Dan&Chris

34 and 25

Very interesting! Does this improve your mileage? How does it help?

Lots of guests today too! 1553 user(s) active in the past 15 minutes Active Users 1431 guests, 113 members 9 anonymous members

I don't remember which cache we were doing, but this one's pretty.

What not to do with a GPS! http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/pseidler1.html

LOL yah, nice way to get on their good side for future placements. Nothing funny. He blew it by asking permission, they didn't know what it was and it was easier to say no. There is no good or bad side to be on. If there is no prohibition, then you have adequate permission. For more information, read this. Thanks for the link to this thread, we are getting geared up to hide a few and I was struggling over this issue.

18 pages and growing strong, you guys are passionate!

Yesterday we did a virtual cache http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...31-ee6ecad15a5a in my hometown. I knew where this was because my father had donated to the building of this monument, and had a brick with his name on it on site. I was going to set a marker on our GPS as to where his brick was, but couldn't find it anywhere. There were just some blank bricks where his name should have been. Dan finally came to see what was taking me so long. Once I had explained to him and showed him where my dad's brick ought to be, he started flipping over the blank bricks. And there it was! Some random vandal must have flipped it over; or my dad has enemies (I don't think so though.) It was the only brick with a name on it that was flipped over. I thought this was a pretty good coincidence, and a most excellent Father's Day tale too!

I would rather do a cache that takes me somewhere I would have never found on my own, and I prefer a swag filled cache, but micros are also great for us because we work midnights and don't always cache when you "normal" folks do. "Microspews" are mostly always available, whereas lots of places are closed to us during our nocturnal ventures. I would be sad if there were no more of them! Dan is so fascinated by the fact we can locate such a tiny thing, he does not care where it takes us. It's all good, Geocaching=fun!

That's more like "paperless caching". Pocket cache was recently coined in order to describe the idea of bringing a "geocache" (usually just its logbook or a supplemental logbook) to a meeting of geocachers in order to have everyone sign the logbook even though the cache is supposed to be at its original location according to the website and the "finders" never actually searched for the geocache. For example: I place GCZZTOP (Rock on you Crazy Bearded Guys! Cache) at 42,33.333/102,44.444. At the next event cache I attend, word gets around that if anyone wants to log GCZZTOP, all they have to do is come up to me wearing a pair of cheap sunglasses and I'll hand them the logbook and a pen. They go home and log GCZZTOP as a find. Indeed! I stand corrected

You have, I think, hit upon something interesting! While I do not agree that geocaching is necessarily on a downward path, I do believe that the rapid growth of the sport/game has perhaps led to a lessening of gratitude and appreciation for the basics of the sport. For me, this has been most obvious in the recent proliferation of threads -- as well as log entries (finds, DNFs and notes) for caches -- wherein cachers actually complain about encountering bears, ticks, snakes, spiders, insects and even mud and dirt on their way to find a cache, as if these things were somehow unexpected or unnatural, or a perversion of nature. Wow! Now, let me say here that my wife grew up in Australia, and has done a lot of hiking and adventuring throughout her life, and I have been a lifelong hiker, rock climber, spelunker, SCUBA diver, cave diver and explorer; I spent my childhood exploring forests, ponds and streams, and often came home at the end of the day covered with mud, ticks and leeches. This latest phenomenon (i.e., the complaints about encountering ticks, snakes, spiders, bears, mud, dirt, trash, etc.) which is emergent in the geo world has caught both my wife and me by total surprise, and, in fact, shocked us, and we finally realized that the sport is now comprised more and more largely of people who had never spent much, if any, time outdoors in their life prior to discovering geocaching, and who perhaps had never previously gotten much exercise either. In other words, it appears strongly that the discovery of geocaching is now leading many previously sedentary people who had never spent time in the outdoors, and who had perhaps never even exercised, to go outside and to hike and walk and even enter forests and woods. I can, I believe, even go a step further, and speculate that many of these previously-inactive non-outdoorsy people have largely been accustomed to passive activities and passive forms of entertainment, such as playing video games, waching TV, and watching movies. Suddenly, a goody number of these people who had grown accustomed to passive entertainment are now venturing outdoors to seek geocaches. This can undestandably lead to some surprises for these newcomers to the outdoors. Now, all this news about increased levels of exercise for people who had previously never ventured outdoors is likely very heartening to public health educators, public health specialists, longevity experts and physical fitness promoters, as that has long been their goal for the more underactive members of the population, and it is also good news for many managers of state parks, whose major challenges had often been under-utilization of trails and backwoods areas in their parks, and I am sure that many people are becoming healthier as a result of their higher levels of exercise. However, I must admit that this same demographic trend -- desirable as it may be -- is massively changing the face of geocaching, particularly as we are hearing more and more whines (please note that I am not using this term pejoratively, but rather simply as the most appropriate descriptive; it is not my intent to offend anyone) and complaints about everyday aspects of nature such as ticks, sunlight, snakes, bears, rocks, creeks, mud, water, spiders and insects, all of which I have always taken for granted, and about which I would never think of complaining. Anyway, I wonder if a good part what you have been witnessing, and some of what you trying to describe, particuarly the lack of appreciation, the complaining, the "disconnect", and the sense of rushing, is simply due to the rapidly-changing demographics of this sport, as people who had been accustomed to passive entertainment become more active and start to seek geocaches. You are spot on Vinny, I am a previous member of the sedentary club. Watching TV, playing on the computer, VG's etc. used to be my main form of entertainment. I only discovered geocaching because there was a link on google. However, as a noob I do not want to be lumped into a category "ungrateful." My husband and I are thoroughly enjoying this hobby, and all the hard work that goes along with it. We very much appreciate all of the great spots we are finding due to the hides and the hider. There are so many cool parks and trails near us that we never would have found if not for geocache.com. I am not trying to speak for anyone but myself-but please don't confuse my suprise over nature as being a complaint. It's more of a discovery (see sentence one! ) The biggest spider I'm used to encountering are the ones that find their way into my bathtub! Go ahead and laugh, I know my dad would be if he were reading this. He took me camping to a very rustic location once when I was a young teen. It was at the pinnacle of my teenage vanity, and I swear I was traumatized by the lack of shower and all of the bugs. Anyways, I have not returned to the woods until now, 20 yrs later. There was a point to this... Oh, if I am being an a-hole I humbly apologize to all the veteran geocachers! Bear with us and have a sense of humor, please enjoy our photos-even if you have seen them all before! "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

1)Microspew=A thoughtlessly placed micro cache which could have been a regular or large cache. A micro cache that has been placed in a lame spot, such as a lampost at your local walmart etc. 2)Pocket cache-"You get location and log information about individual caches from the "details" link on Geocaching.com. To take this information with you, you can print it out on a piece of paper or cut-and-paste it into a Word document and sync that with your Pocket PC. Premium members of Geocaching.com can also use a program called GpxView (http://strandberg.org/gpxview) to download information about sites to their Pocket PC. A "Pocket Query" feature on Geocaching.com lets Premium members search for caches by specific criteria (date created, type of cache, etc.) and download the results of the query to their Pocket PC. GpxView lets you view these downloaded queries on the Pocket PC."

Argiope Aurantia, Garden Spider. (which is, indeed, an orb weaver). Opened the front door to my apartment a few years ago, overnight one of these had built a web in the door frame. I was talking to my wife when I opened the door and turned just in time to keep from getting a face full of him. Closest I have ever come to having a heart attack. We used to have one of these living in the bushes outside of my childhood home. It freaked me out, summer after summer there was always one in that bush.

I did notice when I discovered it that it's abdomen was twisted into one of the groves of the bark and as it crawled out, it was almost laboring to move. As it crawled closer, the abdomen stayed almost twisted as opposed to lining up with the body. It moved like it was full. I wouldn't be suprised if "she" was pregnant. She also paid no attention to the plethora of food scurring around her, but that was probaly because I disturbed her. There was no running water close by, but the area was soggy all around, with deep mud, almost swamp like, just without the water on top of the ground.

We were out caching and I flipped over what I surely thought to be the camo covering of the cache, and boy was I wrong! This is what I found lurking beneath the bark lying on the ground. Does anyone know what kind of spider this is? We are in Michigan and we have never witnessed one this big here. And yes, I did need a stick to retrieve my quarter. Sorry the pics are sooo huge, but we wanted a good close up with detail. Our main goal is to identify this particular spider, but if you have some of your own we'd love to see them. Kinda...

Does no news=bad news?

I couldn't find any girl shotgun images without copyrights, here's a couple handguns though Here's one that may or may not include a copyrighted image.

WHOA, That's heavy man! Yes, I guess it is! However, I have no clue as to what I wrote! As you likely guessed, I wrote it as a spoof. In this case, I wrote it as a spoof of the way that so many people in "advanced" academic fields tend to write. When I was in grad school, my on-campus job was to review the dissertation papers written by doctoral candidates for scientific soundness and sanity, and I would regularly encounter such gibberish in the papers!... Anyway, it was fun writing that essay! You so funny! Your college job sounds delightful

How about these?

You look at everything as a potential hidey-hole!

WHOA, That's heavy man!

Well I'm pretty new and I can't quit trolling. The bickering amongst veteran cachers and hilarious posts from Sue & Vinnie just keep me coming back! It's almost as good as