WRWhizard

Since this is my first bug report, I apologize if I went through the wrong channel but it isn't obvious. I just received email notification of a find on one of my caches. There is an error in the subject line formatting. QUOTE> 51mantaz found Whizard Rides the Rails (Not Published) (Traditional Cache) at 11/10/2010 51mantaz found My New Hide - The best one ever! (Not Published) (Traditional Cache) at 11/10/2010 End Quote< Obviously, you can see where the error is. The second cache is in my watch list but not owned by me. Notices of publication that came in at the same time appear OK. Also, another notification from my watch list appears normal. It came in 15 minutes earlier. Unkle F found A River Runs Through It (Traditional Cache) at 11/10/2010

Welll, some of those bugs I looked for had been placed years ago. I didn't realise it till I got back to where I was staying and checked the bugs page. Easy to do if you are at home on the computer. But when you are out in the field, you only have that little astrisk signifying a bug is there, and the inventory list. No way to know it's been there two years. It happened to me several times on one trip. Enough that I felt I'd not be the only one who arived at a cache expecting a traveler only to find it had been gone for a long long time. OK, you couldn't *KNOW* it's gone just from the date. But unless the bug gets marked missing, it will stay in the inventory forever. Where I was at, apparently a LOT of bugs were long long gone. I just felt that the older the placement date, the less certainty it would still be there. How else but by placement date could you have any indication of the likely hood of it being there? Especialy when you do have the last several logs in your GPS, if the logs go back a month or two, and the placement date is older than those, it's a good bet it's not there.

I'll admit I haven't given this a whole lot of thought about how much trouble it might be to implement, but recently I was on vacation and I deliberately sought out caches that listed travel bugs in their inventories. Many of those travelers had been gone for a very long time. What I propose is that the date of placement of a travel bug be in the GPX file so that a paperless cacher will be able to know a bug is likely gone if it's placement date is very old.

I recently was pleased to discover that my nuvi 260w was able to display topo maps. Quite nicely in fact. For a brief time I had beautiful shaded topo maps along with the city navigator street maps. All zoom levels. Then I updated. Wednesday this past week I was cleaning up my 260 to loan it to my brother, while online I discovered updates were available for it and the Oregon. When all was done, I was shocked to find both units were messed up. BADDLY MESSED UP. The nuvi260 is the worst. Topo maps are gone, except at the farthest zoom levels. If I turn off city maps I get contour lines. Big deal! After what I had this sucks! The Oregon problem isn't so bad. It's just that now, streets from the topo maps are being displayed, even at zoom levels where they are useless. This causes screen draws at 2 and 20mi zoom levels to take 30sec, and 3 minutes respectively. I've got a preliminary reply from Garmin support, but it was only to observe that topo maps aren't shipped on a 260. No info on how to roll back to an earlier version. Is there anyone who can help? I believe I have a full file copy back up of both units as they were shipped, but I don't want to try anything with them till I get more info.

Yea. I've always carried a big zip lock full of Logs, cache notes, pencils, bags etc. in my backpack. Originally I only intended to have the stuff in case I wanted to spontaneously hide one. But Valentines day this year, all my finds were caches that had wintered badly and I was first find since weather set in. I cleaned out all the ruined swag, salvaged a few items to be cleaned up and placed elsewhere and generally put things back it order. Cost me very little and probably made the next finder's experience a bit better. Just consider the fresh log or whatever your SWAG drop. NOTE to newbies: Just don't EVER take the old log book, even if it's mush. Bag it and leave it for the owner.

Surprise find? I have a favorite park near where I work. I was scouting around for my second hide. I'd picked a few spots near the trails as possibles but decided to go up to the top where a bunch of blown downs were. One particularly large stump ring caught my eye but I shrugged it off as too obvious. Then I looked down at my feet at the downed tree and thought. "That bark laying like that... looks like..." I pulled it aside and there was an ammo can. Now I knew every cache in the area so I instantly decided it must be an unpublished new one, so I ran back to my car to get some swag and a geo gem I had. Back up the hill, then when I opened it, I discovered it was the final of a puzzle cache who's origin was nearly 15 miles away! And archived because the owner was banned. Still managed to log the find on another site though. OH yea... earlier in the day I had been commenting to a muggle co-worker on the unlikely chance of finding one by accident.

How a bout when you are fixing frozen pipes in a foreclosed home and you get all excited when you discover an abandoned toy box, shovel all that stuff into a giant leaf bag then spend hours sorting through it for SWAG?

While scouting my favorite local park for a personal hide, I found the final for a rather devious puzzle cache. At first, I thought I had a FTF on a new unpublished but I soon discovered it had been archive on GC.com because the owner was banned. The start point was downtown Pittsburgh, the final was way out in the suburbs. The thing is still active on another site so I logged the find there, but pulled the travel bugs since they were unloggable due to the site being archived. Kind of weird finding one by accident like that.

My seventh hide has only been found twice so far, but both of them really liked it. Hmmm.... if I post this, I'll be blowing the hide. Never mind.... Hmmm can't delete this... OK, instead I'll just say that a really ingenious hide is great for the hider and the finder. The finder gets the obvious thrill of the hunt, and the hider gets to sit back and wait for the email copy of the logs. A crappy hide, get's crappy logs. A great hide makes it really fun to watch those logs come in. So a tip... if you want great finds, reward the cache hider with a good log so they'll try to up the ante and hide another great one.

I've never found anything of great value. But I've tried to make sure that each cache is a little better after I've visited it. For FTF prizes on my hides, I make handmade blacksmith or wood & string puzzles. I've also turned a few puzzles into travel bugs, solve them then pass them on. Some of these things could probably sell for $10-$20 bucks... but considering the time and effort I put into them... they actually cost near three times that. I was pleased to see that one of them was placed in a GeoWoodstock event today. Some of my coolest finds have been hand made items. Like some bead and feather totems I found once. I might suggest that others consider hand made swag.

On the only hide, in my home town, about six blocks from where i live, I came back to my car to find the folks in an apartment complex had called the cops on me because I had parked in the lot at the end of a cul de sac, sat in the car for a while (loading the cache box), then walked across the gravel landfill to the woods a few hundred yards away. They thought I was a child molester??? The cops were cool. I had my GPS and a bunch of corroborating evidence in the back seat. Very embarrassing though. About 20 people had gathered to watch the pervert be hauled away. The cop apologized explaining that they had had a "problem" a month ago and the perp also had a blue cavalier. !!! Later, I decided that was probably me when I parked there to go back in and scout out the hide. I think I remember saying hi to a couple of kids who walked by. Apparently, that's a no no now a days! Sheesh!

Hey! I just got an Oregon 400 and if there's a way to change the track color, I haven't found it and I've looked.

Your Nuvi and all other Garmin mapping GPS receivers will display Topo maps. Do you have a true 260W, or a 255W branded as a 260W? If the + - touch keys are on the right like this, then you have a 255W in 260W clothing. Ahahhahahah!!!!!! Thank you thank you thank you... I just uploaded the topo maps to my 260w or whatever the heck it is and I got both roads and topo!!! Yes, yes, yes... OK... I'm a bit calmer now. But you've done your good deed for the day. Thanks muchly for the info. Just goes to show you can't always believe what the manufacturer publishes. You know this makes my recent "ordeal/opportunity" that much better. If there hadn't been the screwup on the part of buy.com miss linking to a 400i for $399 I'd never have wound up with the Oregon + the topo maps, I'd have just the 400T. So now both of my units are better for it. I knew God was looking out for me, now I see it was even better than I knew. Thanks again. OH! It doesn't look like the picture above with the lines. It has the same shading as the Oregon. Wonderful!

Your Nuvi and all other Garmin mapping GPS receivers will display Topo maps. Do you have a true 260W, or a 255W branded as a 260W? If the + - touch keys are on the right like this, then you have a 255W in 260W clothing. No kidding about the maps? The plus and minus on mine are on the right like you suggest. So what's the difference? I'll have to look into that. I wound up buying a Oregon 400T which shipped as a 400i due to a screw up with Buy.com but all is happy in the end. The price I got it at, plus the topographic maps wound up being the same price as the lowest price I could find for a 400T anyway. So I got a waterways base map, plus the topo for the same as a 400T. So now I'll see if I can put the topos I have now on the nuvi, that would be nice. If not, oh well. OH! A bit of a review here... I'm really loving that Oregon. The built in caching features are great, and after the nuvi, having that compass with the bearing to target... wonderful!! Not to mention being able to log your finds then upload them. As for the claims that the screen is bad in the sun? If the sun is bright, you can turn the backlight completely off and if you angle it to the sun right, it's the same as the backlight full up. There are so many features in there that after almost a week I'm still finding new stuff. I was pleased to note that although the MapSource manual said that the maps don't layer, they sure seem to on the Oregon.

OK. I bought a Garmin Nuvi 260W around Christmas because I'm a contractor who has to find customers etc. but now I'm into GeoCaching. I just might want to buy a hand held that does topographic maps. Since I already have a Garmin, the Colorado is an obvious choice. If I decided that price was no object. Like I take the stash of money that I would spend on my next computer and buy a really nice GPS, what other units should I consider? Consider that I'm using GSAK to do paperless caching so I'd not like to give that up.

Cheapens the prize. If you do ANYTHING to give someone the advantage, it lowers the bar, makes the FTF meaningless. Why don't you just have them sign the log before you place it, and let them log the find without even going to the site. You shouldn't even have to ask. You already know the answer. Don't cheat your friend out of a real FTF. You aren't doing them a favor, you are hurting them by taking away the chance at a real milestone.

Right then, I guess I'll see about shuffling bugs around. I did manage to get out of town and nabbed one while doing a road trip for my job. This one is overdue to head back to Norway from the US. Any tips on how to encourage someone to take it with them when they fly? Might help to drop it near the airport huh?

Ahhh Great! The reason I asked is cause I don't travel all that much, or if I do, it's on company time and they would not appreciate me being out in the bush when I'm supposed to be working. Eventually all the local caches will be found and being able to revisit once in a while would be nice. The courtesies of not re-finding etc. are nice to know. I wondered what notes were for. I suppose it would be common courtesy not to head out and scoop up a traveler before other seekers had a chance. For a busy cache it would be better to log a "discovered" rather than to take it eh? Where as one that is staying there for a while could use the help.

Finding User ID

I'm pretty new to this (5 finds) but an immediately obvious question comes to mind. Is it against the rules to revisit a cache (not your own) just to get a traveler and move it on?