Cyclometh

This has already been contentious enough and my initial goal of putting out the word on these items has been satisified. Closing this to avoid the inevitable degradation that will follow.

I'll look into whether I can find some inexpensive or free wiki hosting this weekend. Maybe I'll even resurrect an old server and set it up.

Wikis vary in size and scale. Wikipedia's pretty much the biggest one you'll see. It's absolutely massive and completely beyond the scope of what I'm thinking of. I was thinking more along the lines of FlexWiki, which is very lightweight and allows you to edit a page simply by double-clicking it when you're reading it. Its hosting requirements are minimal.

No what you said in your original post that if they were spotted in caches that they should be taken out and disposed of. There are a lot of items in caches that aren't appropriate for kids, but that doesn't mean they should be taken out and disposed of. El Diablo I think these particular items, if spotted in a cache, SHOULD be taken out and disposed of. Nowhere did I say that every item not appropriate for kids should be gotten rid of. These things are packaged as toys, and are clearly not safe to be given to children. To my mind, these fall under the guidelines of no dangerous items in caches. The CSPC has issued a recall for them. That's not something they just do on a whim; it's considered a real danger. If these weren't packaged as toys, or said somewhere that they contained a high lead content, maybe you'd have a point. Since they're prepackaged, and in the US anyway, many parents rely on our government's fairly strict controls on product safety, most would assume that it's safe to give to a child. Unless you personally test every item your child gets their hands on with a gas chromatograph, you're in the same boat. Oh, and I really wish people would read the article before issuing their own knee jerk response. Someone even went off about lawsuits, when the article very clearly stated that none has been filed.

I think people a responding to the knee-jerk response that we should all automatically remove every cheap looking trinket out of a cache because because one kid died after swallowing a broken piece of metal. If you had bothered to read the article, you would have found that several items have been very clearly identified, with pictures and descriptive text. This isn't some crusade against every dollar store toy you might find in a cache. It's a warning that several very specific items, with pictures of same, contain high concentrations of lead and are unsafe for anyone- child or adult- to handle. It'd be great publicity if some kid comes down with lead poisoning from a toy found in a cache left by a well-meaning cacher who didn't know. Exactly how would that affect the sport, you think?

As I know this is my hot point, I will step away from the computer after this and take up knitting or some such but...the very fact that a child died (probably one not old enough to have said item) and the parents sued the company (or companies...else there wouldn't have been a recall), does show that irresponsibility on the part of the parents. Small miniature figurines such as are used for tabletop gaming (strategy, D&D, war, etc) used to be lead based. Now they're pewter and 3 times the cost. Why? Because a small child thought it looked tasty. Kindereggs are banned in the US and are considered contraband (you can be fined and/or arrested for transporting them in) because they contain a plastic capsule with a toy or puzzle inside. Why are they banned? Because, even though the package was clearly marked for 3 yrs and older, it was given to an 18mo old who choked and died. We are letting our most irresponsible make our rules for us and dictate the actions of all. Keep small things from your kids or teach your kids not to eat things that aren't food items ... *grumbles* now I'm all grumpy. Time to cook dinner and get away from the computer. Schnitzel should do it. I get to beat some pork chops into submission and take out the pent up angst In the case of the items I'M talking about, it was the CSPC, not parents. Nobody's had any problem yet with the items in question, but they're not safe. And they don't have any warnings on them about their content being mostly lead. Small parts arent' the issue here, it's the material the bloody things are made of. Lead poisoning's insidious and hard to detect until it's too late. This is a question of whether or not you're informed enough to determine whether that item's safe for the kid or not. The child that died was the main part of the story, the CSPC recall of the other items was the "and this happened as well" part.

Good grief, people. I didn't say or even IMPLY that parents aren't responsible for their kids. The CSPC has recalled these things because they've got lead in them. And a child died after swallowing a piece of one. End of story. Nobody's telling parents what to do. If you want to let your kids play with toys made of lead, that's not my problem. But at least now some people know that if you spot these things at a dollar store or in a cache to stay away from them as they're not safe for kids.

Assuming you're an adult, of course. But these are not the types of things you would typically see an adult take for themselves.

This article about a child that died of lead poisoning after swallowing a piece of jewelry from Reebok also includes some info on necklace and ring sets sold in dollar stores like Dollar Tree, Dollar Bills, Dollar Express, Greenbacks, Only $1 and Super Dollar Tree stores until last month. It's possible (probable) that items like these ended up in caches, since many of us (myself included) visit dollar stores and so on for inexpensive swag, especially the kid-friendly variety. If you spot them in a cache, they should be taken out and disposed of. If you took one from a cache for your child, it'd be a good idea to take it away and destroy it immediately. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11974094/

I couldn't disagree more. I can take a few hours on a weekend and go hit up half a dozen caches with my son, or one or two further afield. Placing a cache means spending the time setting it up, which isn't huge. But it also means committing to maintaining that cache, and that may not be so convenient. There's a big difference between finding and placing a cache in terms of time commitment. Having time to find them doesn't say anything about having time to hide them, unless you mean having time to "fire and forget" a bunch of caches that'll degrade and end up with SBA notes in a few months.

I rest my case. This is exactly the attitude I've been referring to all along. You're not even trying to engender it, but it's there. I'm not saying it's a bad thing or a good thing, but it's a fact. The attitude of those who have been doing this longer is that they know better. Maybe you're right. But nobody should be surprised when a relatively new cacher isn't inclined to place their own or never bothers to try.

You're entitled to your opinion. I don't agree.

Well, we've got a pretty good discussion area here, but I agree, discussion in the context of an article is a good thing. We may not need to do that much to make that happen, though- most wikis are so easy to edit that you can just do the discussion on that topic page, or just have a house rule that says you create a new topic with "_discussion" after the name of the article being discussed or something like that.

I've taken to carrying a bunch of stuff, small and large, in my cache bag, from carabiners to books. I left a book, a chessboard and a game in a cache not long ago, it was a neat cache and my son found a toy car in it, but there was a lot of "cache cruft". Hopefully I improved it somewhat.

I've been thinking about benchmark hunting in general since I came to the hobby. One thing I've found is that there's a lot of good info out there, but you kind of have to scour about to locate it. There's some great pinned threads here, but parsing through discussions on a forum is not always the best way to simply find an answer. What do you folks think about setting up a Wiki for benchmark hunting and recovery? It could provide topics on background, terminology, history, and the NGS. It would also include topics like how to submit a good recovery report, the different types of marks and their use, and so on. I conceive of a pretty much open wiki, with little or no access control. Given the limited audience, I don't think that would be a big deal. What we'd need is a place to host it and some disk space. Thoughts?

It's a cool idea, but I wonder how long it would be before it was ransacked and all the games in it taken. Maybe instead of the game itself, have people leave the name of the game they have and a means of contacting them. You leave a token, pick one up, contact the owner of that token and get the game from them. I dunno, maybe that's too much effort for people to go through. But a cache full of video game disks would be a tempting target for some of the less scrupulous. After all, even at only $5, you could sell them all and turn a profit if you didn't buy any of them in the first place.

You and I must not be reading the same threads, then. Like I said, I really don't care what people think of me or any caches I may place. However, I haven't placed one yet simply because I looked at the forums, did some research and realized that the perceived bar to entry for decent caches was higher than I expected initially. Note that not caring what people think doesn't mean I'm inclined to just put out sucktastic caches. It just means than when I do put one out, I'll feel fine with telling anyone who doesn't like it to pound sand. With a community like this one, having an intimidation factor like there is (and whether you agree or not, it is there) for new caches and cachers is a fact of life. Asking why more people don't place caches in light of that is kind of disingenous.

I agree with El Diablo'. I could throw a film canister in a truck stop and call it a cache. That is not why I'm here. I am currently researching my first cache, which is in a state park, and requires me to submit paperwork, and actually stand behind my cache, with all of the enviromental considerations. I believe that is what geocaching should be. I want a cache to take me to an interesting place other than a light post in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I want to either learn something, see something really strange, or have a beautiful view of our exquisit country......Just my thoughts. Not everyone who wants to hide their first cache wants to do a lamp-post micro in a Wal-mart parking lot. But a lot of people with what are probably good ideas will never bother trying them out for fear of a negative reaction from the caching community. Maybe that's not so bad; who knows, it may raise the overall quality of caches. But you can't have it both ways.

All I can say is that I considered setting up a cache not long after taking up the hobby. But reading some of the threads and rants about caches that people think suck really dampened my enthusiasm for placing one. I'm still going to do one, but probably not until later this summer. And I'm not even that concerned about what people think; I'm just not willing to expend effort for someone to come along and bash said effort. I guess I get a little annoyed when someone asks why more people don't hide caches when all they have to do is read this and the "Getting Started" forum to find plenty of reasons for a newbie who's being diligent and reading up on the topic before leaping in to suddenly think "maybe I shouldn't do this, I don't want to end up being mocked here like all these other hapless people".

Because a lot of people will jump on you if you don't spend a long time planning, setting up, and executing your cache. And there's some that, if they don't think it meets their personal standards, will be happy to let you know about it. There's a lot of people who love to be cache critics. That's pretty intimidating to some people.

I use Cachemate and GSAK for that. Download a PQ into GSAK, move it to Cachemate. When I'm out on the road and find a cache or benchmark, I just do a radius search there and browse the list for the next interesting one.

Two words: flame thrower! Yeah, because starting a fire in the woods at a hazardous waste site or booby-trapped marijuana field is a good idea.

Actually, this brings up something I was thinking about last night- I'm going to be going after some survey markers on the Columbia River, some of which are pretty far out in the sticks. I'm concerned less about animals than I am humans. Some areas have clandestine marijuana fields and meth labs out in the woods. I don't carry weapons and wouldn't on a survey mark hunt, but I'm looking at bringing a friend along and making sure I've got a satellite phone or something in case of running across some less than desirable elements out there.

Including iocaine powder? Inconceivable! Kindly re-read the forum guidelines, paying closer attention to the section prohibiting direct references or allusions to The Princess Bride. You keep using that word. I do not believe it means what you think it means. (OK, I'll stop now. That was just too good to resist. We now return you to your regularly scheduled topic) Personally, I've gotten nervous at a few caches when they were in drain tubes and such once or twice. But the worst thing we have around here is generally going to be things like spiders. I need to get a walking stick, that's for certain- once I start hitting up a few areas on the Columbia River further out from my home environs, I imagine the chances for a close encounter will go up dramatically.

Including iocaine powder? Inconceivable!