Dave from Glanton

Whoever came up with this must have had some pretty weird ideas about where they *might* have been. Kinda makes you wonder how their mind works.

Ditto. I've been finding out about new local caches by word of mouth (well, email) from another local cacher who presumably has been getting notification. Just a shame I was working this weekend and couldn't get out this weekend to look for them

Share! Share! I was out and about with a non-cacher friend of mine. I knew we'd be passing the Silverlink Park (home of a cache I had yet to bag) so insisted that we take a small detour. On the way I tried to explain to him what this was all about and he just didn't get it. The cache in question is concealed in undergrowth just off the main path, so I asked my pal to keep an eye out and shout to me if any potential muggles came along, then went hunting. When I came out a couple of minutes later (OK, more like 10!) my friend was looking very twitchy. When I asked him what the matter was he said (words to the effect of) "I want to get out of here now. What you're doing looks just looks suspicious and I don't want to be involved. I don't want to be around if you're poking around in bushes - it's just seems plain dodgy, and I don't know what the legal implcations of this would be for me." I am not making this up. Even having had the chance to calm down a bit, he was still *so* paranoid about it. A few days later we were in the pub together and bumped into one of his friends. I can't remember how, but the conversation came around to technology, GPS and the like. My mate said quietly to me "don't mention that geocaching lark to this guy - I don't want him to know I might be involved with anything suspicious". I thought about seeing if North Tyneside Council would let me place a cache right outside his house, but somehow I don't think he'd see the funny side.

I don't "advertise" the fact that I'm a cacher, but there are cases where I've volunteered the info (e.g. "what did you get up to this weekend, Dave?"). However, in my experience, whenever I explain caching to my friends or colleagues the reaction has either been pretty lukewarm, or - in one very memorable case - very, very negative. So no danger of me bringing masses to the sport. Join the club. Funny how we can still find time to surf the forums when we're supposed to be working though, isn't it?

A bit of a guess, but here goes... John DeLorean (conman) - the only one not to have worked in the advertising industry

I hope not, because I've done something similar for someone who provided me with enough info to convinve me that they'd found the hiding place for one of my caches, but the box itself had gone AWOL.

Correctomundo - over to you

OK, no pictures for this question then.... What are "Mickeys" the unit of measurement for?

The Queen (Gawd bless 'er)

Space 1999? Kronenburg 1664? Pennsylvania 65000? well, it was worth a punt

If he's talking to someone called Lou, I'll take a guess at Bud Abbott

I would question the practicality of hiding in spillage, as it's likely that these are the sort of stones that could get removed by the landowner for re-use/repair work, thus running the risk of leaving the cache exposed

Aside from the occaisional bit of sheer muppetry on my part, the main reason for DNFing is muggles. I'm not a huge fan of the whole stealth thing, which is why I tend not to do caches in urban areas.

My yellow Etrex seems suprisingly good with heights - when I get to the top of a big hill I sometimes check what the Etrex says versus what it says on the OS map, and generally it's pretty close. IIRC it got the summit height for Windy Gyle as only about 10 feet higher than the OS map said.

I remember a story on Radion 4's "Home Truths" show some time ago (back when John Peel was presenting it). There was a series of stories about random shoes, etc. One week they ran a (slightly macabre) story from somebody who found a boot with a foot still in it. The following week they had a story from the person who the boot/foot had belonged to, explaining the circumstances of the accident he'd had. p.s. am I alone in thinking that "The Missing Shoe Conundrum" would make an excellent name for a rock band?

There's a series of caches in/around Thrunton woods which are worth a visit - good caches and a good setting. There are quite a few other caches within a few miles of there, so you could probably fill a day or two.

Good idea. One nice benefit from this could be that if there's a cache that somebody has really been struggling with then if there's a scheduled maintenance visit then they could potentially arrange to visit with the owner and maybe get an extra clue or two.

There's a rating system, so you can tell how much previous cachers have enjoyed a cache

No you're not alone. I'm not a huge fan of congrats threads, but I can live with seeing the ones for the major milestones. So far we've only got one pre-congrats thread that I can see. Are you anticipating more, and if so, does your OP constitute a pre-rant?

I don't think that'd work - a message only has a certain lifespan, and if it doesn't reach the target phone within a time limit determined by the network operator (say 48 hours) then it just vanishes into the ether.

OK then, just to try and inject a bit of positivity... I think that this forum actually fares quite well, trollwise, compared to some other forums I visit. And as for Usenet/newsgroups..I subscribe to a few of those, and for some of them the troll ratio is probably 50% plus. And I suppose that I should add the obligatory "this is not trolling" comment

and if the photo shows the TB itself then don't forget to edit it so that the tracking number isn't readable

Doing a whois lookup on the protagonist's web domain certainly suggests that he *isn't* Moote

Now is probably a good time to post a link to American humourist Dave Barry's seminal work "The Tupperware Blues" (which actually has a very entertaining story behind it). Rather oddly though, the song doesn't mention using Tupperware as a container for geocaches - it seems obsessed with some strange idea that it's main purpose in life is for storing food. Personally I don't think that'll catch on. Edit - learn to spell, idiot child.

The day job: designing/developing software (mostly realtime and data communications stuff for emergency services) I also get to play with GIS and GPS quite a bit....which is nice. All good fun, so I tend to view this as more like a hobby that I'm lucky enough to get paid for. Extra curricular: guitar playing and music tuition and more geeky things like shareware/freeware development and website stuff. Sometimes I can combine the two - guitar/music tuition software, anyone? Also a bit of a photography nut. Strange as it may seem, I also enjoy a good long walk, even if it doesn't involve a cache hunt. I've also got a 'questionnaire' type of thing on my website - it'd be interesting to see other people's answers to those questions here.