rojanich

Late to the party on this one due to recent ill health and only discovered today that dropping co-ords in search box on any page brings back caches close to home location not the co-ords. Not necessarily the same list at each search either. Nasty bug. Please keep working on it.

Please explain the "rules" for trackables, particularly which one they're not abiding by. In "What does a Travel Bug do?" in Geocaching.com's own Travel Bug FAQ, they say " It's really up to the owner of the bug to give it whatever task they desire. Or no task at all." We see codes on trackable pages now, codes on vehicles and other personal property, and yeah, some on laminated cards. I think that sorta says they're playing this side-game as they wish (whatever task they desire...), not by someone else's idea of "what's right". Not going to argue because there are only guidelines (sort of rules) not laws and even laws are open to interpretation - else why does the free world have 'Higher Courts' ? and Geocaching is a game not real life (or is it .....??!!). It's just that my interpretation of 'The item becomes a hitchhiker that is carried from cache to cache (or person to person) in the real world and you can follow its progress online.' must be different to the TB owner's. Let's just say I will be far more committed to actual TBs and their goals than these cards. I just wish others were more careful of our TBs but that's another issue. Happy caching. We did a fabulous series today, ten themed caches, a great walk, good fun, exercise, fresh air and we gave a themed TB a good time too. Suits us.

Thanks to everyone for their responses especially kunarion for the answer re. 'Discover' not racking up mileage. I suspect these TB's logs do have seriously false mileage due to cachers moving the cards from cache to cache. The TB owner is in Germany and I'm in UK so no chance of putting the card in one of his caches and I guess he'd just set it on its way again. There's no mention of the cards on the TBs' webpages so no requests what to do with them and so no plan. To cerberus1 - I appreciate that TBs are a side game but there are still guidelines and these cards don't come within them. I take you to mean that once someone has paid for a TB it becomes their property and they can do what they like with it. To a certain extent I agree but if you buy an official team cricket/baseball bat it doesn't mean you can march onto the team's pitch and play to your rules does it ? It feels a bit like armchair caching, I'm going to call it armchair TBing.

Hi folks. We’ve been caching for a few years now and really love a number of different aspects of the hobby; TBs being one of them. We love watching our own move round the world and try to help others achieve their goals too. We visited a cache today which I had noticed online last night was supposed to have two TBs in it. Well, it was quite a challenging cache for the Old Goat (OH) to climb to so I tried to be as quick as possible doing the log signing etc. when he handed me the box. I was disappointed not to find any ‘regular’ TBs in the box but grabbed a little laminated card with a couple of, to me, obviously TB type numbers on, thinking this might be a proxy/replacement TB. On getting back home I now discover this card has three tracking codes and the message Discover and share. I’ve checked the codes and they lead me to TB pages with photos of many different but similar cards with two, three and four tracking codes on and the TBs have thousands of Discovered logs and huge mileages. It seems the owner has bought some TBs, made multiple card copies of multiple TB codes and set them loose. Being a simple soul I don’t think this is what TBing is all about. So, my question is what should I do ? Should I ‘discover’ the codes, ‘Grab’ the TB in ignorance or chuck it in the bin because the TB owner is not ‘playing the game’ ? Or, do I just put it in the next cache we find with enough room. Am I being too pompous in not approving of the TB owner playing the way they want to ? Any views ? Also, a question. If there are say, three of these cards and a cacher logs a Discover for one TB code in cache a) and another cacher Discovers the same TB code in cache b ) a 1,000 miles away maybe the next day and another cacher Discovers the same code in cache c) another 2,000 miles away the next day does the TB log up 3,000 miles with just these cards being found and Discovered ? (I said I was a simple soul........) Cheers. Jane (the ja in rojanich)

Oooops, I've just seen a post on another thread about 'advertising' cashes. I don't know if my post is considered 'advertising', I hope not because all I wanted to do was highlight a great series that will soon give a lovely walk among Bluebells as well as all the other things I said. If I've got it wrong, I apologise.

We’ve just done a short series of caches in the Chesterfield area which we wanted to bring to people’s attention. It’s a great series – about two miles if you do the whole thing at once or you can break into two of about a mile each. The terrain isn’t tough and the caches are imaginative. The second half takes you through some woodland where the bluebells are going to be beautiful soon. The series is family and dog friendly and there’s a good pub half way round ! Allow 1 1/2 - 2 hours or more if you go to the pub ! The first cache is ‘1 Fraggle Rock ~ Old Kids TV’ GC5F02A We hope others enjoy the series as much as we did (and no, we’re not related to the CO !)

Can anyone help us move a large trackable closer to destination ? The trackable is approx 13cm x 7cm x 5cm so needs quite a sizeable cache. It needs to travel closer to London and we will be visiting the Wateringbury/East Peckham area and then Hastings/St Leonards area for a few nights soon. We won’t have much time to go walking so a reasonably accessible large cache needed please.

You lucky, lucky people, Capt-Dave and others ! We've already 'lost' five TBs this year and one of those was from its first drop :-( However, ever the optimists we've just ordered some more and hope for more success. Any advice to help with encouraging the finders to move them on and not put them in their trophy bags permanently ? We've bought some of those photo key rings and are going to attach them with notes about the TBs goals, also for most of them we're not making them 'desirable' by having them with cute attachments (sad but we wondered if that's what makes people keep them).

More good thoughts, thanks folks. Manville Possum Hunters – Doh ! I should have worked out PMO myself…. Thanks for reminding me about Waymarks – I think I did read about them when we started Caching but had forgotten. I can see why one needs to be careful about them but there do seem to be some that would give good info to non-locals visiting an area. Hope you found your selected caches ! Lone.R – yup, see where you’re coming from with carpet bombing and giving honest feedback. I challenged a cache size recently – a small that was the size of a 35mm film canister and therefore not big enough for the trackable we wanted to get moving. So far I’ve been ignored and no other finders seem to be bothered. Hzoi – Caching Connoisseur – yup, that works for me Blue Square Thing – I think you’re right, sometimes filtering out caches with low or no fave points might be a step too far. I’ve also seen a number of fave points awarded specifically for the deviousness of the cache container. Not saying deviousness is wrong but would skew our search results. Briansnat – yes, I get the impression that Caching has changed over the years and may be more things to more people than originally envisaged. K13 – yes, I know we don’t have to search for every cache but we’re still newbies enough to get excited about going hunting ! Sad ? Or enthusiastic ? That’s another question. J Grouchy – take your point and will try harder in future ! To be honest as our selective process gets better it’s taking longer to write our logs. We built up a great relationship with one CO in Spain when she e-mailed to thank us for our logs. Oxford Stone – wise words and thanks to some of the responses on here I’ve got some more ideas of how to refine our searches. Now all I need to do is get rid of the guilt gene that says we’re obliged to hunt for every cache until we find them………… We also need to learn not to take it personally that two days after placing a brand new travel bug with neat trinket attached it has gone missing from the cache. We’re hoping it’s someone who just hasn’t got round to logging it yet but that’s another side of caching. Thanks again everyone.

Hi everyone ! I’m so pleased I posed this question and am honoured by the number of responses. In considering the responses, I think/hope I was wrong in using the word ‘snob’. It’s not so much that we think we’re better than others it’s just that some of the different types of caching aren’t for us. We can understand the one on every mile post for miles and miles type although it’s not for us but we’re still struggling with what appears to be the ‘no apparent reason’ type of cache. We would never be disparaging in our logs and would only ever just say TFTC if we couldn’t think of anything pleasant to say. So, I hope I can use a suggestion and say we’re selective but despite doing the research we do sometimes feel a bit let down; that’s life though. Just to respond to a few posts though. Dame Deco – post #13 - I’m sorry if it appeared that I implied we look down our noses at others. That certainly was not my intention and I think by posing the question I wasn’t just trying to find others of a like mind. I take on board what you say about staring threads about adventures though and will post a thread about our recent adventures in Spain where our holiday was enhanced a great deal by one particular cache owner and their caches. Thanks for the idea. Tozainamboku – post #16 - I think we’re still evolving our style of caching which is probably one of the reasons behind the original post. We are definitely ‘giving up’ and moving on quicker now on the few occasions when we find ourselves not enjoying the hunt. At first it was almost a matter of honour to try our hardest to make a find if we’d got to a location. Dprovan – post #18 – Whoa ! Please don’t use emotive words like ‘ruined’ and ‘outraged’ to escalate my expression of ‘getting fed up’. I have said that we’re trying to be selective and I have not blamed any cache owner for anything – I may have used an example of a cache we didn’t like but at no time did I criticise any cache owner - we hope to become cache owners soon ourselves and we understand the work involved in setting and caring for a cache properly. Funkymunkyzone – post #22 – Yup, understand where you’re coming from. We do ‘get’ the fun ‘contraption’ hides but I think we must just try harder to refine our selection process ! Manville-Possum Hubters – post #24 – OK, this is where I show my ignorance…….. Please, what are ‘PMO listings’ and what is a ‘known Waymarker’ ? Mrs. Terratin – post #25 – yup, it seems to come down to research, research, research. Oh, and understanding what you personally want out of Geocaching. As I said previously, we’re still evolving; maybe one day we’ll develop into number chasers, I don’t think so but can’t rule it out. Thanks to everyone for your thoughts. My conclusion is some more analysis to understand what we want out of Geocaching then more focused research and cutting our losses quicker if we get it wrong. We’ve already had so much out of this new hobby we just want it to get better. Happy for more thoughts………………….

My husband and I have been caching now for just over two years. We’re both retired and not very fit so we don’t tend to go for high Terrain starred caches but we do enjoy being lead to places of scenic, historic or architectural etc. interest. We’ve decided we’re not into trying to reach high numbers of caches just for the sake of it although we do watch our number of finds with interest and not a little pride ! We also enjoy the fun of sending our own trackables on their way or helping other people’s little travellers on theirs. Here’s the thing though. We’ve been very lucky to be able to cache in the UK, France, Spain and the USA and while we’ve been to some great places and found, and sometime not found, some great caches we’re getting fed up with being sent to places with absolutely nothing to recommend them to be visited except the fact that there is a cache there; usually a micro or a nano so not even a chance for trading or trackable exchange. Sometimes we can suss this out before hand by using Google Maps but a few times we’ve been to places where to ‘Trash Out’ we’d have needed a mega-skip or a bulldozer and there's not even a view to cheer us up. Our least favourite so far was the lamp post (aka dog pee tree ) on a walkway through an industrial estate. So, this isn’t a question with a right/wrong answer I guess but are we becoming Geocaching snobs and can anyone else relate to our feelings ?

Thought this would be the answer but really just wanted confirmation. Thanks both of you.

Hi We want to revisit a cache we found a while ago and pick up the TB that is there as we know we can help it to its goal. When we log the visit should we log it as another 'Found' and would this increase our Found total ? What is the general etiquette about revisiting caches ? There are some great cache sites we'd like to visit again and write in the paper log again and log our visit online but will it skew our true 'Found' stats ? I mean if another 'Found' hikes your stats up you could log your local cache ten times a day if you wanted to number chase (we don't as it happens !). We only want to have our stats show initial finds. This is going to be more of an issue to us soon as we want to visit a couple of TB hotels each time we go on our travels to help out with the travels of some TBs

Thanks for such helpful responses so quickly. I’ve now started checking the info column on searches (mainly used the map facility before so good to be pointed towards the lists again) and yes, I realise that it doesn’t mean there will be TBs there (encountered that problem already – shame but that’s life ). Also started looking at Geocoins but I have to admit I find them a bit confusing – so many different goals. Now off to investigate Pocket Queries. Thanks again.

I can't find that anyone has asked this before but sorry if it's not a new question. We go longish distance travelling quite often and want to be able to help as many TBs as possible to get to different areas and even countries. Can we search for caches with TBs in them locally to where we live or are staying so we can help them to their goals or just rack up the miles ? OR, is this not considered good etiquette ? We wouldn't hold on to them for long but since finding our first TB which had been languishing in a cache for months and helping it on a few thousand miles we've really enjoyed this aspect of caching. Thanks for any help.