Cedar Grove Seekers

Nope, we don't. And I wish cachers would me more conscious about those differences and how they affect other people playing the game. When I place a cache I try to think about how different types of cachers would approach it and design my hide accordingly. When I log a cache I think about the things I noticed that might affect the finder after me, even if they didn't affect me because of the way I cache. I don't really get why certain types of cachers are so indignant and obstinate about the way other cachers play the game and insist on deliberately attempting to obstruct how they play that game. And I don't get why some of those cachers make up strange justifications for that behavior instead of just admitting it. I agree

You seem to be getting the movies confused with the books. The book set is simply just a long and very well written story by an unemployed mother who thought out the entire series before she submitted a word to an agent or publisher. I must admit that I am not very familiar with the books, but it's always been my impression that they are fairly well written. Now that I have young children, I am curious how the books are considered from a literary standpoint, putting aside the "massive corporate agenda" aspects. Are they of reasonable quality, or are they trash? As for the orignal topic, I don't mind the term muggle and don't associate it with Harry Potter. In addition, the word Seeker in my name doesn't refer to the position played by Harry in the game of Quiddich (I never said I haven't seen the first movie) but I wouldn't get too worked up if someone thought so.

I would guess that, considering some find it quickly and some post a DNF, that it is one of two situations: 1) It's a truly evil hide and some people are getting help from previous finders, or 2) It's a very clever hide such that if you are in the right frame of mind you notice it quickly, but if you are not thinking outside the box then you will never find it. In my opinion, type 2) are the best caches - very rewarding when you do eventually find them.

It would depend on the how badly muggled it was. If the entire cache was in place and a muggle merely broke the pencil, then I'd log as a find. If the muggle took everything except for half a broken pencil, then I would not log as a find. It sounds like you are pretty comfortable that you found the cache, so be happy with your find.

Agreed. It's a personal choice. When my wife and I started caching, we found every cache together (for at least the first 100). After that she wasn't interested in caching as much as I was. We agreed that the account was my account and that if she wanted to start caching on her own then she would create her own account (which never happened). My mom and dad are in the same situation. However my sister/brother-in-law share an account and both contribute their individual finds to it.

Back when I was chasing FTFs, I found one at around 9PM, and didn't get home until around 11PM. I went right to bed and logged it the next morning. I don't think I intentionally delayed logging, but maybe subconciously I did. My brother-in-law saw the unfound cache at midnight and, because he had been drinking, took a taxi to the cache site. He was pretty pissed when he saw that I had already been there three hours earlier. He got me back in the exact same manner on another FTF a few days later. After that we never intentionally delayed logging FTFs. I will also add that, although I'm not too concerned about the order in which people log on-line, I would intentionally wait until the FTF logged on-line when I wasn't FTF. This is importnant to some people , and I did it out of courtesy. However I wouldn't typically wait beyond the end of the day.

Yup. My opinion is if the kids are too young to have a pocket knife, then they will be caching with their parents who can make sure they don't take it. If they are old enough to cache alone, then they are old enough to have a pocket knife. The worst swag I found in a cache was urine. CITOed as much of it as I could hold in my cupped hands.

Although I agree with much of this, I disagree with the premium membership requirement. We found our first several FTFs without a premium membership. When we did get the membership, email notifications were sometimes significantly delayed and unreliable. We didn't have our Blackberrys at the time so still needed access to our computer. We maintained a 10% FTF find ratio by simply checking the computer often (usually late at night and first thing in the morning), and being willing to drop everything and go for them.

I put some weight into percentage of non-traditional finds. I am currently a little over 30%, but figure this will reduce over time as there are no new virtuals or locationless, and the percentage of newly placed multis, puzzles, etc, seems to be dropping too. I will often use this statistic as an informal indication of how well rounded a cacher is, especially those who protest they are not about the numbers, yet seem to only find traditionals.

Ditto

somehow, this statement makes it sounds like you actually are into the numbers after all. I agree. Although you say otherwise, my impression is that the numbers are more important to you than the enjoyment of the hunt. It's OK if this is the case, but don't delude yourself. Personally I like all types of caches for different reasons. One of the main reasons I like multi-caches is that they allow for much more creative intermediate hides. The intermediate hide does not have to be such that it contains a logbook, but could merely be a set of numbers on something very inconspicuous, which allows for much more variety.

For our first several caches, we'd bring the cache print-out (we weren't paperless back then). If we needed to rely on the hint we would manually decrypt it in the field. Pretty cumbersome on some of the very long-winded hints. We didn't realize that we could have automatically decrypted it prior to printing the cache page.

To respond to the OP: Somewhere along the line you’ve heard about FTFs, realized they are important to certain cachers, and decided you would like one. You’ve since realized they can be difficult to get, and you will have to devote a lot more effort to getting one. You may not realize it, but you are probably only aware of them BECAUSE they are difficult to get and require a lot of effort and therefore have importance to certain cachers. Why are they important to you? Why do you want one? I would love to have an Olympic gold medal but certainly would not expect the athletes to take it easy on me so that I could have one. Before anyone suggests you can’t compare gold medals to FTFs, it’s merely an analogy. A small percentage of people are willing and able to do what it takes to get a gold medal – same for FTFs. You seem to suggest that there is nothing in it for the families who can’t get an FTF. If merely finding a cache is not enough, and the FTF is your reward, then I’d suggest that you truly are an FTF hound who is just lazy. If you want an FTF go and earn one. If you’re not willing to earn it then I don’t understand why they are important to you. As for enjoying each others’ company, having fun, helping each other out – my days as an FTF hound contributed far more to this than the non-FTF caches. I met more people chasing an FTF than not. The camaraderie was much stronger amongst the FTF chasers. The FTF crowd never saw ourselves as greedy – we saw ourselves as a group of people interested in adding an element of competition by racing for FTFs. If someone else wanted an FTF they would certainly be welcome to race for them. If they expected to be given the FTF, we would have viewed this as an infringement on our fun – especially considering that the main reason they wanted an FTF was because it was something that was important to us.

FTF is first to find the cache, not to log on-line. It's considered bad form to intentionally wait a long time to log your FTF on-line, however understandable that sometimes you can't log on-line right away. As for non-FTFs logging, you can't expect them to wait a few days to log their cache, especially if they are acknowledging they are not FTF.

Not sure this is entirely true. Homicide rate in Canada hovers around 1.9 per 100,000 versus 5.5 per 100,000 in US in recent years. The almost 3x more homicides in US could be partly due to availability of guns considering only 1/3 of homicides in Canada are gun related, compared to over 60% gun related homicides in the US.

Considering muggle has been around since the early days of geocaching, and I like traditon, I never really minded the term. However, CLAM seems to be pretty popular in this thread, so to heck with tradition, let's go with CLAM. Everyone OK with that. Good, then it's settled.

The obvious way is to create an internet based geocache listing service. One could probably make a lot of money selling advertising space, and membership dues, provided the site was popular and widely used. Not really something I'm interested in doing, but I would never begrudge someone who made a success of it.

I'm all for a challenging hide if it's clever, but intentionally bad coords are just lame.

Yes, they're legit finds. I found one where the cache was on a small island in a pond. I happened to be in the area in winter and just walked across the ice. Owner then caught on and disabled it until spring to maintain difficulty.

What, degradation of geocaching is of no consequence??? OK, OK, I won't start that again.

We instituted this in my area several months ago, and I got stuck with the 2AM-4AM time slot. Looking forward to the new timetable.

Isn't it already covered under Waymarking.com? Edit: This post was a response to the OP. I had not seen Castle Mischief's post which essentially makes the same point in a more subtle manner.

Zactly... Will people please stop saying anything is a world record just because you do something? Honestly.. there is no "world record" for power caching. it's neat that you do it but really.. that's all it is... Neat They found more caches in a 24 hour period than anyone else in the world. That's a record...a world record. Not quite sure why some insist it's not?

You blew away your own record. Well done!

As a suggestion only, would putting some holes in the bottom of the large 65L container help to let the water drain out?