Adrenalynn

If I were thinking of how the rating system might be changed, it'd lean more towards the granularity of ratings. 1-5 isn't enough... A 1-10 scale, or a split-scale for the difficulties would be more realistic. Right now, a paddleboat required 150' off a calm lake/puddle is the same 5 terrain as a cache requiring a powered respirator, a tyvec bunnysuit, and a 25' rapel into an abandoned nuclear reactor's fuelrod containment area... Gotta admit that's kinda silly. Sure - they both require "special equipment". But the special knowledge needed to operate a kiddie-boat is not quite the same as that needed to make a wreck dive off a zodiac in unsheltered atlantic waters...

Mine that haven't run have all just dropped in my inbox as-of a few minutes ago. Looks like the logjam is cleared from here!

The new magellans of the Explorist series do not use vector averaging. As far as the Explorist 200, while this one will work fine. It does not have an option for a computer interface. the Explorist 210 would be a better choice. Not only will in allow the use of a data inteface it has 22MB on memory for map and Data storage, the Garmin Legend (Blue) has 8MB for storage, the Exp 210 will do auto routing the Legend will not. If you want a detailed TOPO map the Magellan map send topo 3D incluldes street names the Garmin software only include names of major roads. The Explorist 210 sells online for about 30or 40 dollars more than the old blue Legend, It is lot more GPS for not a lot more money than the blue legend. I have used several Garmin and Magelan hand held units over the years, they both work. just about any GPS made now is going to work fine for geocaching, most of the problems I have seen have been a problem having to do with cachers making mistakes when placing a cache. The only decent hide I have seen by a Noob was placed by Adrenalyn, but Adrenalyn waited untill getting about 100 finds befroe palcing a cache. But this thread is not about when should a noob hide a cache. Thanks! Since the averaging thing has been "fixed" they should be pretty equiv. In some ways, that's kinda a shame since the averaging thing is great in a quickly moving vehicle. The opposite becomes true when you're moving 70mph, then pull off the road - it takes awhile for the gps to "catch up". Even my eMap has some issues with that, although my Carputer doesn't... (laptop-like-based computer with an Earthmate GPS mated to either Delorme or Streets and Trips 2006) Anyway, the upshot still remains: It's a crummy carpenter who blames his hammer...

Please on't over react and become scared. I live in the area and beara sightings are common and attacks are very UNCOMMON. I don't recommend being scared to the point of non-participation in the great outdoors. However, realizing it is possible for a bear to attack and kill you should be apart of your consciousness. Fear is a great instinct that is responsible for keeping humans and other living things alive. Lack of fear can result in death. Also, lack of intelligence has played a big part in early demise (ie Timothy Treadwell). Realizing that it is possible that a meteor can fall from the sky, crash through your roof, and kill you in your sleep should also probably be in your noggin. As should realizing that you can be struck by lightning on a cloudless day. But the part about getting killed in a head-on collision because you were staring at your GPSr whilst speeding to an FTF? Just forget it. Never gonna happen...

My biggest fear is frequently realized. Walking a mile and a half through a million acre wilderness preserve for an "unknown" cache that turns out to be a micro in a tree.

Another woman for geocaching. Generally alone. Alone or with others, I seem to be able to make a lightpole driveup extreme in some way or another... Love the caching thing, though!

I can certainly understand why you're blowing a gasket, since the answer is just a few threads down the page and it took almost 10 seconds to find it... Try adding &dist=100 to the end of your query string. . .

One name: KRYPTOS eyup. Always solvable. Some just take a century or so...

Congrats to all the noobs! Welcome to Geocaching! Consider logging in your profile your first finds. Nice to see where you've been. 'Course, round these parts, I'm the noob - only 146 caches in the last few months.

I don't think it's mail-queue at the moment. They're just not generating. My found query is still in "scheduled at" state, and the last three PQs have never generated. My every-third-day PQ that should have generated Friday was last generated Tues.

It would generate "almost instantly" if the darned things weren't broken. . . [pout] None of my PQs have generated since before Thursday afternoon...

I haven't been able to get the bleepin' thing to generate queries in the last three days. Great way to ruin a caching weekend. Grrr.

I was with you right until the end there. I'd have expanded on "pull" and disagreed on wider head necessarily. You don't want to squeeze the ticks body. It can cause them to regurgitate whatever contaminates they carry into your system. So narrower tweezers held at an angle and placed between the head and body right against the skin tend to be better. Expanding on "pull" - pull SLOWLY and evenly. Don't yank. Breaking off the mouthparts under the skin is an almost sure infection...

I tend to leave logs that are longer based on how much effort the cache owner and/or I had to put into it. If the cache owner clearly spent a lot of time and effort, my logs will go multiple pages. If they were just driving around town tossing film canisters out the window - well, it's a bit less. Out in the field, I can go pages, or I can go TFTC (thanks for the cache). It depends on my schedule and/or the weather. Most of my TFTC are when it's pouring rain and I don't want to ruin the log, so I'm signing it in a plastic bag, blind. So you'll see a scrawled "found in the pouring rain. thanks for the hunt! - adrenalynn" It's all about personal style...

The problem I see with using this as a score is that people really don't have a clue how to rate the difficulty. It's so very subjective. I can shoot up a 300ft rockpile with 1meter + strides and not be winded. Someone wheelchair-bound would find that to be pretty impossible without a helicopter. I can rappel aussie-style down a cliff in the middle of the night in a "lightly arrested freefall". The average person would fall to their deaths not having been trained to do that. So that x/5 for me is an x/2. For someone else it's an x/aint-never-gonna-happen. I've seen a 4.5 rating that was about 20ft off a paved trail over flat ground. I've seen 1.5s that were an hour hike over rock piles - of course, I later figured out there was a fireroad or paved trail (or major roadway) within feet of it. A cache is what you make of it. The more work the owner put into it, the more enjoyment I get, the longer my log entries...

If you do 70mi down the Bradshaw and see ONE viper - you have your eyes closed, your fingers in your ears, you're sleeping on a block of ice, AND you're not looking very hard...

Another vote for wallyworld swissgear pole for ~$10.

Hey 'Chevy, That's pretty cool! I've been to the Miami Serpentarium half a dozen times. Neat place! Were they doing strike testing during your stay? I love to shoot strike tests... A real challenge. Please feel free to drop me an email. My boots are getting pretty ragged, and I'm contemplating buying new boots in the immediate future. I'd also love to talk with some rep about how geocaching differs from hunting, and knowing both snakes and caching - what I'd love to see in a boot. Gotta admit the market size is there... My current favorite is the Rocky Outback 4500 Ladies The nato-style rapid lace is nice, as are the speed locks at the ankle and calf. But it's a HEAVY boot for light hiking... For those questioning above: Cordura 1000 _should_ stop a cobra. They tend to strike higher, though, so a higher chap is also necessary. Careful if you go full-chaps as they tend to be very stiff and hard to move in. If I were in cobra country and worried about bites, I'd probably go a 3/4 chap with Cordura 1000 over polycarb. But I'm not a designer. Don't know if Chevy's company does outside-US stuff, but he might be the better one to comment.

No offense, TM and DV - I wanna go caching with him. He finds the coolest and nicest examples of pit vipers. Even his "accidental" photos are close to saleable. I'd be all over finding those 'nakes!

Against what? What area, what snakes? Metal is rarely used. For rattlers, 1000 Denier Cordura is common - also known as "viper cloth". personally, I wouldn't make it and depend upon it. Unless you have the equipment or handling experience to test it repeatedly...

Impersonating a police officer. Let us know how that goes for you. When you get out of jail...

I'm looking closer at your pics. Also, the cache location and such. Do you have any higher resolution pictures? Incidentally, he's not all that small. About midrange for that snake. They run 17-34". From the size of his body, I'm going to guess that back up under the rock there's a fair bit more snake there. probably around 2' and change overall. His eyes look cloudy. He might be looking to shed here soon... I can't see his rattle, which would help. But it appears he has 23 dorsal scale rows (that's why I asked about higher res). I'm going to go out on a limb here and say Crotalus cerastes laterorepens which would specifically be "The Colorado Desert Sidewinder". There is a slim change that he's C.cerastes cercobombus - Sonoran Sidewinder. But if so, he'd be pretty west of his territory at that cache. The rarest/hardest to find are the Mojave Desert Sidewinders (Crotalus cerastes cerastes). I've only ever seen one of those. They're further north and west - I found mine up around Lake Havasu City.

Just a note, and I'm sure you were joking, but for accuracy: The fangs will penetrate even good leather gloves like warm butter. Remember - they're evolved to penetrate hide. Snake gloves these days are generally pretty heavy layered kevlar spectra. But he'd strike out anyway. Wrist to elbow is a more likely bite. As you noted in your entry, however, as soon as you disturbed him, he tried to get away instead of going after you. And the sidewinder tends to be the more aggressive of the rattlers. Good shot, though! Just as a rule of thumb: If the head is triangular shaped coming off the body and significantly wider than the neck, it's a sure bet it's a pit viper of some type or another.

Short answer: You don't. They need their own account and their own log entry for the cache.

Let's look at this from the cop-angle... Now, it needs to be noted here that I'm not now, never was, and would never consider being a police officer. Crummy job... [dramatization follows] Ok, so you got up this morning and had an argument with your wife. You were supposed to change the oil in her car today but you can't: You have to go to court and spend the next 45mins having a lawyer try to discredit you. He wants to know "exactly how you ascertained that his client was doing 110mph in a 25mph zone". Of course, you're kinda sensitive to that seeing as how just last month you helped clean up the mess where three teenagers died in a "street racing accident" on that very road. Such a senseless waste. . . Go home and change for your shift. You get a call for robbery in progress. Oh yeah, the kid's armed. Turns out to be a watergun. Good thing he got talked down instead of wasted. That would have destroyed your "career" [sic] And how would you live with yourself after that? You make a traffic stop. The woman is weaving erratically. She gets irate, throws her license at you. You take a deep breath and calmly ask for her registration and insurance. She _darts_ for the glovebox. Time stops: Is she going for a weapon or registration and proof of insurance? Time starts again - it was the latter. You hook her up - suspicion of DUI. She's still irate - stupid public servant. Then when you put her in the car, she starts crying about her family and how sorry she is and how it's never happened before - gosh, is this the same person? You respond to a suspected domestic abuse. The most dangerous call a cop can get. You know these two. Fifth call this month. Last time you told him if it happened again, he was going to jail. You place him under arrest when suddenly she jumps on your back and starts pounding on you. You can't take her man away! It's the end of the shift, busy day, and you get a call for suspicious activity. Here's someone poking around under a bridge. He has something in his hand, hard to tell from here. You ask him "how are you this evening, sir?" He stands up and says "good evening, officer, what can I do for you?" You ask him what he's doing. He replies "I'm looking for a geocache. Are you familiar with geocaching?" No. "It's like a complicated scavenger hunt. One geocacher places a container with a log book some place. They then post it to the Internet. Other geocachers then download those coordinates and use their gps to go try to find it and sign the logbook." Hmm. Sounds harmless enough. "Do you have any ID?" "I always carry my ID. It's in my left hip pocket. May I get it?" Wow. Cooperative citizen. "Yes, please" [calmly take ID from pocket with two fingers, hand it to the cop] ID is valid. Looks like the same person. JoeHarmlessCitizen. Punch the number in the car terminal - no wants, no warrants. "Sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Citizen. Have a nice evening and stay safe." "Thank you, officer, YOU TOO!" "Weird hobby, but on a scale of 1-WEIRD, it's about a 1.2. [shrug] Nice guy, though. These geocachers are pretty cool". That's a cop *I* want to run into when I'm out caching. The one that ran into a cacher as described. He doesn't need to see my ID. He just needs to hear "are you familiar with geocaching?" and his previous experience pops immediately to mind. Everyone with a bad attitude about cops should get invited on a ride-along once or twice. It's a real eyeopener. And when you have friends who are cops, you get to learn the other side of it: They're people with personal lives, stresses, good days, bad days, hopes, dreams, ... Personally, I find the most amazing thing to be how good the psych screening is for cops. I'd have shot most of the people described above in the face. Twice.