rainbowsfancy

I use mine for conditioning my horse for long-distance trail races. I attach it to her breast collar and check the stats at the end of a training ride, or at the periodic vet checks during a race. Also very good to get a decent elevation profile on the hill work. I also use it while hiking, biking, and caching, of course! -RF

Low Bat wins the prize! It was geocachearmy.com. Odd that it didn't come up in a Google search. Soldier #179 has been successfully repositioned in Washington state with orders to guard, not *shoot* the gorgeous grey herons in the Snohomish River Estuary (GCMKFA). FYI: This is NOT a Travel Bug. It is one of those little green army men with a homemade tracking number attached to it. The website has a database that will track the movements of each army man, if people will log their finds and drops. I didn't find the site *quite* as user friendly as tracking Travel Bugs, but it's definitely a fun site, and I will look forward to finding more soldiers. -RF

I bet somebody knows the answer to this question: I found one of those "trackable" army men in a cache last weekend. I logged my find, but, now that my solider has been re-deployed, I can't remember the name of the website that tracks these guys. Anybody know? Me and my sieve-like memory... Thanks a lot! -RF

I've only been at this for a couple weeks, and I was initially interested in learning how to use my GPS and go on the hunts. I didn't know what swag was until I found my first cache that wasn't a micro. So, I figured that moving "junk" from one container to another was just part of the deal. I find it disappointing to see junk and broken toys in caches. There are too many great resources for finding decent, inexpensive swag for people to be leaving broken McToys and melted army men in caches. Giving kids broken toys, whether the kid cares or not, IMO, is just lame. Personally, I don't have kids, and don't cache with kids. I make a point of trying to leave swag for grown-ups, too. I think it would be a high honor for somebody to keep the swag that I left because they found it useful or delightful. -RF PS. LOVED the idea of a cache just for junky swag!

OK, I'm a newbie, and the next chance I'll have to try getting my elusive first find won't be until the weekend. So until then, I'm lurkin' around the forums, soaking up any newbie-friendly info for the ol' databanks. So, I've come up with a newbie question (profound apologies if it's already been hashed...): Who rates the caches with the stars? The cache hiders? Wouldn't the cache hiders be biased toward fewer stars because they, duh, KNOW where the cache is? Wouldn't it be groovy if the cache *finders* could rate the cache? Each finder could use the same rating system (stars for difficulty and terrain), but they could consider, among other things, how many attempts it took them, how many hours it took, how many stitches it took after banging their head on a nearby brick wall, how much shoe (or boot) leather they used getting there, how long it took to talk the cops out of arresting them for suspicious behavior, and other various factors. Each finder's experience will be unique, so that each finder has a unique opportunity to provide feedback about the cache, sorta like eBay. Of course, I could read the logs, but not if I want to avoid spoilers... I'd love to start with some 1/1's, just to get my feet wet (preferably figuratively)

Thanks, Hitman, for asking this question. I tried to find my very first caches this weekend, and was 0 for 3, even after decoding all the clues. Part of the problem, I know, is that I was in too much of a hurry, and didn't have the time to *really* look. (Perhaps I need to get over the idea of appearing like a scrounge in public!) Frustrated, I went home, and checked out the logs for the caches for any extra clues, and then decided to enlist the help of another set of eyeballs. We'll go back during low-muggle hours to try again. I appreciate all of the comments posted by more experienced geocachers. I'm hoping that there is a learning curve, and after I've found a few caches, I'll have a better sense of where to look. Otherwise, I might not have as much patience for this pasttime as I thought... So, having said all that, what is a bison capsule? I'm picturing a mammoth ConTac pill...