LeoGeo

Benchmark JV5645 is a brass screw inside a century-old standpipe in Baltimore near Johns Hopkins University. There are pictures of it at http://www.btco.net/ghosts/Buildings/watertowers/Towers.html

I'd find it convenient to have a one-step method of logging a travel bug "through" a cache -- that is, log it as having been placed into the cache and then immediately retrieved again. This would be useful for those personal TBs that people use to log the distance they've traveled, or for regular TBs whose goal is to visit lots of caches.

It's perfectly good Pittsburghese, too. People there often talk about how their car needs warshed while they're eating a chipchopped ham and drinking an Imp 'n' Arn at a restaurant dahntahn. Bruce (English teacher)

Many cachers write down (or store in their computers) the secret numbers of TB's they have previously retrieved, grabbed, discovered, etc., so that if they realize they made a mistake in logging the TB, they can go back and clean up the logs. Would it be possible to add a feature to the GC website that would make it unnecessary for cachers to keep a separate list like this? That is, if I realize that I logged the "Podunk (IA) Green Jeep" into the wrong cache, and didn't write down the number, I could go the the TB's page and ask for the secret number so I could correct the logs -- but could not ask for the number of a TB that I had never retrieved/grabbed/discovered. It's certainly not a high priority request, but it would be a nice convenience.

Yes it is called Geocaching.com Anything listed there is findable without a GPS if you can read a map. Hee hee There are a few exceptions, I guess, especially around here -- like when the topographic map shows a pristine wilderness of hills and canyons, and you go there, and it's a flat parking lot outside Qualcomm's 1,287th office building

I've started a bookmark list called "San Diego Without a GPS" in case anyone in this area would like to do some (or if you're a tourist who forgot to bring your GPS with you!). These usually require using the encrypted hint and/or Google Map or topo map but I have found all of them without GPS. I usually use GPS but it's fun to try finding some without it. Is there a big worldwide bookmark list of caches that are findable without GPS to which people could contribute, I wonder? Or maybe I could set up a web page collecting a list of such bookmark lists for localities?

Oh, dang again, sorry again. I meant to put this into the San Diego Thread too.

Oh, dang, sorry. Meant to put this into the San Diego Thread. Oops.

Enjoy urban underground exploration? Then hit the San Diego Museum of Art THIS WEEKEND before the close of their exhibit of work by Gordon Matta-Clark that includes an 18 minute movie, "Underground Paris." It shows no geocaches (this was 1977, after all), but does include an ossuary with countless skulls and bones, an extensive wine cellar, a crypt, and various underground passages and chambers of mysterious purpose. I'm not really the type to go "Into the Rat's Nest" and do other "getwetsd"-type adventures , but as long as it's on a nice dry movie screen it's OK by me! The exhibit also includes a film and other artifacts (including a 3-dimensional chunk of floor) documenting the artist's dissection of a condemned office building in Belgium. It might give some inventive geocachers who own a garage full of power tools some good ideas.... But the exhibit closes Sunday so go now!

This morning, the junior half and I went out in search of the "AF" 245 kHz aeronautical beacon in Point Loma (found it); then did the delightful "Bonsai Banzai" cache in BoredKitty's front yard; then headed down to OB for lunch. After parking, we saw a black pickup with San Diego Geocachers stickers in the back window. Just whose truck might we have seen, we wonder?

I gather that somebody in authority at Groundspeak told Yeshua's Girls to get rid of all their caches in Home Depot parking lots on the grounds that their dad works for that company and therefore the caches are "commercial solicitation." Anybody know what's actually up with this? Seems as if this could doom zillions of caches worldwide. Were Yeshua's Girls singled out on what seems to me like a technicality, or are all Home Depot caches everywhere going away? What about the many other caches located on the property of commercial establishments -- like one I remember that's at a farmer's roadside fruit stand in Texas, or whatever? What about caches that use the name of a commercial establishment as a pun in the name, even though they aren't located on commercial property?

I'm just guessing, but some of the purposes of the "Discovered" log for regular TB's might be: 1. To let a cacher increase their TB numbers, if they're into that, even for bugs whose missions they can't help with. If a cacher from Europe visits California and sees a bug that wants to go to Japan, they won't want to take it the wrong direction, but might want to get it into their numbers just the same. 2. To make it easier for a cacher to notify the owner that the bug is still safe and sound, especially if it's been in a cache for a long time, even if the cacher can't help with the TB's mission. 3. To avoid messing up the logs for bugs/coins that many cachers discover at an Event Cache. Under the old system, if you attended the Event but didn't log your TB "discoveries" out of and back into the Event Cache pretty soon, the bug might have been taken to another (physical) cache, and logged into it. Then your logs for the bug in the Event Cache would mess up the bug's bookkeeping. This way, you can remember to "discover" it years after the event takes place, and you won't be throwing the bug's location off in the log.

I've seen a couple of examples of Travel Bug logs getting confused when a cacher removes the bug from the cache, but logs it as "discovered." The TB continues to show up in the cache from which it was removed until the cacher places it elsewhere. Would it be possible to re-word the "discovered" option on the drop-down menu so that it says something like "Discovered it but didn't take it," or "Discovered it but left it in the same cache"? That way, it would be clear that "discovered" is not what you choose when you actually take the bug. Small problem, of course, but maybe a minor tweak could solve it.

Cache owners can help out fellow cachers who rely on public transit by remembering that there is an "attribute" icon available for cache pages that means "Cache can be reached by public transit" (it's picture of a bus). I own only a few caches but I've put the icon and the details of how to get to the cache via city bus on the relevant pages.

I wondered if there's any way to rearrange the order of items in a bookmark list. The default seems to be alphabetical order. I suppose I could prefix the cache name/description with a number that would then cause them to be sorted in the order I wanted, but then it would be hard to insert a new one in the middle. This ability would be useful for lists of "runs" or selected caches along a route, because you could put them in the order in which they would be found as you proceeded along the route. Maybe there's already a way to do this?

You generally get pretty good MP$ on public transit. It'd be helpful if cache owners could give some info about bus/trolley/etc. routes that access their caches so that we could consider that as an option. Obviously, caches on top of mesas out near Wile E. Coyote's house aren't reachable by city bus, but plenty of urban and suburban caches are. And of course there are many series of caches that are deliberatly strung along trolley lines, e.g. in Dallas.

Where do old, filled-up geocache log books go when they die? I was curious whether any local clubs, for example, maintain an archive or library of filled logs from caches in their area. One cache owner has an interesting way of preserving the history of his cache: When the log sheet for GCHEFX ("Froggy Bottom" in Brooklyn, NY) filled up, the owner photographed the sheet and posted the picture on the cache's web page. (This may be a better solution than trying to maintain a library of dirty, slimy, moldy pieces of paper!)

Elsewhere in this thread, somebody else mentioned the space station's velocity, and Uncle Heisenberg tells us that if we know that, then we don't, and can't, know its location. So, science proves it's a locationless cache! (Moreover, it contains a TB, but we don't know whether the name of the TB is "Live Cat" or "Dead Cat.")

Another one like that is TBMQEX, although from the logs at its last known cache (Falls Creek Rocks, Ithaca, NY) it seems as if the stick has been replaced and moved without being logged out.

私は実際にgeocaching 好む Ach! Das Ewig-Geocache zieht uns hinan!

Aww, darn. When I saw "Muir Woods," I thought you meant the Muir Woods Coffee Shop at John Muir College at UC San Diego, where I teach. What's this, a cache right outside my office? But then I saw, oh, you mean the other Muir Woods. The one with redwood trees. Hundreds of miles from here. "Never mind." I hope somebody closer to the cache can liberate your TB!

Could my neighbors please educate a San Diego newbie on how to pronounce "Jamul" (ha-mool, I'm guessing, but where's the accent?) and "Kumeyaay" (no clue -- how many syllables are in that "yaay")? I do know how to pronounce that wealthy coastal neighborhood where the seal pups are: from the distant past I recall Red Skelton's routine about the rich folks in "La Ho-ya" who "hump into their Haguars, get out on the freeway, and drive like Jell." Thanks.

Amen! I ain't anti-picture; sheesh, I have in my wallet, at this moment, annual membership cards to both the Metropolitan Museum in NYC and the San Diego Museum of Art. And I do enjoy seeing photos of interesting waymarks. But our species has progressed some, I hope, from the days when the only way we had to communicate was drawing pictures of the mammoth-hunting expedition on cave walls. I also don't want to imply that I'm as good a verbal describer as Homer, Dickens, Poe, etc., but then, one doubts that all the wielders of digital cameras are 21st-century Ansel Adamses, either. I agree with OpinioNate: let's do the best we can.

Another category that encourages but doesn't require photos is: Payphones.

Well, WalruZ has nothing to fear from me; I don't propose to leave "dull one-line logs" (or create "dull one-line" waymarks). The few waymarks I've created contain verbal descriptions, history, hyperlinks, etc., about the waymarks. Our species has evolved this amazing capability called "language," and I propose that we use it. Perhaps I was being subconsciously sarcastic when I called myself "lazy" for not posting photos. Maybe the truly "lazy" waymarker is the one who <i>only</i> takes a photo instead of <i>thinking</i> about what makes the spot unique and then <i>describing</i> it to fellow waymarkers. I wonder: would WalruZ reject, and condemn as "dull," books like The Odyssey, Don Quixote, Pride and Prejudice, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in favor of comic books, <i>just</i> because the former books contain no pictures?