Smukke

Thanks for the help

I'll be visiting DK from the US from about 18 Dec to 9 Jan, bringing my GPSr (of course!) Min forlovede bor i Aarhus (Skejby), but he will have to work in the daytime so I'll be doing some geocaching and general sightseeing if the weather is not TOO awful. We will travel to Aalborg & Mou for Christmas but most of our time will be in Aarhus. My Danish is awful but I can understand some If anybody wants to try out their English & show me some good places to drop American TBs, geocoins and other stuff, drop me a line! If nothing else, could you hold off the worst of the snow, rain and sleet until after I leave?

OK. If you are FTF on my future caches, please note that the WG cash I plant there as FTF prizes is not from a 'geocache' but from the very natural cash transaction that results from me being too lazy to go out and buy a gift card with the $ instead. Do not place this $ in another cache, but rather spend it at Starbucks, so I have a shot at getting it back as change later the same day.

an e-mail to the cache owner might be in order as well, if you really think it's gone missing. The owner might not have noticed the DNF for some reason. I definitely avoid caches with DNFs on recent logs... but if they look particularly interesting I put them on a watch list, too, to see if somebody else comes along & finds later (or the owner moves/replaces it).

I got an error message when trying to upload an image while editing the submitted waymark detail, but I was able to upload one while simply viewing the log. Anyway, both seem to be working now... good to know how to attach a photo.

Lakrids, the amazing Geo-Pet, goes with me most of the time on a 6-foot leash. Once we are away from civilization (e.g., out on a trail somewhere deep in the woods), I usually drop the leash so I can concentrate on looking for the cache rather than trying to keep her from tying herself to a tree. She's good off-leash unless she sees other humans, in which case she just can't stand it that they don't run over and pet her. She has found one cache that I almost stepped over. This once she just sat there while I walked off, looking at me like, "Isn't this what we were looking for?" Usually, she is more interested in the squirrel smells, lizards, ducks, or whatever else is moving in the woods. One note: If you do take your dog in the woods with you, and it's a typically urban animal, make sure it is prepared for ticks. That is, put the tick goo on the dog a couple of days before you go out. <-- (advice I wish I had given myself a few weeks ago when the dog & I met up with our first ticks.)

Well, I did a bit of a poke around on Waymarking a few hours ago, before I posted my original message, and I didn't see any photos on any of the subcategories I wandered into. One of the subs I looked at was 'fountains.' So, I guess I could describe some lollapalooza of a fountain and give coordinates at McDonald's, (or whatever) and urge everyone to go visit it because it is SO AWESOME D00D! Oh, I'm just having an attitude problem, and showing off my cynical streak. I know, it's still in beta, and eventually all those Structures/Fountains will have photos even though there is neither a rule requiring them nor, in fact, any place to put a photo. (I put my own fountain photo under "Web link") Still feeling cynical but willing to watch how this evolves. Just wish it didn't have to evolve into the mundane (the fountain I logged is really nothing special, just a fountain I happened to have a photo & coordinates for, so I could see the beta process.)

Well, obviously the motive is to give 'beginners' a chance for an FTF before the more rabid FTF-hounds jumped in. Consider it like a 'novice class' in autocross racing, or rally, designed to encourage beginners to compete for some small 'trophy.' I guess I don't know why it would be bad to encourage new folks to try a FTF if they have a shot at it. If you are a cynical old geocacher, feel free to call it a 'fake FTF' but I can assure you that when you are a beginner, every little 'trophy' counts. The way I see it, it's sort of like the TB hotels that 'restrict' people from taking more TBs than they drop. If you don't like the restriction, either ignore it & move a TB on its way anyway (thus possibly doing the TB owner a nice favor), or just dont give your business to those particular hotels. <shrug> Seems to me like life's too short to get all bent out of shape over stuff like this.

I'm one who likes locationless caches but has great concerns about Waymarking. From what I can see so far, it does seem like Waymarking cheapens the 'find': there does not appear to be any requirement to prove in any way that you were there. I didn't want ot mess up my account by logging fake visits to see whether that is, in fact, thae case... I guess I'm proud of the fact that I hiked all the way in to Devil's Soup Bowl so I could get a photo in there & a log new type of cache. And I was excited about finding a little airport that nobody had logged yet for the AV8R locationless cache. But now... you could just log anything, with no proof, no nothing... It just cheapens the whole thing. [Feel free to slap me around if I'm missing some requirement to prove you were really there or that a waymark really exists.] I have huge concerns about opening up the logs to anybody. There are already people who think it's fun to make false logs of TBs by looking at photos that include the TB tag. Now you're giving them the ability to log beautiful overlooks, cool fountains, statues, museums -- that don't exist. Just last night, there was a local TV report on gasprices.com (something like that), where people were logging low-low-low gas prices at gas stations that didn't exist. Haha funny to make people drive to places that don't exist, right? So if part of the idea for Waymarking is to make a sort of index of places to visit when you're on vacation, what's to keep some doofus from posting a lot of false/random junk?? I just don't see a lot of checks & balances on this. At least with GC locationless caches and virtuals, the cache owner (usually) required some sort of 'proof.' It didn't stop fakes from showing up, I'm sure, but it was at least one check on the process, and I don't see that on Waymarking at all. I really don't mean to be a naysayer; I just have some real trouble imagining this being a useful tool when there are so many jerks in this world.

My Aunt Donna, a muggle until I went to visit her in Michigan, was the actual finder of my first night cache earlier this week. I was shining my flashlight ("torch" in that other English language heh) 30 yards off in another direction, trusting the laughing GPSr, and Donna suddenly yelled, "I FOUND IT!!!" Oh yes, they are hooked, too. I think my uncle ordered his GPSr today. It's a disease, I tell you.

Just as a small taste of what is to come with a voting process as discussed, note how many people have responded to this forum subject by suggesting category names, rather than actually commenting on the voting process. Furthermore, people who are unfamiliar with taxonomy-type systems are going to make a real jumble of categorizing things. Just because 2/3 of people are happy to support their fellow geocachers, that doesn't mean it makes any sense to have a particular category. That's why librarians don't just let random people toss books back on the shelf where ever they think they should go. I'm not a great fan of Dewey's Decimals, but at least they offer some standardization. If 2/3 of library patrons vote that Chevrolet Repair Manuals should be located in the Science and Engineering section, is that where we should put 'em? I am all for having discussions about possible new categories in the forums, but there MUST be a better way to handle making the final decisions.

-- Location in an interesting, unique, family-friendly and/or pet-friendly spot that I might never have visited if I wasn't trying to find this cache. -- Creative hide (Ivan Tofindit has some great fun ones), or on a multi, a really creative way to get the stages out there (e.g., "Just Kidding" in Wayland, Mich.) Hmm. Sum it up with 'the wow factor." Something that makes me say, "Wow! I am really glad I drove/walked/rode my bike out of the way just to see/hear/feel/experience this!" My family & I hid one while I was up visiting them in Michigan. I had brought along a container all prepared for a hide, and so they were eager to stuff it somewhere for me. I told them no, we were not just looking for a place to put a container, but "The Place" where the container would be happy to live. We drove around the area and found several places where one could hide any old cache. But it was never "right." I'm sure they were getting frustrated with how picky I was being, but when we finally found "The Place," we ALL knew it was exactly what we had been looking for. And now they are as excited about being guardians for it, as I was to place it.

Until very recently, I was really scared of multis. I am not terribly good at locating micros, and the idea of finding 3-4 micros just to get one cache seemed rather like more than I could possibly do myself. Then I did "An Aggie Micro" with my mom (who is really good at thinking like a micro-cache), and I actually found the first stage myself... And this week we did some really fun multis in Michigan with my family of non-GCers, and just had a good time in some great parks under the sunshine... Multis still intimidate me, but not as much as they once did. Still... it would have to be something pretty spectacular or in a park I really wanted to see to make me try more than 5-6 stages. It's bad enough to not-find a micro that's just a traditional cache; it's awful to have found the first x stages of a multi and not be able to finish it.

Your eTrex, on the satellite page, will tell you about how accurate it is. In very few circumstances, mine has professed to be within 16 ft of accuracy. Mostly it is within 30-40-ish. Trees, rain and power lines can cause great fluctuations in the actual accuracy of the device. It may tell you it is accurate to 16 feet in the trees, but it is laughing at you when it says that. Of my not-quite-60 caches, only 2 have been located in spots where the GPS actually showed I was within 5 feet of the cache. The trick is to figure out how big that 'radius of uncertainty' is for your unit, at a certain battery level (I do think battery level affects mine, but it could just be a psychological issue for the person holding the GPSr), under certain kinds of trees, etc. Generally, the best plan is to get to 30-ish feet away and then, to paraphrase Chevy Chase in caddy Shack: "Be the cache." After a few, you learn to think like a cache. When that happens, you will also see hiding places wherever you go, and always carry small containers with little logbooks in 'em. It's a disease.

I'll be visiting & hunting geocaches around Plainwell/Kalamazoo next weekend (Aug. 13-16). Hoping I don't have to bring rain gear... Might get 1-2 uncles/aunts/cousins into the game, too, by dragging them along for the hunts. YAY!

I have only found one cache so far when my eTrex was within 5 feet of being 'right on.' That said, most of the caches near here are way in the trees/swamp/lakeside/brush/etc., so it's hard to blame the eTrex for what Mother Nature does to satellite signals. The area's daily afternoon thunderstorms mean tree leaves/pine needles are almost always wet. I still have managed to find a lot -- just look in a wider area than most. My biggest concern is getting coords close to correct when I hide things. I'm not at all confident about the eTrex's ability there. OK, I take 10 or so readings, then I average them... They are not all that different, so even though I did some math, it still feels like a 'best guess.'

IMHO, there is a big difference between 'puzzle' caches and "trivia' caches. Trivia caches take maybe 10 minutes of Googling. Puzzle caches are brain-teasers that can take days or weeks of just staring & thinking & forgetting & thinking again... Meanwhile. you know there are 5-6 traditional caches in that general area, and you don't want to drive all the way down there until you have coordinates for everything (including this puzzle cache) so you put it off... ...but then you finally just give up on the puzzle & go get the 'easy' traditionals. The reason I miss a trivia puzzle caches is that I search for clumps of caches in some area, so I can do more than one in an afternoon, for example. If your 'NOT AT THESE COORDINATES!" is not relatively close to the actual coordinates, you won't show up on the map when I'm looking at a clump. And if I missed you the first time I did that clump, I might not go back there unless I had a DNF or two to try again. That's just how *I* think...

The Geo-Pet, real name = Lakrids (Danish for licorice)

I only wanted to pull 2 wheels off the road... When I'm not getting the Smukke-mobile stuck in the mud, I also like to ride my Trek touring & mountain bikes.

Eek! I just put 2 bugs in a bug hotel that had a restriction... but it's not too far away. If they langish too long, I can just grab them out & move them to a different/better spot. The location of this one is pretty good, though, so I think it should get pretty decent traffic... I'll put two more in an unrestricted (but empty) TB hotel soon. Just having some fun, ya know?

I travel a lot & frequently come home with interesting, weird coins that fit even in micro-caches. I got a load of Texas GeoCoins to place for fun when I go out of town, too. My favorite pick-up so far (just a newb myself...) was a Livestrong bracelet. I also have liked finding lapel pins, which I attach to the straps of my camera/swag bags to sort of collect 'caching memories.' You could trade state pins, for example, instead of coins, or some other pin that reflects your personality/hobbies (skiing, biking, etc); not sure how expensive pins are.

Thanks a ton for this discussion. Seriously. After spending the evening fixing up my first couple of travel bugs for their journeys, I dropped in to the forums to see this thread. I gather from my reading that the aforementioned bugs have 98% chance of disappearing early in their traveling life. (sigh) Better to know before release & fix some things than just worry about it later. (/em looks around for some ugly things to release)

I hope this log made the cacher's day but I can assure you that finding the cache made my day.

A newspaper article in the "This Week" section of the Houston Chronicle, about a local cacher here in The Woodlands, Texas. After I clipped out the little box with 'www.geocaching.com' so I would remember to look it up, I tossed the paper in the recycing bin Now that I am hooked, I am wishing I knew who it was so I could make him show me how to really do this.

I agree on woods. Look for some that are less woodsy, or less far into the woods. I did the same as you... found one that was pretty close to home, then struck out on 3 in a row & got frustrated. Terrain/Difficulty ratings are very subjective things. And I just don't seem to be able to handle the GPS well enough yet to get a fix on microcaches. As some people have noted, some micro-cachers go out of their way to make their already-teeny caches hard to find. A few things that helped me a lot: -- Use the decrypted hints -- they are there to help, and it's no shame to use the available information. -- Read others' logs and look at their pictures. You're not looking for spoilers, necessarily, but just some idea of what you seek. E.g., One cache I could not find, I went back & read the logs/looked at pictures and realized I had repeatedly stepped over the well-disguised thing on my unsuccessful search. I walked right to it on my second try. It's easier to find something if you know basically what you're looking for than just looking for 'something that seems out of place.' -- Log your unsuccessful trips as well as your successful ones. You may find that the cache is actually missing, which helps others avoid your frustrating experiene as well. I logged an unsuccessful yesterday & a few hours later someone else with much more experience logged the same, so maybe it really is missing. This may be particularly important on caches that don't have any log notes for a long time -- who besides beginners is willing to admit that they didn't find a cache?