Kite and Hawkeye

quote:Originally posted by SUNHOUSE:Hey, have any of you heard of or seen the Mount Soledad Troll Bridges or Munchkin Houses? Last time you asked I posted links to two articles about them, including where the remaining one was...

If it looks like a bomb, a sticker saying "Geocache" on the outside probably isn't going to ease the panic of a fearful bystander. We just did a cache that's within thirty feet of some train tracks (it's since been archived)... in a mortar tube. They're not quite as scary as PVC pipes, which occasionally give me pause even when I'm pretty sure there's supposed to be a geocache there, but they're a bit on the intimidating size. In a bit of gallows humor, I often refer to pipe caches as bombs (Hawkeye: "What kind of container is it?" Me: "It's a bomb."). I realize this is not wise, and I only do it in the car when I'm sure there's nobody to overhear, but I just can't get past it. Those things look like bombs. Plus, I can't get them open half the time -- those screw-on tops get TIGHT. So, I really don't like them as containers.

quote:Originally posted by Gory:is it possible to get this info by searching for the bug by name? assuming you know its name just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you Generally not, unless the owner was unwise enough to take a photo of the bug that left the tag number visible. The problem with making tag numbers public knowledge is that then anybody can write a fake log and pretend they have the bug, which makes a mess of things. To prevent that, the only way to get a bug's tag number is to actually have the bug. I don't know if it might be possible for the bug's owner to recover the tag number somehow by contacting Groundspeak or not. Obviously, the information is stored somewhere, so that the tag number can be accepted as a sort of password when logging the bug. Is that information accessible to anyone working for geocaching.com? I don't know.

Am I the only one who can't get a pen to write on Rite in the Rain paper? I can scribble all I want, but the ink won't keep flowing. Pencil works, but I dislike using pencil on logs since it can smear. I like using a folded or rolled bit of paper for a micro log sheet. Staples may work okay on thin paper, but some cachers around here seem to like to staple small bits of heavy cardstock together, and the staples always come loose when people try to turn the stiff pages. They then stick me in the fingers, because I am capable of injuring myself on darn near anything. Oh, and another poor selection for a log book -- a notepad held together by only the rubbery gluey stuff on one end. The pages will be coming off in a matter of days. [This message was edited by Kite & Hawkeye on September 04, 2003 at 01:29 PM.]

quote:Originally posted by Criminal:... No mention of a logbook. The logbook rule is recent -- this cache was hidden last year. OTOH, the old non-logbook micros usually had a code word or some other form of verification, and this seems to have nothing.

aw, never mind. [This message was edited by Kite & Hawkeye on September 04, 2003 at 04:51 PM.]

Hmm. Do other people with Garmins have trouble with the rubber grippy part of the casing coming loose? Ours is starting to slide around when we push buttons, which results in some of the gunky glue beneath the rubber getting out occasionally. Is the Magellan case better?

Pick by features, not manufacturer. There are thousands of geocachers out there using Garmins, and thousands using Magellans, and they're all finding caches. We have a rock-bottom yellow eTrex with a data download cable, no maps, no electronic compass, no WAAS, and we're doing fine. You really can't go wrong, unless you get a model with no option to plug it into your computer (Geko 101, we're looking at you). We've occasionally thought about getting a unit capable of holding map information, but never strongly enough to actually do it. When/if we manage to break the yellow eTrex, we'll probably buy whatever's got the features we want for the lowest price. I'm a bit curious about Magellans; it might be fun to learn to use a different kind of unit. But for all the Mac vs Windows sort of squabbling you hear around here, I've never seen anything that convinces me either brand has a real advantage. Some people say Magellans hold signal better under tree cover, I dunno. We don't have many trees here.

We have 1400 caches within 100 miles, but I've only seen two members-only caches. (Admittedly, I don't often search out to the 100-mile perimeter.) Some people make caches members only to reward the local 'regulars,' by giving them first crack at a new cache (and then probably converting it to no longer being members-only later). I might make a cache members only to limit the activity (a night cache, say, where twenty people tromping around with flashlights on the first weekend might look suspicious). I was very curious about members-only caches before I joined -- it was a bit disappointing to find there weren't actually dozens of secret caches populating the area! Are there any areas with a lot of them?

Mean is going into the woods and chucking a micro under a random bush, where there are ten thousand bushes all around it that look exactly alike, and there's enough tree cover to prevent better than 30-foot accuracy. Mean is saying "under a rock" in a field of rocks. Mean is putting a cache in a nondescript area with a hint like "coordinates are right on, just find it." Your coordinates are never going to be 100% accurate, and your finders are going to be dealing with 20-odd foot accuracy as well. Don't just tell them it's at the bleedin' coordinates. Challenging and fun caches involve difficult-but-not-impossible puzzles, really good camouflage, novel hiding methods (I'll never forget to look up again), stuff like that. Putting a needle in a haystack just to be contrary isn't fun.

We're in the process of creating an eight-stage multi; the legs are virtual, with a container at the final stage. It's a car-themed cache, so the legs are a mile or two from each other along a road. Are you seriously saying that people would be prohibited from placing another cache within 528 feet of ANY of the stages? That would certainly cast multis in a bad light, if they monopolize huge areas like that. I don't *want* to monopolize a huge swath of an already-dense area. This just makes multicaches less appealing. Multi stages are typically virtuals, or small tags or micro-containers; there's no reason an ammo can can't be a couple hundred feet from one. It would really suck to place a regular cache, and have an approver come back with, "Nope, there's a leg of a multi nearby." What multi? What leg? You don't want to give away that information, do you? Is anyone supposed to even KNOW where the intermediate stages of every multi in their area are? Someone can do their research, find a nice open area, place a cache... and find out a mystery multi stage is blocking it. There are a few large local multis that have you, say, take numbers off a street sign. Is it really reasonable to say that for 0.1 miles all around that sign, the area is sufficiently saturated with Geocaching goodness? Come on. I do know of one cache not far from us that's placed barely 50 feet from the final stage of a two-parter. In fact, the standalone's spot was such an appealing hiding place that I looked there, first, when trying to find the multi. The standalone was placed the week after we found the multi; I'd be surprised if people coming later don't wander over, looking for the multi, and find the standalone first. That's a genuine collision. Intermediate stages, though, are different animals, and I don't think placing a five-leg multi should have the same effect as placing five stand-alone caches, when it comes to density measurements.

My bug was abducted from its second cache by people without a geocaching login. They mentioned 'kidnapping' it in the log book. A month later, by some miracle, they actually created a login and logged that they'd picked up the bug. Then, they dropped it off without logging the cache where they left it -- another team found it a month later in a different cache. After that, things went more smoothly (by 'smoothly' I mean 'people only held it a month or two'). Until March. March 30th, the bug was picked up (indeed, the cacher who picked it up left his OWN bug in its place. Yes, he owns a bug, so he ought to know what it's like). In April, he went caching, dropping off ANOTHER bug of his own, but not mine. Finally, in June, after he logged some more caches without dropping off my bug, I emailed him. Oh yeah, he said, he was going to put the bug in his caching bag right now. He hasn't logged a cache since. My bug has been in his possession for over five months. I can't believe someone who owns travel bugs could be so unreasonable. He didn't say there was any reason it hadn't been dropped off, in June -- just that he'd been forgetting to do it. I'd email him again, but I don't think I can make somebody go geocaching if they don't want to. I'm considering offering to send him a SASE, though it would be a rather humiliating end to the bug's journey. After watching the travels of bugs we've picked up and dropped off, frankly, I'm pretty discouraged about Travel Bugs in general. In our first year of caching, I was all excited about them, and planned to buy a bunch more. But at $5 a pop, plus the cost of whatever item's attached to them, it's not seeming worth it right now. I don't care if my bug goes 700 miles off course or gets put in a travel bug prison or something -- I'd just like to see it OUT THERE. Nobody took any pictures of the bug during its travels, half of them didn't log it properly, and it's been sitting in one guy's possession for longer than it was traveling before that. Yeah, lots of fun. Grr. (And yeah, we included a nice explanatory tag about the bug's goal and how to log him. It didn't help.)

Ask the bug's owner if s/he thinks it's okay to log the bug in and out of caches you visit while it's in your possession. Some people like that, others don't. If you're taking the bug significant distances, or to interesting places, I can see doing it. Otherwise, I'd (personally, for my bug) prefer to see it dropped off in one of those caches. OTOH, it's more fun and interesting to have the bug's travels with you recorded, than it would be to have you simply hold it for weeks before releasing it. I saw someone take a bug halfway across the world, log it into a cache there, and then return it to somewhere not too far from its starting point. I'd be fine with that, because if someone dropped my bug OFF in an exotic locale, I'd be concerned about how frequently the cache it's in would be visited; a lot of old vacation caches are never visited, or get plundered in the many months between visitors. There's really nothing you can do to record its ordinary travels in the car, or at your house, though. You could, of course, take pictures of it in those situations and post them to the bug's page, which would also be fun.

The fact remains, it's illegal to cross the tracks, and if that's the only way to reach the cache it ought not to be placed. I do know of a cacher who got a $1000 fine for trespassing on a railway access road. Does it happen often? Probably not. But it's not impossible.

The Cincy Duck has done well. He's been out there nearly two years! We were lucky enough to help him travel last October. His ID# is 43, so he must be one of the oldest bugs out there.

I just logged this bug: http://www.geocaching.com/track/track_detail.asp?ID=37378 At the end of my pickup log it says, "Travelled 0.2 miles south"! Why would my pickup cause the bug to 'move'? Sounds like we've got a bug... no pun intended. Has this happened before? Will it cause any problems with my future dropoff of the bug?

A badly-themed cache that actually exists: toothbrushes. Not so bad, you say? Well, the container is permanently mounted in cement (that means you can't dump it and dry it when it gets wet inside), and it's camouflaged under a damp, rotting stump. When we found that one, there was nothing in it I would've put in my mouth for a million bucks.

quote:Originally posted by Team Texas Coyote:So although I see the messages about "edit, delete or permanently encrypt this entry", you're saying no one else sees that. And I will see it on all logs that I sign. Is that correct. Happy Trails Right. When you're logged in, you have the option to modify any logs that were entered under your user name.

Without completely ruling out the possibility that we may be sissies, I'd still like to say that a hiking stick really can help, even when walking on easy terrain. I go farther, faster when I'm using my stick, and I don't get tired as quickly. If there are hills involved, the stick makes a huge difference, both in reducing the effort of getting uphill, and in helping me keep my balance. I've got a bad Achilles tendon, so there's really no question about the necessity of a stick for me, but even the able-bodied Hawkeye has made the same observations about the stick increasing efficiency on the trail. These titanium things are practically weightless, and the help they contribute is worth a lot more to me than a pack a few ounces lighter would be. Good stick technique is important, though -- if you're just tapping it to the ground every few steps, no, it's probably not helping. Use the wrist strap correctly, coordinate the stick with your opposite leg, plant it ahead before putting weight on it. Two sticks are better than one if you've got significant terrain and are serious about doing things right, but one is far from useless. I'd give up everything in my pack... up to but not including the GPS, before I'd leave my stick behind on a geocaching trip. Okay, I'd probably keep some water, too, but nothing else. Honest. Gimme my stick. And on top of all that, as previously stated, sticks aren't just for walking. There's not always going to be a stick on the ground near the cache site, so what are you going to do when you need to poke in a possibly snake-infested crack in the rocks? How will you balance while rock-hopping across streams? What will you use to fend off aggressive plants and animals (what, you've never met an aggressive plant?)? A stick! It's almost as useful as a towel.

What I like about our purchased hiking sticks ('trekking poles' or something like that) is that they're almost weightless (definitely a relief after the big stick I used to carry), they collapse down to about 18" for ease of stowing and carrying when they're not in use, and they have wonderfully comfortable grips (foam over cork). They also have nice, grippy graphite tips, and baskets that keep them from sinking into loose sand or soil. There's a nice adjustable strap that provides wrist support, too. Do ordinary sticks or broom handles work? Sure. I just found the extra features and conveniences useful. Brian mentioned that he didn't get his to 'look cool' -- I'd go so far as to say that ours make us look like big dorks, because we're carrying fancy Trekking Poles and we're often in urban parks with little terrain. But they're really useful for poking, and you never know when you're going to need a stick.

I leave pyrite (fool's gold) in caches sometimes. I've even got little pyrite pebbles for micros. You're on your own if you want a digital watch, though.

quote:Originally posted by Doc-Dean:What about picking up the bug yourself onto your profile and then depositing it in the http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=5a66fbb7-a8a7-437b-af37-bc3808e67867 ?? Can't pick it up if you don't know its tag number.

Thanks! Next time, we'll be more patient. Shoulda known nothing was wrong .

quote:Originally posted by InkyCat:Found a TB that it a little compass in a cache in Massachusetts. The cache page did not indicate there was a TB there. None of the log entries mentioned it. I've e-mailed geocaching.com and got an auto-response but as yet no reply to how to log this find. Anyone else have an experience like this? Thanx, InkyCat. Inky (the "Island Girl") How do you know it's a travel bug? Does it have a dog tag with a bug number on it? Then all you need to do is go to Groundspeak.com, and enter that number. See what the last activity was on the bug -- if it was recent, you probably just need to wait a little for the last person to log that they dropped it off. If it's been a while, you can 'grab' the bug; log "I have it" on the bug's page, but un-check the box that says you picked it up from a particular cache if the cache it lists there isn't where you found it. In any case, you can find the bug's page and its name by putting in its tracking number either on Groundspeak, or on the main travel bug page. Those six digits are the key to everything.

quote:Originally posted by Keystone Approver:I see nothing pending in the approval queue under your username, Bobkat92. Did you receive a confirming e-mail about your cache submission? If so, what's the GC number of your cache? -------------------- Don't mess with the frog. Okay, now I *am* a bit worried that the new form has a bug or something. Do we have ours (GCGQKH) in the queue? [This message was edited by Kite & Hawkeye on August 27, 2003 at 08:47 PM.]