Old Bet

I think I did not think this through. But you cannot delete forum posts, so it lives.

Looks like this has been addressed by HQ. I found a 5-step adventure today; my total finds incremented by 1.

I am building my first Adventure, and it would be helpful to users if I could include a link to a local map. Other resources also might enhance the experience. We can add YouTube videos. It would be great if there was a way to add "Other Resources."

I think I did not make myself clear. Right now, for every 10 caches you find, you get 1 favorite point which you can award to the caches you rate most highly. My proposal is that for every 10 caches you hide (or maybe 5), you also get 1 favorite point which go into your pool of points to award. I thought it might be an added incentive to encourage hiding of caches.

I had the same experience. I emailed gc.com, and received a response which included the following suggestion. "While DeLorme works on this bug fix, we suggest visiting Delorme's website in order to download and update the new plug-in. www.delorme.com/plugins/gpsplugin.aspx . Once you have the update the "Send to GPS" feature will work on geocaching.com." I followed the suggestion, and download to GPS works just fine now.

Two thoughts on favorites: Thought 1 -- I think favorites are doled out too generously. I don't believe 10 percent of the caches I have found rate as personal favorites. As a result, I have a nice stockpile of unassigned favorite points. Why not let us assign more than 1 point to a cache? For example, I might assign 1 point to a favorite, 2 points to a superfavorite, or 3 points to a super-duper favorite. Thought 2 -- Why not award favorite points for hides? Geocaching does not live on hunting alone; we need hiders as well, and hiders ought to be encouraged and rewarded.

Is there a way to search bookmarks? We will be visiting Europe on an organized tour in a few months. Presumably, other cachers have taken the same tour with the same or similar itinerary in previous years. It is possible one or more of those cachers created a bookmark list of hides along the route. But if so, how would I find them?

Favorite points should be awarded for hides as well as finds.

Somehow, the advent of Challenges eluded me until today. I would have preferred a little more structure, minimally that the challenge begin at a specific set of lat/lon coordinates. And, if there were some way to police it, challenges should be restricted to locations where physical caches are verboten, such as national parks, or where physical caches are totally impractical, such as amid satellite blocking/bouncing city skyscrapers. (On the other hand, I have cached successfully in some pretty big cities, despite uncoopertive satellites.) As for the Team Old Bet, we just won't accept challenges that are insufficiently cache-like or otherwise unappealing. Others might have other standards. So be it.

One observation: the cacher who started this thread is not a premium member. That means he (or she) is getting something for nothing. While we all benefit from suggestions for improving the site, perhaps this poster should consider that he is contributing nothing to the costs of developing and maintaining the site.

The user manual for my PN-30 says it is important to use "only" DeLorme rechargeble batteries. I am skeptical. Is this just a sales pitch? Is there any reason I can't use other rechargeables? Thanks

I might be able to help. I think the way to do this might be to HIDE a cache. I will contact the poster via eMail.

The Old Croton Aqueduct State Historic Park is a state park, so state park rules apply: you need a permit to hide a cache. The park headquarters is in Dobbs Ferry 693-5259) Actually, there does appear to be one cache along the aqueduct. In Croton, not far from where the aqueduct begins in Croton Gorge Park (county park) look for Team Bacmac's Aquecache. (GCT6JB) I have not found it yet, but it appears to be on or near the aqueduct trail.

We'll be spending a week in London this month. Being tourists, we will be doing touristy things. So while we'd like to find a few caches along the way, we don't want to spend our entire holiday with our eyes on the ground, poking around in the shrubbery etc. I'm hoping someone can suggest a handful of comparatively easy caches hidden in London. We'll be staying in the West End, no automobile, heading for all the usual places tourists visit. We also will take a couple of day trips by train, possible to Hampton Court and Dover Castle...tourist stuff. (If anyone wants to suggest a couple of restaurants or pubs where tourists usually don't go that will be a nice bonus.)

Thanks, Neil! I like the way you think!

Posted in error; please disregard. I asked this question yesterday, and already have received several helpful responses.

We will be visiting the London area in May. Being good tourists, we will want to be pictured at the prime meridien. Being geocachers, we will want to take a picture of our GPS receiver showing 0 degrees longitude. Question is, what datum or coordinate set do we use? We were fortunate a few years ago to visit the Galapogos Islands. When the captain stationed our expedition vessel on the equator the ship's GPS unit showed 0 degrees latitude, but my GPS did not agree. I changed the datum set from the WGS 84 we use for geocaching and selected a set beginning with "SA", which I surmised, apparently correctly, represented South America and got the picture I wanted. I suspected something similar will happen with the prime meridien. And, indeed, Wikipedia suggests a discrepency of about 102 meters between the meriden as marked at the Royal Observatory and the 0 degrees longitude reading we will get using WGS 84. So what datum will match? Thanks.

A new book from the NY/NJ Trail Conference offers the first complete guide to parks, preserves and other outdoor places in Westchester County. It's called "Walkable Westchester" and was written by Jane and Walt Daniels, who according to the cover notes have walked all of the trails listed in the book. (Are there any geocachers among the "trail checkers" who assisted them in the project?) This is a great GPS companion. For one thing, it gives driving directions to parking areas, which for us sometimes is the most baffling part of a cache quest. I am going through the book, marking the places where we have found caches. Next step will be to determine if there are caches in places we have not yet visited...or visited before we took up geocaching. "Walkable Westchester" sells for $24.95 and all proceeds go to the Trail Conference, according to an article in the New York Times.

While hiking/caching in Sunny Ridge Preserve (a New Castle, NY town park) we noticed many trees had small, round, metal tags, with numerals or letters and digits. Memory clicked and we recalled seeing similar tags on a previous cache quest. Looked it up, and it was the cache called OAK 2305 (GCZMQM). Does anyone know who tags the trees and why? Thanks.

I know we can send an email request to change the user name on our GC.com account. If we do that, am I right in presuming that all of our caching records (logs, lists of finds and DNFs, profile etc.) will remain intact, with only the name changing? Thanks,

When we started out, we prepared a profile because we thought that was "the thing to do." After a couple of early inquiries, we explained the genesis of our geoID, "The Old Bet Brigade." Not sure if anyone examines the profile, but the inquiries stopped. The stats are mainly for our own use. It's a convenient place to keep track of our caching activities. We don't routinely look at other profiles. Caching locally, we usually see the same names popping up in the cache logs. When we encounter a new name, we might take a look at the profile to see where this cacher comes from. (Yes, I ended that sentence with a preposition. If you check the profile, you will see that the Brigade does not include any English teachers.)

One of our goals (the Brigade is a 2-person geocaching combine) is to find all of the caches within 10 miles of home. That total was 67 at last count, of which we have found 30. That includes 11 of the 20 closest. Among the missing nine are two DNFs which we haven't gotten back to and one where I couldn't figure out where to park. There also are several that are close to a road or parking area. In good weather, we prefer to combine a hike of a couple of miles with our geocaching. Some days, our hikes do not coincide with the caches. We'll go after some of the others when the weather turns. Since JonBoy responded to this thread earlier, I'll also note that 16 of the 67 10-mile-zone caches were JonBoy (or JonBoy and Darielle) hides, of which we have found 11. Five of the 20 nearest caches as JonBoy's, of which we have found four. I'll also echo what some other poster's have said: some of the "nearby" caches turn out to be some distance away once you convert as-the-crow-flies distances into road distances.

I did not read all of the responses, so maybe this was said: Given the problems we already have with some land managers and other officials, can you imagine the setback to geocaching if someone found an adult (i.e. X-rated) cache and complained about it? And it won't matter if the offending (to some) cache is listed on gc.com or not. To the outside world, a cache is a cache is a cache.

Sorry for the delay in answering the last question. I also was wondering. In fact, the file contains only waypoints. However, the Website includes descriptions of what natural or scenic attraction can be found at each waypoint. Since we will be on a naturalist-guided tour, I expect the interesting stuff will be pointed out to us, but if the guide skips something along the way -- or we trek near something of interest -- I figure the waypoints will be a help. Who knows.