BigHank

I travel a lot for my job, and in my experience, the mid priced hotels such as Best Western, Comfort Suites, La Quinta, etc., generally all have free internet access. The more expensive places, such as Westin, Hilton, Radisson, etc., all charge an arm and a leg for internet access. Also, the mid priced ones have free parking and the higher priced ones charge for parking, too. As far as a laptop...I am fortunate in that my job provides me with one, and also with a wi-fi card and an "air card" which allows me to access the internet anywhere I can be in range of a tower. This is real handy for 'caching too, obviously. As far as type or brand of computer, just check consumer reports and stuff like that for repair histories, and make sure it is rugged. If a cigarette lighter power cord doesn't come with it, it is a real good investment for traveling. Enjoy your trip.

There's a cache out in AZ that I did called "Mine's bigger than most" and it is on the hider's property.... it is so obvious once you find it, you'll wonder how you didn't see it when you pulled up and parked. Although I was from out of state and didn't know the area or the hider, I didn't feel uncomfortable at all because I had read the cache page and knew what to expect. Two weeks ago I did one in Hampton, Va. I hadn't read the cache page, only had the coords downloaded to my GPS. I felt kind of strange going on someone's lawn, so I DNF'd it. Got an email from the owner that night..he was watching me from the window and said I stood right next to it. So knowing it was okay, I went back the next day.

Yup, not something that I would hold in high regard, that's for sure.

Magellan 315....still works fine. Keep it as a spare or to loan to someone just starting out. 60cs..had it about two years now, hate to not have it around...use it for trips and for 'caching.

I tend to agree that if someone can prove to my satisfaction that they actually found the cache before it was archived, then I would not delete the log. But it would have to be on a case by case basis in view of whatever circumstances surround the late online logging. I don't think there is any one hard and fast rule of thumb for this.

Hey, you said what I was going to say...... thanks for saying it.

I think it wouldn't take long for the ratings to get skewed, especially since quality is so subjective to rate and varies from area to area, just as terrain and difficulty do. I thnk one thing would be if hiders were to hold themselves to a higher standard .....in my mind, you should never have to 'apologize' for your cache on your cache page, for example "Quick micro in the park, just wanted to hide one and only had a few minutes at lunch time to toss this out and get some coords. Sorry if the coords are off, please note better ones if you get them."

When caching with a group, if one person finds the cache, and the others are ten or twenty feet away, did any of those others actually find the cache? Not trying to stir anything up, just a curiosity question to see how others feel and to see how it applies to this discussion.

. If everyone had their way, every cache would have to be an ammo can, you would have to leave some spectacular swag better than what you took (by the way, if everyone always traded up, eventually you wouldn't be able to afford to cache), take a picture of yourself (WITH the container and your GPSr), leave a DNA sample to prove you REALLY found it, leave a fingerprint ON the container (whoops, I mean IN the container) to further prove you didn't give your DNA sample or a fingerprint card to someone else, write an essay, leave behind a media card digitally signed by a private key (issued by a trusted CA, of course), free all the travel bugs, CITO the entire forest, then log your cache online, complete with all of the digital photographic evidence, a picture of your legal signature in the log book and a 1000 word manifesto rating the cache for potential future finders. Edit - One more thing: after all of that, your find count would remain unchanged or undisplayed, because it isn't about the numbers. Finally!!! Someone who really knows how caching should be done. TFTP.

6/21/06 Found Log Lame Urban Micro #6,666 found by Vinny & Sue Team Found this cache on a sweltering hot summer day. The choice of hide site itself was ingenious, as who else but HIDER AAA could have been sensitive enough and intuitive enough -- indeed, enough of a poet and artisan -- to have realized that every lamppost in this parking lot needed a microcache in its base in order to achieve its highest order of spiritual and inner fulfillment in its time on earth? And who else but HIDER AAA could have, and would have, been courageous enough to respond to the heartfelt cry of this lamppost for a microcache of its very own, and who else would have been strong enough and resourceful enough -- and creative enough -- to have found this magnificent hide-a-key container, lovingly crafted it into a cache container, and then lovingly and religiously placed it in such a daring and scintillating spot, a spot so magical, so special, that my eyes fill with tears as I write this log entry, just as they did in that sacred and holy parking lot earlier this afternoon, whence and where those beneficient tears mixed with the sweat on my face on that hot summer afternoon, and then those sacred tears of joy and love streamed off my face and bathed the tiny paper logbook as I prepared to return it to its magical magnetic receptacle, its special chalice, then to return it lovingly to its special designated altar, its resting spot where it can lie nestled in safety, guarded by the noble tall cylindrical sentinel known generically to the heathens and the uninitatied as a "lamp post" but known to any true red-blooded and sincere geocacher as a "Sentinel of microcache guardianship with attendant beacon of yellowish-white light from GE 5169Y sodium vapor lamp at apex". And, after I had replaced the sacred vessel inside the sacred altar known as "Sentinel of microcache guardianship with attendant beacon of yellowish-white light from GE 5169Y sodium vapor lamp at apex", I fell to my knees, overcome with joy and awe, and I prayed to the Holy Lame Urban Magnetic Microcache, thanking it for its benificence, and thanking it for its blessing, and then, further overcome by its magnificence and by my comparative shallowness and banality and unworthiness, not to mention my sins, I cast my torso upon the hot scorching pavement, wailing and crying and screaming, and flailing my fists against the hot unyielding pavement, now covered with the blood of my righteous and wrathful self-directed fury, at the injustice that one so unworthy as I should have dared to have touched a sacred Lame Urban Micro Magnetic Receptacle, and with the thought that I had -- without the requisite 22 hours of prior cleansing and fasting -- also dared to approach its sacred altar, known as a "Sentinel of microcache guardianship with attendant beacon of yellowish-white light from GE 5169Y sodium vapor lamp at apex", in the first place. And, so finally, my homage to the sacred cache was complete, and satiated and bloody, yet filled with bliss and joy at this exposure to The Sacred and The Holy, I returned to my car. Signed logbook with tears and blood, took nothing, left five $100 bills as a small token of my offering to this cache and to the Lame Urban micro Magnetic Cache Gods. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this wonderful cache and religious icon, and for this chance to once again worship the Demigod of Lame Urban Magnetic Microcaches. Thank you. Now that's my kind of log entry: entertaining, humorous and yet tells me all I need to know to make the decision whether to hunt it or not. Great writing.

When I get a short 'cut and paste' log entry for one of my caches, it makes me a bit suspicious as to whether or not they did the cache. So I will make note of it, and on a cache maintenance trip, check the log for a signature. On more than a few occasions I have not found a signature. When I emailed the supposed finders of the caches and ask for a description of where the cache was, I got either no answers or vague answers that could not be pinned down to the caches....so I then emailed them and told them I was deleting their log entry. I got a few nasty emails in return, but none that actually could prove they found the cache, just emails that called me a few choice names and said how untrusting I was, among other things. Guilty as charged, I guess, but I still deleted their logs.

You're not a Geocacher until you consider yourself one.

Is there even life before coffee?

Mike, Could you explain further your reasoning for this opinion? I'm just curious as to how you arrived at it. thanks, Hank

Very sensible and well put. Thank you.

After reading through this thread and the other related ones, one thing jumps out at me: most of the controversy appears to stem from things that happen at events. That being the case, the simple solution, to me, is to eliminate events. No events= no pocket caches, no "discovering" iconic items, no logging the fantastic feat of arriving at a pizza place or state park, etc. Of course, if by some unbelievable set of circumstances that ever happens, I'm sure we will find something else to generate controversy. If not, the forums sure would get boring quickly.

Chili.

One of the things I always used to enjoy about caching was reading the logs describing the adventures cachers had while searching for and finding (or not finding) the cache. Not only was it fun to go back and read other's logs on caches I had been to, but it was fun to read them for most caches. Now, most log entries are some variation of "TFTC" or "Team Number Ho's was here" cut and pasted all over the place. Maybe doing away with stats would bring back some of the sharing of our adventures which was one of the contributing factors, I think, in establishing our sense of community back when this hobby started, and it would probably get us back to our roots, to what Geocaching originally was, which to me was a lot more fun.

Numbers are the bane of Geocaching and cause more resentment and arguments than anything except lame micros (had to work those in somehow). I wonder how many folks would still cache if there were no stats kept?

Micros have become the Kudzu of Geocaching.

Made it to Star Scout, Troop 24, Lindenhurst, NY. We had a lot of fun, and learned a lot and I enjoyed every minute of time I spent in that troop. By the time I was a high school freshman, though, I had developed a real love for two things: football and cars. While I was too young yet to get a license, I knew I would need some money to buy a car when I could, so I started working. Between school, footbal and working, I had no time for scouts...yet the things I learned in scouting as far as self-reliance, self-discipline, seeing a project through to the end, teamwork, etc., all continued to help me. I was never a great football player, but I put everything I had into it and had fun, and I finally got my car, and spent a year working on it before I could even drive it. I joined the Navy, and found that those same skills helped me be successful there, too. And to this day, I apply those skills and attitudes to my work, and they continue to help me. Scouting truly is a lifelong influence. I also was an assistant cubmaster, a unit commissioner, assistant district commissioner, assistant scoutmaster and scoutmaster in various places as I moved around in the Navy. I am no longer involved, but have the utmost respect and admiration for scouting.

Retired from U.S. Navy after 30 years. Now Chief of Operations for state emergency management agency. Been in emergency management 11 years and plan on working here another 9 at least and maybe 14 if I am still having fun. I get to travel a bit in the job to conferences and such, and to various areas of the state...so that allows me to get some 'caching in sometimes. But mostly my wife and I 'cache as a team. She is an early childhood development specialist and works at a pre-school with the 4-5 year olds.

Do you have to be a professional Sushi Chef, or will skills acquired watching Iron Chef be sufficient?

I remember when the cache descriptions told you something about the cache and the area, and contained a list of items the cache started out with. And folks logged what they took and left. Reading the logs was part of the fun, and the way we shared our adventures...sort of a virtual "sit around the campfire and talk about the day's hunt." And I liked it better when we were sort of an underground activity and you were part of something that only a very few people even knew about, yet you conducted it right under the noses of the "uninitiated." I still cache, when I feel like it, but I no longer check the site every day for new caches like I did when I first started. I can remember checking the site at work, and seeing a new one pop up that I could see the area from my office...so at lunch time I went for it....only to find that JoGPS had beaten my by 20 minutes...and he did the same for the next two....we were all so eager for the few new caches that popped up every couple of weeks. I also remember meeting JoGPS on the trail coming back from a cache about a year later.. glad to finally meet him in person, as we had exchanged some friendly emails during the year about various caches in Nashville and I had kinda wondered what he was like.....heck of a nice guy, btw. Caching has changed tremendously.... how much of that is for the better? I don't know.

Cell Phone and HT (Kenwood TH-6, tri bander, which also gives me weather alerts, plus is small and lightweight but still puts out 5 watts on each band) N3ORX