Iamnotasuperhero

I'd imagine it would be one of those jobs where if you want to volunteer for the position you are disqualified from holding it.

I've been stung with a (close to £30) customs charge on packages from America valuing around £100, this was with DHL. I think with customs charges, we get shook down by these companies seeing it as another revenue stream, every time I've been hit it's been with DHL, but they always deliver the package and then demand money out of me. It's a major annoyance.

Being new to this sort of thing, I was glad to see an event I could get geeky over. But I have to say I'm not liking all the rivalry and all that over these events, seems like there are a couple of events and the organisers don't seem to be communicating what so ever. Maybe there needs to be a system in place for anyone wanting to organise an event to arrange dates and locaions, but the current system seems to fall apart when someone comes along who demands specifics. I plan to attend Piratemania next year and the year after, though the Geolympics will be closer for me to attend (I'm South Eastern based) I have little interest in attending, but Piratemania seems more up my street. I think this is what things will boil down to, people will choose their events based on their own interests, there will be plenty of people in the same boat as me. I do wish the Geolympics well though, but I worry that anyone who might be coming over for the actual Olympics might find the financial strain of coming over a week earlier for a Geocaching event too much, which might harm the expected turn out but you should still get people who like the idea of an Olympic games of Geocaching. As I see it (and it is only a humble opinion) the way the organisers of Geolympics are rigidly sticking to their dates could have a negative impact on their event, I'd imagine a better move would have been to host the event at a separate date to the Olympics and run it as an autonomous celebration, hell you could even have a TB travel along a pre-planned route as if it were an Olympic Torch with set Cachers of good standing picking it up at each leg of the journey untill it reached the "games". But oh well, I'm just a nobody and as has been indicated many a time, opinions such as mine do not matter to the Geolympics commitee. But I would like to see some sort of regulatory body for Uk events, to make sure all events are at reasonable distances away from any others both in distance and date, they could help with planning and even help with finding companies to help make the special edition coins and other such swag at affordable prices, maybe even sponsorship for said events to help with costs. A man is allowed to dream, right? I'll stop rambling, GO TEAM.

I'm not entirely looking to be "adopted" but I would like to have some more (and local) Geocaching based friends, so if anyone is in the east-Surrey area and they'd be willing to talk to a relative newb (I do have some small sense of common sense) or even possibly meet socially at some point, send me a message. Thanks.

That doesn't seem like a fair comparison, the author appears to already have an interest in Letterboxing. I mean it's a good comparison but I get the feeling that the author neglected to go as indepth into Geocaching as they could have, ignoring the TB and Geocoin aspect, personally I find a well crafted custom Geocoin to as visually pleasing as a stamp (though I do have a bad habit of over-inking my stamps). But thanks for posting the link.

Adding limitations to the game won't make the game better as many people have pointed out, having a hundred plus finds does not mean that their ability to place a cache will be any better, and a newbie might have the golden touch and place an excellent cache his first time. The way I see it, if you start limiting the required finds in order to post, you will only end up alienating a lot of new players, instead you should be trying to educate new players, either get a comprehensive guide or try to encourage local Cacher meetings with an aim of getting new players to interact with veterans, maybe even get newbies to join a veteran on a placement. Personally I've been caching for a couple of weeks, 12 finds so far and I'm begining to collect equipment so I can place my first, but I do not plan to actually place my first till I am somewhere around 50 caches found. I have an idea of where I want it to be but will explore the area when it comes close to it. Ultimately where I live, there are only a couple of caches in walking distance (I don't drive) and if I want to go further afield, I have to dedicate a day to it whether I plan to walk or get a friend to join me, so the likelihood of my finding 100 caches in the next 6 months are low, but in those six months I have a good chance of finding a good local spot to hide a cache, so I will focus on that when the time is right. I can understand your frustrations a bad caches, really I do but adding more rules and restrictions to the game really is not the way to go, if it's a matter of education then educate the players, making them jump through hoops will just end up annoying people and they'll go and find somewhere else to play. When trying to fix a problem like this, take a second to ask yourself will this discourage new players, or will it hinder remote players, does it cause more problems? It boils down to this for me, if bad caches could be fixed so easily, I would think it would have been implemented already.