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JimmyEv

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Everything posted by JimmyEv

  1. This is really disappointing. I haven't been caching since Spring and I use my Garmin iQue for Waymarking. They released their updates for Vista in April or May. Then I go back to my Magellan for geocaching seven months later and have to put all the waypoints in by hand.
  2. I installed this too, but it still doesn't allow Geocache Manager to work. I can drop and drag files to the explorist from Geocache Manager and EasyGPS, and they'll be in the explorist's memory, but it won't read them.
  3. It is kind of odd that NPS chose to issue a memo (or is it a directive?) on gps activities rather than go through the congressionally-mandated procedure of rulemaking (i.e., publishing the proposed rule in the Federal Register, open comment period, publishing Final Rule in the Federal Register). Seems like the policy-wonks in DC are trying to take a short-cut.
  4. What is it with all these places that don't have litter? Televisions and radios strewn about the side of the second-busiest interchange in the United States. Not suspicious. Box in bushes alongside road in some small town. Suspicious.
  5. I agree. But in Texas, to prevent trespassing, you either have to fence your land or demarcate it with purple paint. If the trees aren't marked with purple, there's a pretty safe bet you're on public land.
  6. I've noticed those RVers at Walmart. You don't see them in Target's parking lot. There's no sign at Walmart saying that RVers are allowed overnight. Do they each ask Mr. Store Manager if they can camp in the parking lot? Is it just something they assume they can do? Or does Walmart have a blanket policy on the RVers? I wouldn't be afraid of someone asking Walmart Corporate for blanket permission. They're pretty savvy in Bentonville. They can look up the demographics of your average geocacher. Just like they know the demographics of their average RVer. What's funny is that they're almost the same, one's just a little younger on average.
  7. This is really interesting. I've always thought of caching as an extremely solitary activity, much like hiking. The point of signing the log is because you're not supposed to log it online until you've signed the physical log. The point of logging finds online is basically a reflection of your experience at that cache. I've never seen anything social about it, excpet for bumping into other cachers on rare occasions and the event thingies. If you look for a cache, you're going to have some kind of effect on the person that comes after you for the simple fact that you have to rehide the container and it's going to be at least a little bit different.
  8. Yes. Kind of makes most of the posts irrelevant.
  9. A bicycle. They don't care what you're doing, it has something to do with that contraption you're riding.
  10. I have two caches within 100' of active railroad tracks. I had to look up the property maps, which showed the railroad owned only 25' on either side of the track, and link them for the reviewer. Apparently railroads normally own 100' on either side of the track, but the property owned by the railroad sometimes varies. It's especially narrow in urban areas.
  11. By the number of people I'm accosted by every time I leave a Walmart store (Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, cheerleaders, football teams, a church's bake sale...) I'd be surprised if Walmart every said no to any one using their property. I don't think those are 'problem' caches. I also don't think that caches are problems based upon muggles' perceptions of what they are. Any cache -- urban, rural, ammo box, tupperware -- placed with or without permission -- can cause a ruckus based upon someone's perception of the cache (drug stash? bomb?). And it's not just caches. Any thing can cause this, from light brites to the vast amounts of litter alongside the road to actual caches (just wait until someone realizes that a bomb might be hidden in that plastic shopping bag laying there, or, worse yet, in that beer can tossed on the side of that highway bridge. Life in New England would come to a grinding halt). There is no way to control what others might think. What I think are problem caches are ones that are hidden in a unique way, then imitated in a non-unique way. For example, the first sprinkler cache I did was hidden in a wetland. Every sprinkler cache I've done since then (which I assume was based on that first one in the area) is in a flower bed. Clearly the sprinkler in the wetland didn't belong -- but a sprinkler in a flower bed? How unusual is that? Same thing with electrical caches. The first ones I did you could blatantly tell that they weren't part of the electrical equipment of the facility. But then people started hiding them in a way that you couldn't differentiate between real electrical equipment and fake. These do have the potential to cause problems.
  12. Most caches can be found by carefully observing the area. If you look for awhile and can't find it, you need to stop looking before you reach your 'frustration' point where you start turning things into swiss cheese. Post a DNF, go look for a different one, and come back to this one a different time. I don't know how many times I've given up looking after 20 minutes or so, came back a different day, and ran right into the cache. Or stepped on it. And there's some you might never find. And I don't pay the difficulty rating much attention -- it varies too much person to person.
  13. I started biking between caches when I got tired of park & grabs. Gives a whole new angle to them, and actually makes them interesting. I just got a Garmin iQue and I'm trying to figure out how to mount it on the bike (or myself) so it can tell me directions while I'm riding. There's a lot of turns in the city -- I hate stopping every turn, pulling out the pda, and looking at the directions.
  14. A lot of local cachers are afraid to post on these forums. It's not because of lack of time -- they have no problem posting to the local forums. Every time they post on here, they think they're being attacked instead of just discussing something. You do sort of have to have a thick skin in here. The local geocaching forums I've been on are much nicer (and typically unmoderated). But you can pick which forums to participate in, so stick to the local ones until this one isn't so annoying to you.
  15. I like these categories. Maybe it would be simpler if the cache placer just answered the question of why he/she placed the cache here. For a quick grab? Just to place one? Scenic location? Humor? CITO? They thought it was an interesting place?
  16. If the park didn't charge a fee, and still had the same cache page (sans fees), would you still be upset? Most likely the park is placing caches to increase visitation (that's how most parks get funded by the legislature, except in Texas where they actually measure the parks by revenue and then close them because they never make any money). If the park personnel had their druthers, there probably wouldn't be any fees to begin with. The only reason there are fees is because the taxpayers of that state refuse to fully fund their park system. In some states (Pennsylvania leaps to mind), the taxpayers willingly fund the park system, and there aren't any entrance fees. Some taxpayers in some states (say, Wisconsin) try to soak out-of-state people with paying for their parks, charging them twice the fee they charge residents. It's non-commercial because it's public --- it's being done by people you hired that are paid by you (or at least the residents of Utah). If you don't like the way they're running your parks, with fees for caching and hiking and mountain biking, change it. Or move to a state more agreeable.
  17. Heck, this happened to me in the woods far from the nearest house. I'm sure the cops don't like this either. They have to respond to calls and they pretty much know the nut cases. The cop saw us hiking and within two minutes thought the mountain biker that had phoned us in as 'suspicious' because we had a hiking stick was a bonafide nutcase.
  18. Featured Waymarks are featured (I'm assuming) because they have some kind of 'Wow' factor. Why couldn't featured waymarks somehow be a virtual cache at gc.com? Then it'd be like, 'Wow, this came from Waymarking.'
  19. I don't care if you log it as a 'note' or a DNF or even an e-mail to the owner, but one of those things should be done every time you can't find a cache. It might save both you and people that come after you a lot of aggravation because it greatly increases the chances of the owner discovering it is missing. The only time I don't log a DNF is if I already posted a DNF; The owner verified it was there; and I posted a second DNF. At that point the DNFs get a little useless and redundant.
  20. Said much better than my pathetic attempt. 'Lameness' is in the eye of the beholder. What I think is lame varies from day-to-day. When heading home in the car, wearing clothes saturated with sweat after hiking 3 miles in 98 degree heat to grab a cache, a little micro under the lamp post at Walmart feels good. But if it's the 15th lamp post I did that day, then I might think it's lame. If I drive between park and grabs, I think they're lame; If I cycle between them I think they're cool. Regardless, we've been given the tools to weed out what we don't like, or to find whatever we're looking for that particular day, if we'd use them. If Groundspeak gave us a magic button that would make all lame (however we define it) caches disappear, people would still complain about lame caches. Back to my OT point about urban being a misnomer...
  21. You're right, that was too sweeping. I really didn't mean to attack the 'burbs. They tend to have the highest saturation and therefore the highest number of what some people think are 'lame' caches. It's just the terminology in the forums is bugging me. The cache that started this whole thread is 25 miles out of the city. Not very urban.
  22. What's commonly being referred to as 'urban' caches aren't urban at all --- they're suburban. And suburban caches are about as inspired as their surroundings (IF they're not in a park). There aren't any Walmarts in the urban core of Houston, I doubt there's many urban Walmarts at all. Urban caches are usually in interesting places, as you pointed out. Sometimes in 'uncomfortable' areas to some people, but mostly interesting.
  23. That won't work in Houston. You have to screen the pq with a terrain rating of at least 3.5. The other day I did a park and grab, 25 feet from the street, with a terrain rating of 4. I call it 'terrain creep.'
  24. Sometime last year, around June, I decided to stop driving between caches. Since then, I usually drive to the first cache, hop on my bike, and go to other ones near-by, anywhere from 3-30 caches on rides of 6-30 miles. It makes the whole caching experience a lot different, and better IMHO. If there's one that's a multi, and the legs are too far away, the remaining legs go on the list for another day. Now that I'm thinking about this, I've also done this for my Waymarking, walking or biking between the waymarks I create (or found or whatever).
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