RUSCAL

Hey Dave, Funny you should mention Superstition; I just got back from a run out there. Bikedog, Howling wolf and I went out Friday night and hooked up with Kawikaturn and some of his Arizona friends. We were dirt biking this trip. First trip for the bike this season, as Nellybelle has been getting most of the attention! We knocked out all the Superstition caches, so I may have to hook up with you at another location. I don't know if Parsa has done them, so you guys could get together and sweep the area. The sand is soft up there, so you will likely have to air down your tires for floatation. I'm in the middle of installing on board air on Nellybelle, so will be able to air back up when completing runs. I have been thinking about hiding a 4WD power caching trail in the desert, so if you are interested in a hiding trip let me know. I need to collect a bunch of ammo cans first though! If others went out and hid some more caches out there as well, we would be able to have another desert event in a month or so and have some new caches for people to go after. We could time the release of all the caches for the day before the future event. I am planning this outside of the desert state park to avoid any issues. The Truckhaven area might be a good spot to gather. Russ

Jeffery, Sorry to hear about your accident. Sounds like you took quite a hit! Glad you didn't land on your head or you would be relegated to doing regular caches like the rest of us! Take care of yourself and drink plenty of pints of medicine. Russ

Congrats to TucsonThompsen for passing the 1.5 kilocache mark! Weren't you at 1000 a few weeks ago Jeffrey? We should start a pool to guess the date when and if TT would catch up to Splashman. $5.00 per guess would go into the pot. There would have to be a date that all guesses had to be in by, say 2 weeks out. Closest guesser would take the pot. Tie guesses would split the pot. The guesses could be turned in at a pizza get together in about two weeks. If he never catches The Splashes I would get the money. Russ

Yeah TT, you have to stay away from those stat pages. They will turn you into a cachaholic for sure! I just tell myself.... one day at a time...... one day at a time.... one day at Ruscal

Hi Padre Girl, I have a pair of nice binoculars which were a hard earned FTF prize for solving "The Ocotillo Challange Poker Run" cache that I think would be a great prize. I'll bring them to the picnic and throw them in the kitty. Ruscal

I got NellyBelle a new bumper with a travel bug tag mounting tab built in just to shut her up. I even got her a new tag. Now she wants a big tag like duncan's Jeep has! JEESH! Ruscal

Nellybelle is green with envy that everyone is making such a fuss over those little yellow jeeps. Now she wants a bug tag! How do I tactfully tell her she is too big to fit into a cache container. Ruscal

My 2 cents on the subject of power caching trails: As a person who has had the pleasure of sampling a couple of the power caching trails that were selflessly set up by residents of the Palm Springs area I can say that I had a great time completing them. Saying that the trails violate the “spirit” of the geocaching rules is bull. What is the “spirit” of geocaching? Some people think it is challenging searches in a non scenic area, while others feel it can be an easily found micro hidden in a beautiful area, while others say there should be a puzzle involved in the equation, others may want you to use a couple of gas tanks of fuel to bag their sprawling multi-cache. The best thing about geocaching is seeing the new innovation and creativity that adds dimension to the sport. I can’t wait to see what comes up in the next few years. Will power caching trails harm the sport? I don’t see how they will. As the sport grows caches will naturally have to become more closely spaced as the available real estate becomes populated with caches. Personally I don’t care how many caches are hidden on a trail I hike. I’ll hike any scenic area whether it has 1 cache or 50. Having caches spaced every .1 mile is pretty close together, and can interrupt the rhythm of the hike, but you don’t have to do all the caches on a trail if you choose not to. No big deal, just select the one or two you want to go after. In a town like Palm Springs there are only a handful of local cachers to put out the hides. If each of those cachers hid 25 caches (that’s more than most of our local hiders output) they would only have 125 caches to find in town and then the game would be over for them. So these people figured it out that hiding more caches was the answer to keep the fun going. Hiding in great density draws people to the area as well. If you are going to blow through a couple of tanks of $2.25 per gallon gas to drive all the way there, it is attractive to have a big cache list to tackle. Does the San Diego area need Power caching trails? Maybe not, since we are built differently than a vacation town, with a mature cache population already in place here it may be best to save our remaining spaces for the normal growth rate of the sport to fill in. 25 caches on EL Cap may get a few people off their butts though! One cache I recently did that was more of a spread-out power trail called “The Ocotillo Challenge Poker Run” was really fun. It consists of several waypoints spread over many miles of desert. Each waypoint cache is miles apart and not logged individually (multi). It took me 4 trips to the desert to finish and about 6 tanks of gas or about $300.00 worth. My daily cache count was .25 at a cost of $75.00! (That’s a quarter cache per day, not 25) Was it worth it? Absolutely! Can I afford to do many of those? I wish! In conclusion, keep inventing the sport, and keep the geocops out of it unless we be destructive to our planet! And thanks to those who took their personal time and effort to hide the power cache trail caches for OUR ENJOYMENT. Ruscal El Cap, hmmmmm?

Some of you may have seen last nights presentation of "Venom ER" on the Animal Channel last night. I was glued to the TV the whole time. The show was about local rattlesnake bite victims, and how The Loma Linda Medical Center handled the individual cases as they arrived via helicopter from the field and other hospitals. This show was really an eye opener regarding the treatment for bites. I always thought if you recieved antivenon you were home free, but it isn't that simple. It is amazing how much of that stuff you need to slow the effects of the venom. One patient died from the bite even with 30+ vials of antivenon. As geocachers, we get hours away from trailheads, and hours more driving to get to treatment, so the utmost caution in how we do things is mandatory. Prevention definitely is the best chance of survival. The program described the effects of being bitten by the various types of rattlers in this area. Some cause massive swelling and muscle damage while others cause convultions. Green Mohaves are particularly horrible! I have seen many snakes while geocaching, and have had a few very close encounters, and by all rights should have been bitten a few times. After watching that show I will be a little more careful. Another episode of Venom ER will air tuesday night at 9:00pm. I have a meeting that night, but will record it. Check it out, Ruscal

quote:Originally posted by Rocket Man:I think that the Splashes said they were bringing a fire pit. I will bring some wood also. I will be driving Mrs. Rocket Man's red Landcruiser and I will also have a small Viking tent trailer. fkrexcal and I will arrive around noon and then head out caching for the afternoon. We may go do Whale peak. Is anyone else interested? We will leave the tent trailer at camp. Count me in on that Rocketman. Have wanted to do Whale Peak for some time now. If it is very hot, we may want to get a little later start though. Sunset from up there would be cool. What ever you decide, I'll be there. Russ Rocket Man

quote:Originally posted by allanorn:How is everyone acquiring their cache pages for the Anza-Borrego Tour? I think printing them out would use too much paper and I know the GPS can't store that much information. If I had better knowlege of Web programming I'd try to pull the data off that way but I think that would be too time consuming. Any ideas? Allanorn, My friend K-nic just writes the coordinates on a small list he keeps in his pocket to keep track of finds and dnf's. He preloads the coordinates into his GPSr before going out searching. Most GPSr's will hold a bunch of waypoints. Low tech, but works well, Ruscal

quote:Originally posted by Night Hunter:Ruscal: Do you just like the way that 1000 looks or what , are you ever going to log the rest of those caches? Maybe you could wait till your at 1250 then log them all at the same time Actually I do like the way it looks , but will get around to logging the few caches I have done since the picnic soon. I think there were a few before the picnic as well (if I can just remember which ones they were!)????? Shudda writ em down. I'm on the 12 step program, so won't be logging too many this year if I don't go off the caching wagon, that is. Total abstinence is a killer! Russ http://members.cox.net/fordest/geocaching http://members.cox.net/fordest/usacoolflag.gif I, Madam, I made radio!! So I dared!! Am I mad?? AM I????

quote:Originally posted by The Adams Family Circus:Just an FYI: The Off to Find a Wizard cache, the memorial from the Geocaching picnic in February, is back in circulation. Go get it! 8-) Earl, Ringmaster, The Adams Family Circus And all those folks who haven't found it yet thought they were off the hook! HA HA... Ruscal

This trip sounds like fun! I think I can make it for the 25th-26th. I haven't done any of the caches south of Box Canyon, so heading down south to catch a few sounds good. I will be riding a motorcycle, as I don't have a 4wd. Birdlegs will probably stay home. Going through the squeeze sounds like fun, but I have done all the caches down through Fish Creek and out to Ocotillo Wells. Maybe Kawikaturn or Bikedog can make it so we'll have more than one biker. We could use the coordinates for ''Desert Peek-a-boo'' GC4D6 as a congregating point. (maybe .15 miles west would be best ) That should be the area the Indian Guides use for their campouts, and is 2wd friendly. There are quite a few caches along the S2 corridor that are accessible by 2wd vehicle as well. Ruscal

Late October, early November should be cool enough. Ocotillo wells has pit toilets in a couple of areas, and showers at the busy main area. It is good to get away from the crowds to camp, and make short runs into the area where facilities are when needed. Kawikaturn likes to camp at Holmes Camp which is east of the Ocotillo Air strip out in the flats. It has pit toilets. There are hundreds of dirt roads going in all directions in that area. You can go all the way to the Salton Sea to the east or up to Truckhaven to the north or Anza Borrego to the north west. More trails than can be explored in one day. Three of the sea to sea caches can be had from the area, and many others. The caches in the area are generally swag poor, but it's getting there that's the reward. Rocket man's caches are the exception and in a fun scenic area to the west. Ruscal

There are caches in the Fish Creek area. Most involve short hikes after parking your rig. Some are drive up. The superstition area has no caches that I am aware of, and could use some hides. The vehicles would have to traverse soft sand to access the Superstition Mountain/hilly area though. Ruscal

Hi Kite, My new Mount Soledad cache ''Ghost Riders'' is a little less terrain severe than Mark71Mark's cache on the north slope. You are looking at the steepest part of the slope when standing at the vehicle gate. Use your own discretion though, only you know what you feel comfortable doing. As participant searchers in this game, we have to use our own judgment regarding our personal safety. There are potentially fatal dangers in this sport, so we have to look out for ourselves. Keep on cachin, Ruscal quote:Originally posted by Kite & Hawkeye:Is there any sort of guideline as to when event caches should be archived? I'm getting tired of looking at the Magellan "Pre-Launch Geocaching Challenge" at REI. The Challenge has a page of its own, the one that people get to log when they find all 25 caches. There's no further possibility of logging the Pre-Launch event. It is a blight upon our nearest unfound page! But, then, there must always be unattainable caches to taunt us (like that 4.5 terrain above Black's Beach). And Ruscal, dangit, placing another cache on Mount Soledad when we just FINALLY logged Soledad Splendor, after a year of dawdling and dragging feet (and one not-found. It wasn't under the bloody rock! really!). I hate going down those steep trails, so I'm going to end up perched on the top like the wuss that I am while Hawkeye goes down the trail, and I will fear for his life after seeing some little memorial cross halfway down. A hiker that perished falling into the abyss? Someone who intentionally jumped? Mount Soledad makes me strangely uncomfortable. But there's a cache there, so we have to return.

quote:Originally posted by SUNHOUSE:Hey another quickie whats the link to the paper ur supposed to print out and put in a geocache? On the Geocaching.com main page look under "New to caching" then the link to hiding your first cache. You will find another link to a word doc with the page. Ruscal

Hi Sunhouse, I have done that cache, and think you will need a GPSr to do it! The address won't get you close enough. Ruscal [This message was edited by RUSCAL on August 04, 2003 at 02:22 PM.]

Thanks for the reply sbell, The icon will open the gc.com page several times, then stops working after a while. If I reboot it will start working again for a while. I did delete the icon and recreate it, but same result. Ruscal

You're confused?

When I click on "Log this cache" button, it takes me to "My cache" page. If I hit the go back button and rehit the "Log this cache" it correctly takes me to the log page. It always takes two tries. Anyone else experience this? Ruscal [This message was edited by RUSCAL on July 16, 2003 at 09:26 PM.]

The shortcut icon for Geocaching.com works for a few times, but after being on and off the site after a while the icon will no longer launch the program. Any idea why? Ruscal [This message was edited by RUSCAL on July 16, 2003 at 09:21 PM.]

What got me started? Decided to buy a GPSR for use on my dirt bike for navigating. While searching for internet GPS dealers I came across a geocaching button link and wondered what that was and pushed it. Read about it and thought it sounded like fun and a good way to learn how the GPSr worked. I took delivery of a GPSr on 7-12-02 and went out with my son that night to find Nscaler's "Batiquitos Lagoon Cache". We had such fun finding that one in the dark, that we kept diong others when we got the chance. I started off slow and did a cache now and then, but at some point got hooked and couldn't get enough. Then picked up the pace doing caches at almost every opportunity. My 14 year old son soon tired of doing them, so I was then on my own. After a while I emailed K'nic who lived in my neighborhood and had found a similar number of caches to see if he wanted to join me for some caching. We get together when our schedules align. After 10 months I have found 677 caches and hidden 4, so I guess you could say I am addicted and in need of help! It looks like marriage helped Mark71Mark kick the habit, but I have tried that and I'm not very good at it. I still enjoy caching as much as when I started, but it getting hard to find caches without driving 100 miles to get them, and it is getting expensive to keep gas in the van. So will have to slow down a little to let the cache supply build again. Ruscal