Goofster

I spy GS&Dogs, whom I haven't seen in a long, long time!

Received mine today as well. It's beautiful!

Received my geocoin in the post today - it's awesome, guys, thanks very much!

I spy Discombob!

Western Cape geocachers: be on the lookout for low-flying FTF'ers as they tackle all of those new Shipwreck Series caches!

I have a Garmin GPSMap 76C looking for a home. It was bought in 2005, so it doesn't have the high sensitivity chipset. I also have a dashboard mount and a handlebar mount for it. Anyone in the Cape Town metropol area interested?

Quizmaster? Me? Are you fearful that I might sweep the prize board clean again, Tom?

Yeah, well done Henzz & MnCo on your milestones! What a grand day it was for all of us!

Thanks for the good wishes! Hopefully the next 500 won't take quite as long!

Crisis over! I finally cracked my password by trawling through my memory banks. I will now record it in a safe place!

Anyone out there doing maintenance on http://geocachingranking.com? I would like to update my stats manually but don't recall my password, and the website tells me it can't send my email requesting assistance. Anyone able to help?

Yeah. It's been a while since I last checked in on the forum!

Hi Laurence, Apologies for the delay in replying but I’ve not been keeping an eye on my email much this week. A CITO can be held on any day of the year, but Larks and I have always tried to coincide ours with International CITO Weekend, which I think is usually the 3rd weekend in April. You can check the events calendar on the geocaching website, or on the CITO website, to confirm the dates (probably 18 & 19 April). I won’t be arranging one this year again, so feel free to grab the gap and arrange something. The first CITO we held was at Silvermine, and Larks did all the negotiation with SANParks. However, I suspect that not many organisations would object to a group of civic-minded folk picking up trash, as long as the area is not ecologically sensitive, e.g. endangered plants and the like. If there is a large amount of trash to be collected, it is helpful to contact the managing body to try to arrange collection with them. Cachers are a notoriously hungry bunch and won’t gather in large numbers unless there’s the reward of a plate of grub (preferably breakfast, although brunch is also a popular option), so what I did the last two years was find a suitable eatery close to the CITO location that could accommodate a group of 20 -30 people, and negotiated from that standpoint. The CITO’s that I arranged were also out of my area, especially the last one in Pringle Bay, so I had to make a trip or two to finalise the breakfast details. It’s a good idea to set a cut-off date for reservations, but there will always be people who will pitch up on the day and decide at the last minute to eat. Having said that, though, arranging a meal is not obligatory. Folk can always drift off in groups and do their own eating elsewhere. We’ve also tried in the past to get companies such as CUM and the like (and individuals) to sponsor lucky draw prizes for attendees, which has worked quite well. I’ve always thought it would be a good idea if we could set up an overseeing body, such as a Western Cape Chapter of Geocaching South Africa, to liaise with the press, retailers, SANParks and the like, to promote and sponsor prizes for events. Perhaps now that the number of geocachers is increasing it may be time to think about something like that. Just a thought. Hope this helps you somewhat.

Way to go, Trickies! So jealous of you being in Scotland!!!

Yeah, congratulations GR on this auspicious appointment. And thanks too to Peter Scholtz, whose efforts in the early years helped to put SA geocaching 'on the map'. I hope we see Peter finding and hiding more caches some day soon!

Oooh, yes, how cheeky! I would certainly delete a log of that nature if it appeared on one of my caches. Does that mean we no longer have to look for the caches, we just have to get to the coordinates and we can log a find?? Sorry, that's just not on!

Congratulations to Carlstein on the double ton! Well done and keep up the good work!!

Cool, another nice site we can use to keep track of our progress. Now, how about pruning the geocachingranking website of all those 'lapsed' cachers who haven't found anything in over 1000 days - that's about three years since they were last active, so I think we can safely say that, for them, the bug didn't bite!

And then, of course, we have those cachers who will place a new, regular sized cache out in the middle of nowhere, but without a pen or pencil to log your finds! I normally have at least two pens with me, but what do you do when you're halfway up a mountain at 05h30 in the morning, and you realise you left your pens in the cache-mobile?

Unfortunately, the South African fuel industry is still heavily regulated by Government, and it is illegal to discount the price of petrol - witness Raymond Ackerman's failed attempts to sell petrol at a reduced price at Pick 'n Pay outlets. Sponsoring even a tankful of petrol would amount to discounting the price - as an employee of a major oil company, even I am not entitled to a free allowance. Perhaps I should rather siwtch to working for a financial institution, where I would at least get preferential home loan rates!!

I'm not at all sure that I approve of these "geocaching" competitions. I think the term has been misappropriated, because racing to win a prize is not what geocaching is about, in my book. Cape Storm did something similar at one time, not sure if they still do but I found it a little distasteful at the time. And it would be nice if they got the datum format correct. Call me grumpy!

Is it just me, or is anyone else confused about the "Sunday 17 March 2008" date?

Thanks, Tom. It was a pleasure - as always - to see you last night! I must admit I've been more like The Tortoise than The Hare in reaching 400, but we all know how that story ends, don't we? Well done to +27 21 on reaching their 50 - it was great to meet you guys and I look forward to seeing you at future events! P.S. Well done to all of those other cachers who have reached a milestone lately, espcecially The Trickies - 1500 ways to go!!

This is all very intriguing.

We all have our reasons for being geocachers; mine is that I love the nature walks. Given that, I much prefer to do caches that take me to places of natural and scenic beauty or interest. I’m not a fan of plodding around the concrete jungle searching for clues that will lead to me a micro placed outside a pub or something similar, although I’ll do those from time to time if I’m with a group of geocachers or simply at a loss for something better to do. Those roadside caches on the long stretches of country drive are a welcome break; I’ve placed one myself, and I think it’s a nice location even though there isn’t anything particularly significant (apart from the beauty of nature) about it. But it has allowed people to travel a route they might not have considered before, and to see a part of the country they might otherwise not have seen.