Anonymike7

Oh, and one of my next hides will be a signature swap. Finders don't have to trade sig items, but I'd like it if they did

I've handed several of mine out to various geofriends and folks at events, and I recently found a signature domino and 'baseball' card during a day of caching. I've found a few beaded bracelets and earrings put in caches, as well, but it's a rare occurrence when I find anything like that. I'm hoping that by spreading my tokens far and wide, it will inspire other people to do something similar.

With respect, the police don't care about your fingerprints. Even if marijuana was somehow made more illegal, the cops aren't going to try to track you down simply for having had contact with it. They'll take it away and burn it (one way or another ) without giving a single thought to who it belongs to.

Wow...how have I never seen this thread before? Just looking back a few pages, I'm put to shame by some of the other folks' work with polymer clay. Nonetheless, I've attached a pic of what I've been working on lately. I'd like to think they're not bad for a newbie to the material. The group on the left side are thick-cut, and I've released 20 as geocoins, with official Groundspeak codes on them. The group on the right are 'simple' signature items of various designs and sizes. I sign my name on them with a fine-point Sharpie. I'm open to discussing trades or commissions if anyone is interested.

All the positivity about handmade sig items in this thread has made me feel a lot better about my own items. Thanks, guys!

For tick removal, I've picked up a nifty gadget called a "tick key." It's supposedly quite effective but since I purchased it in July, I haven't picked up a single tick. Hm...perhaps that's how it's supposed to work!

Greetings from Providence! I'm sorry to hear of your trouble with this trackable and given the evidence that it's a child who has it, I'm thinking you might want to write it off. That said, if you can delete the picture with the tracking code, I'll be happy to release a proxy for you. I've got a bunch of handmade, blank geocoins whose design has already been approved by Groundspeak. If you're interested, take a look at this picture, pick a design*, and drop me a line. *sorry, I'm out of turtles.

Respectfully, I think your idea sounds a bit too complex. Adding/removing scales on a cache-by-cache basis could quickly turn into a lot of work and bookkeeping (that is, having to track how many scales you have of any one color at any given time.) I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your friend, and I think it's great that you and your other friends want to honor him. My thought would be to come up with a team name that references your friend in some way and make a single sort of token/item with the team's name on it. That way, any or all of you can have tokens on hand at any time to drop off in a cache, without having to worry about adding or removing pieces. Personally, I make my signature tokens out of polymer clay. They're super-cheap, easily customized/personalized, and rather durable. If you want to attach them to TBs, it's also easy to drill a hole through them.

Wolf, how did I know you'd chime in on this one? Ed, there are so many things to see in the US that perhaps you should think about what uniquely American things you want to experience during your visit. NYC has so much to offer, and Central Park is full of highly-favorited caches. San Francisco is a beautiful, vibrant city that has tremendous cache density in Golden Gate Park. Washington, DC has some fantastic museums and you can't go more than few blocks in any direction without tripping over a virtual cache. Power trails can be fun, sure...but why cross an ocean and most of a continent just to boost your numbers? Figure out your tourism first, then cache around that! If you wind up in New England, feel free to look me up (and probably BBWolf, too!).

I've often left 1 oz. tubs of Play-doh with my and my caching partner's geonames written on them. Lately I had the idea to start leaving polymer clay tokens with our names on them, and in fact dropped the first of them just a few days ago. The shiny thing in the picture is a quarter, to show scale.

Having gone through that first package of clay while testing some ideas and prototypes, I picked up a pack of 30 colors in 1 oz. bricks for <$25 the other day. The attached picture shows some of the tokens I've made so far; each "cane" I've made has yielded ~12-15 tokens of any one design and uses maybe 2-4 oz. of clay. I sign them either in the white bar on the face, or around the edge. If Groundspeak gives me permission to use them as geocoins, I'll write "Geocoin" on one side and the tracking number on the other. That shiny part is a quarter, for size comparison. Hope this helps!

You might want to look into the costs for custom printing on trinkets, like pens, carabiners, or the like. I'd imagine they're reasonably priced, and a bit of useful swag like that can help to ensure that your cache is remembered, as items like that become an often-used part of many cachers' go-bags. I've just recently begun playing with polymer clay as a means of creating a customized signature item. If you're a bit creative, this can be a very inexpensive option. I picked up a 14-pack of colors last night for about $9 at the biggest-box store. The stuff is cheap enough that you can experiment and test lots of options until you find something you like. I used to teach, so I understand the financial limitations of teachers' wallets. I hope these ideas are useful and that everything comes together as desired! (there are also those unsanctioned souvenir tags, which aren't too expensive, but definitely costlier than the alternatives)

You aren't planning on screwing those eye-bolts into a tree, are you? Only if I can obtain explicit permission to do so. As of right now, I don't even have a spot picked out. I've already asked in a separate thread for alternatives to eye-bolts, and have some good alternatives.

The setup I have in mind requires nothing more than some rope, weights, and eye-bolts. Basically, pulling one end of the rope will pull one of the weights against an eye bolt, allowing the more lightly-weighted CC at the other end to be lowered. I'm looking for some examples of real-world application in pre-existing caches.

So I'm planning on creating a hide where the finder will pull down on a rope, in turn lowering the container (probably a giant hairy spider). I've heard that similar caches do exist, but I'm not sure where. Can anyone offer any GC codes or thoughts on a hide like this? I'd like to do a little research before I hide mine, so that I can avoid any potential problems. All help greatly appreciated!

My signature item, which I don't leave at every cache, is a 1oz. tub of play-doh with my name on it. They're cheap and fun. I like the idea of personally-engraved wooden nickels, though...could be worth it to get those made up with some trackable codes.

You and Mn-treker are absolutely right, and I should have known better seeing as I work with current and former addicts. The police have been notified.

Thank you. I don't think I've ever had to log an NA before...I'd hate to unnecessarily step on someone's toes, but I think you told me what I already knew.

I avenged an old DNF today only by explicit spoiler from a friend. The area around GZ is littered with discarded hypodermics, and the hide itself is sort of pushed into the ground under a low, small shrub. The cache is listed as kid-friendly, which it obviously is not. It's a very tricky hide, and searching for it is likely to get someone hurt if they're not paying perfect attention. So...do I log this as NM, or NA?

Hi all, I've been working out the details of a cache hide with a mechanical component (essentially a counter-weighted rope system). I'd like to install it up in a tree, but would like to follow the rules and avoid doing any drilling to set eyebolts. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can "painlessly" and securely mount some eyes or rings on a tree limb?

Reading some of the responses above, I feel like I've been lucky in meeting lots of cachers on the trail. I've just recently passed one year and 500 finds, so my percentages compared to some others are rather high. Below is a sampling of instances when I've met fellow cachers: * Two guys working together on an FTF * Another guy whom I beat to FTF by 3 minutes * A dad and his 3 kids, who were just leaving the trail as we came up * Two older ladies who were just entering that same trail as we were leaving * A pair of 15-year olds who had been following our trail of signatures down a bike path until they caught up to us. * A trio of teens who had no idea that an event was happening a quarter-mile away in the same park * A guy who pulled up in his car as we were scouring a rock wall, "Yeah, I couldn't find it either!" * A married couple who were trying to FTF a cache. I wasn't on the hunt for FTF; it was just a nearby cache. I got the STF, they picked up TTF. And then, of course, there was a recent event in which I went out on a hunt with one set of people and returned with an entirely different group. I can't remember any other instances of running into other cachers, but I'm sure there will be more in the future.

I cache with my Android phone exclusively and currently have 15 active caches of my own. My caches are in the woods and in the city, and among them are field puzzles, multiple stages, and offsets. I've been caching just over a year now, so I'm still a relative newbie. My caches have been pretty successful and I don't think I've ever had a complaint or correction on my coordinates. As mentioned in the quotes above, due diligence and care are key to any successful hide. I'll take a waypoint reading and write it down in a small notebook. Then I'll walk a little bit away and approach from a different side, taking and writing down another waypoint. I usually take 10-15 readings before averaging them to determine the end location. Once I have those numbers I'll check the coords on Google maps, just to confirm accurate proximity. If there's any significant discrepancy on the map, I'll go back to my intended GZ to reconfirm my readings. OP, it's not about the tech; it's about the people. If you know who's leaving lousy hides, ignore their listings. If you're traveling, look at cache logs to see what people have said about hides in their area. Don't blame the phones.

Life is dangerous. We face danger every day, whether we recognize it or not. You could be hit by a car, contract MRSA, eat some bad shellfish. A meteor could fall on your head or you could trip and fall down the stairs. Even if you isolate yourself to prevent all these things, you might be struck by an embolism, aneurysm, or infarction. There's no such thing as a "safe" life. Recognizing that we take face danger every day, and being aware of how to avoid that danger, are key life skills. Awareness of the dangers inherent in geocaching is simply an extension of those skills. If I hadn't been willing to take the risks inherent in some of my cache hunts, I'd have missed amazing experiences. To wit: * A cliff-side Earthcache. Stunning landscape and view, but I didn't get too close to the edge. * A tree-climbing cache in the middle of a city. Careful planning and research got me up and down safely. * Hacking through dense, untracked reeds to wind up on an amazing, cracked-earth floodplain. Someone knew exactly where I was at all times. ...and those are just the ones that I recall immediately. Never mind that I've seen deer out in the wild and the fact that they can be very dangerous, or exposing myself to possible infection (knock wood) after getting scratched on thorns and scraped by rocks. Insect-borne dangers include West Nile, EEE, and Lyme disease. Life is risky and dangerous, but it's meant to be lived. As I said above, isolation and "playing it safe" are no guarantee of safety. Approach things sanely and take calculated risks. Common sense (a trait far too many people lack) is a powerful ally and as they say, prior planning prevents poor performance.

Alright, so I've downloaded GSAK and the macro, but I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I have no idea how to set filters, waypoints, etc. Can someone help walk me through this?

Fantastic! I think that's exactly what I was looking for. I'll take a look later today. Thanks!