doktorfunk

OK, thanks for that. It hadn't occurred to me that people might not log things for more than a week or two.

Actually, I just checked on a recent event (which I unfortunately couldn't attend): it shows 86 items under "view past trackables" and nothing still left in the inventory. Is that unusually good? How does dropping a trackable at an event work? Is there a big bowl people put them in and take them out of?

I haven't been to an event yet, but is it possible and OK to log such a trackable as visiting an event? Yes, you can log a "visit" for the event. That's okay. Just don't let it out of your hands. What we are saying is that "dropping" a trackable into an event, and leaving it for someone else to "retrieve" is where the trouble starts. Check out any recent events near you. Is the event over for more than a week or two? Are there still trackables listed in the inventory? That makes sense, thanks. The idea of dropping a trackable at an event sounded pretty flakey to me anyway!

I haven't been to an event yet, but is it possible and OK to log such a trackable as visiting an event?

It means that the trackable owner has had bad experiences with his/her trackables being placed in caches with "tb hotel" as the name, and bad experiences with trackables being dropped into Events, and never retrieved or logged properly. Events are often "black holes" into which trackables get lost. If the trackable owner states quite clearly that they don't want their trackables dropped into so-named "tb hotels" or into Events, then please respect their wishes and don't do it. The trackable owner's wishes/mission statement is the one directive you should comply with as much as possible. Not dropping their trackable into a "tb hotel" or Event is a wish that is easy to respect. B. OK, I agree with the general principle (that COs shouldn't specify 1:1) and the TO's right to specify, but some (many?) COs seem to use (AFAICT) "TB hotel" just to mean "cache big enough to hold a lot of trackables" --- if the cache description doesn't say that it's a "1 in, 1 out hotel", is it OK?

So when a travel bug's page says "NO TB HOTELS or EVENTS", I should interpret that as "no obligation to do 1:1 swaps" or "do not put this in a cache whose owner asks for 1:1 swaps"? I haven't been to an event yet, but should I honour that request too? Thanks.

Hi, I would like to be able to "view past trackables" for a particular cache but then sort the results by recency of entries involving that cache. AFAICT, there isn't any way to do that --- sorting by "last log" shows a lot of trackables that are currently moving quite fast but haven't been near the cache I was looking at for some time. I think this would be useful for evaluating whether a trackable has been lost/stolen and whether a particular cache is susceptible to that problem. (I'm new to this forum so am very open to corrections.) Thanks.

I'm not sure now. The two in question are the only two I've found in Amsterdam that can accommodate TBs, and both caches have had quite a bit of logged traffic in the past couple of days, and one has had a couple of TBs logged since I found it. I might go back this evening and drop mine there.

Thanks. I've gone back to record TBs missing from yesterday's find.

Hi, I'm working some urban foreign caching into a business trip. I've found two caches in Amsterdam that are supposed to have 3 & 4 trackables (respectively) in them. Both caches were intact, in good condition, with log books & a few swaps, but all the trackables were missing. I noticed today that you can "write note" on a trackable's log without the secret code, so I've done that for the 4 missing from the 2nd cache --- is that a worthwhile thing to do? Also, I'm carrying someone else's geocoin & our own new TB, both of which I'd intended to drop off here. But I'm reluctanct to leave either in a cache from which all the trackables are missing. Is that paranoid or reasonable? Thanks, Adam

I was just searching the forum to see if there's any reason not to use a split ring instead of the plug chain ... thanks!

Thanks. I'll let you know if I get an answer back from the TB's owner. (It's TB2JGEG, by the way.)

Thanks. I'm not sure why I didn't see that. I've sent a message to the travel bug owner and won't do it without his permission.

Neither did I! I thought caches had to be located outdoors or at least somewhere open 24/7, although I have come across a puzzle cache outside a museum with coordinates that you could only work out by going inside and reading certain exhibits.

Hi, There's a travel bug near our house in the UK that wants to travel to several locations in the USA. It's going to be a while before we go back there, but I could mail it to some relatives who are familiar with a few caches that we found in my hometown so they could plant it in one of them and get it closer to the places it wants to visit. Would that be a good or bad thing to do? Thanks, Adam