nericksx

After I did a keyword search on GC.com, I did a version of that the hard way. Since I'm a map geek and troll Google Maps just for the heck, I went to the maps view (instead of the satellite view) and looked for little gray rectangles. Those are the cemeteries. Then I rt clicked and chose "What Is Here" and that puts the coords in the search box. Then I cut and pasted them into the "find" page on GC.com. Took me ALL DANG DAY but I've got a pretty healthy bookmark list in a 30 mile radius now. Now whenever I'm using Google Maps for something else and come across one of those little gray rectangles, I pop the coords into GC.com just to check.

Jackalgirl got this right. I don't spend a lot of time in the forums because I'm just not thick-skinned enough. It feels like things devolve into a mosh-pit pretty quick around here and I bruise easily. However, geocaching being the only international community that I'm part of, I was willing to take a couple on the chin to see if I could get anywhere. When it felt like I was going to spend more time defending my post than anything else, I decided to try other ideas instead. No, I wasn't asking for anyone to send me or her or anyone else money. I really did just want a local who to could help her navigate to a base or a Red Cross or accept a wire transfer from us or something. She said she was just so freaked out and alone even if a local was just willing to be a friend until we could secure some resources from here that would have been great. That's all. I did go back and read through the posts. Thanks to everyone who offered useful info. We did end up contacting a case worker here (a la AlabamaRambler) who was able to help my friend out in Italy. Turns out it happens all the time. (Who knew?). I don't know all the details as to what agency assisted her or how or when, but I started getting Facebook updates detailing all her travels to other places in Italy, so she is alive and well and everything is fine (and she's not peeling potatoes). Thanks again!

**sigh** So much suspicion. My "friend" is my sister's finance. She's close with our family and we were there when she shipped out of Portland, OR to go Iraq. No she is not scamming us. We've actually known her for a few years now, as she and my sister were in college together before she shipped out. 15 months, 18 months, it's kind of splitting hairs, doncha think? The point is, while she has been deployed, she has not had occasion to need an ATM. I get the impression that they are few and far between in Iraq and while being busy being on duty, finding and hitting an ATM just hasn't been much of a priority or a necessity - for whatever reason. It's actually my mom who's been trying to facilitate this (I have a job during the day) and she was the one who said that there are no Western Unions. I just went to their website and there are 10 in Pisa alone. Looks like now that I'm home I need to research this out for myself. I just thought that maybe I could reach out via the geo-community to get an assist..... nevermind. I just want all you to know that it's not a scam, just a legitimately stranded person overseas. Thanks for your feedback.

She has about 10 Euros. She had planned to use her debit card to get money when she arrived in Pisa, but then realized that after not having used it for 18 months (there are no ATMs in Iraq) she had forgotten the PIN. She can't have money wired because no bank will release the funds without a passport. Otherwise, she totally would have traveled to Rome to the embassy. We were able to contact our state senator's office and they referred us to a case manager who deals with just this kind of thing. Unfortunately, the case manager is not in the office today. I have also PMed two cachers in Pisa to see if they would be willing to lend a hand. I figure the worst thing that happens is they say no or ignore me.

Thanks! I also PMed two cachers in Pisa because I figure the worst that happens is they ignore me or say no. We've also contacted our local rep to the US Senate and they gave us the number for a case worker who helps with just this kind of thing... but she's out of the office. We'll keep working on it tho!

Yeah, May is a little long to wait Thanks, tho!

That's a good question. She came with a group of other service people, so my assumption is that it was military-sponsored transport. That probably explains why they told her that she didn't need a passport (I also don't believe she was planning to go to any other countries other than Italy), which was true until she tried to go to a bank.

So this is a little off the wall. A friend of mine who is on a tour of duty in Iraq, is up in Pisa on vacation. Before she left the military told her that there was no need for her to have a passport to travel in Europe, that her military ID would be enough. That turns out not to be the case (duh) and she doesn't have any money because no bank will let her make a transaction without a passport for ID. I took a gamble and looked up caches in Pisa and PMed the owner of one, just on the off-chance that he might be willing to help (_nick_ is his name). Is there anyone else who is in the area of Pisa who would be willing to assist? She's just a little freaked out and needs a local to try to help her navigate the situation. We are also trying to contact the Italian Consulate, the US Embassy, the State Dep't and our local congressperson, so far to no avail. I'll post this in the general section of the forums as well. Thanks!

So this is a little off the wall. A friend of mine who is on a tour of duty in Iraq, is up in Pisa on vacation. Before she left the military told her that there was no need for her to have a passport to travel in Europe, that her military ID would be enough. That turns out not to be the case (duh) and she doesn't have any money because no bank will let her make a transaction without a passport for ID. I took a gamble and looked up caches in Pisa and PMed the owner of one, just on the off-chance that he might be willing to help (_nick_ is his name). Is there anyone else who is in the area of Pisa who would be willing to assist? She's just a little freaked out and needs a local to try to help her navigate the situation. We are also trying to contact the Italian Consulate, the US Embassy, the State Dep't and our local congressperson, so far to no avail. I'll post this in the Italy section of the forums as well. Thanks!

Nope, I sure wouldn't have. So I totally agree that finding a coin is way cooler than finding a "slip of paper." I do think that if you're going to do the proxy thing, it'd better be more interesting than a slip of paper. I have some traveling coins in my inventory right this minute, actually. I don't normally pick up TBs because the responsibility makes me nervous, but I just can resist the coins. I get it. I was just hoping to have it both ways, which I know you can't.

This whole thing has me going in circles. I found a "500 Finds" coin in my very first cache and I was so excited! Then I learned that I didn't get to keep it. Ratz. It was fun to carry it around for awhile though and admire it and pretend it was mine before passing it on. Then I signed up on the forums and started reading about geocoins going missing all the time. I kinda couldn't figure out what the point was of the coins were. I mean they're so beautiful that of course you want to admire and treasure them, but they're trackable so you're supposed to release them and never see them again. That seems like buying a new Porsche to donate to a crash derby to me, but to each their own I guess. Then I read about making a proxy. Not as cool for the finder as finding a real coin, but a double bonus for the owner because they get to have their little piece of art AND have the goodness of a trackable. I bought probably $80 worth of geocoins and set about making proxies. I scanned in the coins and made laminated cards with a TB-style writeup. Then I put a grommet in the card and attached an interesting key chain. It started to feel a bit like attaching a TB dog tag to a random object tho.... but then I thought maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to view the coin and the TB number separately. You get to keep the coin and get to use the TB# to make a trackable. Then I read this thread. Wait, people care that much what their inventory icon list looks like? Really? With as often as the cache inventory list is wrong, I'm surprised that people choose caches to find based on the TB inventory. So now I'm just at a loss. I have these lovely coins that I really like and I'm not inclined to release them to be stolen and become part of someone else's collection. I'd release the proxies, but it's such a heated topic, I don't want to have someone "post a note mentioning that the coin has disappeared, and been replace by a cheap copy." *sigh*

AND I posted this in the wrong section. Mod: feel free to delete. I found the same (nearly) topic in the geocoin forum.

Awhile back another member (Arrow, I think maybe) suggested that if you didn't want to part with your beautiful geocoin, one idea would be to laminate a picture of the geocoin (front and back) and drop that in a cache. I decided this was a great idea and scanned in all our geocoins and bought credit-card sized laminating squares. I made neat-o cards with the coin images and other details. However, I still felt like something was missing. It was just a laminated card after all, and didn't think it was compelling-looking enough for someone to pick it up as a TB, so I bought some Oregon keychains to attach to the card. I'm still concerned, tho. I'm afraid that people will be all confused. "It's a TB, wait no, it's a geocoin (sorta), but there's a TB-like tag on it. I don't get it. Screw it, I'm not going to pick it up." I thought it was a great idea, but then again, if it's such a great idea how come I've never seen it done? Is there some pitfall I'm missing? I'd really appreciate some feedback. Thanks!

We mostly do caches while we're camping or visiting another area. I have a trackable patch that is on my backpack that I like to dip in a cache we do while on an extended trip (sometimes even if I don't find the cache, so I can at least have a record of the adventure on my TB page). My problem was figuring out how to get my TB "back home" between trips. So I hid a cache and now I dip in my own local cache. Some of my friends who I have turned on to geocaching have also taken to dipping into my cache to log miles on their TBs because, you know, we're all friends an I won't mind.

Geocachers are wonderful in person but snarky as hell on the forums. I've been a web developer for 10 years and I can tell you that for a site to be down for nearly two months, there is definitely more going on than "server trouble" I'm sure coinsandpins is great if you're an existing customer but I am unlikely to ever buy from them as a new customer. I wanted the birthday geocoin for my son's birthday on the Dec 26th. For over a week they didn't even have an error page up, much less a page detailing their contact info. Naturally by the time they posted some contact info, it was too late to get anything here on time. Of course, by that point I'm a little nervous about buying from a company that lets their URL resolve to a 404 for 2 weeks. "Once upon a time" when we didn't have the internet, we had dead-tree catalogs and phone numbers. How would a potential customer know what they carry at this point? They don't even list a phone number on their error page to request a catalog, and I sure don't trust a place that can't get their website up after 2 months to even receive an email, much less reply to one. I'm actually not all that upset about coinsandpins.com being down. Maybe they are moving to a brick & mortar model, maybe they are setting up as an Ebay store. Who knows? Who cares? If I want a geocoin that bad, I'll just go to another vendor. What I'm replying to is Eartha's snarky reply that being frustrated/confused that a previously seemingly reliable vendor's site is down is somehow the CUSTOMER'S problem. That the most preposterous thing I've heard all week. If you're a virtual business, then your website is your face to the world. If you let your website disappear for 2 months, it's the same as boarding up the doors and windows on a brick & mortal store. How am I supposed to know they're still a great business, just selling out of the back of their car instead? All I know is that it appears that they couldn't keep the lights on, so I'm not inclined to trust them with my money. </rant>

Maybe other recreational communities should adopt CITO too? CITO while you cycle

Two in one day. My son and I decided to try for and FTF before breakfast, and before we were 1/2 mile from the cache I knew the little black car I was following was a fellow cacher. When we both pulled into a parking lot I was all excited to meet another local cacher, but he tried to dart out of his car before us but I still managed to catch him long enough to say, "well, should we find it together?" He replied abruptly, "it's already been found" and then literally sprinted off. Since my son is only 5, we had no choice but to let him go on ahead and beat us to being STF. So later that day, we decided to go for an afternoon FTF, and low and behold, we run into our local FTF champ (who was FTF to the earlier one we tried for, incidentally) so I finally got to meet him. While signing STF on that one another cacher who is a friend and fellow member of our church came up. We all stood around and chewed the fat awhile, and it turns out that the other folks have also had less-than-cordial run-ins with the competitive couple in the little black car. I was kind of bummed to find out that a fairly active caching team in my area is... well... less than cordial. Isn't this supposed to be fun?

I tried to go to www.coinandpins.com to buy a couple of geo coins for Christmas presents, and I get a "server not found" error. Does anyone know what's going on?

Well exactly. The bonus of going to the coast is that it doesn't really get above 55, but it doesn't really get below 50. It's also a misnomer that it rains for 3 months straight in the PacNW. In fact, it was sunny here this morning and didn't rain all day. So I'm hoping that it doesn't rain the whole week!

My hubby says that in using his geosense he looks for things that wouldn't occur on their own in nature. As in, "there is nothing in nature that would cause all that bark to pile up *just so* at the base of a tree." He finds lots of caches when we're out together.

Brookings is pretty far to trek, but I'm considering it! Thanks for the great tip!

It's too late for counseling I'm afraid, we've been a camping family for a long time. I think I'm good in the gear dept. I have a 3-season tent and sleeping bags rated to 20 deg F (even for the kids). I've got tarps galore and Sweedish steel that lights in the rain, etc... We wilderness camped exclusively this summer but I agree with Bittsen that inland might get chilly, and with AlabamaRambler that the state park will be a better choice for the kids' first winter camp. I also have games galore (thanks, briansnat!) and if I end up where there is electric I can break out the ol' laptop & DVDs. When I've tent camped along side the grandparents, I done the space-heater in the tent thing, with the cord running to the RV. That's always great if you have the option. So I've narrowed it down to two places: Cape Lookout and a private campground in Pacific City. Thanks everyone for your awesome feedback! I like hearing all the tales

Awww... thanks! My husband and I spent our 10th anniversary camping (sans kids) on top of a peak in the Tillamook Forest in September. It was very cool. Your idea with your Suburban sound's great! I hope you guys have a great time! If you see a sad sad purple Volvo wagon with a geocaching sticker on it, stop and say hi! This is the second time this week Wenatchee has shown up on my radar screen. Earlier this week some friends of mine were recommending a boutique called For the Love of It. Small world.

The last day of my job is going to be Dec 7th. To avoid going into a depressed death spiral, I'd like to be heading out into the great outdoors on Dec 8th for the remainder of the week - to do some camping and geocaching. I live in Oregon and only have a tent, so it's likely to be a soggy affair. I'm thinking of either going to one of my wilderness spots in the Tillamook State Forest or trying one of the State Parks on the coast that are always so crowded in the high season. I'm toying with staying in a yurt if we go to the coast, but I'm trying to keep the costs real low so I haven't made up my mind yet. I'd be taking my little boys who are seasoned summer campers, but haven't been subjected to winter camping yet. Any thoughts? Suggestions?

O M G I just read a couple more pages of this thread. I didn't realize that it's some crazy regional beef. I wonder if the picture poster would be offended if I said, "well whadda you expect? It's friggin' North Carolina! Thank goodness I live on the other side of the country!" Thinking about that other thread about places in the U.S. NOT to cache....