brad.32

I don't know about the moving to Hawai'i part. My wife wants to move farther east not west. Otherwise it could work. ArcGIS is so much nicer than the old Arc/INFO

The code could go by columns instead of by rows 101011110000000100111110010010001111110110101101100010001111100000010000101 I've tried both code sequences with different grouping sizes but didn't come up with anything either, including using the 2's compliment of both sequences. The end or beginning of each row could have a check digit (the sums are odd or even and match at the ends, probably coincidence [small sample]). To claim a virt at Gusev, you would have to break the code and should answer the science questions: were the rocks, minerals, and geologic landforms modified by the presence of water? Email the answers to Steve Squyres at Cornell University

Art Bell Boo. Hiss.

Spirit landed in what may have been a lake bed. There are more features (depressions and rocks, etc) there than the investigators expected. The current round of pictures are just mapping shots to get bearings and decide where to drive the rover to collect more detailed spectra and other data. That site was selected for Spirit because it has the potential to provide a lot of information about the past hydrology of the the region. The "cache owners" went back and forth with the "cache approvers" / engineers to select sites with science potential and mininal crash and burn potential. The puzzle cache is an opportunity for kids to be involved in the exploration process. The blocks holdin the disk are part of a magnetic experiment and can be used an a color calibrator similar to the other disk with the sun dial. The sun dial is to highlight the similarities and differences between the motion of the sun here and there, etc.

All the racers have been retrieved from the event cache. As long as I'm posting something... The voting for the most creative, so far: Rank Votes Bug Name 1 7 Sparky 2 3 Sunday Drive 3 3 Carl the Canoe

You might look through this thread, and the threads linked into it for information on tags that other people have used: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=59108

Did you try doing a search of this forum for races? A quick look at some of the recent threads came up with these threads, but a search will probably come up with more... The CircumConUS race just started http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=59876 A new race in Europe and Africa http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=61258 Other race possibilities, including a current one http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=26401 Edited to add the 2003 Cannonball Run http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=26567

Sissy-n-CR have done it with a small, circular disk attached to a steel penny. Room for the bug's name and the tracking number: http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=30717

Go to the travel bug page and click on "visit log" next to your log entry. Click on "edit image" above the image. Click on the trash can to the upper right of the image to delete the image and then upload the corrected one.

I take pictures of the travel bug as people would find it (the hitchhiker with part of the metal and instruction tags showing), but you are right, the hitchhiker is the only thing that needs to be in the picture. Showing part of the metal tag gives people a sense of scale though. Everyone who has handled a travel bug knows how big that tag is, so they can judge the size of the hitchhiker from that.

A fellow cacher told me that he was looking through the first couple pages of the TB gallery over the weekend and found 9 that had the tracking number clearly visible in the pictures. He sent emails to those owners. At 20 pictures / page, that's about 1/4 of them. Scary.

bons pointed out in another thread that they all haven't been logged out of the event cache yet. All of the 26 racers were physically taken by the people who attended the starting line event, so eventually they all should be retrieved by those people.

All of the bugs at EELBOY's event were taken by the end of the event. There were 26 CircumConUS racers and about 10-15 regular bugs. Some people were under the impression that they should trade bug for bug, but, at least for the racers, they needed to be distributed. I've been to two geocaching events. People did not write down the tracking numbers of the bugs at them. The bugs people logged were the ones they took.

At least the chicken is flexible. Stumpy is pretty tall. I just added another picture to the event page that shows the bugs more from the side: http://users.rcn.com/brad.32/geocaching/racepictures.htm Vote.

The race has begun We had a good turnout at the launch/release/starting line event and all the racers are on their way. Good luck to them as they make their way to the first stop: Texas. The first item now that the race is underway is for you to vote for the most creative or unique racer for one of the race awards. Since polls haven't been implemented in the new Groundspeak forums, please visit the race page (http://users.rcn.com/brad.32/geocaching/tbrace.htm) to see the status and then click through to the list of racers, or go directly to the list, and vote for one. Thanks.

Instructions tags attached to the bugs are the only way and people don't read those either. How many cachers read all the material on the geocaching.com site? The travel bug FAQ and "how-to" sections cover most things, but how many people actually read what is available? I've been posting in the forums for over a year but recently was dinged with a warning because I broke a rule that's clearly stated there, but I never read. If all cachers read all the gc web pages and followed forums, then everyone would know everything about caching and the proper of use of TBs Ain't gonna happen. Our daughter's been watching Mary Poppins the last couple days. She's "practically perfect in every way", but we cachers are not.

TB owners think instruction tags are helpful. They can't hurt, hmmm, unless the wording annoys the finder. The new geocaching.com-generated instruction tag is very big unless you reduce it, so it will turn any size TB hitchhiker into a large-sized one. A number of people make instruction tags for their bugs that are luggage-tag sized, plus or minus. I'm in this category.

Because you didn't log your bug into the cache before someone retrieved it, it was never officially in the cache, so it's not going to be in the cache's history, as Lazyboy & Mitey Mite wrote. You could ask the person who grabbed it to delete their log entry, then you grab it back, then place it in the cache, then they retrieve it and it's on it's merry way again. Something like that. Email and timing.

According to the race rules: "The owner of the travel bug must not live in Sweden" Doesn't that mean the race is ONLY open to non-Swedish teams? Is that what you meant?

It depends on the goal of the bug. Is a trip to Denmark in the plans for the bug? If it's a travel-the-world bug then it's probably okay. If it's a bug that's visiting the 50 states, then that would be a problem. Hmmm... Is the friend a cacher so she can find a cache and place the bug in a cache?

You automatically watch bugs you own as the owner. After you upload a picture, then you edit the bug and select the picture to display with the description. If you don't do the edit and selection, then the picture names are just listed to click on, but none are displayed.

They can go in any caches. The Groundspeak tracking system keeps track of the placements of travel bugs so you don't have to do anything. The bugs that you find and the ones you own will be in your profile lists, so you can easily check on them.

Are you using the reference number, which would be on the web page, or the tracking number which is only on the metal tag?

Currently there are seven racers on hand or that have been checked into the starting line cache, and there is one more still in the mail. The race page now has a link to the list of racers with their pictures from their geocaching web pages ONLY 7 shipping days until the race...

Right, a bug with no goal, and/or doesn't say "travel by ground", has "I'm leavin' on a jet plane" written all over it.