tgspidell

Amazing Race 3 is about to start on CBS in October. It occurs to me that a geocaching hunt would be an interesting event for the teams to compete in. The question is: How do you build a geocaching event that ten or so teams can all find? If they're all finding the same item, one team can just follow another, ruining the challenge. Perhaps ten caches spread out in a circular arrangement in a desert, each starting in the center. Or perhaps it just wouldn't make good TV... Anyway, I'd love to see it. It'd be a great promotional gimmick for Garmin. tgspidell

After reviewing all of the comments, we've decided to leave both caches up, and cross reference them. Thanks for all of the opinions. tgspidell

I posted a virtual cache in Rocky Mountain National Park - http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=31099 About eight days later, another geocacher posted a cache at virtually the same location - http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=32628 I've emailed antennaDC (the other geocacher) to see if we're referring to the exact same sign in our caches. We're not - the two signs are about 20' from each other. He's offered to either link to my cache or delete his cache. The question - is having two virtual caches so close to each other useful, or annoying? Thanks for any opinions, Tom Spidell

With 1500+ benchmarks already found, I just hope that the ones already found will count when a counting system is implemented. In other words, I hope everything isn't reset when the counting system goes live. One other variation on counting - I think it'd be interesting to have a separate count for benchmark "first finds." With benchmarks, I think it'd be fun to have an extra incentive to find (and, in some cases, uncover and clean) them first. That'd get us to the elusive "under 700,000" goal faster! Tom S.

With 1500+ benchmarks already found, I just hope that the ones already found will count when a counting system is implemented. In other words, I hope everything isn't reset when the counting system goes live. One other variation on counting - I think it'd be interesting to have a separate count for benchmark "first finds." With benchmarks, I think it'd be fun to have an extra incentive to find (and, in some cases, uncover and clean) them first. That'd get us to the elusive "under 700,000" goal faster! Tom S.

Looked for a benchmark marked as MONUMENTED - http://www.geocaching.com/mark/details.asp?PID=OM0441 This one was by a railroad which no longer exists - looks like it's in the process of being turned in to a bike path. The official history lists 1934 by CGS (MONUMENTED) Does this mean that it was MONUMENTED in 1934 (whatever that means), or that it was last verified in 1934 by CGS, and has been monumented sometime since then? I'm wondering if there's no chance of finding MONUMENTED benchmarks. Thanks, tgspidell

A new Geocacher here. My first surprise when geocaching was that the GPS satellites aren't geosynchronous. I thought that any satellites that are lower than a geosynchronous orbit eventually come down. This means that the satellites have to use power occasionally to stay in a correct orbit. This seems a risky thing to do for such precisely positioned satellites. Am I misunderstanding the physics here? Thanks, tgspidell