Rigour

Waypoint the car and use the tracking feature - it's especially useful when you get close and start seeing the cache bounce around on the GPS.

To me, while TNLN are fine, they do represent a "missed opportunity" to improve the cache. I try to trade up, probably don't always succeed, but one man's gold is another's garbage.. I think it would be very cool if instead of caches degrading, they got better and beter and better... of course, that would make it all the more annoying when some jerk loots the cache.

I interviewed and was one of many I think he got a good response. Article to appear in Men's Journal.

Second cache should not have been aproved in the circumstances you describe.

First, I am glad people are relating that their caches have been hit, I would want to know that if it happenned in my neighbourhood so that I could take action to protect my cache. Secondly, I doubt very much people are motivated to loot by the booty. $100 to buy a GPS to amass a pile of crap is hardly a good investment. Plus they are making some good treks to loot. What is really motivating these people is the sense that they have "won" that they are somehow smarter than the rest of us who actually place caches. I'm guessing white males in their late teens to early 20s at most, who feel a thrill that they are doing something naughty. Sigh. Certainly from my point of view, if this was happenning in my area I would do 2 things immediately: 1: I would delete from the cache description all mention of booty contents. 2. I would strip my cache of its booty, leaving only the log book. In addition I might a) leave a note to the vandals telling them why you have done what you did and/or leave a note indicating that if people want to trade, they can phone you at whatever your number is and you can arrange a meeeting. None of these ideas are "solutions" but as long as the looters keep getting positive reinforcement, they'll keep doing this. Geo-looting has become their new hobby.

First, I am glad people are relating that their caches have been hit, I would want to know that if it happenned in my neighbourhood so that I could take action to protect my cache. Secondly, I doubt very much people are motivated to loot by the booty. $100 to buy a GPS to amass a pile of crap is hardly a good investment. Plus they are making some good treks to loot. What is really motivating these people is the sense that they have "won" that they are somehow smarter than the rest of us who actually place caches. I'm guessing white males in their late teens to early 20s at most, who feel a thrill that they are doing something naughty. Sigh. Certainly from my point of view, if this was happenning in my area I would do 2 things immediately: 1: I would delete from the cache description all mention of booty contents. 2. I would strip my cache of its booty, leaving only the log book. In addition I might a) leave a note to the vandals telling them why you have done what you did and/or leave a note indicating that if people want to trade, they can phone you at whatever your number is and you can arrange a meeeting. None of these ideas are "solutions" but as long as the looters keep getting positive reinforcement, they'll keep doing this. Geo-looting has become their new hobby.

First, I am glad people are relating that their caches have been hit, I would want to know that if it happenned in my neighbourhood so that I could take action to protect my cache. Secondly, I doubt very much people are motivated to loot by the booty. $100 to buy a GPS to amass a pile of crap is hardly a good investment. Plus they are making some good treks to loot. What is really motivating these people is the sense that they have "won" that they are somehow smarter than the rest of us who actually place caches. I'm guessing white males in their late teens to early 20s at most, who feel a thrill that they are doing something naughty. Sigh. Certainly from my point of view, if this was happenning in my area I would do 2 things immediately: 1: I would delete from the cache description all mention of booty contents. 2. I would strip my cache of its booty, leaving only the log book. In addition I might a) leave a note to the vandals telling them why you have done what you did and/or leave a note indicating that if people want to trade, they can phone you at whatever your number is and you can arrange a meeeting. None of these ideas are "solutions" but as long as the looters keep getting positive reinforcement, they'll keep doing this. Geo-looting has become their new hobby.

How are people capturing the images in the first place?

A few weeks ago, I went by one of my caches and upgraded the contents, re-seeding it with some better stuff to counter-act the normal "erosion", i.e. degradation caused by trading down. Went to check on it recently and guess what, all the good stuff gone and nothing traded for it. Went through all the usual reactions: 1. Thought about archiving it. Decided not to for now. 2. Thought about ugrading it AGAIN, decided not to do that either. Maybe the cache will die and maybe it won't, but I'm not prepared to throw good money after bad. My one thought about this is as follows: The higher a cache's difficulty, the less likely it is to get plundered, either because: a) it's less likely to be stumbled upon by a non-cacher, or the kind of cacher who would do this is probably too lazy to invest the time and effort in going out to a difficult cache It is a great let-down to leave some nice stuff hoping that fellow cachers will enjoy it only to find it ends up in the pockets of some shmo.

A few weeks ago, I went by one of my caches and upgraded the contents, re-seeding it with some better stuff to counter-act the normal "erosion", i.e. degradation caused by trading down. Went to check on it recently and guess what, all the good stuff gone and nothing traded for it. Went through all the usual reactions: 1. Thought about archiving it. Decided not to for now. 2. Thought about ugrading it AGAIN, decided not to do that either. Maybe the cache will die and maybe it won't, but I'm not prepared to throw good money after bad. My one thought about this is as follows: The higher a cache's difficulty, the less likely it is to get plundered, either because: a) it's less likely to be stumbled upon by a non-cacher, or the kind of cacher who would do this is probably too lazy to invest the time and effort in going out to a difficult cache It is a great let-down to leave some nice stuff hoping that fellow cachers will enjoy it only to find it ends up in the pockets of some shmo.

A few weeks ago, I went by one of my caches and upgraded the contents, re-seeding it with some better stuff to counter-act the normal "erosion", i.e. degradation caused by trading down. Went to check on it recently and guess what, all the good stuff gone and nothing traded for it. Went through all the usual reactions: 1. Thought about archiving it. Decided not to for now. 2. Thought about ugrading it AGAIN, decided not to do that either. Maybe the cache will die and maybe it won't, but I'm not prepared to throw good money after bad. My one thought about this is as follows: The higher a cache's difficulty, the less likely it is to get plundered, either because: a) it's less likely to be stumbled upon by a non-cacher, or the kind of cacher who would do this is probably too lazy to invest the time and effort in going out to a difficult cache It is a great let-down to leave some nice stuff hoping that fellow cachers will enjoy it only to find it ends up in the pockets of some shmo.

Am going up this weekend to say goodbye to les Expos, get in a bit of caching. Anyone have any camping sites they'd recommend?

quote:Originally posted by brdad:You'd have to live in a house like this to think up stuff like that. I considered making it as a virtual, but decided it was too lame for my liking. But if anyone ever comes to Maine and wants the coords, just say so. http://www.bytethebullet.com/images/sking.jpg Knowing his active involvement in the community, I wrote Mr. King a couple of months ago requesting his permission to use this site as a virtual. Certainly anyone who works at the Tourist Information Centres in Bangor has always been free with this information when asked. In any event, haven't heard back, so for now am assuming he'd rather not increase the traffic by his house.

quote:Originally posted by brdad:You'd have to live in a house like this to think up stuff like that. I considered making it as a virtual, but decided it was too lame for my liking. But if anyone ever comes to Maine and wants the coords, just say so. http://www.bytethebullet.com/images/sking.jpg Knowing his active involvement in the community, I wrote Mr. King a couple of months ago requesting his permission to use this site as a virtual. Certainly anyone who works at the Tourist Information Centres in Bangor has always been free with this information when asked. In any event, haven't heard back, so for now am assuming he'd rather not increase the traffic by his house.

or conducted through trusted courriers. You leave a bunch of drugs out in the woods where anyone can find it or your customer can find but then say he didn't, and you have no way of proving delivery? Urban myth at work here.

quote:Originally posted by Rubbertoe:I've made a few posts over there as well, but I wanted to add this here. It seems that several people are saying that TNLN hurts a cache somehow. I can't understand how this is supposed to be accurate. If someone TNLN's a cache - it is as if they hadn't even been to the cache at all! How can this be a negative thing for a cache. They aren't leaving anything different in the cache, so they aren't running the risk of someone thinking they didn't trade fairly... and whatever contents were there before them are still going to be there after their visit. So, I see absolutely no harm in TNLN visits to people's caches... and I can't see how people can attribute the decline of a cache due to TNLN visits, either. Where there is no gain, the loss is obvious.

quote:Originally posted by Rubbertoe:I've made a few posts over there as well, but I wanted to add this here. It seems that several people are saying that TNLN hurts a cache somehow. I can't understand how this is supposed to be accurate. If someone TNLN's a cache - it is as if they hadn't even been to the cache at all! How can this be a negative thing for a cache. They aren't leaving anything different in the cache, so they aren't running the risk of someone thinking they didn't trade fairly... and whatever contents were there before them are still going to be there after their visit. So, I see absolutely no harm in TNLN visits to people's caches... and I can't see how people can attribute the decline of a cache due to TNLN visits, either. Where there is no gain, the loss is obvious.

Here we are arrived at the cache. We open it and... yuck another pile of McCrap! OK, some thoughts: 1. If you had a really nice house and a rusted-out car in the front lawn, what do you think observers would say, that the nice house tends to make the car not so bad, or that the car destroys the aesthetic of the house? Uh-huh, me too. A cache with trash in it is a trashy cache. For this reason, all crap trades into the cache tend to degrade the cache, in no small part because they send a signal that this is a place where you put your McCrap. It's called the "broken windows" effect. 2. For this reason we shouldn't necessarily tolerate McCrap. Now again, by McCrap I don't mean toys for kids and I don't mean even McToys provided they are unopened. I mean the sort of things we are talking about - things that can't conceivably be attractive to anyone except some small child. 3. Should caches have things for kids in them? Definitely. Nice, new things, not beaten up old things. I don't have kids but basically the question I ask when I take my nieces and nephews with me is: would I feel comfortable if they put this in their mouth? 4. Why not take McCrap from the cache just for the sake of trading and then swap it into another cache? For my money because that makes me a carrier of the McCrap virus. Maybe I didn't originally put the McCrap in, but no-one in the next cache will be able to tell the difference. By trading McCrap I am perpetuating the very thing I wish to stop. 5. OK, why not trade something nice for McCrap? I'll be honest, I have done that - in a case where the McCrap was so dismal that I felt it was no good to anyone, so I was trading as part of my "cache in, trash out" policy. But more often I don't, in the hopes that at some point the cache will hit whatever its McCrap limit is, that the next McCrapper will realize what they are doing, or at the very least that I won't continue to perpetuate the practise by validating McCrapping through a series of meritorious trades that would look familiar to certain native land negotiators from the 17th century. 6. For me, TNLN is an editorial comment, as is TN left something. 7. At the end of the day, whose responsibility is this? As a hobby it is each of our responsibilities, but in the individual cache it is the owners. So while I try to trade up, I don't feel it is my responsibility to clean up caches other than my own, which I try to seed with decent stuff and keep that way.

Why not give her the GPS and send her out to get it?

If I TNLN, it's an editorial comment on the contents of the cache.

Placing a cache near homeless people is asking for the cache to be looted.

I too am surprised at how few Islanders are geocaching, it seems like the majority of hits are coming from tourists. I suspect some bright light in PEI Tourism is going to see some opportunities there for next summer. I'm over pretty much every month, so take advantage of that opportunity to do maintainance on my cache there.

Very cool. Where can we write to commend them on this decision? Too often people only write to complain, not to thank people when their concerns are heard.

I think river ranger is being quite reasonable and responsible in his comments, while I'm being deliberately provocative in mine, but I'll try my point on this another way. I think in anything you do you have to make account for human error and human stupidity. You post co-ordinates to some place and the game is I have to get to that place. Don't kid yourself, there's going to be traffic. It's going to have an impact. You don't know what way people are going to approach your cache in most places. Some of the people are going to be there right after it rains, some of them are going to have dogs with them, some of them are going to have kids. Some of them aren't going to notice the damage they are doing, and some of them really aren't going to care. Now you can bemoan that fact and curse the way things are and couldn't we just all place caches right under spotted owl nests if only people would approach them properly OR you can accept that some people will not have the training, inclination, and/or awareness to do anything other than march right to the cache. So what are your options? For me when I place a cache I try to balance the placement with the impact. If the area is sensitive, I don't place the cache there, I place it a safe distance away or not at all. Secondly, I add a statement in the description which will provide readers with increased awareness and information. That doesn't solve the inclination problem but it's something anyway. But if you are gonna get bent outta shape because some branches get bent outta shape, then don't bother placing the cache. Some of the finest farmland in North America is buried under highways. Its environmental impact is HUGE. We can try to not deliberately make it worse, but bottom line, if you want a road that transport trucks can rumble through at 110 kmph, you are going to really wreck a lot of habitat. It's called an opportunity cost. Now in a world like that, in world that does a gazillion things to poison itself, there are a lot of things I am prepared to do: recycle, buy carefully, compost in my backyard, put up a solar panel. One thing I am NOT going to sweat about is the damage I do when I walk somewhere. Again, this is not an excuse for trampling deliberately. This is me saying that a bunch of bent branches and a social trail have NO important effect on the future of this planet - at least comparatively. Save your guilt for the next time you buy some overpackaged product or mow your lawn with an engine mower, or do any one of literally a million things you do which are much much worse. [This message was edited by Rigour on September 20, 2002 at 12:10 PM.]

quote:Originally posted by Zartimus: quote:Originally posted by Rigour:I would like to complain about the beautiful naked women in my bed. I can't tell if that is plural or not[grin]. It's not plural. It's not even singular. That's my complaint.