Bill Bailey

The ones that get me are the plastic jugs and bottles with mouths much smaller than the main container. They can be watertight, but not always. BUT they are always filled with squishy, poky, springy, tangly swag and a rolled up notepad for a log. Takes me half an hour sometimes to get all the stuff back in and the top on. -Bill

I'v done a couple reflector courses (the first two Nighteye caches, in the series before the one Lepidus referred to) but other that that, even though stay up late, I usually stay inside. On two caches, one a DNF'ed multi in Hew Hampshire and one of the nicer long- lived mountain hikes here (Kleaver Karl's Kache) I have run into dark by virtue of starting too late. On the NH one, we were 80 feet from the final and couldn't see the way in when we decided to turn around. No light, of course. It was after sunset, but still okay twilight, but we were on a blazed trail with maybe 50 or more feet between blazes and no solid ground path. We really needed to get at least back to the main trails before the light was gone. It's the most amazing feeling to be out in the woods while the light goes away. After a while, it doesn't look like it's getting darker, but everything gets grayer as your night vision sets in, and then grainier as you finally run out of photons. Fortunately, that's when the car came into view on both of these. And yup, I have a little flashlight in my bag now. -Bill [edit OOps.. click COPY click paste]

37 MPG, at least the way I drive it. And yes, I stay closer to home and on the road. -Bill

The picture on my profile is from a cache camera at Kelsey's Beaverbrook Cache. It's one of the most natural, relaxed, unposed pictures ever taken of me. (I say so even though I took it, and I am constantly amazed at how well that works in general.) I was going to include a link, but then I remembered that there's already one over there <---. It's me, triumphant, outside at peace in the woods. I always enjoy seeing pictures from caches, whether they are from the cache's camera or the cacher's. What I invariably see is people enjoying what they are doing, and that's why we are here! I tried an experiment early on, well before travel bugs, where I took a waterproof one-use camera, looped a nice little logbook onto its lanyard, gave it a stated goal (On the first log page) of travelling around until the camera was full, then making it back to me. It promptly disappeared, of course, but I might want to try it again sometime. -Bill

Some people you have to calibrate for. We have a cacher here who signed my very silliest cache As Plain As... like this: hillarious...S.L. craftsman But then this is how he signs most caches: S.L. craftsman So I'm still honored. Most of the logs on this are short but it's a one - shot sight gag and a play on another nano by our Ubercacher, Mondou2, so I still like what people say. I get a lot of puns, but if you've seen the cache you know I asked for it and I'm lovin' it! I like to write Limmericks, haikus and Double Dactlys, and put them in my logs sometimes, (And I'm having great fun in O.T.!) Here's a sketch of Craftsman I left in Ludicrous Limmericks: With Craftsman it's clear as a bell Some trouble? You never can tell. Though I'm verbose, or worse, Crafty's entries are terse: I'm Craftsman, I did it, SL Here's a haiku from a log on a fairly simple cache that still captures the experience: Dodging the raindrops On a break from Sleuthers' test. Thank you for the cache! So good is not always long. I just love to see someone's sense of humor come through. And I ALWAYS spell out Thank you for the cache! It's not a rubber stamp. Here's about as verbose as I get: Prevaricator's puzzle Cache Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion: Addon Note As for myself, I spend easily five to ten times as long reading logs and logging as I do caching. I even browse caches all over the world (Thanks, Google Earth). ...What were we talking about? -Bill

You may not believe this, but I was setting and finding 'multicaches' with my cousins more than forty years ago. We called them 'Treasure hunts', which is still how I describe caching to newcomers. We got the idea from a Dick and Jane book where Dick hid Jane's dollies and placed a chain of notes to lead her to them. My mother worked summers in my uncle's greenhouse, so we were there on a two block lot with fields, hills and holes all over, not to mention all the cool hideyholes in the greenhouse (like the 'cave' behind the steam boiler!) to play in. I did one with geometric solids made of cardboard as clue holders. Another had a clue on a paper airplane launched from a catapault by a tripwire. Years later, I bought my GPSIII mainly for car navigation (After the 'Deckers Triangle' incident - don't get me started.) Since it didn't have turn by turn nav or detailed street maps, it was of limited use. Then I saw a piece on Geocaching on CNN science news. (This was a long time ago, and they still did things like that.) This was one of two times I have seen something on TV and immediately said 'I gotta do that!' (The other was stunt kites.) This was in November or December of 2000, and it was February 24 of 2001 before I had good weather to get out and find my first, Dinosaur Ridge (GC10D). And the rest is in my profile! -Bill

Mine probably looks cooler to others than it does to me. I never have any good ideas for these things while I'm sitting there with the entry window open. Therefore, I end up with the most boring handle possible-it's just my name!