nonaeroterraqueous

Restrictions are great! I'd hate to accidentally show up and try to socialize with people who wouldn't want me there . If you don't want me there, then I don't want to be there.

Hmmm...always wondered what was in that big black box. XXX-large cache with an extremely high muggle rating. Stealth required, to say the least.

All I've got to say is there had better be some flippin' excellent swag at the end, that's all.

Call me crazy, but I like to spend a bit of time revisiting the web pages of caches I've found to read logs that have been posted since mine... and, there are always the forums, but that's a relatively new passtime for me.

I can imagine my dad, with his failing vision using max-strength reading glasses and squinting just to see the cache, much less write on the log. With his temper, I'm glad none of the ones I've found with him were like that. I have a problem just fitting my name on logs that small (just call me "Non"). Can you imagine hiding an S-chip and including a "bring your own electronic device" message on the web page? You could shove that sucker into any old sidewalk crevice (just for the record: don't even think of doing it)... and a month later someone logs that they got a virus from it.

When we first started caching, I liked micros and my wife hated them. She figured that if there wasn't anything to trade then there was no point. Lately, though, I have to admit I'm starting to get sick of them, and I've seen some very clever ones, too. Some micros have even gotten me to places I never knew about. Even so, if there's nothing hidden in the cache, then I felt like I haven't really found anything. It takes more effort to find a micro and more effort to hide a large. Somewhere in the middle there's a balance. These days I find that the smaller the cache is, the less time I'm willing to spend looking for it, but because smaller caches are usually harder to find that means I frequently fail to turn up the micros successfully. Micros are never very exciting to me, but they are something to find, which is still better than nothing. muggles

But.. but... We're always LTF! If I'm the last person to find a cache just before it disappears, then I take it personally. I figure I must have done something wrong. muggles

Don't care if I'm FTF, so long as I'm not LTF. Personally, I like looking through a long list of names written before mine and seeing the familiar signatures. I also don't like trying to get a cache at the same time as a half-dozen others most certainly are. Geocaching is only an indirectly social event for me.

Like I always say, there's no comparing counts anyway. Your two hundred finds is not the same as my two hundred. With different difficulty, density and membership times there's no comparison, so any cheating you do only prevents you from knowing how many you really found. As for spoilers, I don't really get it, myself. I know everyone enjoys caching for different aspects, but I would only hide a cache well to keep it from muggles, not cachers. To me, the ideal cache is immediately found by the cacher and never found by the muggle. I like getting to the bush; I don't like digging through it. I guess I would only delete a log if it contained obscenity unfit for the general public, or if the cacher repeatedly posted angry comments, like some kind of hate-spammer. I haven't deleted one yet, thankfully. I have deleted one of my own postings after the cache owner emailed me that I said too much: I didn't know how I could have said too much, when I only posted a DNF. I figure, if I never found the thing, then how could I possibly give it away? I deleted the post anyway (didn't have a clue how to edit it to make it less "revealing" ), just to keep the cacher happy.

learn to recognize the difference between "swag" and "trash," (does it have any monetary value at all?). lists are fun. as clever as any hide may be, there's usually some way to make it even more innovative. muggles

Very interesting idea. Here in Southern California many footpaths, while killing plantlife, actually seem to promote plantlife on either edge of the path, when people are careful to follow in each others paths. It doesn't always happen like this, but there was a study by Hardy W. Campbell in Nebraska in the 1880s, whereby he attempted to improve farming in a dry climate by packing down the soil. Sounds counter-intuitive, I know, but I think it tends to concentrate rainwater at the edge of the path, promoting plant life there, while creating an impermeable cap on the path itself, which prevents excessive evaporation from the soil beneath. Campbell's study ultimately failed to make farms work in dry weather, but the principle might still be true to some extent. It might rely on the climate and, in this case, the behavior of the cachers for that particular cache. We'll see how this one turns out.

hey, what's wrong with bickering?

I don't remember our hundredth find, I think because it was in the middle of an urban power caching spree. In Orange County, California, we have the Bikencache series, which is quite a long stretch of tightly packed caches, so somewhere in the middle of all of that was number one-hundred. Number two hundred was very memorable, because we had to reach it by a very long, rough dirt road with a car not built for that kind of terrain. It was technically an FTF also, with beta testers. It was the only day we've ever been FTF. That and some others had been sitting along that road without any first finds for about a month before we got there. Two others lay beyond our 200th find, but we could not get to them do to the worsening condition of the road and an oncoming thunderstorm. I believe they still have yet to get official FTFs (not counting the beta testers).

Do we need an Act of Congress here? Sometimes it's easy to forget that Groundspeak isn't the sole provider of geocache hides and that the game extends well beyond it's own authority. The website, itself, has vested its authority in the owners of each cache, which means that the rules, in fact, are necessarily up to each owner. There's no rule that says you can't keep your own personal list of finds on your own computer and say, "Yay, I've found this many caches." We all start at different times, and we all have varying amounts of time and money to burn, so there's really no comparing find counts anyway. GCT75F is an example of a cache that you can find, but grabbing is a whole other matter. I "found" it myself, but extracting it is the only challenge that makes this cache what it's worth. I can honestly say that I will never grab this one. Hence, I will never log it as "found." I could fill a list of caches like this. If you get a kick out of simply doing a drive-by and calling it good without signing the log, then yay for you; keep track of your finds on a map at home or something. Don't gripe when the cache owner disagrees and deletes your log. There are so many caches out there I'm sure you'll have no problem finding plenty that will accept your terms.

Personally, I prefer to carry a set of return adress stickers with my cacher name and logo. They sometimes stick when the log is too wet to write on. At least I can toss one in there for good measure if nothing else . I know some people claim finds that they didn't find. More people don't claim DNFs for caches that they did not find. The same people tailgate me on the freeway for all the same reasons: they just want to get ahead of the next guy. At least here they don't threaten my life with their shallowness. If the greatest accomplishment a person has is a bigger number next to their name on a geocaching website, then I feel sorry for them. I log in my finds on the web for my personal benefit, and I would feel irked if some arrogant baboon deleted my post because they thought they had some clairvoyant ability to see where I was on a given day, especially if that person wasn't even responsible enough to provide a well-equipped, dry cache . Chill out, people. Stop trying to control each other .