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d+n.s

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Everything posted by d+n.s

  1. Nope. Sounds like a the CO made some errors though. Glad he let the next guy know.
  2. In my experience (which is all we can objectively comment from) the problem is that the two variables do tend to correlate. I had a meeting in the state capitol today, and stopped for a quick one (I'm maintaining a +50 day caching streak) at the back of a big box. Don't look, I haven't logged it yet... The hide was described as "Typical, but with a twist." The only twist was that the Hide-a-Key was covered in silver duct tape to blend with the guardrail better. I do have to say I appreciated the cache name, "Forbidden Park." (Oops... well, that gives it away...) It was hidden next to a hydrant, where you can't park. Having read the description, I spent extra time there, overlooking the obvious and trying to find a clever container. Maybe that's the twist? And this is less creative than most caches you find on a trail? Almost every single ammo can I have found was under a pile of rocks. I'm just saying it's the locations people should gripe about instead of the proximity to convenient parking or the lack of a whacky container. I mean, most of the clever camo I've seen was done to hide a cache from muggles in an urban setting. I see no correlation at all between parking and cache creativity. Its just a simple, clean and convenient criticism to make in general.
  3. Sounds good. I'd be happy to go there. The cache is just the carrot.
  4. I think people are putting too much weight on the word "offended" in order to perhaps not address how obnoxious and rude it is preach to people trying to have a little fun.
  5. And as many cachers here have noted, sometimes garages are the tallest buildings in an area and have pretty awesome views of their surroundings, so the "there's no view there" argument is moot. As for being in Nature, so? Not everything beautiful has dirt and trees around it. I suspect the lines often being drawn in these threads are between people who live in "fun" cities and people who live in "ugly" cities. For me it's all about location. A parking garage might be a decent location if it's next to something cool or has a nice view. I think the urban find I have found have been the most unique ones. One was a peephole on a business. Another was a fake drain outside a prominent building. Another told you the history of an important local venue that used to stand there and had been replaced. There is even a great series that marks the favorite little hidden secrets of local cachers. Being new around here, those caches have taken me to so many wonderful spots I never knew about. I love going on 8 mile hikes. I really do! But there is nothing inherently awful about spending time exploring Austin. Heck, when I was in Seattle, several urban caches took me to places that I only would have learned about from the locals. Lots of caches like that here.
  6. The kids love em! EDIT: I'm just kidding of course. If it's a nice one I'm sure someone will take it. It's sort of funny how no one has said they like finding these things, just that it's not garbage. I would suspect dirty golf balls get traded for more often than tracts. If nothing else, it's just bad swag.
  7. I've also said it before, and I'll also say it again. The difference between setting up a real cache and a virtual cache is that it takes zero effort to create a virtual cache. You don't even need to leave the house. It's therefore much easier for someone to create a "virtual powertrail" than a powertrail of real caches, and so people would be much more likely to do that. There is a power trail of Earthcaches right outside my house. Lets be real though, we don't know the nature of these new virtuals, other than that it's been implied they have changed in some way. I don't think we should be making definitive statements about their nature until we've heard what they even are.
  8. I have a series that is in progress. It will take forever too. They are building a new hike/bike trail from downtown all the way to our state park. They have conveniently divided the trail into sections. Over the ext few years I plan on putting a cache in each section as it's finished.
  9. I really like Multis, but there aren't a lot here. I tend to pick a park that looks like it has a few neat spots and clear it out. If there is a mulit we definitely always do it, but our ratio of multi-caches to traditionals is pretty low just due to a lack of multis.
  10. In This Thread: People conflate the distance of a cache from the parking lot with it's "creativity" Does everyone else just live in an ugly boring city? In Austin there are TONS of awesome P&Gs that take you to neat little shops, culture spots, sculptures, museums, fountains or just nice simple views in a small city park. If someone want to tell me that this cache is somehow worse than this cache it's fine, but lets not pretend one is "lazy and uncreative" while the other isn't. It's intellectually dishonest. You just like hiking to caches as a matter of preference. Cut and dry. As far as I'm concerned, it's the LOCATIONS I treasure, not the caches full of boxes. That's why I don't mind getting a DNF from time to time.
  11. Just because it's a virtual, doesn't mean it won't suck. The current trend in geocaching these days seems to be "Easier is better", as areas become saturated with P&Gs. Note: This is an observation/opinion, not a complaint. The P&G crowd are playing the way they want, and mostly doing so within the guidelines. I'm just pointing out that with today's trends, the chance for suckiness is high. For instance, I have a butt load of waypoints, (2000+), in a GSAK file, ready to create a virtual power trail running the length of Interstate 4. Because the highway is so wide. I'll be able to keep my linear distance from cache to cache a lot closer than 528', as I stagger them from one side of the highway to the other. If the virtuals don't have some significant restrictions such as the old "Wow" factor, I will publish these under a sock account. The irony is, there are folks who will sing my sock's praises for the creaton of such a monstrosity, celebrating the fact that they can now rack up over 2000 finds with a 4 hour round trip drive. Your sock's e-mail would be a mess!
  12. I feel that if the most "offensive" thing I found in a cache was a religious pamphlet I'd be pretty happy. And I have only found 56 caches. I am a Christian, but if I found a pamphlet for muslimism/judaism/hinduism etc... I would hardly be "offended". I don't know what it is about religion, but the only people that seem to get mad about it are some (READ: SOME) agnostics/atheists. As much as I would love for it to happen, I don't care whether or not you are my religion. But for some reason you seem to care that I am. [/rant] Back to what I was originally saying... I have found a plastic... err... phallus in a cache. I went ahead and took that out. Don't watch the news much eh? Lets be realistic here, atheists and agnostics are one of the smallest minorities in America. I hardly doubt they spend a lot of time worried about what YOUR religion is. Saying SOME atheists feel a certain way is a about as much of a cop-out as saying, "I dont know what it is about cachers, but some (READ: SOME) sure like hiding packages that look like bombs." It sorta' lets you both deride someone and hide behind non-committal language at once. You know? I can assure, you people of all different faiths, creeds and cultures get offended by differing religious beliefs. There is a lot of power, money and hate out there to prove it. True, true. I guess I didn't word what I was trying to say very well. It certainly sounds the way you are describing it! This is what I mean to say: I don't know of any people of faith (whatever it may be) that would be "offended" by a differing faith's pamphlet. (Unless it outrightly says "YOU ARE GOING TO HELL", in which case it still isn't "trash" or "hate speech", but unhelpful words from misguided people.) At least in my experience, it has only been agnostics/atheists that ever get their panties in a bunch over religious proselytizing. (To use your example, there are very few, if any, people who are not cachers hiding things that look like bombs but aren't bombs in parks. Therefore, you can't blame all cachers, but you can only blame cachers. Does that make sense?) I still don't think this is coming out exactly as it seems in my head, but you should be able to get the right idea. In my personal experience, its been pretty even. I work with a lot of Muslims who get pretty annoyed by it for example. I happen to know (simply by living in Texas) that a lot of Christians are offended by someone perhaps proselytizing about differences in faith in regard to specific issues. Gay marriage or the death penalty pamphlets for example, can make Christians enraged at other Christians! Certainly, if I went to downtown Waco or maybe Arlington with a sign that said, "Religion is an ancient tool to control the masses" I would get more garbage thrown at me than if the sign had said, "Repent or burn forever" Don't people even slander our president by implying he's secretly muslim? How is that even an insult? Buddhists seem pretty chill though So, I'll have to respectfully disagree. I think us agnostics/atheists tend to be annoyed as much as the next guy. There may be a higher percentage who are politically active, just do to the nature of being one of the most hated minorities in the country but I doubt our "panties" are so wadded that there will be a bunch of... you know... wars and genocides about this stuff. EDIT: We might be getting way OT, but feel free to send me a message if you want to really talk abut it. I enjoy discussing the subject
  13. You could do a really funny/annoying multi in a parking garage. Stage 1 is on the top floor. You open it and it says: "Same spot 2 floors down" or perhaps just list the altitude AND coords of the stage or something like that. You could do that a couple times or be nice and have the second stage lead to a final cache NOT in the garage. There is a parking garage in Austin that has an AWESOME view at the top. *scratches chin...* EDIT: I took too much time to type this! great minds think alike!
  14. Reminds me of the homeless guy with the sign that says, "I bet you a dollar you read this"
  15. I really hope they end up like a Earthcache but for cultural and historical significance rather than ecological. Complete with a committee and everything.
  16. I certainly wouldn't assume that someone's spiritual belief was "trash". This is actually a really good point. I really like that idea even if it doesn't sway me from thinking leaving stuff like that is rude/presumptuous at best. Most of the ones (all?) I see at least imply I'm going to something called "hell" if I don't get on board, which is at least rude in my book A very religious friend once told me, "If you can effectively explain your faith to a complete stranger on a scrap of paper, you probably don't have much to spare." I've always like that. Seems like it applies to leaving little tracts in caches for families other faiths to find, and potentially have to explain rather than have fun in the woods. But yeah, treating other people's faith like trash.. I really like that. Makes me think. (Not being sarcastic. I know it reads that way)
  17. We always trash them rather than trade for them... that said, we always leave a little party favor in caches too, so I dont know what that means... I feel that if the most "offensive" thing I found in a cache was a religious pamphlet I'd be pretty happy. And I have only found 56 caches. I am a Christian, but if I found a pamphlet for muslimism/judaism/hinduism etc... I would hardly be "offended". I don't know what it is about religion, but the only people that seem to get mad about it are some (READ: SOME) agnostics/atheists. As much as I would love for it to happen, I don't care whether or not you are my religion. But for some reason you seem to care that I am. [/rant] Back to what I was originally saying... I have found a plastic... err... phallus in a cache. I went ahead and took that out. Don't watch the news much eh? Lets be realistic here, atheists and agnostics are one of the smallest minorities in America. I hardly doubt they spend a lot of time worried about what YOUR religion is. Saying SOME atheists feel a certain way is a about as much of a cop-out as saying, "I dont know what it is about cachers, but some (READ: SOME) sure like hiding packages that look like bombs." It sorta' lets you both deride someone and hide behind non-committal language at once. You know? I can assure, you people of all different faiths, creeds and cultures get offended by differing religious beliefs. There is a lot of power, money and hate out there to prove it.
  18. If you want to do the overhang, I say do the overhang. It looks like a fine spot from the picture, and people can leave their crappy toys or TBs in the next cache. Shouldn't hurt anyone's feelings. What's the worst thing that happens? They DNF it and get taken to a beautiful location? If you are really worried about it, you could make that one stage of a multi and put an ammo can in the woods after it. Put some coords in the multi, hide it at the overlook and and voila! OR, you could get crazy and drill a small hole in a log, glue some bark on top of the nano and make a REALLY hard cache for the masochists out there. OR you could leave it as an FTF prize and be done with it. Or make it a weird TB.
  19. I'd be curious if/when they were planning on rolling anymore out too. There are a few of them I really liked that aren't there yet.
  20. I don't know why people are trying to make the OP into a "rules lawyer" or something. We have guidelines for a lot of stuff. Explaining to users what a NA is and why they should use it doesn't seem out of line... see a lot of threads here that ask about it and I see a lot of OTHER threads where "did you read the guidelines?" is an acceptable response. I think a simple set of GUIDELINES (not rules) makes sense, even if I don't personally need them. If nothing else, I don't know why the onus of understanding when to bother reviewers should fall on the reviewers themselves. Werd! You'll have my axe. It makes complete sense to wait until you have found some caches before you hide them, but I would rather have people out there having fun and learning as they go. Personally, I don't have any issues finding caches I like, and it's confusing that so many people manage to accidentally find so many P&Gs if they hate them. The severity of the issue seems overstated. On the inverse, owning a cache makes you a much better cacher IMO. but again, it shouldn't be a requirement either.
  21. On ours we use GSAK to name it like Waypoint Name: 2EHQ8/Tra/S Which is: The GC code without the "GC" prefix/Traditional/Small Comment: (1.5/2)LandBridge(Lf:FFFF)Hahfhny cvyr bs ebpxf haqre gur ebpx yrqtr. Which is: (Difficulty/Terrain)SmartName(did the last four people find it?)encrypted hint It works for impulse caching and quick reference, but we also use an ipod nano for full cache descriptions on dedicated caching trips.
  22. I've done some flubbing, mostly because I don't bother to log some caches
  23. Might have been a bear, don't know, never heard bear stories from Bainbridge Island. Or this one ... I know bear are out there, see the scat just about every time I go. I'm glad you liked it!
  24. This was mine, he was actually STF. FTF got logged WAY later I was sort of disappointed he had such a lousy time... I had a good e-mail conversation with him, among other things assuring him the plants weren't poisonous. That said, the cache is not a night cache... I guess FTFers will do what they have to do.
  25. It sure looked like a cairn to me. If it were real, I would guess a summit log too. Of course, we all know that it was just made up by some marketers in a board meeting somewhere. He did. It said
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