takes them 36-48 hours from the time they attach until they hit pay blood (not including the soft-bodied ticks that attack dogs, which seem to engorge rather quickly). If you check every day, you will catch them before they become engorged and before they are able to transmit any diseases they may be carrying.

And you probably won't ever see them in those sizes, for two reasons: 1) Individual lithium ion cells produce about three volts of potential vs. 1.2 - 1.5 for the more usual types. 2) They require a very different type of charger. If LIs were made in standard sizes, it would be way too easy for somebody to stick them in a regular charger and possibly cause great injury to themselves or others.

Don't even get us started about 'urricanes 'ardly hhhever 'appenin' in 'ampshire.

Took me less than 10 minutes of peeking through your found Travel Bugs. We haven't found any of the same ones, but you have carried "*Hunny* (is not here)", owned by Centris. Centris has found at least three (I didn't look further than page one) of the same caches I have found, and these were within 8 days of each other. On edit, after 5 more minutes of looking through Centris' finds and Travel Bugs, there is the King Boreas connection (he hid a cache, now archived, within a few miles of my home). Also, Centris seems to live in the Twin Cities. I went to college in the Twin Cities.

I don't think there's much grey here. It's an awful lot like a "No Trespassing" sign. They can't mean me, can they? I've found the observation about caches which are very close to the trail to be quite true. The further away ones are better anyway because you don't have to worry about muggles, and they're just the same amount of difficulty to find months later as when they were first placed. I've got one, placed in December 2003, that is starting to develop a spur trail right to it. We'll see what it looks like by the end of the summer. I might have to move it. I might want to qualify the above statement about not having to worry about muggles far off the trail. Just last week, we were muggle-jumped pretty bad by some mushroom hunters very far off the trail. Luckily, they seemed to be looking for mushrooms more than they were paying attention to us. The cache has been found twice in the last week! Hooray!

Yes. Well, that clears it up! I was confused for a minute there. Exactly. Precisely. If you had not come to me, I would have come to you.

Because it costs more to make ethanol than you can sell it for, and it takes nearly 3 gallons of fossil fuels to raise and harvest enough corn to get 1 gallon of ethanol (and that's BEFORE the corn is even converted to ethanol, which is a very inefficient process as well). The only reason the ethanol and gas prices are comparable is because corn farming and ethanol production are funded by tax money to artifically lower the cost. So, Ethanol prices rise because it takes a lot of fossil fuels to make ethanol. Read this study if you want to hear more about how inefficient the process is. I'm not saying that ethanol is the end to all of our problems (or any of them for that matter), but that study has been pretty much discredited. I'm sort of more interested in bio-diesel, anyway. Seems like you get more bang for your buck than screwing with ethanol.

I always put a shorty pencil in, but tell people in the description that they'd better bring their own anyway, if they want other people to be able to read what they've written. Not only that, if you've warned people to bring their own pencil, it's clear that they're looking for a micro, just in case they missed looking at the top of the page. I hate to admit I've done that before.

I used this anti-theft method for over two years when I lived on the edge of the bad part of town. In over two years, I had a tire pressure gauge stolen. Everyone else in my apartment house had their windows smashed and various parts of their radios stolen. I must add that not only did I have a crappy radio, the installation was very poor as well, and it looked like hell.

I really don't know what to think about this topic. I've observed two people who have logged multiple finds on one of my caches. Is is my duty to delete logs? In both cases, I think it was an honest mistake. I think this honest mistake gets made a lot. You shouldn't be able to post a "find" log more than once on any given cache, but it is quite possible with the current programming. I don't feel like creating animosity by deleting logs which are made by reputable cachers. On the other hand, I know of a guy not too far from here who likes to log finds on his own caches every time he goes to do maintenance! How appalling!

I can't say that I'd nominate Des Moines, IA as THE BEST place to cache, but from reading the forums here, it has some advantages. First being, there are no lame, crappy caches here. I'm convinced that each hider really thought about their hide, and wanted to show something special. I do not speak to the issue of maintenance, ahem, however. If micros are your thing, don't come here. There aren't very many, and I think half of them are mine. I've hidden four micros, and they're all in city parks in the woods, more or less. We also have several new puzzle caches in the metro, and some very interesting multis within a 50 mile radius of here. Des Moines would not be a waste of a weekend, in my so humble opinion.

I would agree with the others here. If you get a good lock, you'll know it because of consistent readings. If your readings are 100' off of each other, it might even be necessary to come back at a later time when the satellites are lined up more favorably. Bummer, yes, but sometimes necessary.

Man, is it just me, or the ticks REALLY BAD this year? I've picked off probably 25, and it's only May. I don't think I'd wear shorts out caching this year.

I am now beyond the point where I can just sort of go on the spur of the moment and find one or two, unless some new ones crop up. There are a couple within a reasonable distance from me, but I guess I'm sort of saving them for out-of-town company. The nearest unfound cluster is a 45 minute drive, and one more trip will take care of that. Then I'm up to an hour. Somebody above said a whole weekend devoted to caching would be interesting. I agree. I have half-days, at best.

I think GPS units work far better in the plains than in the mountains or forests--fewer dropouts. Plus, the rain in Spain stays mainly in the Plain.

Yes, yes, yes! Make sure you log the bug. It seems that many people have not figured out that you need to do this separately. When you've found one, there is nothing automatic about logging it. You have to go to the bug page and do a whole different log for the bug itself. Then when you drop it off, make sure to highlight the appropriate bug at the bottom of the cache log page for the cache where you dropped it off. Also, if you're dropping a bug you've found in the same trip, i.e. you find Bug at cache No. 1, drive straight to cache No. 2 and drop it without going home to log on the computer, make certain you write down the tag number, or you won't be able to log the bug. Sorry for the rant, but there are so many bug icons shown without any actual Travel Bugs in the caches they represent. OK, now I've gone back and seen that Milbank has already figured out how to do it correctly, but I guess I'll still post this for general entertainment purposes. Plus, I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.

I also tried to hunt my first cache without a GPS--unsuccessfully. Back then, I did not think about the different map datum of the USGS maps versus what we use. Also, many of the landmark features have changed dramatically between when these maps were printed and the present day. Between these two, I was sunk. I spent $80 on my GPS at Target. It's the lowest of the low (Garmin Geko 101), but I've found 107 caches with it so far.

I think the decon container or 1 cup container standard works on a practical level. But I don't really care either way. I think it's way more irritating when somebody lists something as a traditional cache, but then you have to go to multiple locations and/or solve a puzzle to find it.

It never really occurred to me. I just grab whatever's on top.

My main reason is No. 1. There are a lot of caches that disappear. Most of these are probably not due to geocachers stealing them with malice aforethought. Therefore, it is not advisable to let the cache location be generally known to the general public. Having said that, No. 4 is near the top of my list, too. Perhaps this is because my life is not full of real danger and adventure (nor would I want it to be). Being secretive gives me a chance to be that Secret Agent without any of the actual peril or sacrifice. A win-win situation if you ask me. Try it at night for even more effect.

I think there is a spraypaint that is specifically made for painting plastic. I can't remember the brand name however... Krylon's "Fusion" line, IIRC I bought some of this Fusion spray paint and sprayed two plastic cache containers. One I have placed, the other is still sitting around the house, waiting for a quality spot to be found. I'll let you know in about a year how the paint holds up. It seemed to go on real good. I used Criminal's method of painting camouflage.

My wife found out about geocaching before I knew what it was. She bought the GPSr. She registered with the website (see my funny name?). She located the first cache. So far so good, right? The problem lies in frequency. When she did all this I believe she had in mind a frequency of about monthly, possibly bi-monthly, and then only for a couple of hours, probably hunting for one or two at a time. Plus, it's difficult to get her to come out into the woods between May and October. Too many bugs. So here I am trying not to go caching, in order to keep the peace. It's difficult when there is a totally virgin cache, as of last time I checked, about 45 minutes from here, and I like to play the FTF game. Maybe I'll take the boy out this afternoon if no one's logged yet. Hmmm. . .