Triskeles

Yours (the one about eating your friends) is on the back of a t-shirt I bought for a good friend several years ago. I haven't put a siggy line in yet, but my son loves the one about never angering a geocacher...because we know the good places to hide bodies. He quotes it whenever someone makes him realllllly mad. I've forgotten who uses that one!

hmmm....good point. When we go caching, sometimes I mention it to my mom (if I happen to be talking to her earlier that day and if it comes up), but she has no idea where we're going. Both young Triskele and I carry our cell phones everywhere, and his has that "kid finder" option on it, but that won't help a lot if no one knows we're missing. The cats know where we are, but as we've taken the cell phones with us, they'd have to use the laptop to notify someone. And once they log in, they always go to the lolcat site and forget everything else. When we go out in the boonies, I'll start letting my mom know where we'll be and when we'll be back. edited to add: Wait...then I'll have to hear her infernal "hiking is dangerous...there are rattlesnakes and javelina and scorpions out there! Don't endanger my grandson" lecture. I may have to notify someone else...

My caching partner is my son, who is quick to point out that he's NOT 11, he's "11.75" years old. He's an excellent caching buddy because he loves nature and being outside, he's silly and has a great sense of humor, and he's interesting to talk to. And he's always up for spending a few hours, or all day, running around looking for caches. He's pretty darn good as well, and often finds the cache before I do. Most of all, I love spending that casual one-on-one time with him, the misadventures we often have, and the memories that are being created.

Several weeks ago, we were looking for a cache hidden outside a convenience store. When we pulled up, four police cars were parked outside, and it looked like they were on break and stocking up on snacks. We thought for a minute, then went ahead, pulled out the GPSr and started looking. Every single one of them ignored us. Afterwards, I realized I'd forgotten to take off my court ID when I got off work. Don't know if that had anything to do with it, or if they just knew what geocaching was.

There's a few very similar ones around town here. My son thinks they look likes ones from the GI Joe toys. They always have little teeny tiny logbooks in them.

ooooh...this just gave me a great idea for a puzzle cache!! Thank you

I wish you were talking about my cache!! My first placement was met with disaster when landscapers came to severely trim back some groundcover...and took my cache with it. I would have LOVED it if someone had come by at just the right time and rescued it.

They can be faulted for doing it where they are expressly told not to. Like geocaches. Groundspeak doesn't prohibit religious swag. I think that point has been made thousands of times. You just don't seem to get it. Now, about that donut... I want a pony. If I had a pony people would give me donuts to let them pet him. And a blue bow. I want a pony with a blue bow so people will give me donuts. I'll see what I can do... but you have to promise to share the donuts. Donuts? I thought one had to be a plantinum member before donuts came into play!

My young'un and I just placed our first one a few weeks ago, so we were just shy of 70 finds. We spent several weeks prior to that looking and thinking of containers and places to hide them. I want our caches to be quality ones at places that either offer something or mean something to us. Now, whenever we're in stores,we're always looking for stuff that can be turned into cache containers. The other day, whilst channel surfing, I came across an infomercial for lock-n-locks. I almost bought some!!

Very good advice about not sticking your hands in places you can't see---I believe New Mexico has scorpions as well.

Celtic Rock? Have you ever listened to the Killdares?

I get "Do we have to go home now?" "Can we do just one more?" "Can we do a few more?" And then, when we're shopping, "Are there any caches around here? Can we go geocaching when we're done?" He especially does it when he knows he needs to clean his room or do chores. As far as music, when in the car we listen to our "adult album alternative" radio station or whatever happens to be in the cd player. Recently it's been David Gray (mine), Muse (son's), A mix tape of Zeppelin and BOC (both of ours), or the Killdares (both). When we're out in nature we listen for quails, the wind, birds, and of course, that specific rattle that terrifies both of us.

My first cache placement was muggled within a few days of being published, so when I replaced the container I thought for sure that it was going to be tricky to find, so I upped the difficulty to 3. But yesterday, we spent a second chunk of time trying to find a cache that is so tricky it hasn't been found since May of 09...and that one is only 2.5 stars. I'm thinking seriously about dropping the difficulty of mine.

I've only been caching a few months, but when I started I left short logs using acronyms, because I saw that a lot of people around these parts were doing that. Then, here in the forums, I read the thread about the importance of longer logs, and I hung my head in shame. Now I make a point to leave a few sentences, and more if we really enjoyed the cache or had a funny story to tell. Given that my caching partner is my goofy 11.5 year old son who loves to find caches before me, and that I have horrible balance and fall down a lot, there's almost always something to tell. So, in my limited experience, I'm thinking that the short logs may also be due to the "monkey see, monkey do" of new cachers who who emulate what they see going on around them.

We ran into some fellow cachers a few weeks ago. Once we saw what the other was walking around with, that was that. Very nice people too! What was really ironic is that last weekend we were at the Festival of Books. We happened to be in the science tent, where they had a booth about DNA extraction that my son was fascinated with. One of the folks in the booth asked me how I knew those little plastic tubes were called "eppendorfs", and I replied that sometimes people hid geocaches in them. Turns out she's the matriarch of a major caching family here in town, and we've found several of her caches! And, to add to the irony, just a few days prior, she and a friend found our first cache hide. Sometimes it's a very small world!!

If I remember correctly, I've got a 10-mile radius. We get one or two a week, on average. Sometimes more, sometimes less. We've been planting our first caches, so the we're included in that now!!

Way to keep a low profile... Are you trying to tell me I cant cache, dressed as I wish? That I have to conform to the physical drollness of society to be treated like the human I obviously am? That because of how I look, I somehow deserve to be treated poorly when I'm minding my own business doing absolutely nothing wrong? Last week we decided to look for a cache that was placed outside a convenience store. When we pulled up, there were FOUR police cars in the parking lot, and several officers were in and out of their cars with fountain drinks and snacks in hand. We brazenly whipped out our GPSr and started looking for the cache. They completely ignored us. I was actually a little surprised.

The youngster and I are always saying that when we're challenged, we're doing to adopt the "Karate Kid" pose then start running around like we're maniacs. But we've yet to be confronted. When it does happen, I suspect we'll chicken out and do the grownup thing.

There have been many instances of "I should stay home and mop the floors and take care of other household things", etc etc etc, but instead my son and I go out caching. But darn it, when he's a grown up, he'll remember that time we almost fell off the car when we got the giggles while trying to grab a cache. Or the time he bravely walked across a crisscross of rebar, only to find a four-leaf clover in the cache. He's NOT going to remember how sparkling clean our floors were. Or weren't, in our case. There have also been several times when I made a mental note for us to be back home by a certain time, so I could cook dinner. But then the "just one more cache" thing starts, and next thing you know we're in Trader Joe's looking for something fast for dinner. lol

A few weeks ago we visited several of the Wallyworlds in the area, and not a one had any or a blank area on the shelf with a label. I asked each of the clerks, and one said that their stock in general was low right now (must be the counting thing mentioned in a previous post) and that they would be getting lots of stock within a few weeks. He was unable to tell me if match containers would be carried again. After checking a few of the Targets, I did a big "DUH!!! Shop locally!!" and made a visit to my favorite locally-owned camping/outdoors store. They had many in stock for $1.25 each. Since I've already taken mine out of the blister card, I don't remember the brand. They are hard orange plastic, and there's a little strike strip on the bottom. I'm okay with paying $1.25 as opposed to the .99 ones, since it's going to a locally owned store that I love. I just can't believe I didn't try them first!! It's not the first time they've carried something that I couldn't find at chain stores.

I'm having trouble understanding this. I don't mean you any disrespect but it seems like you're saying that there is an age at which your kids would be old enough to cache alone but not old enough to go into a park alone. I don't think a geocache in a park near a school is going to be the tipping point that attracts more sexual predators or that predators shop for parks, near schools, and that have geocaches in them. Predators will be were there are children- period. I also think, and what I've read seems to support this, that you're child is more likely to encounter a predator that they already know that an stranger in the park. I know this is a very touchy subject and I don't want to come across as second-guessing your motivations, or your parenting. I work in the criminal justice system, and am around felons (including sex offenders) every day at work. Because of that, I tend to be more paranoid than usual when it comes to my son's safety. But I just wanted to mention that I've run into known sex offenders in grocery stores, hobby shops, libraries and just this past Sunday, a video game store. In toy stores and the toy sections in mass-merchandise stores, I've seen people that I didn't know, but displayed behavior that made me suspicious. Interestingly enough, I've yet to see one whilst out geocaching or in a park. I'm not saying that they aren't there. I'm just saying that they're everywhere, and wanted to remind parents that you need to be careful all the time, not just when a park is near. I get sooo annoyed when I see parents in a store who just send their young kids off to play in the toy section while they do their shopping! Please don't think I'm criticizing anyone on this board...I'm not. Okay...I'm off my soap box now!!

My son's charter school held a popular geocaching course as one of their summer sessions last year, and even they don't have any geocaches near the school. I think that's the safe choice.

The geek in me actually knows what a bat'leth is. Ah, but does the geek in you know what "manula labour" is? Isn't a manula a male doula? That would make a "manula labour" a birthing that is coached/supervised by a male doula.

That photo TOTALLY made my morning!!! Thank you!!! If you edit your PQ to exclude micros, size not chosen and other, you'll likely not find very many lamp post caches. Excluding Micros might only help to elminate SOME lamp post caches. But not all.

I could be wrong, but a certain geeky part of me wants to pull out a bat'leth when I look at one of them.