Grumpster

I think you are missing something. Playing nice in the sand box. In other words, allow some one else the opportunity of getting a FTF without having to become a FTF whore just to get one. It's exciting for most all of us. Personally, I'm just not willing to compete for it. I play nice in the sand box by allowing others to play as well.

28 years and millions of miles, one thing I've learned. Finding a place to park my truck is one of the biggest challanges I face every day. It's not nearly as easy as one might think. A group of us are getting a group together for truck firendly cashes. Were gradually forming a group similar to what the states have. There is a active thread here. Were also in the process of building a website geotruckers.com. It's not up quite yet but I'm working on the site and other's are working on the graphics. This club caters to both 18 wheelers and RV'ers as well. So far we've had a lot of good feedback from others. djstern, webmaster of geotruckers.com

One thing I notice through out the world about people sure applys here. When some one (or a group of people) don't like something they feel compelled to legislate others on it. If you don't like micros, don't hunt them! Sometimes, I'm into a off the trail hunt for a good ammo can, but other times I enjoy a simple micro. If I don't want to hunt something I simply don't. I'll never tell some one that they can't do something just because I choose not to do it my self. No one's making you hunt micros. Don't try to make me NOT hunt them by outlawing them. One of the most creative hides I've seen and loved finding was L.M.N.O.P. by FlyinV (GCJF77). This was a very creative cache that was about the size of 2 asprin stacked on top of each other. Now, THAT'S what I call a micro. I would have never been able to enjoy this cache if micros were outlaw'd

I see a lot of good work has been going on with the graphics on the site. Sorry I haven't been around lately. I was on my way to Florida and my truck broke down. It's in the shop. Engine problems. $6000.00 to fix it. (OUCH!) Anyhow, I'm stuck in a hotel. Got my new PDA on Saturday and spent time getting it set up for paperless caching and learning the programs. Finally got to take it out for a test run today. Loved it. My poor wife was going crazy with cabin fever sitting in this room. Anyhow, I'm going to take her out caching again tomorrow, Tuesday, and try to get some work done on the site in the evening. Does any one have a particular opinion on which one of the forums should be used on the site? I should be able to at least have our forums on line by the evening if all goes well. The first order of business once the forums are installed is to get a structure set up but that can be dealt with later. Righ now I'm trying to decide what one to use. TwoTruckers, it looks like your quickly becomming the "official" database builder. Are you going to build one large database or split it into states or regions? Truckerbears, Team Zebra, I agree that we need something that would size small for the web site and print well on t-shirts and geocoins. Shame we can't use a modified verson of the geocaching.com logo. That would have been perfect.

Seemd fine to me. Need to make the RV a little smaller. Can't have anything bigger on the road than a truck. Also a slight adjustment on the angle of the RV to match the up/down angle of the truck, but I expect that the clean up will take care of that. Otherwise, the obvious clean up and it'll look good.

It's nice to see us getting along for a change. I sincerely hope it's the beginning of things to come. I prefer a PNG or TIFF as a second choice or go ahead and send the image as it. I have't seen a file format that I can't open yet. I've got many of the imaging toy's. Just haven't had the time to get good at playing with them. Way too many projects going on at one time but hope find time to play with them more some day. On the RV images, Fleetwood RV comes to mind. Their one of the bigger ones. You should find something you like there. You might give Holiday Rambler a try. On the left side of the screen is a link to each of their rigs. Just place your mouse over the rig's name and it should pop up a picture of the rig. There are many more, but those are a couple of the big boy's. Just be careful that you don't do a picture of a RV goind down the road with the slide out's extended on the sides. Sounds dumb, I know but easy to do. Well, I just got loaded and running to the other coast so I won't have nearly as much time as I've enjoyed the past couple of day's. I'll try to get as much work done on the site as I can in the evenings but things are goind to slow down for a while. I will be able to get a permanente discussion forum up easily enough once we decide what one we want to use. There we can conduct the conversations that would bore the rest of the geocachers to death.

Work is going well on the new site. Most of it is currently on my machine but I hope to have it uploaded shortely. I've been lucky to have a good layover day that has allowed me plenty of time to work on the site. Right now I'm in need of some graphic work. If I could get some help on that, it would free me to focus on other things. I know we have a lot of good talent on this site. Now is the time to show off. I need 3 images currently. 1: We'll call this one logo1. A square image similar to the 4 color geocaching image. I'm thinking of the 4 colors with a truck and RV superimposed on it. Make it about twice of the size of what's on the geocaching.com site so it can be resized as needed. It should also have the text "GeoTrucking" at the bottom of it. 2: We'll call this one logo2. Same as logo1 except for twice the width. The logo from logo1 should be on the left half and text on the right half. The text I need on the right half should be something like GeoTruckers Forums. Something like this. Hope that makes since. Kinda hard to draw pictures in text. 3: Main banner: A banner of about 800X200 or 800X300 or so. I'm not really sure just what I want here. It should reflect three things though. Geocaching, Trucking and RV'ing. This banner would be used for the main banner of our site at the top of the page. I'm totally open to ideas here. 4: Wallpaper: A image for use as wall paper on the site. Relitavely small, about 2-3 inches square [rectangle?] (give or take) that tiles well. Possibly pastel or water color in style. It needs to be colored in a way that I can place text over it that can still be easily read. These are only concepts. I'm open to ideas that would fit. The dimensions need to be close but the style is open as long as it represents the three aspects of the site (geocaching, trucking, RV'ers.) If your into graphics, now is the time to show off. I know we have a lot of good talent here. We could use some of it on the site. TruckerBears, I understand that you did the second image on the old site. That was good work. If your still willing to be a part of this, I'd like to see more of your work. I'm also thinking that that graphic might have good future use as a geo coin or t-shirt logo or something. I'd like to have a copy of that image in my image library for geotrucking.com. I would like to see a RV added to that image to represent those members of our site, and I'd like to see a version with the US instead of the globe. It would be neat to compair the two versions (golbe vs. us). Please send your work as a email attachment to webmaster@geotruckers.com. Thanks in advance for all of your help. Together, we'll have a great site in time. Now, hi-ho hi-ho, it's off to work I go. djstern.

Thanks. It was late and I was sleepy so didn't get the configuration between to two programs to match very well. Because of that, it was kinda like comparring apples to oranges. I've set them both up with similar categories and sub categories so they should be more compairable now. Please take another look and let me know what you think. The comparisson should be more honest and fair between the two now. Hopefully, I'll make a final decision what one to use in a day or two and we'll have a real place to meet.

Most mobile services in the US offer some sort of flat rate plan. I'd be careful to check the provider out to make sure that it'll have coverage in the area you go in. T-Mobile is very big in parts of the country but in others it is not. (A geocacher from California visited me and he had no service on T-mobile here in Mississippi). Check out Cingular, Nextel, Altel and other companies to figure out which has the best coverage. As far as wireless goes - many places of free wireless. I beleive MacDonald's Resturaunts also offer free wifi access. You should be able to check on Google and/or Yahoo for Wireless access points. Many state and local tourism divisions have wireless access points. sd I'm a cross country truck driver with somewhere arouund a million miles under my belt. Got two computers in the truck, (one for my wife and one for me) and she spends a lot of time on line while I drive. for the past few years I've been using Sprint with reasonable luck. I have looked into Cingular and belive, from their maps, and other truckers like my self that they have better coverage than Sprint. What ever you do, don't bother with Nextel. That was my first provider and the worst mistake I ever made. I lost about $250.00 to them. I agree on T-Mobile. The price looks great and they do have a good customer service reputation but they do not have the nationwide coverage of Cingular. I know of a number of other drivers that don't get coverage with T-mobile in many parts of the country. Bottom line, in my humble opinion, Cingular for phone and Cingular as a first choice, sprint a distant second choice for modem. The speed is realistically between 90-120k. They claim it to be faster but that isn't the real world most of the time though I have seen the higher speeds on my wireless modem on occasion.

'bout fell out of my chair with that one. *grin* Bite yur tongue. Ky is the best on that. The only state I know of that actually say's a bear can't mess with you. Keep in mind that many companies have a strict policy about dropping trailers. Even if you do get away with it, heaven forbid something should happen it'd end your career. I never recommend dropping anyplace but a drop yard unless you have express permission from the company. It don't even have wings and it seems that it's already trying to fly. I can't belive the response I've seem from retired truckers, local drivers, non truckers and RV'ers on the topic. I need to get a framework on the site first, but one of the first tasks at hand for me is to get a set of guide lines posted on the site for trucker friendly caches. ie: most malls don't allow truck parking and will tow, or the trucks a local always see someplace may be there on business delivering and the rest of us can't just park there 'cause it's not a truck stop. I'll have to make it sound prettier but you get the idea.

Got a little ahead of my self. I started to upload the page and realized I was missing something. It should be there in about 2 minutes. Sorry.

UPDATE: I've installed two sample forum programs on geotruckers.com. Please take a look at each one and let me know what you think of each. Keep in mind that you're ONLY looking at the function and usability of each. I've done no changes on the color scheme or configuration yet. That will come later once a program is chosen. No point in a lot of work on the one that isn't chosen. Both forums are virgin and have no postings. Feel free to put in whatever rubbish you like and play with it. Plenty of gobbledygook to fill the pages and create threads and replies. I've added a few random categories that display my slightly warped since of humor in one of them. Don't carry on a discussion you want to keep. It'll be removed once the permanent install is done. Please let me know what ya'll think of the user's interface. In the mean time I'll work on the back end and see what's easiest to administer. geotruckers.com Thank you.

Spooner, that's exactly the kind of supporet we are looking for. It just so happens that my wife and I were in Vegas a few weeks ago and did some caches on the strip. Lot's of them were virtual, but there were a few real one's as well. I saw a couple of places that would have made for great cache locations on the strip. I've thought about it a lot since then. We get up there every so often (a few times a year) but not enough to maintain a good cache. I'll definately take you up on your offer next time we're through Vegas. Maybe we could get together for lunch or something. Thanks very much for the offer. djstern WebmasterofGeoTruckers.com

Hello to all from the webmaster of geocaching.com My name is D.J., not to be confused with -DJ- (TwoTruckers) I'll be working over the next few day's, weeks, and months on the development on geotrucking.com. TwoTruckers has already said what we need from all of you so no need for me to repeat it. Anything from a simple scetch on a sheet of paper to full blown graphics etc is very appreciated. Please send your comment's suggestions, ideas etc to webmaster@geotruckers.com or fax to 815-846-0718. As two truckers mentioned, we could use articles for use on the site. I only reflect the view of one person and that could get very boring very quickly. To keep the site fresh we need the input of others. I've got some information up on the site about how you can help. I'm currently working on a forum for us to hold our discussions in. Please feel free do drop by and contribute. I look forward to developing this site and the good things that I belive can come out of it. Thank you. djstern

Well we have good news. TwoTruckers and I have spent the past few hours, on and off, talking on the phone and working things out. With the encouragement of TwoTruckers I will end up becoming the webmaster of geotruckers.com. I have many good ideas for the site and I'm sure more will come. I do, however, need ideas from the rest of you. I'm good at the technical side of things, but I'm no artist. I am interested in the input from everyone on the look and feel of the site. Background images, color sceme, layout, etc. If you have any ideas, please let me hear them. Draw your concept on a sheet of paper and email it to me at webmaster@geotruckers.com, fax it to me at 815-846-0718 or if you're really ambitious, do a sample html page or images and email it to me. Anything you can contribute would be appreciated. Currently, I'm looking at a blank sheet of paper and wondering what I'll put on it. This site is for everyone here, so the ideas for the look and feel of the site should be from everyone. My mind is full of ideas for the backend, (chat rooms, forums, articles, links, etc.) but I'd like input from everyone for the front page and look of the site. Also, to keep the site fresh and interesting, we could use some various articles. Write anything you like that would fit into the theme of our site. For example, geocaching adventures, trucking stories, RV Stories, human intrest, how-to's, etc. You get the idea. If it's a story you like telling, then write it down and share it with the rest of us. If it's something that you often find yourself explaining to others or others asking you about, then write about it. I only reflect the viewpoint of one person. To make this site intresting and keep it fresh, we need the stories from everyone else. Please send submissions to webmaster@geotruckers.com I'll start working on the site tonight and hopefully, I'll have a basic shell for people to see shortly. My thanks to everyone who has been involved djstern

TwoTrucks, I would like to see this work as well. That's why I had made the offer to begin with to host the site. I have your number and I'll give you a call in a little while. Don't know what our options are at this point but we'll work out what we can and post the results of our conversation here when done. TeamZebra, Thanks for the support. I really do appreciate it. That means a lot to me. To everyoe here. I never wanted things to go the way they did. I thought about letting it go but this was something that I was really intrested in devoting a lot of time and energy into and right or wrong I did take it very personally. I wish I could have let it go but I just couldn't. Having said my piece and been heard, I'd like to put it in the past and see this project move forward, with or without me. I also have no desire for a pissing match and it is for that reason that I declined to webmaster the site. I'll call TwoTruckers and we'll take it from there. Right now, I don't know. This whole group was his idea to begin with and I don't want any more to go against that than already has.

I have chosen to remove this post in hopes that focus can be placed on the formation of geotruckers.com

Well, I was out of pocket for one day without a connection crossing Nebraska and Wyoming and I'm surprised at the turn things have taken. I had intended on asking for suggestions for a name for the group and letting the group decide as a community on what the name should be. My suggestion would have been geocachetrucking.com. Two reasons for this name. 1: It says exactly what we're all about and 2: it's about the best search engine friendly name I can think of. That's something you always have to think about with domain names. I would have NEVER have thought to set up the domain myself without a community consensus. We, as a group, should agree on what we should be named, etc. I would have liked to hear some thought from others before a name was chosen for the site. I'm quite sure others could have contributed some excellent thoughts as well. As for hosting on my site, this would not have been a problem or I wouldn't have offered it to start out with. As I said, I am a domain host. When I said it would take A LOT of traffic, I meant in the dozens of gigabytes range before it would ever show up on my radar. That's a traffic level that few sites ever achieve. I had never expected that after missing only one day of connection time that a site would be set up and a name chosen without ANY discussion of any kind on domain name or anything else for that matter. I do have to say that I would have liked to have seen it be more of a community effort and discussions put to the community in this forum before any decisions were made I would also suggest that the design and building of the site be an effort of the core group of us who have been the genesis of this concept, not just one person. The site should be built by all of us. TwoTruckers: I do agree with you that we do need to include RV'ers in our group as well as any other geocachers who would understand our plight and be willing to be a part of our effort. I would also suggest that our group, whatever its name would be, should be open to all with support of our purpose in mind. That being to make geocaching sites that are accessible to those of us in large vehicles that can't park just anywhere. Such should also be clearly stated on the web site.

Thanks for inviting me over TwoTruckers. I didn't know this thread existed. Glad to see there are other truckers out here into geocaching. I liked the thought of starting a truckers geocaching group. Actually, it makes a lot of since. Most states have their own group and some cities even have one. Why not us. With that thought in mind, I happen to be a domain host and could easily host the site my self. No hosting fees involved, at least until the bandwidth starts killing me. We'd have to generate a lot of traffic before that would even become a factor. I'd prefer to keep at least some of the open discussion here on geocaching.com but the reports of caches needing repair and other communications between truckers that don't quite fit in here would be fine there. It would be the perfect place to discuss with each other maintenance of our caches etc. without boring the rest of the community with our lifestyle. It would even be possible to set up forums like we have here, mail lists, chat rooms, and about any thing else you can think of. What do ya'll think? We could use a subdomain of one of my sites, endlesshorizons.org or we could register our own domain. That's cheep enough that I'd be willing to spring for it as long as others are willing to participate. Enough of that for now. Thanks NevaP for the Nebraska I-80 list. Just so happens that I'm sitting just north of Kansas City right now and heading that way across Nebraska. I'm afraid that I won't have much time to do many of them this trip but I'm sure I'll manage to get at least a couple in. Those 600 mile day's kind of get in the way of all my playing. Thanks to all others for the other caches. I'll put them in my lists and look forward to doing them. BTW I've got a simple one that ya'll might like. GCN737 This one is in West Texas on I-10 near Fort Stockton. It is the first one that my wife and I ever did. When I first arrived I thought this was going to be too easy. Was more of a challenge than I expected and got my wife hooked. D.J.

I asked the same question a while back. http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...opic=102673&hl= Count us in if you want to get a small group together to do Trucker friendly caches. Also I can think of at least one more trucking team that would go in on the endeavor. We routinely make mention and thank the fols that place trucker friendly caches when we log our finds. Looked at your thread and it looks very intresting. We're getting a little off topis in this thread so I'll join you over there and we'll take up the converstaion there.

Just get on or off any freeway or change freeways along the route. Ramps are one way and that would do it.

Though I'd agree with most of what was reported in your review, but I can't imagine for the life of me the problems with speed here. I've been using Street Atlas since version 2 and have never experienced such problems. I currently run it on a Athlon 1800+ and run 2000-3000+ miles routes with no problem. I also occasionally run it on my OLD laptop with a 233 mhz processor and only 256 megs of ram with MUCH better results. The only thing I can think of is that he was using it on a Mac through a emulator. I have no experience with a Mac but I can assure you that it run's MUCH better on a PC. Street Atlas USA is far from perfect (there's no such thing) but it's by far the best that I'v used and it keeps getting better each year. The accuracy can't be matched by any thing out there. I've seen users of many other mapping programs come to Street Atlas but have never seen a Street Atlas user change over to another program. That say's a lot in it's self.

A gender changer should be all you need. It might be easier though to get their USB GPS receiver for use with the laptop. It's small, compact, draws power from the laptop and easier to use than using your Magellan for laptop navigation. Don't know about the 2006 version. They usually get better each year though. Need to call them and tell them to send me the upgrade offer. Don't want to pay full price. Off topic for a second. I was thinking on doing a 70 foot (parking spaces) series of caches across the country. Would be hard to maintain though. Do you think there are enough other truck drivers out there that might be interested? Would others be willing to help with maintenance?

Correct, It's called the Blue Logger and it functions not only as a GPSr but also keeps a track of your movements. Works through Bluetooth so your PDA must be bluetooth as well. Also great for seeing what the kids were up to when they said "Mom/Dad, can I borrow the car". As for the first question in this thread, Your mapping program don't care where it get's it's GPS signal from, as long as it get's it. The mapping program your use gives you your voice prompt and turn by turn directions. You'll find a lot of different opinions here but for my money the best is DeLorme Street Atlas for PDA's and either Street Atlas for road mapping or Topo USA for off road, hiking, back country navigation. Street Atlas for PDA's is all you need if you are only interested in road navigation. For off road, back country travels the 3D topographical maps of Topo USA is a great companion that integrates well and is worth the small $30.00 extra cost.

Me thinks discretion just went out the window. Good news is the search party won't have any problem finding your. Just follow the glow in the forest or where ever you are.