[Now that's not your oridinary DNF]

Sure, I could imagine perhaps the micro might go missing, but the tree? All that is left is a 12-inch stub, but the tree is nowhere to be found.

Looked for a micro that sounded like it was in a tree not too long ago and when I arrived all I found was a stump. The tree had been cut down and removed. As I was double checking my coords and walking the area when I stumbled across the cache laying on the ground. So I logged my find and hid the cache in a little hole in the side of the stump.

 

It has vanished, like a 7-0 lead in the 7th inning of the ALCS.

Now I could of gone all day without reading that (again). Us Tampa Bay area folks are hurting this morning. Hopefully the Rays don't squander the opportunity tomorrow as it would be nicer to have that big a win in front of a home crowd, but as part of that home crowd I would of rather not see it go to game 6.... ::sigh::

[Are there really only three rules.]

No doubt a tricky hide gets long logs versus a grab and go cache, but so too do "hike and grabs" in nice locations. So yes, I really do think the majority of people want to find the cache they're looking for, and the "evil hiders" out there are few and far between.

Evil hiders?!?!?? I resemble that remark! People finding my caches have referred to me as evil, wicked, cruel, dastardly, mean, diabolical and sinister.... I like it (which is why I'm the proud owner of several hundred hides).

There are certainly very few of them in my area, and regionally as well. This is not to say people don't enjoy the challenge from their local evil hider, but then they might follow it up with a dozen park-n-grabs, or hike-n-grabs.

I think there is a pretty close balance with PAG's or easy finds and evil fun hides in this area.

I'm speaking as an old schooler here, I don't cache in parking lots, on street corners, etc... I rarely walk right up to an ammo box or tupperware in the woods (especially with my crappy Garmin that doesn't like tree cover). I have to look around quite a bit usually. But I know I'm in the general area, and have a high probability of finding the cache. And they're not all under a pile of sticks either, I've seen some pretty cleverly hidden ammo boxes; I've also seen them hidden in areas with many potential hiding spots. Most notably in rocks. Ugh.

I think this is where living a balanced geocaching life works for me. Yesterday I went for a bike ride after work. Snagged a quick PAG along the way which is probably all I could get to on my route. Also snagged a tricky puzzle cache. A couple other tough puzzle caches along the way I didn't find so I am crunching on them over lunch (between posts). Last week I was out of town (state) and snagged a couple finds, a PAG, an ammo can and a micro at a cool statue right across from my hotel I didn't see for days until I looked for the cache. Recently we did some hikes and found some nice ammo cans and some micros. Before that some paddle only caches. Just like my other "habits" of life, not much I won't eat or drink, no roller coaster too fast, no sporting event I won't attend, no music I won't listen to, no movie I won't watch, no cache I won't try to find Life's too short to limit the possibilities!

If the written rule is "Write about your find in the cache logbook", then you can't do a bogus online log without breaking rule #2. I think this covers bogus logs completely.

By the letter of the law (rule) there if you only sign your name, or just sign your name and write the date in the log book, and fail to write about your experience you are just as much breaking that rule as you would be entering a bogus log online....

[Caches in Busy Round-A-Bouts]

Anyways, I believe the key word in the OP of this post is "busy". I trust the people who have said in this thread that they own such a cache (IMPG and the smurf come to mind) that they wouldn't put people in danger, or place a cache in one that is not legal for pedestrians to be in. Inexperienced hiders who think it would be a cool place to put a cache, that's another thing.

Good summation there, if the traffic circle (round about, whatever) is designed and constructed in a way that is pedestrians friendly then go for it. If not then it would be like placing the cache in the median strip down I-75 a mile from any exit

[Spell check?]

You mean there's a spell checker out there that won't flag FTF, DNF, smileys, cacher, geocacher, LPC, PAG, camo, and GPSr as misspelled words??? COOL!

 

Personally I think it would be nicer if when someone typed "TFTH!" a window would pop up and state :

 

 

[Caches in Busy Round-A-Bouts]

Thanks for all the comments so far. Thankfully this is the first of its kind that I encountered. Any more of this type and they will be on my ignore list. There are other, far nicer caches out there to be found.

I think each hide can be judged on it's own merits but sometimes lumping caches into a group and blanket ignoring them can cause you to miss a potentially good hide. While I do the same thing with lamp post hides and bus stop hides (which are very prevalent around here) I have also hidden a traffic circle hide. The county was "planning" a large community in one area near the beach which because of the economic climate has been abandoned. They put in a massively chaotic traffic circle with lanes shooting all around, merges going to no where, bike lanes that disappear and reappear in weird locations, ramp sidewalk entrances that have sign posts in the middle of the ramp, just a ton of very odd designs. But in the middle a neat round-about with palm trees, a sidewalk and a neat garden area. So yeah, it got a hide. So hate to think people see "traffic circle" and go "ignore" and miss being brought to a pretty unique location.

 

Not saying to not ignore things, but just to be cautious how the lumping is done

[Are there really only three rules.]

The fact that a smaller container is harder to find then a larger one should be quite obvious. You speak as though it seems you think every geocache should be "challenging", and are more "fun" if they are. Not everyone thinks this way. Be it lifting a skirt at Wally World, or walking up to the obvious pile of sticks in the woods. As a matter of fact, I think the "challenging" crowd is a very small minority of the geocaching populace.

So you think the vast majority of cachers don't like being challenged and would prefer just walking up and have a bight safety orange painted ammo can laying in the open with a big yellow arrow painted on the ground pointing towards it and signs leading to it saying RIGHT HERE --->? The only people I have met who just want to get a bunch of quick finds are people more into numbers then conquering challenges and having fun.

 

The more challenging the better as I like earning my smileys and like making people earn them on my hides.... cool camo and tricky hides are BIG pluses with hides. Being the proud owner of a wide variety of hides I can assure you the challenging caches get the page long logs while the PAG's and WAG's (Walk And Grab's) get the "TFTH" logs. But I agree it takes a lot of variety to please everyone which is why there is such a wide variety of hides and people have the right to seek what they like. To each his/her own as long as everyone has fun, but I'd rather do a couple visits to conquer a tricky cache that's been DNF'ed by several people then rack up numbers visiting a couple dozen lamp post or bus stop hides.

[Are there really only three rules.]

You have obviously been doing too many micros. There are regular sized caches out there with real log books and space to write about the hunt and the trade.

Was in Iowa and Nebraska for business last week and did a full sized ammo can with a full sized full log book... in fact three full full sized log books, so I wouldn't count on the size mattering that much on having a place to write. And when you have multiple log books in a cache it's often hard to determine what book to sign and where. Validating a log entry would be a couple day's task there Not sure about everyone else but when I'm on a caching run the last thing I do is scan thru the pages to read other people's logs. Well, maybe the last thing I want to do is stand at the cache writing "Was a hot and blustery day, we started early in the morning but forgot the GPS so had to turn around and head back home... blah-blah-blah". No spell checker in the woods. We just sign our names as there are more caches to be found and composition works better at night at the keyboard.

 

Also, found a micro during the trip that was as neat a location, even more tricky a hide and more fun then striding up to an ammo can, looking down and going "There it is!".

[PQ & GSAK Coord Issues?]

First, no secondary software used. I get PQ's from GC site, unzip them and put them in a folder. Then open them into GSAK, then using USB cable directly load them into Garmin MAP 60CSx. I did download the PQ in Florida and was using it to find caches in Iowa but all the other caches were dead on for coords including the info for this cache on my PDA. I think the accidental dragging is probably what happened.

 

Load caches as custom POIs instead of waypoints?

MAP 60CSx has geocaching feature where caches found can be automatically changed to found caches and moved from being an unfound geocache to a regular waypoint. That way the geocaches can be searched without all the rest of the loaded waypoints cluttering up the search. To load them as custom POI's wouldn't I loose that feature?

[PQ & GSAK Coord Issues?]

If you select the waypoint and switch to map view and then hit enter you can move the waypoint any where you wish to put it. Hit enter and it is changed. I bet you moved the waypoint with out realizing you moved it. I've done it.Jim

Okay, this is something I need to LEARN how to do so I can be SURE to NEVER do that again. This is on the GPSr itself????

[PQ & GSAK Coord Issues?]

This is the second time I've had this happen so I figured it's time to find out whassup! I got shipped up from Florida to Iowa last week and while I was there I figured I'd snag a few finds. While in Iowa I was right across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska so figured I'd sneak across the border and add the state to my find list. The cache Lauritzen Gardens GC6A0E was right off I-80 so off I went. Got to GZ and since this was a full sized ammo can I thought it would be a quick grab. The coords led me to a mowed field about 50-feet from anything other them short cut grass. I thought something was off so I widened my search area and scoured around before scratching my head and giving up.

 

As I started to drive away I remember about a previous "issue" I had so I yanked out My Palm TX and looked up the cache. I pulled it up on my Garmin GPS MAP60CSx and the last two numbers after the decimal place for both north and west were WRONG!!!

 

I quickly made the correction in my GPSr and zoomed off to the cache. Didn't document the coords that were in my GPSr but they were entered there via a PQ, loaded into my GPSr and my Palm TX via GSAK 7.2.3.35. I had this issue happen once before but this was WeIrD!!! All the other coords were right, all the info was right, but just this one cache had a minor error in both north and west, put me off about 150-feet but the info was also transferred to my PDA via GSAK and the coords were right in there.

 

Any clue as to what might of happened these couple of times as I'd hate to be off in the wild somewhere as that 150-feet could be the difference bewteen a smiley and dropping off the face of the earth???

[Best Micro container]

Also, you can roughen them with sandpaper and they take spray paint pretty well, including the "stone" textured paint. Haven't had one out long enough to see how it lasts though, might need an outer coat for durability.Edward

We buy those 86-cent bright orange waterproof match containers from WallyWorld and then spray them with the camo paint they also sell. Have had them last ages without fading or chipping with no prep work at all. Great containers and close easy and tight! Can drill a small hole in the top and screw in a little hanger hook (to cut the threads), then unscrew it, cut off most of the screw part (so it doesn't stick way down in the container or poke someone), plop some hotmelt on top, screw it in and then put a little inside (avoid the threads) to seal it and it's a solid hanger (camo paint after adding hook and glue dries).

[Unapproved Cache]

Quite the opposite. These two incidents were in two different states. Unfortunately, without taking suicides into consideration, this happens nation wide from walking on tracks to racing the train to stopping on the tracks at a light. Big moving object against puny little human... I'm thinking the gene pool needs to be thinned out a bit but that's just me.

http://www.darwinawards.com/

[fraude FTF by FTF Jaeger]

Are you referring to the Red Hot Chile Peppers method of wearing socks? In that case, it's okay if they are white socks, but certainly not black socks. Wearing black socks "In that way" is worse than wearing them on your legs.

Other then for winter warmth, the RHCP method accepts adorning colored socks for most situations outside the home. While I agree black is not the preferred color (in fact in most circles black is not a color at all but the lack of all color) it is still accepted as long as it does not contain embedded designs such as diamonds or stripes, or have contrasting toe-and-heel areas (often referred to as the junk-and-jewels areas by the Kiedis method).

 

How do you define "Wear"? Obviously if the sock is touching ANY part of the body, it is being worn. Here's the definition of "Wear" according to the dictionary, since you seem to be having a hard time. to carry or have on the body or about the person as a covering, equipment, ornament, or the like: to wear a coat; to wear a saber; to wear a disguise.Clearly "dangling dark hosiery" is a wear-able garment. What dictionary are you reading?!?!?!?!

I general refer to my Skeptic's Dictionary but being in Florida I now find myself more reading Spanglish For Dummies.

[Unapproved Cache]

Sour grapes weren't needed to be added. Just because they didn't flex with your request doesn't make them not flexible. The fact of the matter is whether you like it or not, No is an answer. New hiders always run into this when trying to stretch the envelope just a little too much.

Been down that road a few times myself. Learned that it's best if a spot is firmly denied you can plea your case, but if it's shot down then just move on. The reviewers are volunteers and when you push the point too much or without tact, you find yourself kicking dirt on the umpire's shoes.... you ain't gonna win that fight... or maybe the next few either

 

Rethink your hide. See about making the park a waypoint for a mulit. Instead of picking up your ball and going home because they didn't want to play the way you wanted to play, get creative!

We have some places down here that flat out won't allow a geocache to exist but they're great places. So we do a multi and tour the people around having them collect data in the place (count benches, count trees, count how many statues are blah-blah-blah, etc) and that gets them the coords for the final which is just outside the boundaries. Nothing at all hidden in the place and people have a blast running around. Have an 11 part multi touring John & Mable's Ringling Gardens near the Ringling Museum and it takes cachers on a complete (and free) tour of the gardens.

 

I totally agree, if exploration is the father of geocaching, creativity is it's mother.

[Was it my breath?]

Same goes for all us parents out there who's kids grow up and move out and when you start cleaning up you find tucked away in the closets all that tennis stuff, the boogy board and wet suit, the skate board, the hula hoop, the baton, the paintball stuff, the roller blades, the hockey stick, the stored aquarium, the volley ball, the badmitton net, and all the stuff they went thru before they latched on to soccer or softball or whatever they ended up sticking with (if anything at all). Not something you grow out of, try it before you buy it mentality. All of them sound good until the law of diminishing returns kicks in... more work then fun and they're done.

 

For me GC gave me an outlet for running around like crazy having fun, being creative and sneaky, visiting all kinds of urban and rural spots, riding a bike and doing all kinds of things that many empty-nesters stop doing when they find themselves in an empty nest. So for me it's an addiction but a fun one and one that if I don't get around to for a couple weeks will still be there when I'm ready.

 

There are some who don't want GC to grow too much, the secret society feeling is kind of fun, too

[How long do you spend trying for a cache -]

If I don't find it, who cares? I just had a nice nap in the woods Seriously, in a nice spot, I could spend 30 minutes or more on it.

Agree that is a good T-shirt slogan....

 

For us in the woods it's often determined by trying to calculate how long before sunset and how many miles back to the Jeepster, and if we've ever been back to the Jeepster the way we're about to head (a GPSr in hand by no way means you can't get lost), and how long before the swarms of hungry skeeters wake up

[fraude FTF by FTF Jaeger]

I'm always VERY serious. Are you condoning the wearing of black socks?

It totally depends on what part of the body someone is wearing them on. There are those who say when someone wears black socks on another part of the body other then the feet then they're not wearing them right and should not be allowed to wear them at all. They feel they're not really "wearing black socks" and should find something else to call it like "dangling dark hosiery"...

[The WORST thing u ever found]

BTW, Does anyone know what kind of crickets these are?

BAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

We did a cache called Bloody Bucket Road GCVFX7 (archived, dang it!) after doing a paddle on the Peace River. Cool story in the listing from "Weird Florida" by Charlie Carlson, but we ended up parking at this little riverside remote launch away from everything. As I stepped out of the Jeep I looked down and right 'almost' under my foot was the bottom part of a deer leg, still bloody and fresh. ACK! With the story we just read we were about to high tail it out but decided we were there and might as well have a smiley along with the nasty. As we were leaving there was some plastic odd shaped bags nearby and we were thinking the rest of the deer might be in there but by then the flies were getting pretty busy....

[How long do you spend trying for a cache -]

Usually when I get a DNF it turns out I stopped looking somewhere between 10-15 seconds sooner then I should of

 

Actually, most times when I stop looking it's because after doing the one or two (or seventeen) more times, I get told that we're not having fun anymore, and that's usually followed by a little more begging and then the obligatory "Yes dear"

[DSLR with your gear?]

Here's a real kicker, not really a GC issue but it's the gear I use for GC. We took my Sony A100 to the Tampa Bay Ray's MLB win over the Boston Red Sox at the Trop in St. Pete last night. Had good seats behind home plate but snuck down to the dugout and snapped a load of great shots. Didn't get bumped until the 2nd inning and got great shots at the plate and on 1st. Went to our seats and snapped some more. When to take a shot and saw a red E on the rear display. Didn't know what that was so I powered off my camera, checked it out and saw nothing out of sorts. Powered it back on and the message came up saying CANNOT ACCESS CARD - FORMAT?.... ACK!!!! The 2Gb compact flash card appears to of died along with all my great pictures!!! DOUBLE ACK!!!! Tried everything I could at home and even tried things like DataDoctor and nothing. Grrrrrrr............ Took a little of the fun out of the victory.

[The OTHER Thanks, But No Thanks! Thread]

Exactly! Life is good!

Says that on the back of my Jeepster And we drive right past a cache that looks like it's stuck on a bus stop seat, or off the side of the road with nothing around, or too near a crowded place or anywhere we don't think we'll enjoy. We're not into GC for the numbers and if somethings doesn't look like fun, we're gonna keep moving. No use in getting all bent out of shape over them and have them tarnish our fun, some people like 'em and there's plenty to go around.

 

Rose coloured glasses? Naw, just not sh*t coloured glasses....

[The OTHER Thanks, But No Thanks! Thread]

elevant, 'cuz I have no clue. That's just how my brain works sometimes.

Actually I saw the relevancy of it... guess that's how my brain works.

 

My wish is far simpler than your hypothetical example:I wish for those folks who hide caches to create the best hides they are capable of.

In my post I was saying I didn't wish for those things as it would make the game kind of boring to me. I said I kind of like the game the way it is and I would rather think that people DO place caches to the best of their abilities, meaning the less-then-perfect caches are more an example of their abilities then an example of their lack of effort. No one is saying they like boring locations but I think the good locations far outweigh the boring ones or else we'd stop playing.

 

Kind of like the Harley example... if there were no other bikes allowed on the roads other then Harley's, then Harley's wouldn't be seen as anything special. And anyone wanting to stand out would would have to start riding a Trek or a Cannondale

 

I kind of like it the way it is and I believe most others do, too.

Then you shouldn't mind if some of us ask for new cache filtering tools. You might not use them but many others will.

Nooooo, I would like more filter methods and would like to see a cache rating system finders could fill out and be able to filter on that. I just don't think there needs to be any changes to try to mandate some quality standard for hides. Just as people can hide what they want, others can find what they want. Filters would just allow supply and demand to take over and self-regulate things.

[The lost art of logging]

here's a log quoted in its entirety: found.

and a quote from another: the clams may not be feeling well, but it's 11:45 and they have spoken to the choreographer.

which cache was worse?

The first by a long shot IMHO.... at least I had some entertainment with the second trying to figure out what they were implying (or smoking). The worst I think I ever had was someone finding a load of my hides and on every page entering "k". I live for those long stories which is why I try to hide hides that will inspire them, but some people just can't put two words together to save their mouse

[The OTHER Thanks, But No Thanks! Thread]

If being rushed impacts your ability to type something creative, is the airport lobby the best place to type up your cache page?

The example was in someone who found the cache and is rushed in entering a log. Many owners (including me) look at the logs entered as a scale on our own hides. Seeing TFTH as all that is in a log entry is often perceived as a cache not worth entering more. With a rating system on the log page someone can enter TFTH but then rank the hide high for creativity, imagination, technique and location without having to compose a long log entry such as someone rushed at the airport entering a log before they leave. Yeah, people should take the time to write about their experience, but just as people don't all have equal skills in creating imaginative hides, some people don't have the skills to compose articulate and creative log entries (or cache listings for that matter).

 

I don't disagree that some caches could be hidden better and some locations could be better chosen. But I also don't disagree that some owners could hide and maintain more hides then they have, they could hide a wider variety (after all, we are hiding them for the geocaching community and not ourselves to find), they could maintain their caches more promptly, they could be more articulate in the listings and their log entries, but we don't live in a utopia of geocaching and things could always be better.

 

Do I wish every cache was a knock your socks off incredible location with dead-on coords, perfect working pen and plenty of log space to sign, an HTML listing page with pictures, stories and history of the location, a perfectly water-tight sealed container unaffected by the weather and impossible for cachers to not seal back properly, no muggle within sight any time of the day or night and an owner who responds to emails instantly and maintains the hide promptly when any issue arises? Ummmm.... no. I kind of like it the way it is and I believe most others do, too.

[The OTHER Thanks, But No Thanks! Thread]

ask yourself: is this location pleasant in any way? is this hide interesting in any way? if you can't answer "yes" to at least ONE of those questions, you might hesitate before thinking a handicapped person should settle for such a "gift".

A micro cache hidden off the side of the road with nothing "interesting" around where someone lost a loved one in a traffic accident.... lame? A nano cache hidden on a railing where someone met their spouse for the first time.... lame? A small cache placed near a tree where someone saw a bald eagle even though the eagle wasn't around when it was found.... lame? The interesting thing might be the story behind the cache and have nothing to do with the technique or the container, to some of us that in itself is interesting.

 

Things like "lameness" or "inspiration" or "interesting" are very subjective things. There was obviously some reason every cache was placed where and how it was. Maybe it's not obvious from the listing and maybe there was very little behind it at all, but to the person that placed it, it had a reason, even if just to feel proud to own a cache and be a part of the community. If someone thinks a cache could use improvement it would be better to be proactive and offer a suggestion, but no harm if the suggestion is ignored.

 

Other then that... filter-filter-filter. GC could use more filtering tools but if we had a finder rating system that someone could rate a hide when they enter their log, you could filter on that, too, rather then trying to decypher log listings. You can get a good feel for a hide from the opinions of those who found it. Could also be a good tool for owners to see how their hides are being perceived. A log stating "TFTH" but rating your hide high for creativity beats thinking they didn't like it because they didn't write a long log entry. Maybe they're at the airport rushing for a plane with no time to type.