Steve&GeoCarolyn

It was not a demand. It was a threat. I honor nearly all requests by cache owners, including those who ask that my log be on a specific topic. I do my very best to honor all requests made by travel bug owners, including those that request rather intimate details in my logs. I will go out of my way and make a great effort to honor someone's request. However, I don't accede to threats. Allowing other people to control one through threats is a mistake, in my opinion. Where exactly does it stop? The fact that you and others here find the threats the cache owner chose to make to be acceptable speaks volumes. Carolyn

There is not much that we typically want in a cache, but I delight in leaving things, especially at caches that are beautiful to visit. My favorite thing to leave is jewelry. I have three nieces who are all mad for Claire's jewelry, so I haunt the sales there and buy jewelry to use as gifts for them and as things to put in caches. I imagine that a young girl cacher might enjoy baubles from Claire's better than little racing cars. (From what I've noticed from logs, people do pick up the lockets and jewelry I put in caches fairly quickly and that pleases me.) My beloved loves finding dice in caches, so that is what we are most likely to pick up.

I agree with most of what you've written here. I believe in basic courtesy. If I don't have anything nice to say about a cache or if I don't have time to write a decent log, I don't log that find. I've avoided logging a few "finds" and I will probably avoid logging finds in the future that I can say nothing good about or do not remember well enough. We've even established a rule of thumb: We search for no more than 4 caches in a day because that is the maximum I can remember and log well. (And if one of those four turns out to be in a garbage dump, I'm not going to log that find.) Also, I am not promoting long logs either. In fact, if I didn't take so much time in the editorial process, my logs would be considerably longer, but it takes time for me to edit them down so that they are good (as opposed to long). But there is a reciprocal politeness that is at issue in this thread. It is the threat to delete logs, not for their quality, not for their violation of Groundspeak's rules, but merely because the cache owner believes that the cache was found with the wrong motive, that of a challenge. This is wrong. Further, it is bad strategy if you what you want is to promote good logs. Telling Joey Numbers Whore that you're going to delete his TFTC! log, one of 100 he logged that day is worthy of a shrug. You are not discouraging him because he has so little invested. Instead, you are discouraging people who care about what they write and spend time to make it good. Why work hard on a log if the cache owner can delete it at whim? Support for this sort of action will have the exact opposite effect of what you say you want. Carolyn

I'm not sure what a "Bucket List" is. Definition? But to answer the question, I'm finding that certain cachers are quietly persuasive about their areas, making me long to go places I'd never even considered. So here's my list: I long to go to Antelope Valley and experience some of Kit Fox's adventures. They draw me, though I fear I would have severe altitude sickness as I always do in the Colorado Rockies. New Jersey. I've found Briansnat persuasive about that state and it was certainly one that I never considered appealing before him. But he makes it sound beautiful and peaceful. I am not even sure how he does this since I can't point to a single post he's made about the advantages of New Jersey over all other states. Clan Riffster has made the Florida swamps sound like an adventure in Paradise and I've started quietly dropping hints to my beloved. "You know, our swamps are beautiful, but I have it on good authority that they are nothing compared to Florida's swamps. Wouldn't it be divine? Er, once we have snake boots." I've learned though that saying, "Wouldn't it be wonderful to be nipple deep in a Florida swamp?" is not a selling point. And finally, top of my list of places I never would have considered before, I absolutely long to go to Oklahoma and visit the Get Smart series of caches. I have even started a list of props that we will need for the photographic moments. (I've stopped dropping the veiled hints and started pointing out the advantages of a trip to Oklahoma to my beloved sooner rather than later.) Carolyn

I think that there is a difference between being forced to do something and having something that one has created destroyed or taken away. The spirit that motivates someone to destroy a log "in a heartbeat" with no consideration for the person who took time to write the prose and post the photographs is the same spirit of vandalism that motivates someone else to destroy caches they don't like. The fact that Groundspeak apparently allows the one is quite disappointing. Nonetheless, people often have the capacity and power to do things that they would not do because it would simply be immoral or unethical to do so. I think most cache owners are good ethical people and would not do so or would contact the cache logger to discuss the problem before a deletion (thus giving the logger the opportunity to rescue the prose and photographs to their own computer). The ones who would act without basic consideration for loggers have made their positions known on this thread (and others) and I'm happy to put their caches on my list of caches I don't log. No. I also wouldn't support deletion of your logs without substantial reason. Obviously not. However, if they choose to take a travel bug, their feet should be held to the fire to release it in a cache unharmed. Taking something that doesn't belong to you or destroying it is unethical. Obviously they should move them to another cache. Again, they should not destroy them no matter how much they don't like travel bugs. Would you support a cache page that said "I don't like travel bugs. Do not place them in this cache. I will destroy any I find here"? Carolyn

I think what we have here is a failure to communicate. (To paraphrase my new favorite movie quote of the moment.) Did you enjoy the hunt? No problem. Did you hunt that cache solely for the √ and got nothing out of it because you failed to find, and thusly was unable to claim that √? Problem. In fact, though, what is being defended is this: "As of January 1st 2009, all of my caches will be exempt from logging for challenges, games, series or other bookmarked nonsense dragging down the game. I will delete any finds assocoated (sic) with this." There is nothing there about enjoying the hunt. (And I really don't see how organizing one's hunt with a challenge harms enjoyment of the hunt for individual caches.) What is being defended is wholesale deletion of logs (no matter how good or bad) if they are used as part of a challenge, now or in the future. As to your example of gourmet food preparation, at one point I had a personal challenge to visit every raw food restaurant in the US, photograph the entree and dessert, and enjoy eating it. (I also wrote up a bit about it.) My challenge didn't in any way harm my enjoyment of each individual restaurant. In fact it enhanced it. I was able to compare and say, "Mmmm! Roxanne's (Marin County) has a lovely ethereal quality to the food with amazing service, but the food at Karyn's (Chicago) is delightfully solid and Midwestern and the raw pizza at Juliano's (Los Angeles) explodes with fresh flavor in my mouth in a way that only Californian cuisine does. But for everyday food, nothing beats Go Raw in Las Vegas. I could eat every meal, every day there. Why not see challenge caches as enhancing the enjoyment of individual caches in the same way my restaurant challenge did for raw food? Carolyn

I suppose so, but it doesn't seem to be entirely effort-driven. As near as I can tell (other than setting up a 5/5 cache) the easiest way to discourage visits to a cache is to make it premium members only, which cuts down visits to a greater degree than one would think. The effort to join the site is pretty minimal and the work-time value of the money involved is also pretty small. Terrain and difficulty are not interchangeable on an effort-driven basis. They seem to have different discouragement curves. Highway caches are popular all out of proportion to the effort it takes to get to one. Strangely enough (to me) urban micros seem to be extremely popular when looked at from how often they are visited, despite the declarations of people on this forum and that doesn't seem to be particularly effort-driven. I agree that effort has a lot to do with how often a cache is visited, but it seems to me that there are other dynamics in place as well (though I do not yet understand what they are). Carolyn

I spend a long time logging our caches. This last weekend we attempted 5 caches, found 2 and I left 2 found logs, 2 DNF logs, and 1 note. I processed 136 photos to get down to the 14 I used in the logs. I spent 2.5 hours writing and editing 912 words of what I hope is lively prose and processing those photos. Because this system doesn't show DNFs or notes in our public profiles, you cannot see some of my best writing and photos from this weekend. (I hate that about this system.) From what I understand from flask and the other cache owners here, they would think nothing of deleting my hard work in writing these logs if they suspected I had "bad" motives (did this as part of a challenge) in searching for those caches. I find this a very troubling set of attitudes. I am blessed to live in Tennessee where people are nicer about these things. Carolyn Since the system won't show you this weekend's DNFs and Notes, here are the links to the logs.: Six, Sicks, Icks: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...a7-efce6d7f1218 Joe's http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...ee-6948d7e9c67a BSA http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...0b-3f089af9e4c5

I've been keeping careful track of the caches we find, when the last find was on them, and I check nearly every day to see which of the ones we've found have been found (or DNF) after us. I've noticed the following in my area: Puzzle caches don't get found as often as non-puzzle caches. Caches that require any amount of hiking don't get found as much. Caches that are premium member only don't get found as much. Caches that are far from a highway don't get found as often as those near a highway. Caches that require boats or that have prominent poisonous snake warnings don't get found as often. What I do is mentally count all those things up in my mind. A premium members only puzzle cache that requires some hiking? Oh that could easily take a year for the next finder to log it. Probably best not to put a travel bug in that cache. Your area probably has some special attributes as well. Perhaps poisonous snakes are not as prominent but you have other things that keep people from finding them? From what I've noticed the most popular caches (by find count) are park and grabs off of major highways. So if one of those hadn't been found in 6 months, I might very well think it missing. Carolyn

How to project a waypoint! Perhaps even an explanation of what "projecting a waypoint" is.

RPG-style? All I can think of is Rocket Propelled Grenade-style. Jim Sounds exciting. Role Playing Game. Your idea sounds like more fun, though it might be shading the understanding of Groundspeak's cache placement guidelines to have something blow up.

That sounds like fun and a good way to keep the adventure grounded in the real world. Carolyn

That sounds beautiful. I looked it up on Wherigo.com and can see why people come from far away to do it. Perhaps if we end up in Florida we will be able to do it as well. Thanks! Carolyn

Indeed yes! You can have a cute little merit badge on your page. There is a website that will count things up and create one for you. Not that it means anything, but it is very cute. Carolyn

But isn't that just it? It is not the challenges that cause people to write poorly or meagerly. It is the personality of those who would rather stick a fork in their eye than write a good log. They will not be writing good or lengthy logs whether they are doing a challenge or not. To blame this on the challenges is short-sighted, I think. Challenges are just a way to organize the cache hunt. They don't force anyone to write badly or rudely. As to writing for oneself, I'm pretty much there. I write because I love to write and because I want to communicate the fun of what I am doing to the person who introduced me to geocaching. I understand that these logs serve as a kind of thank you note to the owner and I try to do that as well. But if I hated writing with a shining purple passion, I wouldn't be writing longish logs. The idea promulgated on these boards that I should be writing for the cache owner and only the cache owner has given me pause at times and I've thought that perhaps I should just set up a blog and not write cache logs at all because I am so clearly not writing primarily for the cache owner. But then who really wins with that decision? I don't win. The cache owner doesn't win if I take my logs elsewhere. My friend has to seek out my blog to read what I'm writing (though he probably wouldn't mind). Any one who might enjoy my photos or my logs doesn't win if I switch to a blog instead of logging my finds and DNFs because of this. And yet every time one of the cache owners here soberly explains to someone that finders should be writing their logs focusing on what pleases the cache owner I think about setting up that blog again. (My beloved says "Stay off the forum and the problem is solved.") My guess is that I'm not the only one intimidated by such demands. I think this sort of thing is counter-productive to producing good logs. At least it is for me. Carolyn

You cache to eat??? I am so clearly doing this wrong. On our cache hikes there is a complete dearth of food (other than a few emergency Clif bars). Is there a gourmet set of caches somewhere? I am so onboard with that idea!!! Cache to eat, it definitely has possibilities in the Carolyn playbook (though probably not the Steve playbook, alas). Carolyn

I think the closest Wherigo to us is 175 miles away. Nonetheless, this looks like exactly the sort of thing we would enjoy. I'm thinking of creating a Wherigo cartridge here in this area since no one else seems to be. Do you most prefer the RPG-style Wherigo cartridges or the historical ones? I'm having trouble deciding what would be good here. Carolyn

What sort of problem are you having? When I first started I wanted to friend the person who introduced me to this, but it turned out that both of us had our friend request set to "do not allow friend requests". Once we changed it in our profile, we were able to have friends. Is that the problem you're facing? Carolyn

I am not sure I understand how you are thinking about this. We're pretty new but we understand ourselves well enough to know that we don't enjoy ticking up high numbers of finds (too hard to log and not enough hiking). But we like a bit of a challenge. High difficulty caches, puzzle caches, difficult terrain all provide some challenge for us and we like that. One other thing we enjoy is exploration, so when we noticed that we could get a cute little badge for completing the "Well-Rounded Cacher" challenge, we decided to start doing it. It requires that we get one cache from each difficulty/terrain combination and that we get one cache of each type. About a week ago we visited our first earthcache. I'd feared that earthcaches would be dreadfully boring and tedious, but I was wrong. This was one of the most enjoyable caches I'd ever visited. It was simply beautiful and the logging requirements had us splashing in the stream and balancing on rocks. We emerged in a high state of giggles. Had we not been engaged in this challenge, we never would have tried this cache and we never would have known what we were missing. I don't think you can predict what people will enjoy. All the recent research indicates that we are really bad at predicting what our future selves will like, much less what some other person will like. Given that, isn't it best to have ways of encouraging people to get outside of their own small world to try new things and find new things to enjoy? Isn't that what challenges are ultimately for? If you'd been the owner of that earthcache we enjoyed so much, would you resent the fact that we were only trying earthcaches because of the challenge? Does it diminish your enjoyment in our enjoyment of your cache? If it does, can you explain why that would be the case? I'm kind of missing something here, I think. Carolyn

My beloved keeps pointing out that most of the geocaching logs in this region cluster around the cooler months. (His ultimate goal is to convince me that geocaching in July and August in the local wetlands is too unpleasant even for dedicated geocachers and that I should plan other activities, preferably air-conditioned activities.) Tzipora in another thread pointed out the advantages of geocaching in Alaska (no snakes). I suspect that if we were there my beloved would be pointing out the sparsity of geocaching logs in winter months. Is there a geocaching season where you are? Or a geocaching heavy season and light season? Is there a season when you absolutely will not venture out to geocache? Or do you switch to urban hides in the difficult months? Or do you just gut it out no matter how deep the snow, or how hot, humid, and mosquito-filled the air is? Carolyn

Thank you, Tzipora. Such is the irrational nature of my fear of snakes that I am far more afraid of the most harmless grass snake than I am of bears and moose. Knowing that there are no snakes in Alaska certainly makes it sound like an appealing place. Can you actually hike barefoot in Alaska? Carolyn

Is there any way for me to set my profile so that people who look at me (my friends, for example) can see my DNFs? Some of our experiences not finding caches are quite funny and I'd like it if my friends could follow those as well as my finds. Carolyn You can put them in a bookmark list and make it public. Thank you! I hadn't thought of that. I will make up a bookmark list of caches with amusing or adventurous DNFs and tell my friends where to look in the future. Carolyn

So you are a model husband? I am so glad to have found you! You must send an email to my beloved and explain to him the absolute importance of us finding the puzzle cache I've solved, no matter how many times we must go or how unpleasant the gasoline fumes are, or how likely it seems that the cache is missing. He's told me that three times are enough. But it's never enough, is it? Not if I haven't found it yet. Carolyn

That really made me laugh! Hopefully we haven't discouraged anyone from seeking the cache. It is amazing how close we can be to transcendent beauty and never see it until we are brought to it. We are trying to figure out where we would want to place a cache and I keep wishing that I knew places as beautiful as those that I have been brought to by other geocachers. I think it must take months or years in some cases to find the perfect cache-spot. It was very nice to meet you as well! We enjoyed talking to you. It made the time in the lunch line fly. The cache is somewhat odd. It is the oldest cache in Tennessee and has been more or less unofficially adopted by a senior member of this community and, from what I can tell from the logs, is actively cared for by the community at large. So it is a well-cared for cache. It probably doesn't need me. (And I am sure that it is my imagination that the cache keeps begging me to visit.) Carolyn

Is there any way for me to set my profile so that people who look at me (my friends, for example) can see my DNFs? Some of our experiences not finding caches are quite funny and I'd like it if my friends could follow those as well as my finds. Carolyn