Darwin473

Speaking of silly ideas, I saw this padlock TB in the GC shop. I'm not a fan of the whole "love lock" idea, I'd consider it a form of littering. But the idea that I did have, was to do the exact same thing except that instead of using a key padlock, putting a TB code on a combination padlock. Then you've got a padlock that can be put "in" micro and nano caches by padlocking it to something nearby the cache. Or the first to unlock would have a funky new padlock they could use for their beer fridge. Not sure how many people would be willing to move around a combination padlock. Not sure why I'm obsessed with releasing some kind of awkward TB to put "in" micro and nano caches...

This is probably too late to help you specifically, but it may help someone in the future who is in a similar situation: If I wanted just a code quickly, the "best" way that I can think of is to be friendly with your preferred supplier / re-seller and ask them if you can buy a regular TB, paid by credit card and posted BUT get them to open it up and email you the TB code and activation code. That way, you'd have the code "instantly" (maybe within a day or three, depending on how long it takes you to find a reseller willing to do it), and the physical TB can be snail-mailed to either your old address and forwarded or to your new address (or to a friend's place to hold until you get settled). Then you have your code you can put on your proxy, and if that proxy goes missing you'll still have the original and can send it out again later on. The other option I can think of is to find a local geocaching group near a reseller and see if someone is willing to go in to the shop and buy a TB over the counter, and as before - email you the codes and then snail-mail the physical TB.

I saw one that some artist made, but it is a fairly delicate thing and they made it find-able (anybody can share the code online). At the moment, I don't know that a Covid-themed TB would generate much money, even if it was quite popular and 100% of proceeds went to research. As far as I'm aware, Australia has put up $123M to join in to Covax venture, plus about $20M or so into various universities and research facilities that are trying do develop vaccines. Assuming a production run of 1,000 sold at $25 each, that's only $25,000 - a drop in the ocean for research. If the money went to some charitable organization, then they would certainly appreciate the donation. Though my main argument against it would be to think how I would feel if someone near and dear to me had died due to Covid and I opened a cache and found a little Covid-themed TB that was "celebrating" the pandemic (not what it's doing, but it could be perceived that way). I know I wouldn't be happy, and I wouldn't wish that gut-punch on someone else.

I found the first (OzGeoMuster), second (GeoVenture) and fourth (CacheQLD) events you listed quite easily, but I had no luck tracking down the third one. I tried searching Australia wide and filtering for Events, but had no luck (I was hoping there'd be one closer to where I am, but I'm pretty sure there aren't enough cachers here to warrant an event - let alone a Mega). Can you double check that one and see if it's still on, and where it is please?

From reading through the descriptions in a few Stargate caches including the original one the implication is that somehow the TB's are moved from one cache to another over long distances. It's kind of vague. My interpretation (and I could be wrong) is that there is some other transport method in the background. For example, the original cache the Historical section at the bottom says "my Dad and I" so it could be that they both work in the same company and there is regular trucks (or parcels) travelling from location A to location B. Since these transport routes run anyway carrying stuff for their business, the cache owners can move TB's from A to B without incurring any additional cost by simply putting them into the packages that are going that way anyway. I don't see anybody wanting to pay ongoing postage costs for an unknown number of TB's to be sent via UPS or other postal service. But if a company is sending packages regularly (or delivery drivers) then it seems to me to be the simplest method of having a regular run to move TB's long distances without much out of pocket expenses for the cache owners.

But it's okay for Americans to deface Aussie currency, and Aussies to deface American currency?

I'd heard of, but hadn't really paid attention to Project-GC so I figured I'd give it a go. Instructions below are from a computer, if you're on a mobile it may be slightly different. Go to the Project-GC site and click "Authenticate" (blue button, top right hand corner). This doesn't give your details to P-GC, it gives it access to some of your stats. After clicking, you'll go to geocaching.com again and click the "agree" button. Once authenticated, click on "My Profile Stats" and scroll down. You'll get a looong page of information. Below the first graph, there's a section "some numbers". About in the middle-ish there is one line "Total cache-to-cache distance". That's how far it is between all the caches you've logged. Mine is just 552km (342mi), and half of that is from a little holiday I had into the hills last week.

How hard / tough are pennies? Technically, they aren't worth anything (okay, they are, but you know what I mean), but have you thought of stamping them or engraving them? Making them a bit more personalised might make them "worth" a bit more, as a sig item. If they're pretty tough and hard to dent then it's probably more effort than it's worth. Just an idea, feel free to ignore me.

I love it! There's being flexible, there's bending the rules, there's flat out breaking the rules and then there's going so far out of the scope of the rules that it's barely the same game! The last step will be to build a robot arm, to throw pre-printed logs into a net with a return chute and a script to auto-log it onto the site. None of the fun of caching while barely glancing in the direction of the rules. rofl!

Are there any other rules we can break on the ET? I don't have Premium so I don't get the full stats, but having a look through my (short) list of finds, it looks like 5 is the best I've done in one day (with 4 on another day and a few days with 3).

An interesting proposal. I'm not a fan of puzzle caches, but they're clearly marked on the map and easy to avoid. If the cache description (or logs) don't mention the type of container, how would one avoid finding that type of container?

I literally burst out laughing when I read that, my wife is looking at me with a "what the..." expression. I can honestly say, that would never have occurred to me! Pre-filling logs is just ... wow. I am speechless. Edit: So ... does that mean the ET Highway can be done by rolling down the road at 50mph throwing film cannisters out the window every few seconds? Because that seems like the fastest way to do it. Also the least responsible and I hope nobody reads this and tries it.

Did you start "spacing out" at any stage? I can see it getting very monotonous and repetitive, and it might be hard to note how long you had been doing it. With those caches, are they all the same? I can imagine whoever set them out might have gotten a bulk purchase of the same container. In which case I can see how it would work to pick up & travel while logging. If they're all basically the same. And what are the logs? Is it just random paper and logs or is it a bit more orderly? If I was going to set up a mega-power trail like that (which I wouldn't), I'd bulk purchase all the containers to be the same, then contract a printing company to do up all the stickers. Another bulk purchase of poles and mount all the containers on poles. maybe even stick a number, kind of like mile marker signs. If setting up that many caches, I'd simplify as much as possible!

So I was right. I wonder how many days it would take to do the whole lot, one person, properly? Might almost be easier to do on foot (with a support vehicle to carry food and water). Or maybe two people, one to drive the vehicle and one to jump out and do all the searching and logging. Though maybe it wouldn't need much searching if all the caches are on poles or otherwise easy to find. Ah, but if you found cache 124 in the spot where 123 is meant to be, would you put it back and reset all the misplaced caches?

I think the only way to do the ET highway is the way Team Dennis did it. If I wanted to do it "properly" by picking up, signing, and returning each cache back in it's proper location then I doubt that I'd get much higher than a few hundred. But that's also a special case. People who do that in any other location ("couldn't find the cache so I helped by replaced it") are definitely doing the wrong thing. On the other hand, doing the ET highway sounds like an absolutely terrible time to me. Driving endlessly, picking up identical caches and being hyper-focused all day just to get some number ... no thanks, not for me.

I'll agree with that! I've been trying to get my GeoKids interested in caching, but they're teenagers so anything I suggest has to be met with vicious eye-rolling. Being on their phones isn't enough of a lure if it involves going outside and getting exercise!

It took me a few goes to get the process down. It has the advantage of being really cheap, it has the disadvantage of being a bit time consuming. If I had the option, I wanted to buy one of those cheap laser engravers online. They're useless on aluminium but if you give the aluminium a thin coat of black paint, then a low power laser engraver can totally burn off the paint - then use the salt etch method to do the actual engraving. Save several steps that way. If you have a go and have any questions, feel free to ask here or message me directly. At the moment it takes me the better part of the day to do one tag (both sides) but that's also doing other things like housework in between steps. The power supply I use is a 5VDC 2.5A and it's probably a bit too aggressive. A 5V, 1A power supply should be fine, and cheap enough if you need to go buy a new one. As for the toner to tape transfer method, I've used that to make a bunch of stickers for things around the house plus for some of my signature items.

We have everything, from dessert to rainforest to even snow (in a few, small places for short times of the year). I like to put TB's in ziplock bags to help them last longer when I find them, though it hadn't occurred to me that the default chains they come with would be cheapies and not stainless steel. Thanks for pointing that out! Yes, that's where I got the text from. Not that it stops people any more than roadside speed limit signs stop people speeding. But at least it's on there. On the plus side, nobody has pointed out any spelling mistakes (yet) so my inner editor must have done an okay job!

Firstly, apologies for doing the whole "yay, first TB" newbie post - but it's so exciting to get ready to send the first one out into the world! Secondly, I wanted to share what I did in case it helps someone else with their TB's. This is what I'm sending out (with front and back on one image): It's a LEGO tyre (I have no idea what set it's from, it was floating around in the bottom of one of my drawers), with a hole drilled through the tyre face for the chain, and a home-made aluminium Travel Bug copy. So the original TB stays in my drawer at home, in case (when?) this one goes missing. Personally, I think I had more fun making the aluminium copy than anything else. I made the aluminum copy by using the toner to packing tape method for getting my printed design onto something transparent, used photoresist dry film to create a mask on the aluminium, and then used salt water and electricity to etch the aluminium (so no nasty chemicals or acids to deal with). Overall, minimal cost as I already had the printer and packing tape, and the bits I used (including the power supply) to etch the aluminium I bought from a thrift store. The biggest cost (and delay - I ordered it back in July but it took over two months to arrive) was the dry film - at a bank breaking total of $9 including postage for 1m (3ft). The idea is that the TB is interesting enough that people go "hey, neat" but not so interesting that they put it in their pocket. The copy is so that if it does go missing, I can re-launch it again. Plus by making my own tag, I could put my own text on it including the goal / mission for it. The bulk of the text on the back is what I've seen on other TB's. Sure, I could have used laminated paper, or just paid a few dollars for an engraver to laser engrave some metal - but where's the fun in doing it the easy way?

Whoops. At least your figured it out. Good luck getting it sorted, hopefully it isn't too painful. And double hopefully before the legit owner of that code tries to activate theirs...

Inspired by Steve, Cindy and other cumbersome TB's; I'd had the idea of bolting a TB onto a brick - big enough to be a novelty, small enough that it can actually be moved around (just not by people that are flying! ) I figured I could give it the goal to only be placed "in" nano caches, since a brick on the ground near a cache wouldn't attract too much attention. Then I realised it was a silly idea and decided not to do it.

If I wanted to be cynical, I could say that it's deliberate so that people buy more TB's rather than watching existing ones in circulation! I was quite surprised by your earlier comment of people putting TB's in other companies caches ... though it would makes sense from the point of view of somebody who didn't know any better. For those types of people, I don't think it would matter what was written on the TB (or the cache), they'd still put it in the wrong spot.

Which makes sense ... which makes my wonder why Groundspeak doesn't have a "trackables here" button on the front page? :/

Question (asking here since it's a longevity discussion rather than starting a new thread): is there any particular reason TB's have "log me at geocaching.com" on them instead of "log me at geocaching.com/track/"? I ask because if I think like a new player or a random muggle who has found a TB, I might try and do the right thing and go look at geocaching.com - however, looking at the front page of the site, there is nothing there that tells a NP or RM what to actually do with the TB. But if they go to geocaching.com/track/ then right there in the middle of the page (mobile or PC) is a "enter code here" box. Plus if they're good enough to scroll down a bit, there is a lot of information there about what TB's are and how they work. I can imagine the system that the website uses getting upgraded, updated and changed around. I can see the main front page being changed and updated (I assume that back in the day it used to have a "log your TB here" button, but it's been removed), but I assume that no matter how many times the site is changed and updated, they can keep geocaching.com/track/ as the landing page for TB logging. My original training was a systems analyst, and one of the ruling guides is "make it easy for people to do what you want them to do" (just look at the wording on surveys when they have a bias and want a specific answer). Can't do much about all the TB's already out there, but that seems like a simple change that might increase the longevity of people's TB's. Or return the "log TB here" button on the front page. Or both.

I've seen a few logs that seemed to be just a random word salad. The worst I've seen was someone that was putting "tftc" but repearing it dozens of times! Though I find them annoying, I wouldn't consider them rude or innapropriate. Maybe misguided, or in poor judgement.