Geofellas

I would like to credit Keith Watson for giving me the idea. Mind you, although the weather network website purports to provide you with a means to get the code for the link I could never get that to work so had to delve my way through the javascript it produces to figure out how to set this up on my caches. Thanks Keith.

If you're now looking for something to do April 2nd weekend watch out for our second annual April Fools cache that we are planning to take live on (duh!! ) April 1st. Probably not a zillion miles from the general area of last year's. It will have a couple of new twists but should enable you to log a few other caches on the way to completing it

Check out our "Up the Old Road" series - go to this search page. Be aware though that York River Trailhead and High Falls Anniversary Cache are both in Algonquin Park and I think, therefore, not snowmobile friendly. You will need an OFSC permit for the trails on which most of these caches are located.

Go for it - we need some 5/5s that are not just canoe caches - sounds an awesome idea. While on the topic of incredibly challenging caches take a look at Holy Wastewater! - needless to say I passed on even attempting this one on my recent trip down south

That's exactly how I interpreted it

Many congrats Keith. What makes your 400 even more remarkable is that you have apparently done them all without leaving Ontario (The 3 funny virtuals/mysteries listed as being elsewhere in your stats can all be done from here ) When are you targetting #500 for?

Earth Day Canada is April 22nd 2005. Even if you can't hold it on the actual day maybe could link it in in some way since the aims are in line.

Come visit us in Canada - we have a few See Bushwacker for example - took us 9½ hours - all to find a rusty old coffee can in the middle of nowhere

I found my first Traveller Tag last week. I'm regretting having picked it up now since 1) the website is not the most friendly one I've encountered and 2) the whole philosophy seems to be one of trying to circumvent paying Groundspeak for TB tags. Given that Groundspeak needs revenue to keep the significant (and hence not cheap) infrastructure going to support our fun hobby I would rather pay for TB tags and support those that do so I can have greater confidence that they will be able to continue to provide the website services they do. I will drop this Traveller Tag somewhere, log it in on that site as best I can, and not pick up any more TTs.

How about setting up an Event Cache? We were just talking about how nice it would be to have one in this area - they mostly seem to be west of Toronto

Thanks for enlightening me - but I'm not sure I understand how not having access to gc.com prevents this cacher from physically placing the TBs (one of which I am watching, hence my interest) into caches and thus allowing them to continue on their journeys while resolving whatever issues they may have with TPTB. I was careful to use words like "apparently" and "appears to" to allow for many interpretations of the situation to be inferred but it did seem sensible to alert people to the possibility of some issues. That was my sole intent. Actually, if you look at my recent logs you will see that I am, at the moment, considerably closer than 3000 miles away.

There is an apparently banned member Trashman001 who appears to have raided TBs from various caches in BC and to be holding them hostage in some dispute with TPTB. You can see the TBs and thus the caches affected here

Sorry abut that - thread now moved here Now reclosing thread

In the latest edition of The Sciencist (sic) (note the contents of this link will probably change with time) there is the following article. If this gets adopted what will it mean for geocaching? Jeremy better get ready to re-calculate all the coordinates and we had all better get ready to download new firmware into our GPSrs Ribzilla Brings International Geographic Community to Its Knees Calgary, CA (September 23, 2004) – Over 220,000 individuals have demanded that the prime meridian be moved from its current location initiating the globe’s longitude at Greenwich—just outside of London, England—to the site of a popular rib restaurant in Calgary, Canada. In response to the petition submitted on Friday, Dr. Romeo Holande, president-elect of the International Geographers’ Guild (IGG), declared yesterday during a press conference in Lyon, France, that carelessness was to blame for the mess in which the IGG now found itself. “It is true that the geographic community generally agrees that the location of the prime meridian is not a definitive. Indeed its current location at Greenwich is purely a convention,” explained Dr. Holande, “but this is a bit ridiculous.” Ridiculous or not, according to the international governing body’s constitution, the IGG has little choice in the matter. Article 14 states that “all inter-plenary petitions bearing the signatures of more than 5000 members must be accepted and recognized as the will of the general assembly in absentia”—a rule one rib connoisseur has sought to exploit, in geographic proportions. The petition, submitted by freelance geographer and rib restaurant owner Douglas Seib of Calgary, seeks to move the international point at which the day is said to begin some 114° west—directly over his restaurant. “I’m the kind of guy that reads everything that he signs. When I joined the IGG, I read the constitution and was intrigued by the possibilities it held, purely from a business standpoint. I figured that if I included the price of a membership in the IGG into the price of a full order of the Ribzilla, or the prime rib, I could sign up at least 10,000 customers in a year. If I could get them to sign the petition on the way out the door, I knew that the IGG would have no choice but to move universal time here, to my restaurant,” commented Mr. Seib during a phone call on Tuesday with a staff reporter. In reply to a question during the press conference, Dr. Holande remarked, “Although we were pleased to see our membership number climb over the past four months, we hold several reservations about moving the line, not least of which is renaming it as the ‘primeribbian’. I don’t even know what that means.”

That's great - thanks - it would be really helpful.

These are great replies - most helpful - thank you. Hopefully we can get this started this weekend Nothing like implementing an idea right away!!

We are thinking of creating a travel bug that will encourage finders to send a postcard to my son's grade 4 class (ages 9-10) as part of a project they have to get postcards from all over the world. Adding a geocaching twist to this project gives added interest for the kids. We would be glad if anyone could share their experiences of doing something similar, successes, failures, dos, don'ts &c. If anyone could point us to some example bugs that are used for this purpose so we could share these examples with the teacher to help her understand the whole concept better that would be great too. Thanks in advance...

Hopefully this is a new suggestion - I did run a search first and couldn't find it having been suggested before. As someone who travels a fair bit I like to try and find caches near airports that I am passing through (for TB swops, filling in time before flights, caching somewehere new, etc. etc.). Currently I have to go and look up the airport's lat and long at a site like World Airport Codes and then enter it in the search fields on gc.com. Would it be reasonable to ask for a field for entering the airport code as the centre point of a search (à la Postal/Zip Code)? Then I could just enter YYZ (or the full ICAO 4 character code CYYZ - probably should allow both formats - but at least the 3 char one anyway) and find all the caches close to Pearson Airport, Toronto, Canada for example. There are various databases available to do the lookup which I'm sure TPTB could buy for a very reasonable price to supply this feature - I might even offer a donation if that would help to get this feature implemented.

Did Bushwacker and, on the way in, Lingham yesterday . Highly recommended for a challenging day out. 9½ hours from trail head to cache and back again. Bushwacker is definitely a 5/5 - trails passable right now but you really will have to foot it the last 500m to Bushwacker and, if your balance is not perfect and you haven't practiced log walking for a while, perhaps swim a bit too!! Pics will get posted in due course!! First to reach Bushwacker for over 2 years - it's still there but the coffee can is a bit rusty now.

Here's another one for you - there's still an FTF available on this one... Up the Old Harcourt Road Enjoy!!

OK ATVers - check out our Nonquon Swamp Cache - just approved today. Who will be FTF?

See our log for "Victoria Bridge" for more details

And, in a similar vein, when running a query for unfound caches it would be nice if "finds" by the owner could be discounted since they don't really count when you are looking for FTF oppotunities. Some newbie owners don't realise that they should use "Write Note" rather than "Found It" when seeding their cache with TBs. (I had one such the other day which I was fortunate enough to spot and so get an FTF for it) Come to think of it why does the system even allow owners to post "Found It"s on their own caches? Makes no sense to me (but that one has probably been asked and answered before somewhere)

Cool - looks like they will be licence exempt too - unlike in the US where you have to pay US$75 per year licence fee. I see they are proposing opening up additional channels - the Rino 110 and 120 (not sure about the 130) currently doesn't support all the potential channels but those they do support should be enough. The unfortunate thing about the GMRS on the Rino though is that the FCC have prevented its use for transmission of location infomation (probably the neatest feature of the Rino IMHO) so if you want to do that you are stuck with FRS. I wonder a) what Canada will do in that regard and b ) whether Garmin will take any notice (i.e. incorporate that functionality in the product - actually I bet it would be possible right now with a firmware upgrade)

I went for classical elegance!!