Brick

Congrats GlobalRat, Noddy and TVM!! Wow. Beeeeg ones !

Many moons ago, a good friend introduced me to the Botshabelo cultural village outside Middelburg. Since then I have visited often and the place holds a whole lot of very special memories for me. As I drive in, past the blue gum trees I smile mischievously. The nearby koppie has very special memories of long hours spent in absolute silence where the act of eating a croissant seems to disturb the silence. The church with the rustic smell you cannot describe in words, the blanket under the poplar trees just lying there, the horserides...and so the list goes. I decided to place a cache there, but realised that one cache sometimes is not enough to draw cachers. So I placed three more. And THEN the cachers came. Reading cacher logs with people's reactions gives you a warm a fuzzy feeling for showing other people a part of you. Well, I was pleasantly surprised at the latest logs by g.i.s. Seems their association with the place goes further back than mine. I quote : Sometimes in our hectic caching, chasing the numbers, sometimes it’s worth having a cache just for rekindling a long-lost memory, and to just make people stop for a while and appreciate life for a while....

There is one : Survivor Tree Mail THat's actually the NICE part of the cache. BUt go read the logs how scary it is, people getting out of their car in the KNP... eeish....

http://www.afriski.co.za/ might also be an option. Might also be cheaper... me thinks.

I have done some nice roadside caches on my way down to Cape Town, and they were good for getting the kids out of the car, grabbing a quick cup of coffee, and off we go again. Roadside caches do have their place, and I'm sure the majority of them are cool. BUT. We just returned from Bela Bela, and sadly, as long as we have event days where there will be 'blanket-cache-droppings', we will have useless roadside caches. Good for the numbers, but nothing else.

As one of the 'older' members, I joined in 2001. It took me 4 years to get to 100 caches, as there simply was not that many around. I can remember placing my first cache in 2002 (Smuts house) only for it to be found a week later. Lately RedGlobe will find a cache 14 nanoseconds after the listing appears on Groundspeak. There were a few 'regular' cache-placers, one being Chris Smith who, if memory serves drove from one Engen garage to the next all over the country, dropping caches as he went. In Mpumalanga Snowwolf placed a few, and those days 4 caches in an area justified a trip there.

... or earlier if the mood dictates....

Wazat, I think QFC needs to explain to us how the updating works and when. I know there is some way the stats get calculated taking the American time and the square-root of Pi into account. So maybe you are logging your caches correctly but because of other factors your stats don't get updated as often as you would want..

Quietly Team Ginger snuck up on 100. Thanks for letting me share your milestone. I will go with on number 200 too, OK? Next week you say ??

This debate can rage on and on. Just like on our roads, some people deem it acceptable behavior to drive in the emergency lane and push in in the front of the queue, so too will cachers always justify their own behavior as there are no referees, and no-one policing the 'sport' At the risk of repeating myself, in golf, if you touch the ball, but no-one saw, you alone can choose to mark that extra stroke or not. In caching all sorts of things happen, and if you feel comfortable with cheating then so be it. Just don't flaunt your number of finds in front of me as you might run into a baseball bat or some equally hard, but blunt object. I can log so many caches in London, or Outer Mongolia for that matter, because, ultimately, who will know. Well, I will. And that is not how I play. I visited a cache 7 times once, just to scribble my name. 7 TIMES ! I don't write : 'Did not sign log, too may muggles .....' or 'ooo, I saw the container, therefore I log it'. No scribble, no log. All to their own, I guess.

mmmm, the OCC photo... you need to have your 20D's sensor cleaned... I see lotsa little dots.

Hey Glogal Nogal!!! GlobalRat, happy to have helped you achieve the 800 mark !

Hi No a 4x4 is not necessary... A normal car should make almost all the roads comfortably (might get a bit dusty), but if you have one, you might be able to get a couple of metres closer to the caches (ie drive up onto the pavement and stop there :-) ) LeonW, You will need a 4x4 do destroy the vegitation on your way to parking NEXT to the cache, but you will need a car to break the speed-record set by LoC at the last event. I think the bar was set at 176km/h, not so ? This time around, we learn't a lot from our mistakes.. You will have to keep within 10km/h (above the speed limit) as the three winning teams will be required to produce their tracks. If we see that they have been speeding, severe points will be deducted and if found to be endangering anyone or anything, they may even be disqualified... Hope that clears this one up... CrystalFairy cool.... Tongue was FIRMLY in cheek CF...

Hi No a 4x4 is not necessary... A normal car should make almost all the roads comfortably (might get a bit dusty), but if you have one, you might be able to get a couple of metres closer to the caches (ie drive up onto the pavement and stop there :-) ) LeonW, You will need a 4x4 do destroy the vegitation on your way to parking NEXT to the cache, but you will need a car to break the speed-record set by LoC at the last event. I think the bar was set at 176km/h, not so ?

The big 5 are : Elephant, Rhino, Lion, Buffalo and Leopard. Still not sure why though ?

'twas on channel 22. But it was the LoC show !! Very well put together.

In air, somewhat more than 1000km/h, about half of what a flying baksteen can do... And worst of all, by the looks of it, we were going in the wrong direction too !!!

Amateurs... I went caching with a certain Kent guy. If I can recall, his name is Clarke or something. While we were rushing to a cache, I peeked over his shoulder and snapped this picture of the GPSr.....

Hmm...... -20 points to them all. I think they should have been disqualified. Period.

Very well done lads !!

For people who have not done this cache THIS is what you are up against. My personal opinion : If the cache warns you to be careful and you have any doubts about your own ability, then move on to the next one. Any cache placed in the bush, on a koppie anywhere should then be archived too, as the real possibility of getting bitten by a snake exists. Or mugged for that matter. Ask Discombob. Nope, ignore snowolf. The cache is dangerous, and I take responsibility for taking part in Geocaching.

...and some more results. Well done QFC on your 400th. Good one ! Now we wait for ZALandman....

...and slowly the results trickle in. Well done Noddy on your 500... 14 more to 600. Well done boet !

At the top of this page I said well done to GlobalRat for 500. Now, 600. Well done my friend !

As far as I know, this is the first occurrence in the race where the bug's goal was not adhered to, which is in the end the point of a travel bug. Michael Schumacher also had a goal and that was to win the F1 GP but his dreams were 'shattered' too. ...and he also drove Damon Hill of the track to win his first championship