mudsneaker

I have bought a couple of these locally, and in my personal experience it's a decient light for the money, but one unit was so unreliable I had to get rid of it. A poor contact internally that I could not fix caused it to constantly lose power/flicker. I'd have to shake it to regain light, and nothings quite as frusterating as a strobe light when your hunting a cache. The other one is more reliable, with only the occasional flicker problem, so I have kept it and use often. I typically use both a handheld and a headlamp for redundancy in case of failure. (lessons learned the hard way)

I notice that the hides tend to be appropriate in some areas, then drive awhile down the road and you'll find a batch of lame/bad hides, then drive awhile and you may find another good batch. It seems to be typically associated with one individuals "territory" who may tend to put out ammo cans in a certain radius around his local zone, then you may run into another "territory" that a different cacher may have dropped a bunch of micros. It can be more noticable when the area is rural with less cachers for diversity. A higher concentration of cachers will yield more variety in hide styles. Just some of my personal observations at least.

If theres any doubt at all about a location I'm looking at placing a cache, I do this very thing. I do a extremely basic write-up, making notes both in the text and in the reviewer note to please confirm this location is clear for take-off, but please Do Not Publish since the cache and listing is not ready for public consumtion. I spent hours on a big write-up with HTML, research, and finding pictures to accompany it only to find out the location was taken like the OP and learned my lesson. I moved on better prepared on how to deal with the issue in the future and everything has been fine since. Live and Learn

Good time to solve some puzzles!!

According to StatGen: Log Length, words: Average: 60, Longest: GCZJWT 407, Shortest: GCN5D7 2 I know that when someone logs one of my caches with something more than a one liner I appreciate it. So in all fairness my logs also will tell a story of my adventure, or why I was in the area, or the conditions onsite. Any log that has substance is good in my book, since this is why I place caches. To give a finder an experience and hopefully they can share the good or bad with me as well. To me caches with short logs tell a story too, that they are so boring or bad that no one could think of anything good to say at all. So if you own a cache that consistently has short logs, consider it a hint to the quality of the cache.

5.6 miles if I don't include my finds. 14.2 if I leave out the caches I;ve found already. I live near alot of water though, our density is really pretty high when your on land compared to alot of places.

While on a Cache Machine, it was clear that a mower had eaten the ammo can. We found the rubber seal and some remnents of swag pieces. I broke out a large magnet on a pole I carry in case of nasty brush/ivy hides to see if any scape could be found. Didn't find anything but it turns out thats because a group earlier in the day had found some chunks of metal. They did bring the pieces and the logbook they found to the dinner event later in the day.

LMAO! Actually there are many locals who tend to avoid his caches due to his long history deleting logs he didn't like and other irrational behavior. Fled is so well known for being eccentric that at one Halloween event someone came dressed up as him to be extra scary next to all the vampires and zombies! LOL (good thing he isn't here to read this or my three finds on his caches may be deleted next!)

I personally use Streets and Trips for working out routes occasionally, and it's also very handy for accounting for counties on the route.

Cool day for a event...mine and Pengana's B-day.

I do it for the same reasons as well. All my caches start out PM only for the first week or two depending on it's quality and the number of finders. Paying members get the first shot at it before the swag degrades to far and the geotrail is too obvious. Then I drop the PM tag so everyone can go for it, but in reality, pretty much everyone in the area is a PM so I'm just going through the motions I think out of principal..LOL

That is meca for cachers. It was my 1000th find I'm happy to say.

I have bought 3 Sportrak Pro off of Ebay (1 for sister) for roughly $100 a pop, new in box, twice with the mapping software. They are easy to upload to and are user friendly out of the box. http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksi...-All-Categories Its a solid unit that is VERY accurate for the price.

I have a poor memory for numbers, so I simply keep track of all that fun stuff by using stat generators. Peek at my profile and somewhere toward the bottom it shows the dates of milestones. Looks like it was almost 19 months for me, but I took a long vacation from caching, again easily seen in the profile graphs.

A local newbie broke the single most difficult part of a new cache I put out. It had to be pretty hard to break, so he must have been really going to town on it. Guess I assumed finders would use their brains, not their muscles. :roll: Considering the entire thing is about physical puzzles, it seemed kinda obvious, especially since this is stage 3 and the previous WPs are also physical puzzles that only require patience and brains. It took over 2 months to design. buy, cut, assemble, test, and final assemble the thing. :shock: To rebuy the stuff will be $35, but thats slightly less than the initial cost at least. I can reuse the cap and still have the PVC glue and lock. The rebuilding is the part that really hurts. Theres no way to make it happen fast at all. To many parts have to be cut, drilled, fitted, etc. I'm guessing it will take about 2 weeks to do it again. The fella is being good about it, offering to help but it's really not something that I can have him do much since theres so many stages to the build. Certainly not going to have him pay of course, that's just part of putting out caches. (muggle factor) Ok, I just wanted to blow off some steam to people who can understand the frustration. I'm good now. All is well again. It's nice outside, the beer is cold, the grill is warming up. Life is good again. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So do you think being creative is too risky and not worth it? Keep things easy, safe, and unbreakable? Or is the making caches different worth the effort even if someone may just destroy it soon after being released?

Just a word of caution: some of us could care less what other people think. I know alot of folks who enjoy being able to keep track of their personal history and stats in a visual representation. It helps when someone is working toward a goal such as doing at least one of every combination of terr/diff. ~~~ to reply to the original poster OT: Edit your profile by adding HTML. Go here to see some basic HTML usage. Use the program of your choice to generate the stats. They all have different looks and are generated in slightly different ways. Some are pretty easy and others involve some more advanced computer knowledge. You can see all three on my profile, but I do select only parts from each for specific reasons. You could expand any one for yourself to show more data than I personally use. CacheStats ItsNotAboutTheNumbers GSAK statgen macro library

Happy to say Congratz to... Pengana - 1000th Rusty Hingepin - 700th j0hnycache - 500th Me - 1500th it was all part of the ACM so the actual caches were pretty much luck of the draw since we all had some finds already mixed in along the way. Plans of making sure they were great caches were just about impossible, but the day was really fun and we had a great time. Go Team ITW!! (It's the Water)

August 10 by VelcroCountsRight?(105 found) We found the [velcro] but there was not a container anywhere in sight of the location. [view this log on a separate page] August 9 by VelcroCountsRight?(105 found) Logging this one even though the cache box and log were missing. Loved the view! [view this log on a separate page] May 3 by Believes in the Truth (191 found) New signs fresh soil around where we thought it was but no luck [view this log on a separate page] May 3 by NotaScammer (235 found) two brand new signs put in by the city may have destroyed this one? and a neighbor telling us what it used to look like, makes me think this one is gone [view this log on a separate page] May 3 by Honesty is a Virtue (392 found) Attempted to find this during a 24-hour caching expedition with Bluediver24, cwby416, and L-E-YAT. Had no luck at 8:00 AM. Possibly destroyed when new fence and signs were installed? Owner should double check the status of this one.

All the red hucks I've seen so far this year have been rather small. The blackberies seem to be just now starting to ripen up, so ya, things are out of wack this year.

I used the same system for a long time and it worked well. I've now gone paperless but still will use a notepad to lay out a route sometimes. I use the online GC map and simply write in the order of caches I think will work best. A typical note will read like this: Cache name (size) (type) (Diff/Terr) - a short note of any hints or info that may help

I've used 2 places. 2006 was done by This person they come with a waterproof sealant 2007 & 2008 was at Geonickels each coin is in a baggy Both had good coloring and were easy to work with regarding customizing. Geonickels took a very long time this year to get the order completed from the time I contacted him till the time they arrived. (months)

heyya, I'm one of the very few Oly area cachers who use these forums unfortunetly. Without a doubt the best way to catch up with Oly folks is at events. We typically have 1 or 2 at the most in the south end per year that usually attract the usual suspects locally. The larger events such as the Spring Fling and GeoLuau will get a few of the Oly folks as well. If your wanting to meet up sometime to grab a beer or whatever, send me a PM with the best times for ya.

I know theres very few Oly area cachers who read the forums, but wanted to post a warning anyway for anyone who may be headed this way for caching. We have had a cougar hanging around the west side for a few weeks now. This weekend two people had a run in with it and ended up in a tree until the police came and chased the cat away. Seems that it likes Grass Lake Park and isn't leaving like TPTB hoped. See the news story here: Link Theres a few caches in that park, so if you are thinking of going there, be extra cautious.

Just wanted to say once again, Thanks to everyone who made this incredibly well planned event happen. We are SOOOO lucky to have this event in Washington. My only suggestion would be attempting to find sponsors willing to donate prizes so everyone can walk away with something. I personally will be donating some coins when this rolls around again to add to the pool of prizes. Every team really put forth some serious efforts and they all deserve a prize of some sort just for making it through. Thats my $.02 at least. Get ahold of me if anything needs built. I would be happy to contribute what I can if a contraption needs made.

ohjoy! has cruised herself into another big milestone. - 7000 !! Looks like that puts her 93 in the world rankings. whew! Add those 279 hides into the mix and we have a super cacher here in the Great Northwest. Also want to add a Gratz to Pengana for her recent 900th cache.