teamh3

I know what you all mean, and i promised myself to practice what was preached, but the day was to nice, and i had the time. as for going after 1/1 I pretty much am limited to what I can get to on a given day and the one I was going after was a 1.5/2 I know all of this but once the little man starts walking on the screen, im like a freaking robot. I am hopeful that I will soon have my first find. (besides that benchmark) Im not discouraged or frustrated, it takes much much more to do that than what I experienced. Leprachauns I am looking forward to trying some of yours as well. right now im concentrating on schenly and frick parks then I hope to move to down town. Being recently carless (dang tranny) I am focusing on the ones I can get to easily. I am really looking forward to my next foray and the wonder of what stupid thing I will do next. p.s. my avatar pretty much says it all.

I swear I must be going senile, I am going to have to have myself checked out. Went to oakland (PA) with a printed list of the caches got there in the morning and thought I would have a good time. Stopped at starbucks for a capp and sat down at the table to go through the pages and decide which caches I would try to look for. Here was my first mistake, all of the caches I have printed out I have always included the maps that correspond to the area, however with oakland i felt that I knew the area well enought to skip this (especially since my printer was low on ink) I picked out a couple of the caches and plugged the information into my gps and started off. Once again I was hypnotized by the arrow and I followed it blindly, instead of allowing myself to think for myself. off I went The first cache I found myself on the wrong side of a set of railroad tracks and a chain link fence. looking at the sheet again I realized that I had gone the most direct route and not the smartest route. Ok no big deal, this can happen to anyone. Looking at the points i plugged into the gps I see that there is another cache only 1000 feet away, OH JOY, OH RAPTURE! A chance to redeem myself. off I go, A man on a mission. An hour later as i crawl out of a ditch looking at the sheet that says it can be seen from several angles... swearing up and down at the hider of this cache, this demon spawn. after cooling off in the shadow of the bridge above me i start my walk back, dejected. Here at home Now that I have logged my dnfs and looked closer at the pages online, including the maps I have dicovered that the bride I was looking under (250 - 300 feet above me) is most likely the hiding place and if I hadnt followed that demon of an arrow in the first place I would of walked around to the other side of the park and found the the first cache as well. Here is what I learned (at least until I get another attack of alzheimers) 1. always check the maps, even if you think you know an area, you might find a good way of getting to the cache 2. Read the logs of the cache 3. dont follow the arrow use your head 4. did I mention the maps? 5. Dont follow the arrow!!! Im three caches in and have logged three dfn another couple of hundred and I might start to get frustrated.

I will have to check out a medical supply store

I will be posting this same note in trigo I have just started caching but I happen to work some nights at a bar in east pittsburgh i thought maybe it would be a good place to meet once in while, like once a month. there is closeby off street parking and tuesday nights is dollar draft night (and im off that night) I was wondering if anyone would be interested. I am thinking of sometime late in october for the first meeting. october 19 is the date im thinking about. say 8:30-9:00 I will be talking to the owner of the bar tomorrow

man I thought I was the only one to listen to morphine!!! here are some of mine Games with fears - Peter Gabreil look like rain - morphine mission impossible theme - limp bizcuit thanks that was fun - bare naked ladies lost together bad timing side of the road - Blue rodeo things you left behind - nails blowing up your mind - lords of acid blister in the sun - violkent fems its the end of the world as we know it - REM

edited, posted twice by accident

Muzikman - PENN HILLS!! I grew up in penn hills and only moved away a few months ago. I live in east pittsburgh now. Glad to see somone from PH

I may be new to geocaching but I am by no means new to forums. i got into this sport from the photography side. My exwife introduced me to the sport and I thought (at first) what a great excuse to get out into the woods and take some photos. I have been a member of several photography forums, One that was almost brand new when i found it and another that was well established when I first joined. I have posted well over 7000 posts in these to forums combined and what I found is that when people are getting to know each other they are much better behaved once everyone gets comfortable with each other then that is when the dirty laundry comes out. That is when a small difference of opinion becomes a huge flame war.( i have actually seen a fist fight break out because of what was said in the forums, as well as gotten phone calls in the middle of the night about what someone posted on this thread or that) Also as a forum grows it will attract its own group of trolls. Having been one for a short time (just to prove a point to the guy who ran a forum) I know all to well how easy it can be to get under some peoples skin. Nothing I have ever seen has been able to stop this short of having to have every post approved before it can be read, and no one wants that.

I read one guy carried an epi pen in his first aid kit as well as a couple perscription pain pills. he did this just in case one of the people he was with either got really hurt or had an allergic reaction. I think this is a pretty good idea and I was going to post to the thread but I believe that the thread had been locked. it was locked being a duplicate thread ( I am not trying to start a duplicate thread here) but you can read that one here.even though I am just starting and so far have only managed to get about a 15 min walk from civilization I do carry a couple things with me. I carry an extra inhaler since I am asthmatic. having an attack at any time really sicks and some of them felt like I was going to die. and while I dont carry perscription pain pills in my bag I have picked up a bottle of the strongest pain relievers I could get over the counter since I dont think I could ask my Doctor for a perscription for ever four of them. The last thing I carry is two neoprene knee braces and two neoprene ankle wraps. They weigh almost nothing and could come in handy if I or someone I am with suffer a sprain in the knee or ankle. I was hoping to include some of those chemical cold packs but I havent found any near by. I know that there have been alot of threads about what do you carry, I am hoping that this doesnt turn into one of those, what i am asking is what if any specialtiy items do you carry. Edited to add link to mentioned thread

There wasnt anything wrong with my etrex, unfortunately it was a severe case of operator error. after spending a few days reading the manual and actually going out and using it I got the hang of it, I also picked up a compass as well. so then when it says 100 ft east I can actually know im heading east.

pittsburgh area, actually east pittsburgh, tiny town, no caches and even fewer people who have heard of geocaching. Until now.

Welcome Wlecome Welcome I hope you enjoy it as much as I have so far. I still havent found a cache, but that is do more to my current time constraints than anything else. I have done a little benchmark hunting and I find it to be quite enjoyable so I cant wait to clear up my calendar enouh to actually get some cache hunting in. - what they said about additive is no joke, the first three weeks I had gps dreams every night, now hey are down to every other night.

when you write a post on here and check back every five min to see if anyone has written anything else. when even if you know a persons real name you constantly refer to then by there geocaching handle

yep that would be it.

yeah, after reading some of the threads in the benchmark hunting forum I dont think I will be doing any hunting down by the tracks anymore, something about being a dogs chewtoy that i just dont like....

this is the kind of challenge I like. p.s. I also found out that one min is 6076.115485564304 feet according to a website I found http://www.metric-conversions.org/length/n...les-to-feet.htm one nautical mile is one min. edited by teamh3 - i can spel for nuttin

this is a tactic I have considered now in the cool light of afterthought. Ahh the things you think of as soon as you walk out of the woods.

that prettty much answers my questions, since I am in Pa I am glad that keystone chimed in, I was hoping that you would. I will go back there and check to see if there is a place nearby that I could hide a micro cache. I am pretty sure that you can see the monument from where the benchmark is. Getting to it would require a long walk since a spillway stops you from making a straight line. This is not a spillway to be tangled with. My question now is if I have the coords of both the benchmark and the monument, what is the math like if I say the next leg is x feet on a heading of x degrees. and I leave this in a micro at the benchmark(so people wouldnt do the math in advance and skip this leg). in other words, how long is a minute in feet? I can easily figure the delta in min north and min west and use a2 + b2 = c2 to figure the straight line distance but then I would have to convert from min to feet the bearing I can figure by just laying down a drawing of the two coords in autocad and measureing the angle. is all of this correct?

I was in the area and I am sure that I was most likely looking right at it I was not, however equiped to hack through all the vegetaion and little saplings that were growing there. Not to mention I found the drainage ditch between the tracks and the wall the hard way. I do plan on finding it, just when Im better prepared. Yeah I watched one fo the trains go by while i was walking down to KX1236 I was very happy I got the chance to get out today, however I also learned just how out of shape im in. 4.4 miles casual walk mostly flat along train tracks and my legs are swearing at me now. I look forward to the added bonus of helping myself to get in some kind of shape (other than round)

today while I was out benchmark hunting see details here I came across a monument that I have never seen before. This area of town isnt one I usually frequent so it is no suprise that I had never seen it. I thought that it would make a nice site for a virtual cache, especially since it is close to parking and not far from the street, in fact you dont even have to leave the sidewalk. It is however next to a nice shady little park. I am still new to all of this but I have read in some of the threads about a crackdown (if that is the right word) on virtuals. Does anyone with more experience on this have any thoughts on the idea? I would appreciate any advice

i am hoping to meet up with some local cachers, I just joined a local forum and I hope to be getting to know some of them

Why polish it up? I guess that is the kind of person I am. actually I was hoping to get it chromed. (i have a friend that does this for a living) and I figured it would look cool. although a rusty spike has its own charms as well. as to size and fitting it in a cache, i was figuring that it is shorter than a standard pen or pencil so I hoping that it will fit in enough caches to get around. My goal for my first TB isnt miles or distance. I want it to travel to as many different caches as possible. even if they are all close together. im not worried if it never leaves western PA (where I am from) P.s. I didnt realize just how out of shape I am. my legs are killing me and only after 4.4 miles most of it flat, walking along train tracks. I guess I have to order a TB now.

Went out early this morning for a little benhmark hunting. had a great time and logged a find and 4.4 miles hiked. I was stumped at first since the Benchmark reqired me to cross over private property at a factory by the train tracks. I approached the guard and expalined to him what I was doing and showed him the pages I had printed off and my GPSr. after a phonecall and a visit from the factory manager i allowed access to the tracks and found the benchmark. I guess I came back out during some kind of a break because there were about 8 guys sitting on some benches, smoking, and having coffee. When I "appeared" out of the bushes a few of them (having been told wither by the guard or the manager) asked me if I found what i was looking for. I told them that I had and I have to admit being my first find I was all smiles. A coupld of them asked some questions and I tried to answer them the best I could. All in all it was a great time. the weather for the next week is rain rain rain so I was glad i got up early and managaed to fit the hike in. Also found an old railroad spike that I am planning on polishing up and attaching a tb to, but we will have to see how that works.

Went out early this morning for a little benhmark hunting. had a great time and logged a find and 4.4 miles hiked. I was stumped at first since the Benchmark reqired me to cross over private property at a factory by the train tracks. I approached the guard and expalined to him what I was doing and showed him the pages I had printed off and my GPSr. after a phonecall and a visit from the factory manager i allowed access to the tracks and found the benchmark. I guess I came back out during some kind of a break because there were about 8 guys sitting on some benches, smoking, and having coffee. When I "appeared" out of the bushes a few of them (having been told wither by the guard or the manager) asked me if I found what i was looking for. I told them that I had and I have to admit being my first find I was all smiles. A coupld of them asked some questions and I tried to answer them the best I could. All in all it was a great time. the weather for the next week is rain rain rain so I was glad i got up early and managaed to fit the hike in. Also found an old railroad spike that I am planning on polishing up and attaching a tb to, but we will have to see how that works.

I spent sunday with my son, on the way home from church I kid a eclipse mint canister and recorded the position as a waypoint. when I got home and had lunch my son and I went on hunt for the "cache" with him using the GPS and me just walking behind, taggin along. it was exciting to see him walking almost straight toward it and finding it after anly about 10 min of searching once he got into the area. Like I said it was a great feeling to be "doing" something with one of my kids.