warheel

After I figured out how to upload maps to my SD card, and understood the file system, I love my 400. I really don't know if it was me or that it wasn't as intuitive as I would have liked it to be. I really like the size and how it fits into my hand. It also gets a signal much faster than my SporTrak.

Thanks for the support, everyone. I think I would have handled the situation entirely differently had A) I been in a better mood had I found the cache and showed him, or C) if the owner had said in a friendly voice "hey buddy, everything OK over there?"..however, his body language was defensive to begin with. Here is a little more background about the layout around the location of the cache (that I didn't find, BTW). A main road is fronted by numerous shopping centers. with the parking lots all connected. Think of a large grocery store parking lot..this man's land, which has a stand alone building about the size of an 8 screen movie theater on it, is adjacent to the grocery store parking lot. I drove through the grocery store parking lot and continued through the parking lot on his property to get closer to the cache. As a matter of fact, I even saw the owner arrive in the parking lot that morning (a good 250 feet away from the cache) because I passed him in his car as I headed toward the cache. I have no doubt the guy was the landowner because I used to live about 1/2 mile from this location and patronized the business that was located there years ago before it closed. As I drove through the vacant part of the lot, I saw the only logical area where the cache could be --somewhere on a probably 20' wide strip of land separating his parking lot from the parking lot on the next strip mall (this strip of land also meant the end of driving through parking lots as a way to get from strip mall to strip mall). I don't know if he owns the grassy area where I was searching or not. I suppose I will e-mail the cache owner to let him know of the guy. I'm usually aware of all my surroundings--I had my eye on someone unlocking one of the offices at the next strip mall while this guy was walking toward me. Had I spotted him walking toward me, rather than worried about being muggled from the nearby business, I would have been long gone before he got there. If the guy has noticed activity over towards that corner of his property (whether or not he owns the land where the cache is located), then IMO he could have approached me in a more friendly inquisitive manner. It is indeed a relatively new cache...one that I won't bother to find.

This morning I was questioned about what I was doing by a property owner and I didn't handle it well. I been geocaching for several months..I have a busy job and don't get to nearly as often as I like. Most of my finds consist of urban micros located near main streets. After I dropped the kids off at school this morning, I drove to work through a parking lot of a business to get within 15 feet of a cache, which was at the deserted far end of the parking lot. I parked my SUV (big enough to hide behind, I thought) probably 100 feet from the nearest car at the business..it was early. I got out of my car and looked around for about 90 seconds. I see a man walking towards me and thought "oh crud" and started to get in my car. He asked me in an accusatory tone "what are you doing here. I'm the property owner and want to know." I was dressed in slacks and a golf shirt..not exactly like I'm up to anything..I said "nothing". I got in my car and he said, once again, in a semi sarcastic way "Have a nice day", to which I replied, "Have a nice weekend." As I drove off, he wrote down my license plate number and as I drove off I shouted out my plate number. This experience hasn't soured me on geocaching..but it has soured me on urban micros. It was pretty obvious the guy had been watching me since the second I drove through his parking lot and parked at the empty part of it This is serving as some sort of confession...had I been carrying a printout of the cache page, I would have shown it to him and tried to explain what I was doing. However, I didn't like his accusatory tone and let his actions dictate mine--a flaw of mine. I have wondered if I should go back and ask to speak to him to explain my actions to get it off my chest..but I really think by the way he carried himself, he wouldn't be interested in hearing what I had to say, especially after how I acted.