evilrooster

I have one cache that uses one of these - it's been out for a couple of damp Scottish winters now, but I've just pulled it for maintenance. Maintenance will have to include drying out contents and replacing the container, because the original one has allowed some moisture in recently. I reckon one can last a single wet winter without problems, but you may find that the second winter is a bit chancy. In addition to some leakage, the metal hinge pins are prone to rusting over time. I'm happy to replace the container from time to time, because it's the right one for the cache, but if you want to leave it for years on end without maintenance, maybe choose something else. Note that you can paint them if you sand them first to give a "key".

I've just pulled my Dean Bridge cache for maintenance (the splash-box type container needs replacing and the contents drying out). I had some swag set aside to upgrade the contents, but, looking at what's currently in the cache, I don't have much to do! So thanks to everyone who's traded into the cache. Well done. And, if this is representative, then the comments in this thread are true. This is something to be proud of, fellow UK cachers. Enough back-patting - I need to paint a splash box to look like a rock.

Depends what you call manufacturing. But seriously, you guys are scaring me. Is it just that the unemployed have more time to hang out on discussion boards, or is unemployment (particularly in IT) that bad over on your side of the pond? Things are lean but not dead in the water here, but we were contemplating a transatlantic move sometime in the next few years, and my husband and I are both techies...

I'll go for SIR. Hadn't guessed, to be honest...colour me surprised. & clueless.

Bingo! That's the Evenflo we have (just returned by our friend, whose daughter has outgrown it). Great one - lightweight, comfortable, supports the baby very well.

Might very well be. I've noticed in my internet life that not everyone has the instinct for selecting appropriate search terms. I had a discussion about Google last week with a friend. I tend to get the answers I need in the first page, and was surprised when my friend said she'd all but given up on Google because she "could never find anything." I've watched her search since then, and she tends to choose different terms than I do. And she's a web developer, not some Internet newbie. Skill? Talent? Instinct? I don't know. But not everyone seems to be able to generate good, responsive queries.

Goodness - busy lady! Well done.

After my toddler has chosen his loot and played with it for a few weeks, you don't want to see it circulating again. Even if he didn't scream blue murder at the thought of giving up "treasure"...

We're onto our second baby now, having almost never used a stroller for the first, even in urban settings. So we have a variety of carrying methods. For infants, as stated, a sling like the Baby Bjorn is brilliant, but after a time they start to really hurt your back. And the babies just get too big. If Solana's legs are being constricted, it's time for something else. We have two baby backpacks, for different sizes of baby. From about 6 months onward, we used an Evenflo backpack that doesn't appear to be made any more. One of its real strengths was that it had a padded rim that went all the way around the baby, supporting him in an upright position. Of course, as he got bigger, that became a real weakness - he stopped fitting inside the rim. So we got a Karimor backpack without any sort of rim for when he was older, but not really ready for long hikes. We used it a lot less than the Evenflo, because he started walking more (and I got pregnant and didn't want to carry him). I would suggest going into a really good outdoors store and trying lots of them on. Things to look out for: - A really, really good hip belt - A reliable way to adjust the spacing between the hip belt and the shoulder straps, unless everyone who will be using the pack is exactly the same height - Some sort of rain fly/hood (unless, like me, you have a really big golf umbrella) - Storage space...you'll probably end up using it for diapers rather than cache stash, but you'll need it - Some capability for the pack to stand up. You can't use these things like high chairs (according to the manufacturers, but I have from time to time), but at the very least you want the pack to stand up while you put the baby in. - For a small baby, as I stated, a rigid support that goes all the way around her. Then she doesn't have to be as stable a sitter when she starts using it. When dressing your baby for the backpack, do remember that she'll be further from your body than in the sling, so dress her more warmly. And one last tip - get a pocket mirror (like a lady's compact) and carry it in a trouser or jacket pocket. Then you can always get a look at what the baby's doing, and get a good game of peekaboo in as well!

Chose not to open cache after I stumbled across it, for several reasons: 1. This is clearly a vacation cache, and should not have been approved.. The hider, Odysseus, has finds in Ithaka and throughout Greece, but nothing else here in Ilium. He may have been here on business for ten years, but he's gone now. I suspect it'll turn into geo-litter, since Hektor, our most prolific cache adopter, is no longer caching. 2. The cache container is not well chosen. It's a funny shape, not weatherproof, and far too large. (You could put a whole army in that thing!) Don't the Greeks have arrow cans? 3. Leaving a cache lying around just outside the city gates is not the same as hiding it. 4. I don't like Greeks or their caches. - Aeneas

Growing up in California, I learned the phrase as "rat in the woodpile"...but then I also learned to "catch a tiger by the toe/ if he hollers, let him go..." These phrases die out or change, if we let them. Then they get bleached of their original offensiveness...I can use "swive" in almost any company now. I would point out that not everyone feels that the offensiveness is confined to one side of the Atlantic: Nursing leader quits after race remark It's none of my beeswax, since I'm neither British nor black, not the setter nor a likely hunter of the cache, and not an approver, but unless there's some compelling reason to keep it (like it being a direct quote from a plaque), maybe it wouldn't be the end of the world if it were changed?

Evillest sense of humour goes to Capt Slog in my book:

Musta been Eck. Besides, the cache was placed a good nine months ago...just took a while for a find log. You might have forgotten approving it. Tried her out in the sling yesterday, and she loves it...or sleeps in it, anyway. Now if I can just finish recovering , and if it can stop snowing, I can get back to caching! Thanks everyone for the congratulations.

Salt, if the wine is still wet. Pour it on thick, wat for it to soak up the wine, scape it off, pour more on. If dry, time to move the sofa.

Absolutely. We have a sling for front-carrying that will be in service as soon as she can hold her head up enough, then two backpacks in graduated sizes - the firstborn was almost never in a pushchair. (As a matter of fact, the entire Burke and Hare cache was set up while carrying a body for extra versimilitude...) And there have been so many brilliant Edinburgh caches set up since I lost my mobility to pregnancy-related causes that we'll be busy all spring. Unlikely we'll make it to the May bash, though, since I'll be just back to work then.

Second 'cache' - the first one is 2 1/2 and comes with me looking for 'treasure'. They do say you should always carry a spare to replace any that have been plundered, after all...

Cache: Fiona Chenoweth Sutherland Coordinates: 55° 55' 21.72 N 3° 8' 15.00 E Find date: 28 January 2004 Find time: 11:56 AM Cache weight: 9 lb 1/2oz Log entry: Found the cache after 13 hours' searching, some of it fairly difficult. Took entire cache, left hospital, signed birth certificate. evilrooster

Yes, but the absence of a list, or a timetable, causes some frustration when people are waiting for specific promised changes. The locationless cache area is the classic example...cachers would be more patient about waiting for a separate locationless area if they had some idea when it would appear. If it's the difference between "wait till we get around to it" and "wait x months", people are less likely to gripe at the latter statement. I work in the software industry, and I know how deadlines can slip, but I also know that users like being informed. Even if all they end up being informed of is deadline slippage. Generally, people who feel informed are more tolerant than people who feel like they're being fobbed off with generalities and dateless promises.

I'd add a bit on symbols - or rather, at least mention that you can get the degree symbol by typing ° - I think that's the HTML question I get from cachers most often, after using it in a multi description.

Another approach, also using HTML, is to use the <pre> tag (stands for pre-formatted). Then anything you type will appear exactly as you type it, in a monospaced font (courier). So you type: <pre> X X X X XX XX </pre> And it comes out X X X X XX XX ...no need to specify line breaks or anything. What you type is what you get.

Speaking as the owner of a locationless cache, I can see one reason not to spend too much time or energy maintaining it. The degree of rudeness I have encountered from people who won't: - look at the example photo on the cache page - read the description of the item sought - distinguish between the colours RED and BLUE - figure out the difference between a SQUARE and a RECTANGLE ...is truly astonishing. I've let one set of photos that are too dark to tell if they've got the right thing slip by, and loosened up on the additional requirements to log the cache (in this case, proof of date as well as place - I can see where the additional requirement for proof of date might be forgotten in the thrill of logging the cache), but even deleting logs that are blatantly and obviously wrong has gotten me a number of extremely angry emails. After a while, I'm just grateful that loggers have got the general idea of the cache.

heather&lungy look to be from California, based on their finds. I'm originally from California, and trust me, in comparison to the public transport system there, the system here is excellent! I'd suggest no car for the London leg of the trip, and that you might not need one for Bath either. Depends what you want to do while here (apart, of course, from caching.)

It's a mystery, considering how good we all are about trading up, how that broken writstwatch ended up in my Dean Bridge cache...but that was a rare exception. I've become trapped by my signature item (small handbound blank books, usually covered in leather). I tend to take whatever the toddler wants and leave a book, sometimes supplimented by the stone keychains I buy every year at the Edinburgh Festival. Since I make the books myself, I have a lot of trouble figuring out their "value", or if I'm trading up or down. (The toddler thinks I'm trading down, since who would want a little book when you can have a toy puppy or a pack of Christmas cards to play postman with?) Some of it's to do with the eyes of the beholder, but yes, in general, the value of the stuff in the caches I've done has been pretty consistent, whether they're old or new, recently maintained or left to themselves. This is a good indicator that we're trading roughly even, and certainly not down.

They are allowed, if they can't be shoehorned into a multicache. That's not the same as being allowed full stop, or valued equally with other cache types. (You still don't need a darned good reason for placing a traditional.) The key issue is whether virtuals are inherently inferior to traditional caches, or just a variation on them. Briansnat, among others, feels that they are inferior by nature. Therefore, any way that they impact on traditional caches is a bad thing, whether it be by taking up approver time, blocking out spaces that might be used for a traditional cache, or giving landowners an alternative to traditional caches if they're undecided about caching on their land. I, among others, don't feel that virts are inferior. Disagreeing on the premise, of course we end up disagreeing on the consequences that flow from that premise. TPTB agree with briansnat. There's no point trying to change their minds about the consequences, because they have made a fundamental decision about the underlying premise. It's been done to death in the forums, repeatedly, with increasing ill-will on all sides, and the fact of the matter is that virts are considered, at best, second-class caches. TPTB have floated out the possibility of moving virts into their own section, like benchmarks (and like they have discussed doing for locationless caches). This would stop the two cache types from being in direct competition, and make any arguments about whether one type was better than the other moot (from the point of view of competition for resources, anyway.) No date has been mentioned in connection with this development. Until such a time, however, virtuals are all but banned, and there's no real point beating the dead horse again. If you want to place one, and really don't feel it's suitable for a multicache, be prepared to argue your point extensively and quite possibly lose.

The mandate about virtual caches was not democratic, in the sense that it wasn't the subject of any sort of vote or poll. There was a lot of discussion about virts in the forums, and three main lines of argument against them emerged. First (as with all cache types) some of the virts posted were pretty poor quality. Second, it became apparent that a number of cachers, who are often very active in the forums, were (and are) adamantly opposed to virts as being too far from the original spirit of geocaching. Third, there was some perception that virts were "blocking" placement of traditional (and, in their eyes, "better") caches in some areas. Whether The Powers That Be decided to restrict virtuals due to the opinions in the forums or not, I don't know. I know that advocating virts too strongly here is a great way to get insulted (perhaps the new mod rules will tone that down), and not at all effective in getting the policy changed. The decision has been made, and the best we can hope for is that virts will eventually get their own section to evolve in peace. Remember that this is not a democracy, but a business. For whatever reasons, Jeremy et al have decided that the set of their customers who prefer traditional caches should carry the day. TPTB are entitled to make such decisions, and, having done so, do not appear to be swayed by arguments in favor of virts. Although I am (clearly) a fan of virtual caches, I've tried to be factual in this post. I've given up on trying to get them re-instated, or even valued, by the establishment here. The loss of virts is, however, one of the reasons I have stopped placing caches - if I can't place what, in my judgment, is the best cache for a given area, then I won't place at all.