atmospherium

The fish are natural?

Which was the ungrateful part of the DNF log? I've said far worse than that on some of my DNFs, and nobody went all Nicholson all over me. Code Red It was a kinda witty reply.

Congrats on your New! World! Record! Sounds like you had fun. I wonder if we're getting close to the maximum number of caches that can be found in an hour. These latest power runs have been done by teams. I would like to see how many can be done by 1 person. A cache a minute?

I'm a social loser with no friends, so I always cache alone. I'm perfectly at home in the woods, day or night, so no problems there. In public I'm pretty uncomfortable, so I tend to avoid most urban-type caches. But I will go after some of them. In those cases I move quickly and act like I know exactly what I'm doing. I still feel like a suspicious criminal, but I live with it. Yesterday I did 4 urban caches, which included crawling along a set of bleachers next to a baseball field, and going round and round a large cannon in the middle of two busy streets. Felt awkward, but found the caches. The thing to keep telling yourself is, nobody is paying any attention to you. They don't care what you're doing. Ignore the uncomfortable feeling if you can, and cache on.

I'm like a mother hen with my caches. I nervously check them every couple of weeks, scared to death that they won't be in perfect shape for the next finder. I have a cache that nobody has even looked for since last August, yet I've driven the 20 miles out there to check it several times since then. Just in case.

I doubt if there was any local "whistle blower" behind this. It was all those magnets sucking the power out of the towers. They noticed the drain and traced it back. Your next electrical bill is gonna be sky high. Now you know who to blame.

Last weekend was perfect, and I couldn't afford to even leave the house. This weekend I have a few dollars to spare for a bit of caching, and it's been pouring rain for the last 2 days. I don't know if I wanna slop through the mud, so I reckon I'll stay home again and save up for sunnier days.

Don't say anything about it to the new cacher. Being new, they may not have any idea that you've already been doing music themed caches. But, as has been said, you don't have exclusive rights to any themes anyways. Anybody can hide any kind of cache they want. I can understand it bothering you, but...don't let it bother you. And another thing...Mark Knopfler wants his nickname back.

I wonder how many bugs ever do achieve their mission? I've picked up a few bugs on impulse, and then realised that I couldn't really help them along, so I simply dropped them in a cache that gets lots of traffic. Someone else can probably get them going soon enough.

At find #100 I felt like I had arrived as a genuine geocacher. A newbie no more. It was a tough cache that took me several attempts. I was pretty happy about that one For #200 I made an 80 mile pilgrimage to "The Spot". Those are the two memorable milestones so far. #300 was another tough cache, but I lost count the day I hit #400. I'm stuck at #452, thanks to financial problems, so my next milestone will be the day I can afford to go out caching again.

A cacher logged a local cache along the lines of, "No writing instrument. Twisted a leaf into the letter J." I found that cache a few months later. The leaf was still there, still in the J shape. Whatever works. I've had to hike back to the car a few times to retrieve my forgotten pen, and once I sharpened a pencil stub with my car key. Haven't had to draw blood yet.

Bogus!?!? Aww, shucks. I paid them good money, too.

I was confused for a while here. I thought maybe this was some sort of joke. See, there are only 3 to 4 million geocachers in the world. I couldn't see how we could possibly be to blame for any signal shortage. There are umpteen million auto GPS devices being used all day every day. You know, "turn left, turn left", and all that. With possibly 50 million people in America alone using their auto GPS to guide them to the nearest Tim Horton's right at this minute, it's obvious where the signal shortage is coming from. A total ban on auto GPS use is the only way to prevent the entire satellite sytem from crashing down. Literally, if everything I've read is true. But, my argument is null, because, as I said, I was confused. I had entirely forgotten that handheld off-road use GPSrs use a separate proprietary "SignalBrand" satellite system. Now, with such a limited number of birds in the air, the shortage does make sense to me now. I don't see how Groundspeak can possibly resolve this without a massive increase in Premium Membership fees. Gonna have to cut back on forum bandwidth usage, too. Some of you forum regulars are pretty long-winded. Actually, that makes me wonder. Is it possible to bounce excess bandwidth to the satellites? I'm not technically-minded, but I should think with a really big slingshot we may be able to buy ourselves some time until a permanent solution is formulated.

I did a bunch of great caches at the bottom of the Niagara River gorge last year. I was within a few hundred feet of a bunch more nice caches...on the other side of the river.

Big bad breach of etiquette. But, as has been said, this trail is designed for high speed - high numbers caching. So maybe the CO doesn't care. That gives me an idea...maybe a team could do this trail at top speed and just scratch a quick hash mark on the container as they race by. No signatures or stickers needed. I don't usually contribute to the forum firestorms, but I'm typing this at work, keeping an eye over my shoulder for the boss, so what the heck. Gotta live life on the edge somehow.

Oh dear, I forgot to add one of these guys so it would be clear that I was just being juvenile and silly. I don't argue the fact that they found more caches in a day than anyone else to date, or that it is a record. I suppose what I don't like is the words New World Record in big capital letters, as if geocaching was an Olympic event. It's a personal accomplishment for the folks involved (and I do say congrats on your accomplishment), but it isn't anything "official". There was no competition, no scorekeepers, no gold medals or grand prizes. Nothing wrong with shouting to the world, "Hey, look what I did!", but that's all it is. I think I'm just digging myself in deeper, so I should hush up. I admit I'm just jealous. When geocaching first started, I get the feeling that it was an activity for the "elite"; that is, those who could afford GPS devices and were able to take long trips and hikes to find the few caches out there. I wouldn't have been able to be involved in it as it existed ten years ago. Now, it seems to be moving into a phase where only the elite again, those who are able to do extreme caching or power caching, can have the real adventures; while I have to "make do" with walking through a suburban park to pick up a micro or two. I enjoy it, but it isn't something I get to shout to the world about. I wish I could, just once, get to wave my flag and yell from the rooftops, "Hey, look what I did!" Anyway, no hard feelings toward the Ventura Kids and their friends. I hope you had fun.

It sounds like a good time was had by all. But I'm curious...what governing body verified this as a New World Record? It's a new world record because you guys say it is, right? Right. Cool. By the way, a few weeks ago I set a New World Record for the most number of caches placed within a mile of my house. Two. Placed by me. It's a New World Record and I'm dashed proud of it. Next?

Sold.

I need all the help I can get. I read the hints and skim through the recent logs. If the hint says, "No hint needed", then I know I'm gonna have trouble. But seriously, for me it's the journey to the cache, not the challenge of finding the cache. Once I get to GZ I wanna find it, fast. Nothing frustrates me more than going in circles around the same tree for 40 minutes.

The logs were pretty entertaining. Every couple of finds or so the CO jumped in with something like "C'mon you wimps! Scared of a few geese? Failure is not an option!" I could visualise him standing on the path, in full drill seargent uniform, whipping the cachers into shape, "Hustle up, ladies! You ain't taking a stroll around the pond! Mow those geese down! Seek and destroy! Failure is NOT an option!" Yet his other hide seems to be doing fine. It sounds like a great cache. Hopefully the CO is feeling better now. On the subject of geese, they can be very frightening to people unfamiliar with them. I live in Canada Goose country, and protective ganders have sent me scurrying down the trail away from their nests more than once!

I'm pretty firm on the $60 right now. If it doesn't sell in a few days I'll consider $50.

I bought this Garmin eTrex H brand new a year ago when I wasn't sure if Geocaching was something I wanted to do. I found my first 100 caches with it, and then upgraded to a Venture HC. The eTrex H is in fine shape; no scratches or smudges. I paid $80.00 for it. I'll let it go for $60.00, and I'll pay shipping.

I'm pretty much alone in the world, so when I go out caching, I just go. If I fell off a cliff or got stuck underground, it could be a week before anybody noticed I was missing anyways.

I've had 3 encounters. Once they understood what I was doing, and that it was legal and harmless, they were very cool and friendly. But before that moment, they have to be ready for anything. The 2 night encounters I had, I approached them slowly with my hands out in plain view, waving my flashlight and identifying myself so I didn't surprise them. Nobody got hurt, and I found the caches.

Those are Bison-type containers, aren't they? I have four of them out in the field, two as caches and two as multi stages. I work in a drug store, so I got them at cost. I think they work fine in places where even a matchstick container might be too large.