TheConaways

If you did the hotspot thing, you'd have to give the coords of your home as well, unless you pony up the cash to install another Internet link somewhere else. Also, most ISPs don't give multiple IP addresses; you probably will have to pony up more cash for another address, right? Aaron

I'll thank you, too, aqx99. I've totally overlooked that huge section of the page until you pointed it out. Heh. Aaron

Just wanted to bump this thread to get a headcount of geocachers in the CSRA. We're in North Augusta, SC. Anybody else want to claim to live and/or geocache around here? Aaron

How would one go about knowing that the cache is in a or near electrical equipment before setting out without giving away the location? I don't want to open a can of worms or anything. I promise.

I'll agree that safety is in the eye of the beholder, but these situations aren't the same as your not wearing a seatbelt. If you get in an accident, the fact that you don't have on a seatbelt doesn't affect everyone involved (within reason, of course). If you (the proverbrial you) put a cache in a "dangerous" location, it affects everyone who is looking for the cache, including children who don't know that you shouldn't play around electrical equipment or adults who are too uninformed to know the dangers. Of course, I'm sure there's a happy medium to the discussion. There is a responsbility of the geocachers to be make smart decisions or the responsibility of parents to keep their kids safe, so there must be a balance. Who knows what the solution is, but I don't see myself looking for a cache in or near any electrical equipment if I can help it. And I surely do not see myself hiding one in the same spots. It's ludicrous in my mind. Aaron

I'm a network guy myself and have a few laptops hanging around. One is a tough little booger that would probably be happy to go along for the ride and finding a cache just for him would rock. I have no fear of the foreign thumbdrive...as long as you have antivirus up-to-date and don't run any applications on it, you should be good to go. But I, like ganlet, am probably the exception and not the rule since I can restore any machine to factory in a matter of minutes (ok, an hour) and won't lose anything. I did have a creative thought: How about use the thumbdrive like the disposable camera? Since you want a geeky twist, people can take pictures of themselves at the cache with their own digital camera and upload it to the thumbdrive and then sign the text file log. When the drive gets full, email the owner or report the available space in the log. *looks around for an extra thumb drive* Aaron

Though I haven't broken one, we just started and its inevitable. I tend to break things all the time just by my shear size and strength. I would think that as long as I don't do it intentionally and try to fix it myself, no one will be mad at me.

We also got our first this weekend. Gotta love using technology to find other people's stuff. We are totally addicted and looking to find a load more this coming weekend. Aaron

I use this thing with my Garmin 12. Works like a champ. I'm sure it will work with any other GPSr as well as any PDA. Aaron

I'm afraid that Renee and I will be in the woods and I'll break my leg or something and can't walk out. She's capable of a lot of things, but dragging my 6'7", 300lbs body out of the woods (or even the car) is not one of them. Aaron

I was a Life scout for years and years, but that was a long time ago. My town and troop was so small that we didn't have enough counselors to cover the required Eagle badges. I had so many merit badges that it was pathetic, though, just not the required ones. Though we were small, we always finished near the top of every event at the Jamborees. I remember one event where we could only get up 4 guys to go, but we wound up winning the orienteering and volleyball events. Now, the orienteering I can understand, but I don't know how we won the volleyball event playing 4 on 6 the whole weekend. Anyway, I learned a lot of good geocaching skills in the scouts. From orienteering to camping to safety. Aaron

We've only been out once, but we both took small memo books (the pocket-sized one) with us to take notes for logging to the website later. Looking to go paperless, though...that's gotta be the way to go.

I've never had a reaction to either, so I couldn't even tell you what it looked like without looking it up. I do try touching any plant that I'm not familiar with, though...JIC.

We're utter n00bs to geocaching and trying to make a complete checklist of things to take with us when we go looking for caches. Can anyone add or comment on what we have so far? Please note that for at least the short term, we're looking for caches that we can either park-and-grab or find after a mile or so hike. I'm sure each person's mileage will vary. Also note that we don't have all of this stuff yet, but we're working towards getting the list completed. * GPS (duh!) * Log book (personal notes on the cache) * 2 Pens/Pencils * Knick-knacks (for dropping in smaller caches) * Cache List (the trip list) * 35mm canisters (in case a cache needs maintenance) * Small Ziploc bags (see above) * Trash bag (CITO) * Sunscreen * Insect repellent * Camera (always record the visit) * Tripod (Renee's a photographer) * Hiking staff (more important than we first thought...ask the spider webs and potential snake holes) * Water * Snacks * Flashlight * Batteries (for the flashlight, camera, GPS, etc.) * First aid kit (you never know) * Gardening gloves (for the briars that grow over the cache site) What else does everyone bring? Aaron

Howdy. We're Aaron and Renee Conaway. Just started in the sport a few days ago and had our first hunt yesterday. We found 2 caches and had a great time finding places in our area that we didn't even know existed.