Sharks-N-Beans

Good question! All Lab Caches are built with a set start/end time. At Mega Events the organizers get to decide what that time frame is. For I <3 Geocaching Lab Caches, creators and finders will have until midnight on February 28th (your local time) to create or or enter the correct find code and receive or give a smiley to someone. Darn, I won't be ready to pop the question to Shark by then...been working on it for six years Well, now I can get creative w/o the pressure or jitters of that plan.

So, if I read the KB correctly, the Lab needs to be created by the end of February. Is there any time constraints on the find?

What is the flagging tape for?

Yep, that would be me. That and decent cords are my only expectations.

I think the goal here is for the developers to see how creative we can be with a concept. Who finds them is of no importance. What is important is how the results are evaluated.

There won't be any saturation limitations and the cache can be something physical to find and open (revealing the find code) or it can be just a word that is written at the final destination (in the sand on a pretty beach). All local, state, federal laws will apply. I assume the developers aren't concerned w/ cachers mistaking another cache for their Lab because there is only one finder. That sort of provides us with a false sense of freedom doesn't it? If some outcome from this goes into production, I can't see saturation of physical elements being ignored. [He pauses] Geez, here I go trying to stuff all the thinking back into the box. What I meant to say was...WOOHOO! There won't be any saturation limits!

OK, so it sounded like there were no rules for this singular Lab adventure. Keep in mind that I haven't read anything about the Mega Labs. Permission is a given, but what about physical elements and saturation?

It sounds like what you want to hide are commonly known as "HIPS" (hidden in plain sight) caches. They are some of our favorite. They range from the simple cap on the chain link fence post to much larger items that look like they belong. One of my favorites was a light bulb in a real socket. If you plan on putting a lock-n-lock in a place that muggles wouldn't look, think again. They somehow look everywhere.

No doubt the intent is to discover a new twist. We've only been doing this for a few years and already noticed the decline of higher terrain caches locally. The tree climbing group has pretty much disappeared and most new caches do not interest us. We still get excited about using GC to discover places when we travel. This experiment will either offer something new that we fall in love with locally, or just be an aspect of the web site that we ignore. It seems too early to express an opinion.

It's an experiment. Things could go totally wrong and have unplanned effects on your stats. It's not for the meek...do you dare venture into the unknown?

:lol: :lol: This thread is like herding cats. Now bring in professional cats! :lol: :lol: No disrespect as I'm sure you are great at what you do, but I'm sure the professionals that set-up the Obama Care sites are professionals in their own minds also.

Ours slill works...one lawyer and one accountant (bean counter).

I would use them as intended w/ the bison. When used that way, the log almost always stays dry...even if the o-ring deteriorates a bit.

When we were in Sao Paulo driving around looking for the unpaved road to the Ape, I forgot to turn off my phone. The battery died searching for a tower. An associate has been working in Santiago Chile. He's a new cacher and is excited that I am joining him down there next month because he knows I will bring my hand held. Intl phone use sometimes has unexpected results.

We only have hidden a couple of caches so I am interested in hearing real examples of hiding horrors associated with saturation.

I was waiting for this thread to amaze me with something I hadn't considered, but it never did. Surprisingly, this is not a popular opinion, but abandoned caches need archived. Although creative, the idea of listing a new cache with an old placement date is one idea that I hope never catches on.

Looking at your find count spanning 4 years, premium membership would cost you $1 per cache. That's pretty steep, so I understand your disconnect with the fee. I don't think Geocaching is as big of a piece of your recreation time as it is for many of us. Premium membership probably doesn't make sense for you right now, certainly not for stats. If you ever start to cache more often, the other features are a great help.

I would have deleted and skipped the wordy respoonse.

Ya, I saw a somewhat nasty reply posted on the cache page by the CO after I posted a NA. The cache had 5 years of consistent finds w/ just an occasional DNF. All of a sudden, 5 DNFs in a row over a period of 4 months. Three months later, one of the cachers who DNFd wrote a note asking for confirmation. That went unanswered for another 7 months. I posted a NA w/ "The number of consecutive DNFs for over a year are a bit irregular on this cache and the request note for confirmation has gone unanswered." The next day, the CO posted a maintenance log w/ "The cache is present! Just because you lack the skills necessary to find it doesn't mean you have it archived. Actions like that ruin a lot of great caches that owners put time and thought into. It is a shame!". I don't know, maybe I was being annoying, but it did drive confirmation.

Ya, it's a bit cheesy. We come down on folks logging a find for caches they helped hide saying "You didn't find anything". The bigger challenge for puzzle caches is the puzzle itself...They didn't solve anything. Perception is reality.

CH, If I were you, I would search Mega Events and contact the event planners directly. I'm sure they would gladly give you help. Good luck!

The second link didn't work for me.

I would create the water event around teaching all how to paddle to a cache. Round up your fellow watercachers in the area and you can take turns taking the uninitiated out on the water. Two birds...one stone.

Off the top of my head, I would say this series. Take a look and you can cache on a rainy day...start w/ chapter 1.

But that's not necessarily what the cache owner prefers. I prefer to have no swag in my caches and I'm certainly not willing to visit one of my caches just to clean up the swag. I could hide micros, but I do not like them as they are harder to find and do not leave space for trackables. I also need to admit that it happened more than once to me that the log book and sensitive trading items got dirty due to my fault when I had to grab the log book without being able to clean my fingers that got dirty while I approached the cache. At quite a number of caches I have to log when I'm lacking a good stand and need one hand for not sliding down a steep slope. Handling cache containers with a lot of swag in such a situation is a real pain. Cezanne If you put a note on the lid, I won't leave nutin'.