The GeoGadgets Team

I think Two Tracks was pulling your leg, the GPS could only go as fast as the car was traveling. Then what is that whole mass x velocity-thing? I mean, if you are in an auto accident, the mass of a human body increases exponentially during an abrupt stop, or did I misunderstand that science class completely? I'm not the sharpest pencil in the drawer, but I have read a few articles on why people need to wear their seatbelts. Why would this rule not apply to a GPS sitting on the dashboard?

Rats... none of them are even close to the Left Coast...

The Contact Cache has to be my favorite. But then, I'm just tickled that I solved it. And that my family and I made a special trip to find it. Fractal is the MAN! I've done other puzzle caches since (discovered that I have a jones for them), but this is my first and I think it is the best out there.

Ha! I started cruising through the list to see if there was anyone there who I might re-cognize... and the second guy below my own blog was someone who listed their interests like this: "computers, books, horses, pets, swimming, archery, fencing, writing, drawing, polyamory, bdsm, sex, games, hiking, diving, geocaching" Geocaching was last? And he advertises bdsm & sex? What was really interesting was Googling "polyamory"...

Well, you have to have a specialized fire hydrant backpack to haul one of those into the woods! The fire hydrant backpack is a Geocacher's de-lite! Comes complete with it's own rocket pack for those quick hops over alligator-filled swamps, and an anti-grav unit with fully rechargeable nuclear waste-core batteries! Only $19.99! That's right! Only $19.99... operators are standing by.

Here, here... OMG! I so agree! Just reading these forum posts makes me wonder how most of you namby-pambies ever started caching in the first place! The entire freaking game is one big ADVENTURE, folks. It is fun. Hell, I've got an idea, why don't you take the fun out of this for all of us, so your dumbed-down version of it can be over-run with Girly-men. I can understand when you aren't supposed to put caches in the middle of rattlesnake infested rock piles, or in the middle of a lagoon in an alligator preserve. I get fully the reason why no food and no explosives should be used as cache fodder, but those of you who are that worried about your five-year old picking out the pocket knives in caches need to take a little more personal responsibility. When the cache goes over the line safety-wise, make a polite comment to that effect on that cache's page. I would even go so far as to say go ahead and voice your concerns to the person who approved it. If no one else complains, HELLO! Maybe YOU are the problem, not the cache. Common sense is something precious, and should be EXERCISED. You can only tell people so many times to look both ways before they cross the street. If they then jump into the middle of freeway traffic, just hope they haven't procreated yet, and repeat after me: "There, but for the grace of My Higher Power, go I", put on your seatbelt and move along. Sheesh.

Another Geocacher, Two Tracks, showed me where his MapVI showed a top MPH of 283. He noticed it right after having to slam on the brakes in his truck on the highway to avoid a collision. He wasn't traveling that fast, but his GPS was, toward the windshield!

There is/was a gentleman Geocacher in the Portland, OR-area who, when logging his finds online, let loose with these totally cool, very interesting, but hardly to the point log posts. One could've put all of his posts together and published them. It couldn't have been any worse than any thing Hunter Thompson wrote... His forum posts were equally facsinating. I would remember his name if I read it, but for the moment, I'm having a old-timer's attack... I, being the chronicler of our Geocaching team, like to leave details of our exploits in the posted cache logs. Some people tell me how much they enjoy reading them. I have heard, and probably won't hear, from those who dislike my posts. Not that I care, either way. If I do write "TNLNSL, TFTH!" it is just before my signature/user name in the log. And when folks post to my caches, I appreciate knowing how they feel about them, the area they were hidden in, and what condition the cache is in. Thanks for your support...

I know this is going to sound stupid... I have lots of experience with computers... but I've had a PDA - an iPAQ Pocket PC running WinCE'02 - and I can't get a grasp on how to download cache pages to it. I want to go paperless, but I'm PDA-challenged. Can anyone help?

Competition bad? Um, I don't know where YOU live, but around here it's all about the numbers, baby. Not that I'm that way... my family and I have been caching since 10/01 and we still have just over 250 caches. Of course, if we lived in the Medford/Klamath Falls area, where Geocaches outnumber the entire state's Education budget numbers, we would have over a thousand caches just by leaving the house every day. Personally, I'm all for a well-thought out cache, where it is obvious that the person hiding it took their time and put some thought into the location, the container, the contents or what it takes to find it. I'm a huge fan of puzzle caches. I suppose my point is this: If you start giving some kind of extra points for cache placement, then there would be battles over whether a micro had the same point count that a ten-part puzzle multi-cache would. We already get points for hiding. Just be kind and keep your hide/find ratio reasonable.

Just curious, but what would you have put on them?

I know that this is off-topic, but think about this next time you are worried about cons finding your $0.88 Wal-Mart pocket knife in a Geocache: Most imprisoned felons can make a deadly weapon from a chiselled toothbrush, or sharpened pencils, the contents of a ballpoint pen, etc. Can you imagine what they could do with some of the McToys they might find in a cache? Give me a break. I guess reality is in short supply when it comes to "land managers". Instead of no knives, they would be better off to say, "NO CACHES". Not that I approve of that, either. And we have had one of our Geocaches found by a land-clearing chain gang. It was obvious that they rifled through the ammo can, but if they took anything, it was anything valuable.

Now, I know that this topic has reared it's ugly head before, but what about bootlegged copies of DVD's? Offended? Unoffended? Do you care? I'm just making an extra copy of the one I bought... would you hold it for me?

Yeah, what _he_ said!

Sheesh! Remind me where you live again, so I can avoid caching there...

Considering that I drive a land-yacht, gas is a priority. Prices might be restrictive, but I'll still cache. I will just insure that the other half works longer hours and buys less Gatorade, all in the name of making sure the family still gets to go out and find Tupperware. I agree, we have to get our priorities straight, even if it means using our money to lube the PTB's tight grip on the fuel economy. ^ doesn't that suck?

[*hand over heart*] "I'd like to thank my Mother, the Academy... Oh, you mean I haven't won, yet?" []

Or some weird/bizarre voodoo ritual?

Is this an arguement FOR rudeness? No, I would never promote rude behavior, in word or deed. My point is that a simple "Thanks for the find" give absolutely no information to the cachers that follow. A cache that requires the finder to take his/her life in hand, dodge on-coming traffic and dive over a guardrail to avoid becoming a statistic should not be logged as above "TFTF!" In the same vein, there are people who would like to know when they will be hunting a cache in a high-muggle quotient area, to get their stealth on, and to be wary of folks who might think the cacher is casing the parking lot for a car-jacking, break in or mugging. Having your name in the local police blotter may be exciting, and fun to relate in cache logs for some, but for obvious reasons, it doesn't really place a healthy light on a past-time that is being ridiculed. This runs along the same lines as the terrain difficulty ratings: what is a 1.5 to you might be a 3.0 to someone else, but those people won't know without a decent description of the terrain and potential obstacles. My strongest point needs to be this: there are many people on this planet that don't see any criticism as constructive, even if it is worded politely and concisely. In an effort to stay on topic, I am still a proponent of the anonymous grading system for caching. I will hunt every cache, even the ones others claim are stinky, because "they all count the same", but maybe we should push for better cache descriptions, huh? RedwoodRed

It is my opinion that the people responsible for the glut of lame finds aren't only the people hiding them, but some of the people who approve them. Before you all start screaming for my lynching, please keep in mind how simple it is for the folks that approve these things to put their stamp of approval on a brainless magnetic micro lampost cache in the Wal-Mart parking lot. When someone puts a great deal of effort and/or thought into their cache placements, they are sometimes denied the stamp of approval due to some technicality that the approver doesn't understand. I have seen many caches "DENIED" because the approver just failed to grasp what was being done. There should be some kind of "higher power" or group to submit "questionable" caches to, not just one person in your immediate area who approves or denies with a broad stroke of their Sharpie. I could use many examples, but don't wish to bore anyone. RedwoodRed

In all honesty, no matter how polite one is when they tell the owner of a cache that the placement/whatever is bad/lame/stinky, that cache owner may not take it as constructive criticism, but just criticism, and for them maybe all criticism is bad. Have I used to word "criticism" enough? Am I even spelling it correctly? We recently logged a cache (typical magnetic micro lampost style) that turned out to be in the parking lot of an extremely busy business that is open 24/7/365. That isn't usually a problem, we've done tons of them. The problem came when the lampost turned out to be within a few feet of the front entrance! It is one thing when one is standing in a grocery store parking lot, way back in the "Geez, couldn't find anything closer during the Christmas shopping rush"-parking area, and trying to look inconspicuous... but to have to be stealthy during a constant, un-wavering onslaught of foot traffic, that's just plain stupid if the person who hid it wants it to last more than a few days. It took us 15 minutes to grab it, and almost 30 minutes to put it back, the level of traffic was so bad. The whole thing was foolish and not very well thought out, and I expressed that in my logs. I suppose this came from being treated like a car thief by passers-by, but that isn't the only reason. Everyone else who's logged it says something like, "Wow, this is a very busy place!" I don't think that that kind of polite information is going to change anything here. RedwoodRed

Yeah! "Don't go outside and play! Sit around, get depressed and have your doctor prescribe Zantax/Prozac/your drug of choice here!"

Some of our local rangers/park/F&G workers in this area are avid Geocachers. When one of them was at a recent meeting with his 'superiors', the question was asked of the employees, "How do we get more people into the Parks?" This is because increased visitors to the area bring in additional funds that the Parks need for services, etc. When the employee who is an avid Geocacher replied that the Park Service would do well to embrace Geocachers and encourage that activity, he was told that Geocaches were litter, and that Geocachers as a group are "a problem". So, the Parks want increased visitors and their money, but not the added traffic... typical Government "Catch-22" beaurocracy. RedwoodRed

Yep, his sacred site, that I am 100% POSITIVE that not one human throughout known time has ever wizzed there before... NOT! Hell, the reason that the site quoted is considered SACRED is that someone's relatives LIVED, ATE, FARMED, PLANTED, DEFICATED AND URINATED THERE BEFORE. That is what usually happens at places where people live. So, the petrified fecal matter remaining is also SACRED, but our bodily wastes are just adding to the Earth's pollution in general. I'm sure. I'm sure that if this guy were to really look at the BIG PICTURE, he could never claim that everyone dead one hundred years or longer had some sort of beneficial impact on the planet, other than their decomposing bodies, assuming they left one. The real point is this: At one time a native people found that particular spot to be beautiful and bountiful, or a safe place to continue their race/people/existance. The fact that future peoples, regardless of their indiginous-ness would find it equally attractive is not lost on him, since he himself finds it so. Why should the rest of us not be able to appreciate the beauty of that land, assuming we work to maintain that beauty after we leave? The guy's a dirt muncher... why waste any more breath on him unless he swerves his loyalties towards E.L.F.? Then he becomes a target... RedwoodRed

Calling all cachers from the North and South... Get out of the heat and come have fun with us on the Cool Northern California coast. August 8th (Sunday) beginning at 11 a.m. Potluck, games for the kids, and many, many new caches just for this event. We've been given ten Jeep TBs to give out at this event. The event is taking place on the final day of the Del Norte County Fair, so come for the weekend and play. Cool Coastal Retreat Event Already have folks coming up from Southern California... Oregon needs representation! Visit the cache description page for more info on food, camping, lodging and what to bring (besides your sweatshirts - un-acclimated heat-lovers!). If you'd like to volunteer to help with the fun, email me. RedwoodRed - of The GeoGadgets Team Crescent City, California redwoored@geogadgets.com