kewfriend

FewKinder at Inverness - and the cairn to the departed cacher

"What can possibly go wrong?" Father Christmas was taking his early annual holiday after a hectic delivery schedule in late 2007 and now he was lounging on Tahiti in the arms of some very appreciative local ladies. Of course the buxom babes had no idea what he was on about and one even volunteered: "Ne vous inquiétez pas. J'ai acheté des preservatives", and FC wondered whether strawberry or morello cherry would be on the table. But ere FC was closing his lids for a little shut eye, foreclosure had hit Iceland. Little did he know that when he awoke he would no longer be the proud owner of the North Pole. Indeed the 'Seattle Grounds Peak Refinancing Corporation" were already on their way to take possession of North Pole Toy Enterprises from the "Iceland and all Places North LandesbanK", in which FC had rather unwisely placed his trust. Grounds Peak had realised that essentially FC had the wrong business model. FC relied on assembling countless sacks of oversize trash financed through cheap loans secured against Ice. Global warming had completely and literally undermined this business model. Even had the Landesbank not collapsed, the chance that Mr Claus would be able to deliver in 2008 were slim. Grounds Peak had hit on the brilliant strategy of creating a vast empty hole at the North Pole and then advertising the fact on an internalional website (www.geognashing.com). The principle was very simple. Little boys and girls from all over the world would be invited to the Great North Hole (otherwise now known as a GeoGnash) to sign a book of remembrance to FC and to bring a favourite toy to leave in the Great North Hole to help out poor old FC. Rudolph had been re-employed on a short term performance pay related contract to incentivise boys and girls to bring as many presents as possible to FC. As for FC ... well the Grounds Peak team initially decided that his clothing was inappropriately bright for northern climes and that his attendance at the Great North Hole would be disruptive. However the charity "XFam", established to remember Xmas's past, had offered to re-employ FC on a minimum wage. Grounds Peak invested heavily. A large airport was constructed and all the industrial activity contributed positively to the Great North Hole. Tens of thousands of children bought tickets for 'EasyPrez' which deliberately operated clapped out aircraft with high carbon emmisions. The more the children that came, the bigger the hole that grew. The directoprs of grounds Peak Refinancing could not believe how clever they had been. Over in the United Mistakes the times they were a changing. In this strange land every four years they had something called an 'election'. Usually this process was of little interest to the vast majority of inhabitants in that land who preferred to drive around in large trucks and contribute to making the Great North Hole bigger. But this year, for some odd reason the cost of filling their trucks with fuel had risen a smidgen and the natives were restless. Then out of the East came a shining star who came to be know as the Great O' Mama though he was actually still a male. He said he could cure all ills, fill all pockets, and bring presents to all children. So O'Mama won the election and straight away he was petitioned by all the children of all the world. "Tis the evils of the banks and the car factories and capitalism"; he announced. "From hencemore there shall be no economy.". And as he spoke the flights to the Great North Hole dried up, and the Great North Hole started to re-freeze. Then the friendly troops stationed at the Great North Hole were recalled home and FC found himself alone with Rudolph but surrounded by a vast pile of presents. He didnt quite have enough and in the short few weeks before his deliveries were needed he managed to restart the North Pole Toy Enterprises assembly plant and soon lots and lots of shiny prezzies were being packaged up. "what can possibly go wrong"? asked Father Christmas - "well ... ", he mused, "quite a lot but at least all the boys and girls will get some prezzies this Christmas - but it was a close run thing."

Bongard Christmas Puzzles -GCH61T is one of the great Christmas caches. Originally released a day at the time in the run up to Christmas, it had us panting for more more more. Sadly the final location was just too inconvenient to visit but all I will say is that it is a highly highly seasonal location. This is not an easy puzzle cache, but the final spot is very easy. ENJOY

I remember a well known Berkshire cacher having to log a DNF on his own cache after I removed some surreptitious red ribbon marking his cache. I do the CITO and get the last laugh!

Holland Park GCVMV1 has a number of geocaches in it: all are pleasant and not too difficult. Kensington is a bit of a geocache desert. There are a lot of geocaches in Kew and Richmond, many of them puzzles (about 25 mins on the direct Underground from South Kensington). Use my Munificence GC1J6AY as a start to find all the nearby caches. Hampstead Heath in north London has a lot of caches but its further away and most are a little 'ordinary'. GCGBGB Last delivery is a cache near St Pauls Cathedral (about 30 mins from Kensington) and there are lots of virtual and small caches nearby, all quite fun. Let me know if you want help. KF

Today I received not one, but TWO geocoins. Thank you Santa. I feel I have been over-gifted!! My Santa is in Washington DC, but no name , so my coins are pre-fixed "Secret Santa" in their name and might like to wander back across the pond!

If you want to come out towards Richmond, I might be around

I certainly think installing yourself as a Travel Bug has potential: one up from a geo-dog perhaps. You could insist that to be logged you have to be in the hands of some other geocacher for a required period of time. However in the spirit of geocaching travel bus, I'm not sure you could decline to be grabbed. Of course there are some who might wish to upload photos of the travel bug, so you'd need to consider how to manage that. It is of course a trifle unfair if a TB never is actually resident in a cache so you might wish to declare your domicile as a giant cache and finding the TB in the cache would then become a slightly more extensive version of rootling through all the McToys. Access to the cache doesnt have to be all 24 hours and you could of course be a member only cache, but whether that is a successful filter remains debatable. You could declare your personage itself to be the logbook and get yourself signed but I suggest that you'd need to have those signatures tatooed otherwise they might fade too quickly and too many would falsely claim a first to find. If you yourself were the logbook, you could might wish to consider how you would manage logbook replacement. I know of many single male and female cachers so the next issue to be discussed would what would happen if any pairing became hitched. Could you log two TBs or caches for the price of one. If you were a conjoined cache and one half was archived what would happen to the other half. I'm sure GSP has a set of procedures for that one. On further consideration this is truly a geo-minefield and I suggest emailing MTN and MissJenn for formal guidance on how to proceed, perhaps avoiding Keystone who tends to have a very formalistic outlook

The Memory map website is your obvious first port of call but the posted price of £300 for all UK(premium) is steep and now heavily discounted. Thats of course the 1:50000, and the 1:25000 is pricier still. The data comes on DVD. Before mapped GPS really took off we used an XP Laptop and Autoroute loaded up which worked surprisingly well when Autoroute was connected to a GPS: the GPS signal update protocols were tiresomely slow then and have much improved.

Trubble maker - get thee out und place a few more of dem micros

Just check that you downloaded the Topo version into the Extrex right as you intended. At its simplest level, if you could see the the contours on your PC screen (and the print feature is disabled) just before you downloaded, then you probably got that bit.

Its my senior moment forgetting the previous 900! I've bookmarked that BBC one as it looks a cracker! Wales is definitely now on the agenda!

Thanks folks. A grief shared is a brief bared. I've had coins go AWOL before, as well as the odd TB but never straight out of the starting blocks. What annoys me is that they were not (seemingly) handed to a geocacher to grab and pass on. You are right about things turning up. I had a gruesome skull called 'Bury Me' which went AWOL in the north of England. First the tag was found without skull and sent to me. Then months later the skull was found in a bush by a geocacher (as it happens) who remembered reading about and sent in on to me. It restarted its journeys, went over to the states and got lost in the Utah deserts I think.

Escape while you can. Addiction doesn't take hold usually till after the third fix, so you may just get away with it. Never pick up a geocoin or your addiction may become untreatable. If your pursuit is solitary, get a geo-friend FAST: you may just survive.

Ooooooh - spoilt for choice, but what a choice this would be, seeing I have flown in a glider over the top, caved in the holes underneath and cranked myself up to the trigpoint several times. Shall I plan a geoparty for the top MrsB?

Hmmmm .... if thats what I think it is, its def worth a visit!

OK .... just 997 to go before the big 1000! Just 1 more Multi to go before the big 100 and just 3 more Puzzles to do before that big 100. I'm thinking of planning to do my 1000th on St David's Day so ideas please!

GONE - three months now and by my calculation thats another 4 geocoins belonging to me and others probably which will have been pocketed or appear on Ebay. Mine lasted 10 minutes! Hi Kewfriend, a friend of my roomate from the united states took it from here over the sea. He will probably drop it there. But i don't know when. I hope he will do this soon. Because he took 3 or 4 items over. best regards he***ke

I must be alone in trying to structurally unravel what has happened. No one, either local or posting here on behalf of GC has commented. This worries me, because I do not subscribe to the platitudinous theory of social organisations. I know Lucilla and Dave P, (for slightly different reasons) have hung up their Mod pencils. I really regret that. <KF blows DP and L a kiss> I do not think these forums are any nicer or nastier than before, busier maybe - but in general roughly the same as before. We as posters <do I look good in poster paint> have the standard responsibility to not destabilise the forums. That is taken as read. We'll abide by our Mods. That is taken as read <well they have the big OFF button> BUT our Mods must feel that the delegated authority they have is real AND that they are not subject to instant, overnight and cursory over-rulings from a 'senior' Mod at GC and quite simply - publicly humiliated with their authority undermined. I can see the central compliance temptation to do this by GC central Mods whose knowledge of the other geo-languages may not be as 'hot' as their English. These persons in their Mod-roles, (and it does include those whose recent comments here I've welcomed MissJenn, MTN and Keystone) must be prepared to apply to the UK forum Mods the same delegations as are applied to the UK reviewing process, which on the face of it was definitely lacking. There - I've said it. PS I do not class good and coherent participation as we have here from MTN and MissJenn, as 'wading-in'. Thats called communication..

A genuine welcome to your deposition. I promise you I didnt press send twice!!!

A genuine welcome to your deposition. We all know, in terms of forums and caching activity of all kinds that the generally the UK is prime real estate. Our own land laws, footpaths etc etc have aided the development of UK geocaching, so that cache density in England (for instance) is almost at the top of the GC.COM league tables. We need GC & GC needs us for the pastime to flourish. All organisations have to adapt as they grow. GC.COM hasn't done a bad job of adapting - on the whole. The website is a vast improvement on a few years ago. The key current issue does seem to be whether the managerial structures, procedures and processes of GC.COM have managed to adapt fast enough for its growth. Most organisations delegate and federate more as a solution to growth, whilst keeping an overarching corporate identity. That means trusting the judgements of those who are local - not wading in. That trust does happen in the reviewing process, but the forums is more questionable. The perception on the ground IMHO is that GC.COM has become more didactic and centralised as its solution to growth and more prone to wade in, and the current tornadoes are partly a result of that. That may not be the view from GCHQ of course. The sheer size of the UK forums participation means we are bound to get moments when 'people speak out of turn'. Good moderation can deal with that, and candidly your posting is an example of such. Actually I think that the UK forums are surprisingly well behaved given the volume of participation and that perceptions to the contrary are misplaced. OK I put my hands up to the odd 'sour' comment. I personally wouldn't worry too much about the forums; those of us that participate really are very much a minority of geocachers. BUT last year's events were precisely because GC did worry too much about central corporate compliance in the forums and by wading in put us now where we are. I commend a 'back off', chill etc etc. Finally lets have some volunteers to MOD us from amongst us UK crowd. Lets be open, even democratic about it if at all possible and live happily with whom we accept as our MODS, and for goodness sake lay to rest the Masonic Secrecy that is perceived to be GC.

I'd be happy to see this thread closed before it all gets a little unpleasant - I know some folks are in the immortal words of a famous monarch 'not amused'. Though I'm not particularly concerned whether some are amused and some are not, I dont want unpleasantness.

What a wonderful website!

There are unconfirmed rumours that the world's largest holder of satellite dependent real estate has not been included in the $400bn bail out recently voted through by the US Congress. GeoTrash.Com, like many internet based ventures started around the Millenium, was conceived in a public restroom in Seattlite. From small dumps do bigger dumps grow and soon this brave young corporation was employing tens of thousands on all continents. In a masterful re-writing of real estate and employment law, the young entrpreneurs persuaded nearly all their employees to receive absolutely no remuneration. Their reward, they were told, would be in the GeoTrash Heaven - a sort of deity based location about 25,000 miles above planet earth. These selfless employees seized real-estate on every continent by the clever if little known technique of placing an 'ownership container' in locations that most others would overlook. It is not known for certain how many of these lucrative locations exist, but the GeoTrash.Com website boasts over 600,000. This is phenonomal,. and makes this corporation the world largest real-estate manager by a factor of at least 1000. So what went wrong? Initially the trash locations were well considered and in some cases quite sizeable containers were used to claim significant real estate. However as more and more employees registered to join GeoTrash.Com, mostly in the belief that they would one day also be circling planet earth beaming down on their less fortunate bretheren, there was a significant development of the sub-prime trash locations. These came to be known as micros and laterally as nanos. Indeed in recent weeks there have been so many of these sub-prime locations that interest in them has started to evaporate exponentially. Occasionally these containers were stolen or seized by others but now having negative equity, their passing was not even noticed. In one key area of the business, LimeyLand, the high priests of the corporation in Seattle have found the business particularly difficult to manage. Locally based senior managers have either resigned in droves or been fired (sadly for them) not into orbit. There is now an almost anarchic lack of control of the business in LimeyLand. The UK Govenrment has ruled that because this business does not manage cash, it has not qualified for government support and there is now a serious risk of this segment of the business imploding. Stockholders, those that have claims on one or more locations, are deeply worried that their locations will fail to be adopted should this happen. The high priests of the corporation in Seattelite were unavailable for comment.

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