AuntieWeasel
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Posts posted by AuntieWeasel
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Oh, man. You are so going to LOVE this.
The teenagers? If you're lucky.
But YOU have just found your hobby. Don't wait for vacation -- do a search right now on your area code. You'll be amazed how close the closest cache to your house is.
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I've cached with very experienced cachers who have the gear to go paperless and still want printouts for various reasons. My printer was always out of ink, but I did take physical notes with me, as a rule. Sometimes paper is just easier.
My first GPS was a Garmin Legend. The monochrome version. That's more like the £100 you wanted to spend. It was absolutely rock solid right up until I finally managed to beat it to death. Depending on where you go, you'll have to download extra maps -- the base map is pretty basic.
I've found Garmin's maps for the UK can be a little...funky. All the Garmins have the same mapping program (I don't know what the others use). They've led us up a few cart tracks and they're forever telling us to turn left when the road just bends away leftish.
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Well, I've had three handhelds so far, and none of them ever gets to zero and stays there. I'm almost never "right on top" of the cache, per the navigation screen.
The best I can do is, "it's four feet W...it's 16 feet W...it's 5 feet N." I mean, where the marker is, per my device, depends on when you tell me to stop trying to find it.
Equally instructive is just to sit in a field holding the GPS and watch the breadcrumb trail spike all around you.
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If I looked and didn't find it, I log a DNF. But if my search got cut short, or it's the kind of cache I'm not good at or something, I let the owner know in the log not to worry too much.
People can get flexed if they run out and check a cache for no good reason.
My DNF rate, incidentally, is about ten percent.
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I used to leave old coins, back in the days I'd do a couple of long hikes for a couple of smileys on a weekend. I'd buy currency in bulk (pretty cheap after the Euro came in), put them in a little coin envelope with my sig stamped on the outside.
I got all kinds of happy feedback on them. But ultimately I picked up the pace and was hitting a lot of micros and just stopped carrying them with me.
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YESSSSSS!!!
I was going to post that I'm too old to recognize it. But I've just Wikipedia'd Green Day and discovered they were formed in 1987.
I am too old to be familiar with the oeuvre of a band formed 23 years ago. If you want me, I'll be over there chewing open a vein.
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I'm a 28 year old geo-bachelor and I'm way to young to be thinking about having kids OR getting married for that matter.
Glad to hear that, Simpjkee. That greatly increases the likelihood that your avatar represents a man and woman dropping a toddler into a giant bear trap. Is it?
PLEASE say yes!
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Most of the cachers I know either don't have kids or don't cache with them. I really like caching in groups, but I *love* caching by myself.
You need to be a little more selective on your own. If you're male, you probably don't want to be seen skulking around playgrounds. And if you're female, you want to be aware when you're way up the trail by yourself.
And, of course, you need to be finicky about your equipment: extra batteries, good signal on your cellphone.
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There's no GC number on the logbook or anything?
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I hit an adorable chipmunk while caching in Rhode Island. They usually skitter across the road so quickly that I was enjoying watching this one stand up and bathe his widdle face.
It was like, "oh, look at the adorable...badump-ump"
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Yeah, I used to wear a necklace like that. I retired it when I moved to the UK. You would not beLEEV how sensitive they can be.
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Well, I see you're a premium member. You can build a Pocket Query and check the box for listing caches "that have travel bugs."
Reports of bugs are pretty unreliable, though. When one goes missing, it's often allowed to "sit" in the last cache it was known to be in.
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OK, mission accomplished! I marked my current location, then changed the coordinates to where I wanted to go. Now what? I mean do I highlight and press GOTO? And how do I follow the map? Just keep moving in the direction that keeps the arrow on the line? Which "zoom" level do you find to be the most user friendly?
Yep. Highlight and press GOTO and follow the arrow until you find the cache.
You sound exactly like me on my first day out. The nearest cache to me was two miles away, and I just followed that arrow like an idiot. It's a wonder I didn't drive right over someone's grandma.
In fact, for my first six months, I was a complete maroon about parking the car too early and walking. I stupidly walked over ALL KINDS of private property unnecessarily. Do yourself a favor and check out the maps ahead of time and scope out some parking.
As for zoom level, you're going to be going in and out depending on what you're doing. Quickest way to figure it out is to do a couple and forgive yourself in advance for making mistakes.
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Go back to what StarBrand said, the first reply. You mark a waypoint by leaning on the correct button, then you go back and edit that waypoint to the coordinates for the cache. Then you go to it.
That's the simplest way for the absolute beginner.
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I don't think the Legend has a USB cable. If I'm not mistaken, it's serial and it's an extra purchase. Unless it's a much later model than mine was.
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I loved my Legend. It was absolutely bombproof (and it needed to be; I drop stuff a lot).
Do it StarBrand's way to get a start. Find the cache (or a few) closest to you, and put in the coordinates manually. Lean on the...oh, I think it's the bottom left button, but it's been a while. A kneeling guy with a flag pops up and offers to mark "001" for you. Accept that, then go back and edit the coordinates to match the cache page.
Find a couple. You'll either fall completely in love, or not. Then you can learn easier ways to download coordinates, if required.
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So...what is the established FB group for the Southeast?
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I've just checked. Of the twenty TB's I've put out in the last five years (well, twenty one...but one is personal), five have had a log in 2010.
One in four isn't bad, especially as I haven't launched one in a couple of years. And once in a while, one will pop up after a LONG period of dormancy.
I would bet that another one in four disappears in the first hop.
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Got it. Finally. Though it seems to have tripped the fraud protection on my UK debit card and I had to dig out some good old American plastic.
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Meh. Still timing out. Who does a weasel have to sleep with around here to give you thirty bucks?
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I've been trying to renew my premium membership for a couple of days. I input my credit card information, get to the confirmation screen, hit place order...and watch the hourglass go around for ten minutes. Then I get a "webpage not available" message. I've tried a couple of different credit cards.
Is there a problem on your end?
AIIII! I think my premium membership just ran out. My face is hot with shame...
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We used to drive past Pratt's Bottom on our way from London to the coast. I always begged to stop and have tea in Pratt's Bottom.
Just think what you could tell you kids...
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Please keep your personal agenda to yourself. People geocache to escape things of this nature.
Ahhhh...just wanted to see that onscreen one more time.
What he said.
Emphatically.
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Whoa! OS maps for Colorado?! That's exactly what I wanted when I got Garmin's topo card. Foo.
From the link, it looks like they're using a program called Quo for the downloadable maps. Anyone have experience with this program/service?
ftf
in How do I...?
Posted
I only have one FTF, and all I got was a squishy plastic frog.