Ma & Pa

In 2014 I mentioned in geocaching forums that we were obsessed about Big Bang Theory and geocaching. A cacher named TopShelfRob decided to write a script for the show about geocaching. It is fantastic and so funny. Newer cachers may not have seen this incredible story.*************************************************Scene 1Howard and Raj have been Geocachers, and they're sitting with Leonard and Sheldon at lunch talking about something else and Raj let's it slip that something Leonard said reminds him of searching for a Geocache, and Howard slaps him and says "you idiot, don't tell him about it!" Raj says "Why not?" and Howard says "we don't want the whole world to know about it" and so Leonard asks about it, and Raj explains Geocaching to Leonard and Sheldon. Howard says it's the one thing he does that he doesn't tell his Mother about. And Raj starts to say something, and Howard says, "okay... one of two things I do that I don't tell my mother about". So they finish explaining Geocaching and Howard mentions there's even a cache on the ISS that he logged.Sheldon says it sounds stupid, walking around finding junk that other people have left behind, but Leonard says, "I don't know... it sounds kinda fun - just think, you never know what treasure might be hidden who knows where, right under the noses of people going past it everyday! I'm in, let's go find some treasure!" And then Howard and Raj look at each other, and then as they leave the lunchtable, Raj says, "No... it's pretty much junk."Scene 2So the whole gang goes out geocaching and hence RobDJr's scene - Penny finds the cache the others couldn't which was right under their noses. The group goes through the stuff in the cache, and Leonard is rather dismayed at the lack of "treasure" in the cache. There is some cheap toys and a logbook, and a trackable. Then Howard says, "okay let's all sign it." Sheldon interrupts and says, "What are you doing? According to the rules you told me, the person who finds it gets to log it. Penny found it, therefore she gets to sign it. The rest of us didn't find it. We can't sign it." So Howard tries to explain that there are many ways to play, but generally how it works is that everyone present can log a "find" even though only one person actually "found" it. To which Sheldon replies, "I suppose you think that Watson, Crick and Wilkins all deserve to get the Nobel Prize for their work with DNA, then?" Howard, Leonard and Raj look at each other and Leonard says, "But Sheldon, they all did get the Nobel Prize." Sheldon says, "Yes, but that doesn't mean they all three should have!" Sheldon says, "Anyway this is a stupid sport. If I want to go all over the country looking for things other people don't want anymore (looking at the cheap toy), I'll just go to a yard sale."Scene 3They are back at home and Sheldon enters wearing an "I heart Geocaching T-shirt" and announces he wants to give Geocaching another try. Leonard is still kinda disappointed: "Uh, I... don't know. You were right, it seems like a waste of time". He's upset that they didn't find anything worthwhile in the first cache they found, but Sheldon is persistent. He is wearing 3 GPS units in holsters on his belts and has a 5-inch thick stack of paper in his arms: "I went on the website you told me about, and I printed out an itinerary, (aside with a smirk to Howard and Raj: 'I did a pocket query') - and did you know that within a forty mile radius of us there are 366 Geocaches? Here."He takes from his stack, three stapled packets of papers and hands one each to Leonard, Howard and Raj. "What's this?" Raj says. Sheldon continues, "Among those 366 caches there are 312 traditional caches, 24 puzzle caches, 22 multi-caches and 7 Earth Caches. And 1 Munzee." Leonard: "What's a Munzee?" Sheldon: "I'll explain it later. I split the 24 puzzle caches up into four groups of six, distributed evenly in terms of difficulty so each of us can solve a quarter of the puzzles." Howard quickly flips through his packet, and says, "what are these co-ordinates down at the bottom?" Sheldon answers, "Oh, don't worry about those coordinates, I already solved them all, I just thought you all might like to see if you could solve them, too."Then Leonard says, "what's with the 3 GPS units?" Sheldon says, "Well, in case our batteries go dead, I have backups - this one is a Magellan, this one is a Garmin, and this one is a Bushnell, and we're only going to use the Bushnell if we're finding them too easily with the Magellan and the Garmin. Okay guys, let's go."Then Howard says, "Well, okay, but this is a little bit of overkill, usually Raj and me just head out in a random direction and wind up finding 5 or 10 or so. 366 caches, that's going to take us over a month to find them all." Sheldon says, "oh, no, here's the itinerary, we're going to find them all today. In 9 hours and 43 minutes. Hurry up, we leave in two minutes." They look over the itinerary, Sheldon has broken down exactly how long it's going to take them drive to each cache and how long it will take them to find each one. Raj says, "this one here," pointing to the itinerary, "it says we only have 20 seconds to find it, how can you be sure we'll find it so quickly?" Sheldon says, "well, according to the Google Maps satellite image, (he quickly flips a few pages and points it out to him) it's under the skirt at the base of this street lamp in this parking lot. I mean seriously, where else could it be?" So the four of them head out the door, Leonard trailing them and says sarcastically, "Oh, I'm sure this is going to be a lot of fun."Scene 4They are in the car, they all look dazed. Raj says, "I can't believe we found 354 geocaches." Leonard says, "I can't believe we stayed exactly on the itinerary and..." (interrupted by Sheldon's watch beeping) "...found them in exactly 9 hours and 44 minutes." Sheldon: "Time's up, actually we were done in 9:41 - I'm glad I left a little leeway in there, you know what they say - spontaneity is the spice of life."Howard says: "I can't believe we didn't find 12 of them." Sheldon says, "Those twelve weren't there." Howard - agitated: "How do you know?" "Simple, we went to the coordinates, we looked, we didn't find them. Therefore they must not have been there." Raj: "Well, we could have looked a little longer, especially that one, I know I almost had it." Sheldon: "Which one?" Raj: "The one in the park by the creek next to the Supermarket." Sheldon: "No on that one, if it was there we would have found it in 2.5 minutes. In that amount of time of looking, we easily would have exhausted all the possibilities of where it could have been hidden." Howard: "But how do you know that?" Sheldon (annoyed): "Did you even look at the satellite image? I mean, according to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the obvious place for it to be hidden would have been where we looked, in the knothole in the tree on the left. It was extremely unlikely it would have been anywhere else, and mathematically impossible that it wouldn't have been anywhere we wouldn't have found it in the first one hundred and fifty seconds. To look any longer would have been foolhardy. Honestly! It's as if you're the one who just started Geocaching today instead of me!"Leonard: "Well, anyway, I'm glad that's over. Who knew there were so many geocaches in lampposts and guardrails?" Raj: "We could have told you that there wasn't going to be a lot of 'treasure'?" Howard: "Well, it's supposed to be about the journey, anyway, just getting out and seeing nature... not how many smileys you can get in 9 hours and 44 minutes." Sheldon: "I just wanted to optimize our experience by plotting out the most efficient use of our time. Trust me, you had the optimum amount of fun doing it my way." Leonard: "Well, even if we didn't find all 366 of them, I'm sure 354 is going to be a personal record for us that we won't be breaking anytime soon."To which Sheldon says, "What do you mean? Next week we're going to Nevada to do the E.T. Superhighway!"

A cacher has informed us that you have to sign the log sheet provided by the cache owner. If I find a soggy log sheet and add one of our own, the CO can delete our log and insist the we sign his sheet. Apparently this is an official procedure. He also claims that reviewers agree / What are the rules? Here are part of items posted by two cachers on a geocaching FB page Actually, there are no other approved ways of proving a find on a physical cache other than your signature in the logbook. Period. Granted, most CO's give some allowance - but they don't have to. Photos, even ones of you holding the cache, are not defensible if a CO decides to delete your find. Ask me how I know... Some COs will demand that you sign THEIR logbook, no matter how gross it is - or how nice the replacement logbook you left is. Ask me how I know... But all that is moot as long as you are OK with having your find log deleted if it doesn't satisfy the CO. Go ahead, ask me how I know.. ******************************* adding your own logbook into a container that already has a perfectly fine logbook is definitely frowned upon. I would love to see you openly offer cachers finds on your caches without them signing the logbook. The reviewers are cracking down hard on it. I delete any logs where the person says they took a pic of the container.

Thank you all. I opted out of the new look

I tried the first method but I wanted a Needs Maintenance log, I find that kind of log is more likely to grab the attention of the cache owner. How do I find the earlier logging experience? Not sure why the change was made

This was so easy some time ago, but now I have no idea how to do it

Thank you so much. Really appreciated PAul

Heading out tomorrow morning to do more of a cache series. I wanted to review how to attack the series by reviewing the map. I went to one of the cache pages and clicked VIEW LARGER MAP. The map appeared. When I tried to use the mouse wheel to zoom in, I got a message on the map that said: "Use ctr + scroll to zoom the map" I was able to use the Ctr and + and - to zoom in and out, but it certainly was not as convenient as the mouse wheel. I dont get this message when I zoom non geocaching maps. Has there been a change to the maps?

Well I wrote to Support to tell them I could not register for this because of the & symbol in our name. Our grandsons (Team Jake & Ben) also have the same problem. Support wrote back and gave us new trackable codes for the Mary Hyde pirate contest. DUH

I have the same problem signing up as I did with the final part of the pirate contest. The page shows us as MA , likely because it does not accept the & symbol in our name. So it gives an error when we try to submit

WE JUST GOT BACK FROM A LONG GEOCACHING HIKE AND CHECKED FOR PROGRESS ON THIS SITUATION. I NOTED YOUR COMMENT, CHECKED IT OUT AND AM PLEASED TO REPORT THAT IT WORKED. THANK YOU SO MUCH PAul

Change name ... Hmm. Maybe it would work. I love our name and would be afraid that I would have problems changing it back. And I wrote to help desk also. I think they will be busy today and might be upset at whoever did the planning for this

I think the # in your nic causes the problem

I didnt think you solved I just think if there is a & in your nic, it causes a problem, now I see someone with a # symbol has similar problem

Two others on this topic have the same problem as we do. It seems that if your nic has the & symbol, the submission page only shows the first part of your name and therefore the submission rejects. Where do I complain to get it fixed? Robert&Anita Geek & Sweet Is this where I complain? https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=request

I went to the submission page and it says we are logged in as MA and not Ma & Pa. So it wont accept out submission. I wonder if it took MA off our facebook page I just noticed that someone above reported the same problem

Sorry. I thought it was clear. I simply wanted to give cachers a view of a different kind of event. The event page has interesting logs and photos of the activities in the snow on the islands during last saturday's event PAul

If you have never cached in snow I thought you might find this interesting and different from what you do. 10 years ago we started a caching event where we invited cachers to come to our place and cross the ice in snowshoes to an island to grab a bunch of caches and then return for a pot luck. Over the years, the event got so big that we eventually moved the event to a local hall and we added caches on another local island. We were not available this year so someone took over the event. I thought you might enjoy the logs and photos of their caching day. Some cachers walked over 10 miles in snowshoes picking up 23 caches. There are also stories and photos on some of the island caches. https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC6YRF8_eleventh-annual-icewalk-a-new-decade?guid=7aa933ad-f052-4751-a995-394ceb68bd4b

Assuming PEI means Prince Edward Island then: Go to the search page, type "Prince Edward Island" into the search box, click the "Add Filters" button, on the next page click "I Haven't found" over on the right, click the Search button. It will give you =Ma%20%26%20Pa&f=2"]This search If you click this link then click the "Change Filters" button you can play with some of the other options, e.g. cache type, favourite points, enabled/disabled etc.... Edit to add: Just noticed that the search I did above defaulted to within 16km (of the centre of the island), so if you want the whole island then you will have to change the filter to increase the distance (top left corner of the filters page), whack it up to 100+km or thereabouts. You could also enter "Canada: Prince Edward Island" into the "Limit Search to" box at the bottom. Another example using the added info: =Ma%20%26%20Pa&r=70"]This Search

... because you're not able to hit the "Add Filter" button? You're kidding, aren't you? Hans Not kidding. We do not find that the filter button helps us. Tell me how I would get a liting of all the caches on PEI that I havent found

We both hate the new search. Most of the time we cannot figure out how to use it. The old one was so much simpler

Not being a techie, I had a bit of trouble with all this, but MArielle followed the instructions and easily understood how to get to the screens to SHOW ON MAP. She did not know about the switch to turn it on or off. Now her track is showing. Thank you so very much for all your help and the link for other track screens. Around here there a lot of cache series in the woods, so having the tracks is a big safety item. PAul

We did as per the link and the track still does not show. I still wonder if somehow there are too many tracks in the gps. We geocache almost everyday and our archive has tons of tracks. I had a similar problem with my 62s, and the tracks only showed up again after I deleted a ton of archived caches. But that caused other problems with that gps

Make current track visible on map Delete tracks individually Thanks. It took a while to figure out when we got to the screen because it shows the gps screen but not how you get to that page

Yes I knew about the archive but I figured with the amount of caching and trips that maybe the amount of tracks in the archive would affect the creation of new tracks. So how would we do what you suggest?

For some time now MA does not have tracks showing on the map on her 600. We do a lot of caching and someone said that the track file may be full and we would have to clear the tracks. Could that be the problem, and if so how do we clear the tracks from memory? PAul