carlstein

My camera TB is in the UK with a geocacher who is no longer all that active. He reports the camera is almost full, so it's time for it to head home. Anyone able to assist getting it from the UK to RSA? Or know anyone who can?

My camera TB is in the UK with a geocacher who is no longer all that active. He reports the camera is almost full, so it's time for it to head home. Anyone able to assist getting it from the UK to RSA? Or know anyone who can?

What is a personal cache? How do you prevent others from accessing a cache?

Okay, I think I am beginning to understand why I am confused. I was not aware of this concept of collections of geocoins. Are you saying that people have a batch of coins made for them and then they just keep them at home in a box, or maybe in a display or something and haul them out and drag them to events so that other people can peer at them and say "nice" and log that they "discovered" that coin (well done!) and get a nice icon on their website to prove it. Hmm, okay each to his own I guess.... just doesn't seem to me to have too much to do with geocaching.

Anyone understand this concept? Please help me get it. What's the point of a travel bug that doesn't travel? Or do we decide once a bug has seen enough of the world to retire it and let some bozo in Outer Mongolia add it to his "collection"... seems some players do that already: I've not release a lot of bugs (4 to be precise) but 75% of them have ended up in someone's "collection"! I don't geddit.

The Cape Finds?

Cache-karma: give it a 4

Collecting FTF's annoys me.

Guess it's off the topic a bit, so perhaps should have its own thread, but I'm interested to hear what others think of my idea of a system where cache finders can give their rating for difficulty/terrain so that the cache page can display an average. I reckon it is easier to rate a cache for difficulty/terrain having experienced it rather than having placed it.

Travel bugs and coins with lame missions like "I want to travel the world" annoy me. Also, idiots who ignore travel bug missions also annoy me. Like the bug that had a mission to get to England, and someone brings it to South Africa from France. Duh?

So caches with an agenda are illegal... are TB's? Actually, I guess I know the answer considering the Unite for Diabetes TB's. Guess it's a no?

I have a few stories along these lines. The first is straight-forward. One of my caches was muggled with someone else's TB in it. Felt a bit sucky because it was probably that the cache wasn't that well hidden. It was on top of a mountain, however, so I felt a bit unlucky. The second story is about a TB which I made from an Eiffel Tower statuette. It was a gift from my (now-deceased) gran. Having not been to the eiffel tower myself, I never used it as an ornament. I decided that it would make a great TB and as my gran was a pretty well-travelled old lady, I thought she'd probably approve. Anyway, I gave it a mission to get to the real eiffel tower, and aid that whoever got it there could request the next location for it to travel to. Well, it did get to the real Eiffel Tower and the chap who got it there took an awesome photo and requesed that the next destination be the Sydney Opera House. I think it made one more hop before getting stuck in a cache in germany. After a number of months I looked it up and discovered a bunch of those "no sign of the tb" logs for the cache where it was meant to be. Reading back in the logs, I found a german entry where a very active cacher said he had taken it. But he didn't officially log it as taken. I emailed him through geocaching twice in english and then got a german friend to translate an email to german too, but he never bothered to respond. And this is a guy who has gone 2000+ caches. Bozo. The third story is an amazing one. I released a disposable camera TB in my Carrell's Ledge cache. A fairly new cacher took it. He said he'd send it up the garden route. He evidently got out of caching as, after a few months, nothing had happened. I emailed him and he apologised and said he'd move it on. Still nothing. At the same time, I noticed that he was sitting on another TB that coincidentally I had been the last to handle. It had been released by a school class in the US who were tracking it as a learning experience. Clearly not a great TB to hang on to. Later I tried to email again but he stopped responding. Eventually I gave up on it. Then, more than 2 years later, I was passing by a cache on Table Mountain that I had done before and decided, on a whim, to check in on it. Unbelievably, the camera TB was there!!! No mention of the guy who had sat on it for 2 years. It had been placed there by a scout troop. The story gets freakier, because, not much later, I did a cache in Newlands Forest, and what should I find but the US class's travel bug that had gone awol with my camera. Again, the cache had recently been visited by a scout troop. As for the camera, as it was never logged into the caches it visited, I had to grab it and record it as placed in the cache where I found it. A few month's later it still hadn't moved, so as I was passing the cache again, I moved it. But before I had a chance to log where I dropped it, someone else had grabbed it. So according to the logs it still had never travelled! I grabbed it back and logged it again and finally it was off. 3 years, 7 caches, 16 log entries later and it has only managed to travel 55km!!!

I also learnt the hard way about putting a turn off point on a cache description. Check out Msikaba Magic

Inflation in action... or is it just supply and demand. The boxes are up to R59.50 each now

What I'd like is for visitors to caches to be able to give their ratings for terrain and difficulty.

I disagree. The forums are the only way really to draw people's attention to specific cache issues. For example, I recently published photos from a camera cache and asked for comments on who the photos are of. Putting that on the cache-page is only going to get to those who are "watching" the cache. The forums are the best way to alert people to check something on a specific cache. Also, in terms of this thread, not everyone posts a DNF. This is, of course, poor practice, but it can often happen by accident... one tends to forget DNF's the minute you've left the cache site (often deliberately; with a lot of muttering under the breath!). If someone posts "this cache looks like it might be dead to me" and I've had a DNF and forgotten to log it, I might be prompted to do so.

I think this falls more into the category of a feature that we'd like to see implemented on the website; one which I have seen suggested before: an active cacher should be allowed to put in a request to adopt a cache whose owner has left the game: could be handled via approval of a moderator after trying to contact the old owner. In the case of a cache that has actually been archived, it is always possible to just go and set up another cache to replace it. This is not ideal as it brings out the questions of "double-logging", but for now it is the best that can be done. In terms of the 2 caches you've highlighted, the first one is owned by a still-active cacher, so I guess it would be best to first check with him if he has plans to somehow resurrect the cache before you were to do anything yourself.

How about a thread where we can post caches we come across that look like they need to be archived. Let's try to clean up the listings a bit. So, to get the ball rolling: GCNNRM Steeper Please. Owner is inactive. Hasn't been found in years and latest log is a DNF.

surely it's a no-brainer that if the cache is trashed, you do what you can to fix it. and if it's full of crap, take the crap out.... preferably add something cool, but ditch the junk even if you don't have something cool. especially stuff that has not reacted well to getting wet (eg leather, paper, cardboard, rusty metal). a bit more of a moral dilemma is relocating a cache, but if it is clear that it is currently in a location that is no good, then move it, take a note of the co-ord change, log it and let the owner know. I've done this with two caches placed too close to a river. In both cases, the caches had been underwater when the river rose, and it was lucky they were still there. I moved them as little as possible, while ensuring they were definitely above the high water mark.

Coming into this debate very late: one of the main reasons I place caches in remote places is to try to expose places that people wouldn't otherwise visit. There are many reasons to place a cache, but my feeling is that if a remote cache does not achieve this goal *at all* then there is no point in placing it. And I think a cache on an established hike (Fish River, Otter Trail, Outeniqua, etc) does not achieve that goal at all.

Looked through the logs to see who Margie (pic 13) might have done the cache with, but no-one seems to indicate they did it with her? You have any idea, bob? Anyone else?

Having posted this, I realised I knew quite of few of these folks, so started changing the descriptions. But thanks for the help with Sally, Margie and Emzett who I didn't know. Btw, the pic of Sally had me very confused as she looks a lot like Zak (he's perhaps not so clear in our pics) and I couldn't figure how a picture of Zak ended up in the middle of the camera spool!

Everyone who has done Peter Scholtz's cache on Little Lion's Head above Hout Bay (GC21FC), I developed and uploaded the photos from the camera that was in the cache. So log in, check it out and email me which photo is of you. carln@cnmail.co.za

Hey 'bob Check this out: http://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en/tour1.html Basically, lets you put your spreadsheet online. Then you share the address with everyone and they can just access it whenever they want to. No need to keep posting/emailing it. Carl

Distance shouldn't come into it. If the theme and experience of the cache stays the same, then it should keep it's number. Of course, realistically that's unlikely to happen if a cache moves 8km, but my point is it's a subjective decision, not an objective one. Although it all gets a bit murky when a cache goes AWOL and a new cacher replaces it. Now, it's the same cache but it has a new number. Guess you can go back there and claim it again. Also, what if you decide a multi-cache isn't attracting enough attention. So you ditch the clues and leave the final cache as a traditional. Same cache container. Same log book. New cache number. So, go back sign the log again and claim it a second time.