mcrt

I have been using my Forerunner 305 for the last 3+ years as my primary GPS. I was using a 2001 vintage etrex before that. Overall I love it. I never have to worry about setting it down and forgetting it at a cache. One thing that I have never been able to figure out though is the huge difference between the mileage displayed on the GPS unit and the information downloaded into the Garmin Training Center software. Today I was out caching and at the end of the day the Forerunner 305 showed 3.30 miles. I hooked it up to the computer and when the data was downloaded into the Training Center software it came up as 4.8 miles. I then took the data into EasyGPS which showed my mileage as 5.6 miles. Any idea why the major differences? What has your experience been?

I was watching some of the Latitude 47 Blog videos and there was one about a bomb squad team member recommending Geocaching. "Sgt. Byrd believes that other members of the bomb disposal community can learn to sharpen their awareness and stay safer through geocaching." http://blog.geocaching.com/2010/08/geocach...st-found-video/

I didn't know Allanon as well as I should have. I had met him at several events over the years, but I tended to stay with just the few people I already knew well. Brian was always very friendly and I could tell that people loved and respected him. I saw Allanon at the XXX Rootbeer event and was busy running around talking to people and didn't have a chance to say hi. You never know when your final day will be. I know you need to live every day to the fullest. It is always hard when you get these reminders. RIP Allanon.

A couple that are close to the airport that I have done are Paris CDG Airport Central TB hotel and TB Hotel Roissy CdG bis. They are doable on a long layover or before/after flights. In central Paris I have only done three. cimetiere de passy (paris) was well worth it. The other two are archived.

Thanks again for the great coin. It showed up in todays mail. I'm really glad I ordered a couple extra from you while I was at it. My friends will love them.

Bank notes are usually a great thing to bring home. The artistry of them is often amazing. The least valuable notes I have are from Zimbabwe. When I was there in 2001 the official exchange was $32 Zim/US$, but the black market exchange was closer to 500. Now they Zim$ has pretty much vanished from use there, but those 2001 notes were worth a billionth of a cent or less. I got one of the best quotes ever from a friend of my Mom's. She was once told to live the story you want to tell. After she pondered that she quit her job and signed up as the cook on a ship heading from New Olreans to the West Coast via the Panama Canal. These stories have been great. I'm looking forward to hearing more.

My total count is 54 different countries. Greece is still on my to do list. I love history so love seeing all of the places I have heard about. Too many places and not enough time. One real bummer is that I did my first find before I took of in 2001, but there were so few caches and internet time was expensive so I did not keep caching during the travels. I didn't find my second cache until 2006 so I only have finds in eight countries.

I did a good job of realizing a dream starting in 2001. I have always had a love of travel so in 2000 I started planning the trip of a lifetime. In May 2001 I quit my job, and packed up or got rid of everything I owned. Then I loaded up my backpack and in June caught a plane to Kenya. I spent six weeks there working in the slums of Nairobi. After that I caught a truck and spent the next seven weeks getting to Cape Town. Next 3 months in Europe, two months in India and Nepal, two months in SE Asia, Australia and New Zealand and another two months in South America and the Caribbean. After the first year I came back to the US and took a few classes and helped a friend develop her ideas from Nairobi. In June 2003 we went back to Kenya and started the East African Center for Empowerment of Women and Children. (www.eastafricancenter.org) Six month of that and it was time to come back to reality. All told I was "unemployed" and "homeless" for 2.5 years. I visited 42 countries and each time I move I marked my location on my eTrex and noted it in my journal. Certainly a dream of a lifetime. I keep dreaming and would love to eventually join the Traveler's Century Club. I'm at 62 by their count, 38 to go.

I agree that leaving bugs/coins is not required, but it is polite to do so. If a cache gets hit three times a year than I will do "rescue missions" to get a bug out of there and moving again and not leave another bug, but if it is a rest area cache with 150 finds a year then it is nice to leave some travelers for the next person to have fun moving on. I put this on one of my caches that I try to keep stocked with coins and bugs: If you are a repeat visitor coming for a coin, please replace it with another coin. If it is your first visit, help yourself.

Some people don't want to go back to caches at all. For me I think it is a lot of fun to move trackables onward. Isn't that their goal? Especially if I can help something directly meet the goal. I try to leave coins if I take coins or bug if I leave bugs. If possible more than I took. I do log a note on the cache saying what I took and what I left. Safe caching.

When I run my found caches PQ I am not getting child WPs either. Looks like the last time I got the second file was April.

Count me in too.

I know I am hoping to get this fixed too. I just did a caches along a route (created on Google Earth) from Fairbanks to North Pole. No filters applied. From the Fairbanks airport there are about 100 caches in a 5 mile radius, but the caches along a route returns 28 caches on the 17 mile route from Fairbanks to North Pole showing six miles on either side. Argghh.

I rarely go to the forums, but was an almost daily user if the gc kml file. I was stunned today when I went to use it today and got the message The Network KML Link has been disabled. I see this has been a hot topic on the forums today. I find it hard to imagine that the resource draw of this feature is more than the amount of PQs that will need to be done to replace this. Plus the KML was always up to date. With caches being added and archived constantly any PQ is out of date as soon as it is run. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE try to get something that will run on Google Earth again.

My dad has a Delorme GPS. I think it is the PN-20. He is going to Barbados on vacation and wants to try to get maps, I am assuming road maps, for it. Anything out there? I didn't see anything for that on the Delorme website. Thanks

I'm looking forward to visiting Team Pez again. See you there.

159 looks and no one wanted to sell me one for that price. Oh well I just bought a couple off Ebay. Off to Kenya on the 12th.

I am heading down to Kenya in a couple of weeks and am looking for a GPS that I can leave down there for other volunteers to use. I have my old eTrex, but it is pretty beat up and I am a bit sentimental about it. I really don't want to leave it down there. We will be locating huts so we can do a proper random survey of the community. I have a Lowrance iGo I could leave there, but it won't talk to the computer easily. It just adds a ton of manual work. If I get one of the eTrex models like the original yellow one or the legend etc I will need the funky serial cable. If I have to buy one it adds a bunch to the price. If I get one of the models with that connection I want the cable included. The other option is something like a Legend C which is USB data. I have lots of the mini USB cables around so no problems there. Bottom line it is my goal to get this for $50 total. More than that I am willing to lend out my old reliable eTrex. Thanks, MCRT

Hey Craig, I'm a fat guy so I'll be keeping you company near the back of the pack. Just found out about this group caching event recently and sounds like a great one to get in on. I know there are a few other caches along the trail, but I plan on hitting them on the return instead of the way out because I want the Ape cache to be my first find on that DeLorme page. If anyone knows people who have "Around the World in 80 Caches" coins the APE cache is a 10 point score. I'll already do the max number of moves for the one that I have right now, but would be happy to assist other people with the coins they have in this competition.

I was fortunate enough to meet Raine at todays event as well and received one of these coins. I am getting closer to forming the idea for a personal coin. Raine is on the list of people who will get one when I finally get one made.

Add my name to the list of people who would be interested in this adventure. I have done a decent amount of independent travel so am pretty good with wandering in foreign lands. I would recommend to whoever is going to be the organizer on this that you have a fixed schedule for a couple of days before and after APE day. Before and after that people can do whatever they want. I have found that for group travel unless you have a fixed plan there can be a lot of challenges. I use the "Rule of Squares" when considering group travel without a fixed schedule. With one person you only need to consider what you want to do, one squared is one. With more than one you have to consider what each other person wants in addition to yourself, so does each other person. With two people there are four sets of considerations: what do I want, what does the other person want. That has to be considered from both sides. By the time you are at five people you have 25 sets of things to consider. It gets ugly quickly. Thanks to Globalgirl for pointing out this thread to me.

I had a harddrive crash last week so reloaded everything. The default load was 4.0.2416. I just reinstalled clicking on the beta and it loaded 4.0.2693 I can load my .gpx files again. I'm really happy about that because I had spent a bunch of time making gpx files from a year of backpacking around the world and it was fun to look at my trip. Pics from the trip are at www.mikemccarty.com