J the Goat

I'd suspect that many cachers grab the things they want, and leave the "most valuable thing they have to trade". They didn't expect something so nice, so the next cachers definitely won't find something as nice. You'll see lots of trading-down. The measure of one's character is what he does in secret. Regardless, cache contents are not a money-making proposition for the Cache Owner. Oh man, are you sure? There goes my idea for Broken-Mctoys-R-Us.

I've seen a few caches with higher value swag items, none of which have more than 4 or 5 finds based on their location. If you want the cache to remain a better swag type cache, it'll have to be in places like this and even then it's no guarantee. We have a good group of cachers around here, some places; not so much.

The vast majority of rattlesnake bites I've seen involve white males between the ages of 18-30 who have at least a moderate amount of alcohol in their system. Hey ya'll, watch this.... I'd say the next most common are probably kids playing with rocks. Saw three of them last year. One was bitten by a baby rattlesnake that was curled up inside the crack of a rock. He didn't know he'd been bitten until an hour later when his hand swelled up and his uncle went back to see the rock he' "cut" his hand on and found the snake. Scary. We use crofab more often than rarely, but as it's expensive and is fairly time consuming to get set up, it's not given as readily as other meds. My understanding though, is that the potential for allergic reaction to the synthetic that is crofab is nowhere near as high as the old antivenin that was made, partially, with actual snake venom. Less other complications and side effects too.

If I have a trackable with me when I visit a cache, I use the visit option. It's very easy, very fast, and the trackable owners don't get an email every time you VISIT a cache. I like checking my trackables to see how far they've gone since the last time I got a notification about them, it's fun I would hope that if somebody had my trackable at a cache, they'd take the 1 second it takes to use the "visit" option on the drop down menu for that trackable in their inventory. Pictures are even better, but much more time consuming. For the sake of all that is hole-y, keep the mileage accurate!

Did you get permission from the Church to use their parking lot?

Place the cache, set it up how and where you want it, create the cache page, but DO NOT check the box that says it's ready for review. That will assure that you will be the only ones with the coordinates, but it will also save the site in case somebody else has plans to place a cache nearby before yours gets published. After the party, check the box and it will become public

I agree with the NA log in this instance. The good thing here is the email exchange between the CO and the OP. With the CO admitting through the GC email feature that there was no permission granted, TPTB will have access to that info. This sounds like it's a place that has no business with a cache. I skip caches all the time that I don't want to search for based on it's location, that's not a good excuse for permission issues.

Yuppers.

And I know that just because they've now said something about it doens't mean anything will change. I'm not that dense

"2 — Location Geocaching guides treasure-seekers to a precise set of coordinates. The adventure begins there. Make sure that "there" is the right "there." You should double (even triple) check your coordinates using a dedicated GPS receiver. Avoid using smartphones to establish coordinates for new geocaches." I know, I know, they're supposed to be getting better, but there are still folks using their iphone 3's to hide caches. Glad GS has finally addressed it

A couple potential downsides to using a phone instead of a GPSr that haven't yet been touched on in this thread. The first seems to be potentially moot, but with many phones using cell towers to triangulate signals, if you go caching outside of phone range: no reception = no GPS. The big one for me is the battery life of the phone. I enjoy going out for most of a day for hiking and caching. If I'm using it regularly, my phone won't last for any significant time at all, where I can get a good solid 6-8 hours of steady use out of my GPSr on one set of batteries, and I always carry a spare set or two. Who carries a spare iPhone battery? I'm also glad you're putting thought into your hides, thanks for doing so. There have been a few really bad experiences in this area with people using smart phones and/or google maps to hide caches, so my opinion isn't the greatest on those circumstances. The general consensus is that it can be done without much issue, but in my limited experience it's not a good idea. Have fun, and welcome

I get it. It doens't bother me quite as much as it seems to bother you, but I agree with you. Maybe it's more of an appreciation for good cache write-ups than it is for poor ones, but I certainly take some caches more seriously based on the caches description.

I've stumbled across a few rattlesnakes while out and about. I'm less nervous now though, than I was a couple years back. I work in the emergency room, and last summer we had a really high number of rattler bites for some reason. Many came from 3 or 4 hours out, and were still very much treatable and non-fatal. None of these were in the face or neck, but ankles and hands will usually allow you the time to get the treatment you need.

Yes, Nancy came up with this idea and i hope she can continue with it but if not, i would think it would be fairly easy to get volunteers to hide the remaining Districts. The published Districts i was able to come up with: Distcict 4 District 6 District 7 District 9 District 11 District 12 The Lost District Let's see what's left then.... A. Northeast Colorado B. Northeast Colorado/extremely close to Nebraska-Kansas-Colorado borders C. Nebraska-Kansas-Colorado border area D. Wyoming-Nebraska-Colorado border area E. Eastern Utah-Colorado-New Mexico-Texas F. Utah-Wyoming-Arizona G. California-Nevada-Utah-Idaho-Wyoming H. Washington-Oregon-Idaho-Montana I. Montana-North Dakota-South Dakota-Kansas J. Montana-North Dakota-Minnesota-Nebraska-Kansas-Oklahoma-Texas-New Mexico K. Kansas-Oklahoma-Texas-New Mexico-Louisianna-Arkansas-Missouri-Mississippi-Alabama-Georgia-South Carolina-Tennessee-Kentucky-Indiana-Virginia L. Kentucky-West Virginia-Virginia-Ohio-Pennsylvania-Delaware-Maryland-D.C. M. Jersey-Southern NY-Connecticut-Rhode Island-Massachusetts-Pennsylvania Does that look right? I'm not sure what districs the rest should be. Can anyone help here? Thats kinda weird, having the list cut right in half smack dab in the middle...

I like your wording better

While I don't personally agree with the fuzzy marine mammal's reasoning, this information would prompt me to log a NA log. Help future cachers avoid the issue.

I agree, if you want part of the event to be the difficulty of getting somewhere, make the location of the event at that location. If you make it the trailhead or someplace that's easy to get to, then once people show up, they've attended the event at the given coords. Change the coords to where you want them to go; that should fix the problem

The issue to me is not whether or not it matters to you; I don't care about that. What puzzles me is why it is so important that to you everyone else knows and admires your stats. The FTF game would be great if people kept track for themselves; it would even be fine if there was a group that competed with each other in a private forum. It's the excessive bragging and taunting about stats in the logs for the caches and main geocaching forum that I find so obnoxious. Actually, let me re-phrase that: the bragging and taunting are obnoxious in cache logs; here in the forums they are mostly embarrassingly pitiable. The OP asked a question, quite frankly the response "who cares" I find ignorant and the comment "Just because others do doesn't mean it matters" I find very self centered. Some people are very competitive and that should be OK and just because you or others do not care about something I find putting those that do down obnoxious. What puzzles me is the need to reply to someones question with "who cares"! While the OP has every right to start threads like this one (barring word from Groundspeak to the contrary), the reaction you are seeing is not so much because of the obvious question, but because those of us that have been around for a while have learned that the OP will use any pretense to call attention to his FTF count, and some have grown weary of what they see as poorly camouflaged boasting. knowschad, You know I debated for some time about posting this question, and I tried to word it such a way that I wouldn't have the Lifers that live 24/7 on the forums, that seem to live to crucify the next person that posts with any question what so ever. I even posted the name of the cacher that contacted me about the question, just so maybe, just maybe I could get some legitimate responses. But that didn't even work you and all your cronies still find a way to discredit the question. It is a legitimate question and I'm glad that I finally got a legitimate answer from "firennice", that's all I was looking for. Thanks knowschad for nothing, your help is as always just as useless as it ever is. I think I'm being counted in as a Cronie, and that's alright except for one problem. I don't think it's a legitimate question, as there's no legitimate way of verifying the stat with the exception of visiting every cache somebody has claimed FTF on to make sure they're being honest. I'm not being difficult in this thread for the same reason as KC, but I'm being difficult because I firmly believe that it DOESN'T matter. I also acknowlege that to many people it does. Maybe, just maybe, if you don't want contradicting ideas and opinions posted in your threads, you shouldn't post them on the public forums. I also think that anyone who is new to either caching or to the forums should be able to see both sides of this type of debate. If they open a thread about FTF's, they should be able to see as many different ideas about the topic as is possible and make their own decision on how they want to play.

The issue to me is not whether or not it matters to you; I don't care about that. What puzzles me is why it is so important that to you everyone else knows and admires your stats. The FTF game would be great if people kept track for themselves; it would even be fine if there was a group that competed with each other in a private forum. It's the excessive bragging and taunting about stats in the logs for the caches and main geocaching forum that I find so obnoxious. Actually, let me re-phrase that: the bragging and taunting are obnoxious in cache logs; here in the forums they are mostly embarrassingly pitiable. The OP asked a question, quite frankly the response "who cares" I find ignorant and the comment "Just because others do doesn't mean it matters" I find very self centered. Some people are very competitive and that should be OK and just because you or others do not care about something I find putting those that do down obnoxious. What puzzles me is the need to reply to someones question with "who cares"! While the OP has every right to start threads like this one (barring word from Groundspeak to the contrary), the reaction you are seeing is not so much because of the obvious question, but because those of us that have been around for a while have learned that the OP will use any pretense to call attention to his FTF count, and some have grown weary of what they see as poorly camouflaged boasting. Regardless of who the OP is or what he has done both "who cares" and "Just because others do doesn't mean it matters" are insulting to not just the OP, but to others that may see the FTF game as a competition. You guys are calling out the OP but some are behaving much much worse, just my 2¢. On a side note, you'd better throw in your 2¢ worth soon as up here in Canada we won't have then around much longer. That's my quote. It doesn't matter. Not to me at least, and since this is a public forum, I'm entitled to post my opinion. So are you. So are tons of other people. I'm sorry you don't agree with my opinion. I stand by the opinion that it doesn't matter. If we're going to talk about what's insulting, let's talk about CO's who put out garbage containers in garbage locations and then leave them there: as garbage. Or we can talk about folks who show up in the forums and ask for a discussion, then throw a fit when an opinion that's different from theirs shows up for the party. Or we can talk about the people who drive like maniacs for a FTF, putting people in danger with their horrible road antics seeming inability to pay attention to anything but the film can that's so important. Shall I continue?

Just because you don't doesn't mean others don't. Just because others do doesn't mean it matters IBTL

Put me in the camp that thinks this was a poorly worded but well intended idea by GS in the newsletter. I tote around spare containers in my pack, but it's primarily in case I want to hide a cache. I'm not great about packing around logs though I'm surprised nobody's yet touched on cacher population. Around here, there are really less than 10 active cachers. Sure, every now and then somebody pokes their head out from under a log (or real life as it may be) but for the most part, it's just the few of us. I'm much more apt to replace a container around here, as I know most people and know whether they want the container replaced, whether they're likely to do maintainence on their own, or whether they'll just archive it because "this one had a good run." Out of town? Nope, I'm not about to stick my nose in somebody else's bowl of cheerios.

Interesting...I am on the same page with tozainamboku...whodathunkit! I'd be willing to bet his word count is a bit higher though

Or you could completely skip over the lame sauce bus stop nano hides and stick to quality caches

That's true, but if the CO doesn't want the hide spoiled by a picture, then that wish should be respected.

As long as you don't take pictures of the cache in it's little home, or ruin a clever cammo job, I see no problem with posting pictures. I post them occasionally myself. You may want to think about taking down any photos that CO's ask you to remove, but anyone else can kick rocks