HaLiJuSaPa

Congrats to MarkSun for finding his 500th while at "Geocaching MEET UP" in Manhattan yesterday.

Ken, an interesting side-aspect I think you will find interesting is that in New York City (specifically Manhattan) there is a major predominance of very difficult "puzzle" caches compared to other places. The reason this has mostly come about is the uniqueness of Manhattan for geocaching. First off, the tall buildings make for poor GPS reception (though more modern technologies like the SiRF chips have improved on it). This means that except for "urban" micros (and then with extensive hints), most Manhattan caches are in Central Park where there's some openness from the buildings. But the fact that Central Park is almost always crowded during all daylight hours of any day of the year and gets visitors from around the globe means that caches get muggled far more frequently than most places. What many clever cache hiders have done about this is dominate Central Park with very intriguing and complicated "puzzle caches" so that the coordinates are not easily "given away". Here are a couple of examples: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...af-dd5132971eb8 http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...98-fe9161182c17 http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...16-99d924c05eb7 http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...a8-ab4e0e708a4c http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...93-61be4c56b6e2 To be honest, I haven't a clue on most of these, but they are really in the spirit of the old "pirate treasure map", etc. (in fact, the last cache I listed uses a map of Manhattan designed to look like one with "pirate" style instructions). There are 3 or 4 of these "master hiders", I think my listings here noted 3 of them. They're not very active on here but are on the Metro NY Geocaching Society forums. Go to www.metrogc.org to learn more. I am one of the "sub-moderators" that of the "Introductions" forum.

I thought the police response was quite good natured. They seemed to say indirectly OK to have all those parking lot micros, etc. and that they are 'geocaching friendly'.

Hey I am, seriously! Have been LONG before geocaching (since age 6 or so). Ken, if you have any questions about that, email me via my profile (where I mention this a little bit too). Again, I'm really not joking about that, I collect road maps galore for one, and a lot of my interest in caching does relate to maps and geography. But that said, a lot of what is said above is pretty much true though.

Technically, as noted, you are not supposed to "find" virtuals this way, but many people have, especially in the winter months. It is especially popular with German cachers for some reason. Sometimes, admins have figured this out and closed the caches, particularly controversial now since no new virtuals have been allowed since December, 2005 and existing ones are grandfathered in not to be returned once archived. Some believe the reason they did this to begin with was the potential for such abuse with virtuals. There used to be a lot of bookmark lists of "Armchair" caches, but I believe most of these have been shut down as well. And for some unknown reason, armchair caching is particular popular with cachers from Germany.

We found his hide on the Hazleton rails-to-trails (nice park/path, by the way) while up in the area Labor Day weekend.....congrats to him! Congrats and nice picture! Awesome looking spot. A bit late, but we're going to "toot our own horn" again and note our 400th find at the Central Park Proto Picnic event back in late August. It was not our first event, but it was the first time we made event attendance be our milestone find. It was also the 4th anniversary to the day of our first cache hunt/find by sheer coincidence.

Also keep in mind that (as signs at least by me are warning more and more) that many shopping centers have cameras in their parking lots that could cause similar issues to industrial parks.

And it's allowed in terms of GC.com regulations as long as you deal with any possible liability. This cache is on the person's front yard, and it's a home with a standard front and back yard surrounded by other homes, not some place with acres and acres of woods: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...ea-a07effeb3bf0 I think the cache description covers any issues well.

Maybe it was only an issue like around NYC or DC or "sensitive" areas?

Only at 22 and counting.....maybe I'll get to 100 one day

Wow, congratulations! Ironically your 1 day total is my CAREER total (4 years this month!). Is there somewhere on the GC.com site where they show records like this? Now I'm wondering what the record is for most FORUM POSTS in one day....

Wow, if it's really you, welcome!!!!! I LOVED watching your run on Jeopardy, just say last week the rerun of your last game and can't believe it's like 5 years. I have kids your age myself (8 year son, 6 year old daughter) and we find that geocaching is not only something they find fun, but a great way to get the young ones outdoors and appreciating all about it. While many caches are parking lot micros, many others (and the best ones) take you to parks you never knew of before (many with playgrounds and often in your own backyard so to speak), gorgeous views that are "off the beaten path", and lots of nature! We ourselves have a hide in a nature preserve surrounded by a very urban part of the Bronx that few people, even locals, know about. One amazing part of it is that when you get to the final cache, you cannot see any of the buildings of the neighborhood around you, it looks like you're in the deep forest! Secondly, it is a "multi" and to get at those coords, you have to read off a sign at the park entrance phone numbers of how to both get a guided tour of the woods and how to volunteer to clean up and preserve them. I talked about it in a "Letter to the Editor" in response to a US News and World Report article last year about how to get kids outside and it got published. Check out this cache: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...a9-502ac4faa097 I hope you continue to enjoy it, we're at 4 years and counting.

Ah, thanks! They must have recently done this, it appears I was last on the forums 2 weeks ago (8/18)

Was it fixed? I know the OP emailed me and I gave a suggestion. I had some minor intermittent problems like this too recently and it seems to work now making me think it's the website.

I admit I haven't been on the Groundspeak forums as much as I used to, but tonight I noticed something that surprised and confused me. Instead of seeing the "last 10 posts" and being able to scroll through a bunch of forum posts, I now see this kind of "outline format" that shows the first sentence of a post and then I have to click on it. And it does the "earliest" ones first, so when I look at the "Milestone Congratulations" thread in the Mid-Atlantic forum instead of seeing the most recent posts, I'm looking at stuff from years ago. When did this happen and why? It seems like a lot of extra clicking and certainly will limit my foruming even more......

OK thanks all!

Our groups is very close to our 400th find. I am trying to plan it so that the event we are going to on Saturday is this milestone. But I'm not intending the event to be the only cache I log that day. How do I make it so sites you add to your gc.com profile like "it's not about the numbers.com" will recognize the event as the 400 milestone? There are 2 scenarios: one where I find the 6 more before Saturday to be at 399 before the event, the other if I don't get there (i.e. I have saye 397 before "event day") where the event plus several finds that day gets me "over the top". I'm guessing that it should just be a matter of logging the event as the 400th (i.e. if I'm at 399 by Friday, just log the event before any finds, or in my other scenario immediately above where I have 397 by Friday, log 2 caches, then the event, etc.). I'd hate to "fake it" by logging any other finds that day with a different date, though I guess that would work too. Advice welcome, thanks!

Hi! I use a Forerunner 205 to cache. A lot of "hardcore" cachers don't use it because they want detailed maps, a color screen, and more than 100 waypoints to store, but I love the convenience of having the thing on my wrist and it gives awesome satellite reception and accuracy! That said, I'll answer your questions below in CAPS to distinguish it from your question. Good luck and keep enjoying the game.

There was a person in my neck of the woods who had just that problem. There was this really nice park with a Japanese garden, and every attempt she made to keep a cache there was vandalized by a teenager (she knows because he was caught) with too much time on his hands who did just that and posted mean notes to her.

Like it better than I expected given the "cheap, clearance" way I got it. Some reviews complained that the voice is too low in volume, but I found exactly the reverse (at least at "full blast"). I like the fact that when you connect it to your PC, it sometimes try to download map updates from their website. I wish you didn't have to buy a wall charger and that it came with one, but using the USB port of my PC and/or my car 12V plug suits me fine. Also very good reception (works inside my condo, which is the bottom floor of a 7 story building!!! I knew this because my boss at my former job got a Tom Tom 300 years ago and let me "test it" for him and I had the same results. This was actually the 2nd "post 100M" car unit, I had bought a Whistler WGPX-550 mainly because of the added JPEG viewer and MP3 player, but it was very buggy and support wasn't good about it. I also had still used the 100M to drive to caches because you couldn't navigate to a lat-long waypoint. I've since eBayed that unit. Thanks for asking!

Do you know how I can get the program? I'd be curious to try it..... http://www.janboersma.nl/gett/index.php Here you go. check this site and download the TYRE software... OK thanks.

Actually, I think what happens is that what you describe occurs initially, then after a few months or a few hundred finds or you've found everything within 10 or 20 miles of you the reverse occurs (or you start to have a "balance" between your other hobbies).

Ironically, very recently a cache was placed near me in his honor: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...8a-a1c0712ec6b1 Why was he banned anyway?

Skippermark, I noticed that you're coming to the Central Park Proto Picnic event so you might want to ask folks there, I think quite a few "number runners" (not that I'm one of them, LOL!) are coming. I know that in addition to NJ, there are LOTS of caches on Long Island. Actually, if all goes well and we're there, looking forward to seeing the face behind the name after all the past correspondance. Too bad I didn't get a chance to do much caching while I was up your way parts of this summer. Wow, Jungle Habitat, I really need to look at Jersey caches more (darn tolls!). I remember as a little kid all those commercials with Bugs and Daffy! Never ended up going there back then, I always thought for some reason that JH became the safari of Six Flags Great Adventure but I guess it was elsewhere.....

Yeah, my Atari 2600 with 100 cartridges hasn't exactly been a "goldmine". I assume Lowrance dropped it because they went with the trend of color and touchscreens for "car" GPSr's. Honestly, except perhaps for "crossover" appeal (and it was pretty weak as a "hiking GPS"), it would probably not sell today given the B+W screen and weak reception (though with an MCX external antenna it works pretty good).