The Odd Socks

This thread is good timing. We've just this week had at least three travel bugs (and hopefully a fourth too) complete their missions. We released a travel bug for each member of our family in Bradford where we then lived. Each of the four had a mission to get as close to middle of Durham as it could, as quickly as they could, in a race to see which bug got the closest. Having just moved house to Durham, we've been out caching twice this week to collect up the bugs. They were all reported as being within 4 miles of our new home in the city centre. We collected three of them, but posted a DNF on the fourth, as we couldn't find the cache it was in. Hopefully that was just our incompetance - we'll go back again soon and have another look! Not as epic a journey as some bugs on this thread - but it's been fun, all the same!

.....and by the way.....how do we find out more about the pub meet up?? And does it tend to be an afternoon or an evening thing?

Hi Mandy, We're moving to Durham itself, fairly close to the middle (I think!). Sounds like we've picked an area that's great for caching in - look forward to meeting you all at some point fairly soon. Thanks for the welcome Claire

We've used something that sounds very similar, although I think we made a phone call (which was unanswered) rather than sent a text. We had our photo taken outside the Manchester Evening News building. The cache was News at M.E.N and there's a link to the phone service we used on the cache page. Hope that helps, Claire

Cool - thanks for that! We may well give it a try - but will wait a bit and see if we can remember which box our teddy bears are in, before we commit ourselves!

I've posted on the main bits of the forum just occasionally (and I read them often), but somewhere smaller has a nicer feel to it, in some ways. You get to recognise different posters more easily and more of a feel for their quirks and personality.

Hmmm, can't work out how to quote two people in one post Off to Durham....in less than a week - excuse me while I go and panic, and throw things randomly in boxes!!

I'm vaguely aware that such things happen, from hanging about here, but I don't think there have been any close to us - not that I've seen mention of, anyway. Must keep a better eye out.

I'm a little embarrassed to interupt all this talk of snogging .... ....but I do have a question..... I'm interested in how these joint caching trips tend to come about. Did you know each other anyway, before you decided to go caching together? Or did you first bump into each other at a cache site? Or meet via this forum? Or some other way? Just curious - in case we were ever keen to find other folks to cache with, (but you can keep the snogs, if that's ok!)

Until I read this thread, it had never occurred to me to worry about them.... But I will be doing from now on

How about placing the cache very close to a laundrette!?

I have plans for a book swapping cache, though it will take a while as we're about to move to a new area so we're going to need some time to get to know our surroundings and work out where it might fit. Does anyone know if there are any already in the UK? As far as I can tell all the examples given so far are US ones. (I confess I only checked the location of those who posted about them, rather than all the individual cache pages )

I guess that works both ways, doesn't it. My eldest, who is 7, was thrilled to bits to get "Real Live American Money" in a cache (a "Where's George" dollar bill) - again, it would have been much more of a non-event over near you.

I found a micro cache at the weekend and was surprised to find that it had swag in it. The micro was a little bit larger than a film canister, but not by much. I would have been glad to trade for it, but all our trade items were much too big of course. I sometimes even have this problem with smaller "non-micro" caches. It can be very hard to squeeze things in. Anyone got any ideas for really small swag, but things that will still make a decent trade item and not just be rubbish. As an additional thought, I really like the idea of leaving stuff in micros, but is that likely to cause problems - because they aren't really set up for it. (I promise I would make sure the lid fitted back on properly!!)

Now that's a very good idea. I've just joined freecycle and had a successful time so far getting unwanted furniture and old magazines taken away by happy new owners. I bet an ammo box would be just the sort of thing someone might have kicking around in a garage, but not bother to offer unless asked about it.

Wow - how cool is that! (Ok, so I'm easily impressed but there are worse crimes ) Many thanks for your help, guys. Just need to find a few more caches now, to make the map look a bit more populated - what a hardship!

That's very cool, Team Ballibeg! I found the map with our cache finds on it, on the geocacheuk site, which was very pleasing.....but what's the secret to getting it to appear in your profile? I tried a couple of things, but it wouldn't play. Does it update itself on your profile automatically, or do you update it yourself? I've seen other profiles with a "counties I've cached in" map as well. Does anyone know how that can be done? Any help welcomed gladly.

Hmmmm - turns out that Mr Odd Socks bought himself a bike mounting for the GPS ages ago, but neglected to mention it Bang goes another idea. When I confessed to my intentions, he kindly said that as the clip is on his road bike, I could buy him one for his mountain bike if I wanted to.....but it's not the same somehow. (Both bikes have been living in our bedroom for the past 3 years - looking forward to living in a house with a shed!!)

Many thanks, Guys, you're wonderful! I think I'll try Maplins first, as we have one pretty close to here, and it seems slightly less complicated than ordering over the web.

Sorry, I knew I was likely to forget that crucial piece of information - but still managed to do it. It's a Garmin Etrex, I think - the bright yellow one (not that the colour makes any difference to the fittings, of course ) Thanks for the answers so far, guys.

Hopefully this is a fairly straightforward practical question... I think it might be a useful and fun thing to attach a GPS to a mountain bike. Is it possible to buy a fitting or clip which will make this easy to do? Or will I need to use brute force, cable ties and duct tape?? And if it is possible to buy a clip, where would be the best place to look for such a thing? (Google turned out not to be everso helpful - maybe I used the wrong terms) This is as a possible present for Mr Odd Socks, so I'm taking a chance (a pretty safe bet, I would say) that he won't wander through the forum himself......but just in case, shhhhhh everybody, if you know the answer, you'll have to whisper!!!

54. The Odd Socks - 82

We were introduced by the Yorkshire Yompers - their youngest son is best friends with our oldest. They also introduced The McKnifficent 6, who we also know well. A tangent, but is that the same Chris Packam who used to present The Really Wild Show??? I used to have a tremendous crush on him when I was a teenager - I had no idea he was still around, (if it's the same one)

We've found a cache in the UK that was set up exactly like that. We found the key on the travel bug first and had a great time trying to break the codes on the tag attached to it, and find out what on earth this key could belong to. It was all very intriguing. Having finally figured it all out, we then had to find the cache it belonged to. It worked really well - it was one of the hardest but most satisfying caches we've found yet - a very hard puzzle indeed, though it would be possible to do it in a more straightforward way too, if you prefered. Incidentally, it was a micro, so we were in no danger of locking the keys into the cache by mistake! But I would imagine the owners were clever enough to keep hold of a spare key, just in case

Wow - many thanks for the information....and for the very many opinions as well. I had no idea I was starting off such a hot topic!