Quest Master

This cache is still alive and well. You can find it here.

But if you know, (or if anyone else does) could you or they offer an account of those activities as you understand them? Who knows if he will (or will ever be able to) reply himself? Personally, I think I'd rather hear someone else's view on it instead of bits and pieces that are a steady I'm-gonna-poke-you-with-a-stick-then-cry-like-I'm-a-victim posts he seems to want to always post. I won't get into the reasons for my banishments on this forum for fear of retribution. If anybody wants to know about that, they can contact me off the board.

I guess I need to weigh in here. I was banned twice for 30 days during which time I was unable to maintain my cache listings on this website. I cross-listed my caches on navicache.com during the first banishment and I pledged that I would be removing my caches from this website if it ever happened again. I meant it. Natuarally, it was my first point of business after the second banishment concluded to archive my caches from this website and it's a decision that I feel very good about. If they insist on censuring people by excluding them, they should expect that they are going to lose whatever they bring to the game, for better or worse. I am not the first and I'm sure that I won't be the last. I try to maintain my caches at a high level. If I can't do that on this website, I'm more than willing to explore alternatives. I find that navicache has certain advantages from a hider's perspective. I can hide virts, change the cache type, move a cache as far as I like without reviewer interference, and I don't have to deal with this website's petty politics. There's also a lot less clutter. It may be true that navicache.com is a second-rate site with a lot fewer caches but that suits me just fine because I can easily remember when this website was just as clunky and had even fewer caches than navicache presently has. Geocaching was better back then... My caches are not gone. They may be forgotten but they're not gone. I think that they're just as fun on the other website as they were on this one. I hope people will find them there and enjoy them just the same. I don't know how this is going to play out but at this point I have become convinced that a viable alternative to this website would be a wonderful thing. I feel that I'm doing right by providing content to support alternatives. Choice is good. I take offense to the suggestion of hijacking my spots with micros or any other cache for that matter. I'm going to guard my spots jealously. The time-honored tradition of first-come, first served should be respected by fellow geocachers even if the individual websites cannot be expected to enforce it. It occurs to me that navicache.com could be used to list spoilers for hides on this website. Would that be funny too?

Nope. But until you can prove (your unfounded theorys are a waste of everybody's time) that micros are inherently more likely to get muggled than other caches then that by itself wouldn't explain why micros are absent from the ranks of the oldest surviving caches. I might counter that micros are easier to maintain (because it's easy to invent plausible explantions for such things without offering any proof) but by then we've dragged this thread completely off topic. I hereby apologize to the OP for my contribution to derailing this topic. I'd like to know if anybody noticed any OM's (original micros) in the lists. That's vaguely back on topic, I think.

I don't know when this thread turned into the same old micro bashing thread, but you might note two things: There was no micro-size category in the beginning. In fact, right this second, I'm not sure if 'small' existed way back then. The list you are referencing only chronicles caches that are still active. Of course, the oldest pages are going to be full of ammo cans off the beaten path. Less sturdy cantainers and those hidden in muggle-rich environments would likely be archived long ago. From where I sit, I'm seeing that you were the first to mention "micro bashing" but then it is pretty hard not to see a trend unless you really don't want to see it. One might even be inspired to invent facts of their own to keep the blinders on. Your two things of note are a smokescreen. I'm OG enough to know better. Two of the 20 oldest hides in Pennsylvania are mine (they're on the last page or not depending on where the page break is at any given time). It's interesting to note that less than half of these caches are still being maintained by their original owners. The really OG's are mostly gone. I think my time for being attritioned (is that a word?) is drawing near. Somebody will correct me if I wrong but I'm just about certain that my failing memory is still better than yours. I believe that the size attribute has been around almost as long as the micro because I'm pretty sure that it was created for that purpose. I know that micros have been around since before I started caching but they were rarely hidden in the early days. The "small" size was introduced just a couple of years ago when the size attribute icon was added to the search listings. Prior to that, you had to choose between micro or large. Saying that there are no micros among the oldest caches because the containers were less sturdy or vulnerable to muggles doesn't work. They might still exist if they were properly maintained. My oldest caches are not in their original containers. One might argue that there are no micros in the list because their owners or the community didn't care enough about them but I don't think you want to go there. It's off-topic and probably false. There just weren't very many micros being hidden way back when.

Not a problem, it refers back to an acronym I made up in an earlier post in this thread - FOP = Friends Of Phil, Phil Trigo being the virtual leader of TRIGO. No, there is no Phil. Blasphemy! Not all those who seek, find. Wide is path to WalMart and narrow the one to the ammo can. Teacher says, "Every time an ammo can opens, an angel gets a smiley." It's not that Phil doesn't exist. He's virtual. He's grandfathered for now but the day may come when he is exiled to Waymarking unless we can come up with some way to intern him into an earthcache.

And if they don't know the secret handshake, invent one to prove that you're the elite and they're newbie pond scum.

I didn't think I was "due" anything. But, I've already explained this a few pages back so I'm not going to rehash it. Frankly, after reading several of your posts both here and on the TRIGO forums, I'm thinking you and I probably wouldn't get along very well anyways. Maybe I'll run into you on the trail someday and find out I'm wrong, we'll see. Apparently you did expect to be treated ia certain way or you wouldn't have come to this forum to complain that you or others were treated badly. I vaguely remember talking to you for a few minutes. I don't think I was rude. I ditto that we probably wouldn't get along. I think that I share little in common with anyone who enjoys parking lot caching for whatever reason -- no offense intended. That's because you wrongly assume that I view outdoorsy as "cool" and nerdy as "uncool". I echo the sentiment of somebody who has already pointed out that the vast majority (if not all) geoachers are nerds, myself included. It's my sense that there were relatively more outdoorsy nerds playing the game in a better vanished time. I don't think that outdoorsy nerds are better than other nerds but I do prefer the way they play the game. I stand by what I said in the context of my opinion that geocaching was better before than it is now.

I think you're on to something here. I attended the same event and my perception of it was entirely different. I thought it was a tremendous success. We did a good thing and we got good press for geocaching. I guess this was lost on the OP who seems to be mired in his own agenda. The reality (or, rather, my perception of it) is that there really wasn't a whole lot of time for socializing at this particular event because we were mostly out in the field doing the importantant work of finding boundary corners and reporting on their condition. The OP conveniently failed to mention any of this and chose instead to bash the organizers of the event by charging that they exibited "rude" and "elitist" behavior. He even went so far as to make much ado about one guy out of a hundred attendees who was being a wallflower and blames that on the organizers. My take is that he came to the event with his prejudice and he is still clinging to it. A funny thing about the "numbers elite" is that they don't like to hear that a number of the utmost importance to them is perceived to be a farce by others. And God forbid that they should ever say it out loud because that's "elitist", "negative", and "rude". To the degree that they are committed to the business of keeping score, I have learned that they will hold a grudge forever for this transgression. This talk about "elitism" has a very familiar ring to it. Yawn. It's getting to the point that you can't hide a cache 1/2 mile into the woods without being called elitist. I feel compelled to apologize but I just can't help myself. I invested a considerable amount of time into the planning of this event as did many other members of TRIGO. We're pretty proud of what we accomplished. I would say to the OP that I'm sorry that he didn't have a good time but this event wasn't about him or his issues. Yeah, I know who I am. I'm sorry if he felt that he didn't get his "due" from me or anybody else but I'm not going to dwell on that for more than ten seconds. It just so happens that I didn't participate in this event to make friends and I certainly don't need any who would call me "elitist".

The purpose for this post? Something happened that irritated me a few weeks back at an event and it's been gnawing at me ever since. I'm not directing this post at anybody, although it may feel that way to those involved, I'm directing this at the situation that I do not like. So, a few weeks ago, I attended a large local event. It was hosted by a local caching group that is well known to be really into their numbers and anti-puzzle, anti-hiking, anti-anything that requires effort to increment their find count, even anti-"outdoorsy cachers". I'm strongly against the last piece of this, since I'm an outdoorsy person that took up geocaching to go to go places and see things and I’ll never get the point of incrementing a number on a website just for the sake of incrementing a number on a website. Anyways, I try to make it a point to be polite to everyone I meet unless given a reason not to be. Even after given a reason, I'm not likely to be rude to them, just not "hang out" with them. At the event, there was a large group of cachers that were all obviously good friends who were members of said organization. They were getting ready to go out to score two dozen finds on temporary caches set out for the event. They were loudly proclaiming things such as "I should get my 1450th find on this trip out! HAHAHAHA!” and “I already got the new cache at the Taco Bell on the way here! hahahahah! It may have been fun for them, but they were being loud, obnoxious, and ignoring cachers who weren't part of their little group. Several of these guys are the big numbers cachers in the area (again, I'm not going to mention names, that's not the purpose here). At one point, I introduced myself to one of them simply because I recognized the name and thought it was cool to meet him and I almost felt like I was looked up on with scorn, maybe because I’ll say out loud that I think micros in parking lots are stupid, I dunno. Anyways, what really irked me about the entire situation is that I wanted to talk cache while they just wanted to run around doing the temporary caches and explore other innovative ways to increment their number. This seemed quite odd to me. I know that at events thrown by the organization that I'm a participant in, we like to socialize and spend our time telling war stories about the great caches we had found. It seemed a waste to spend this time looking for a series of ho-hum temporary caches. I make it a point to include everyone. This group made it a point to exclude certain cachers that they didn’t agree with. They pretended to be “open minded” but they really didn’t want to hear anything that could be construed as being “negative”. I was fortunate to find a like-minded cacher sitting alone in the corner who wasn’t keen on finding a bunch of temps. I chatted with him for a good half an hour. We talked cache. I never got how many he found but I did get that it didn’t matter to him either. The point of all this rambling?? WHY?? Why do many numbers cachers think they're "elite", better than anybody else? Why do they brag so much about milestones and FTFs. Don't get me wrong, it's not all numbers cachers, but I've seen several. I've only had contact with maybe a dozen "numbers cachers" to the caching game. One was positive, the rest were negative. In this case, I felt shunned when I tried to mingle with a group. I've been attacked in the forums by another member of the group in the past because he can’t (or doesn’t want to) hunt anything more 100 feet from pavement. I've also read an essay by another in the group that basically states that "elitist old-school" cachers ruin the fun for everyone else by complaining about micros and he wished that they would just shut up so that everyone could revel in the glory of their find stat. Whatever happened to don't judge a book by how many pages it has? I honestly feel that I could probably be friends with any of these guys if given the chance. But, then again, they’re too busy playing in parking lots. Why can't we all just get along? If you don't like to hear that it's not about the numbers and spend your time running from this light pole to the next signing waypointed scraps of paper...then that's your business...why brag about it and expect others to be impressed? If you don't like complaints about guardrail micros...ignore them...or stop hiding them... Why are you so offended by the complaints? Why are you irritated? What is gnawing at you? Do you really feel that you are being “attacked”? What is the root cause of your angst? Maybe you need to reevaluate the way you play the game.

I quit my charter membership subscription a month or so ago but I still have a public bookmark list out there that should probably be deleted now that I can no longer maintain it. I have no intention of renewing my subscription. I actually have several public bookmark lists but only one ever appeared in the "Bookmark Lists" tab on my public profile. This one still appears on cache pages but I'd rather that it didn't since it's not accurate anymore. Ironically, my other public bookmark lists that might still be useful to other geocachers cannot be viewed by them. I think this is because they were initially set up as private bookmark lists and changed to public after they were finished. It's one of many buggy things about bookmark lists that never got fixed.

While in a way (since we're not premium members) we'd kind of welcome this action, I'm kind of surprised they wouldn't just do the other route which is the free premium membership to monitor it. Given how many park managers get concerned (wrongly, though) about geocaching causing too many people to "trample" off the trail and "destroy" things, I'd think they'd * WANT * PM-only caches with the idea that they would generate less such "trampling" and tend to attract cachers who may be more likely to respect being "delicate" when bushwacking. It makes sense to me. Commercial activity is strictly regulated in DCNR areas. If you have to pay to cache and the money goes to a for-profit company in Seattle, that's commercial. The DCNR is right to prohibit MOCs in state parks and forests.

1. Sometimes I do it just to tick off the people that take their numbers too seriously. 2. No. 3. I don't police cache logs. If somebody wants to cheat my cache, that's their problem.

Questmaster has a BM list. Its up to a few pages. The list is no longer available to anybody but me since I quit my charter membership. If anybody wants to adopt and maintain the list, contact me. There are 75 caches in the list but not all of them are bomb squad related and not all of them were blown up. I'd say that slighly less than half of the caches in the list were detonated or blasted with a water cannon but I think that's irrelevent because some scares are worse than detonations and some detonations are not as bad as some scares in terms of the inconvenience they cause. There are likely many more cache-related bomb scares but I won't arbitrarily judge whether or not the total number is "small". That likely depends on your interest in advancing the agenda of hiding stuff willy-nilly everywhere.

People that try to "win" at geocaching inevitably become losers that "cheat".

I posted that I believe that there was a thread. Perhaps I'll search for it in a bit. You are welcome to perform a search, if you wish. (Perhaps, you are the one that is posting without substance, just to forward your long-standing agenda.) I presented facts. You offered nothing except unfounded allegations of an agenda and a vague reference to an alleged forum thread that supposedly proves something that doesn't make sense. If it exists, I'd like to read it and learn. Your drivel is just that if you can't back it up. We're still waiting for that link. This is only true because there are more people in those areas. As you know, caches in wooded areas have also had the police called for them. Well Duh! The why of it is irrelevant. Pointing out rare exceptions that prove the rule does not make your case or further YOUR agenda (whatever that is).

Because that "did not go well".

That would appear to be this cache. What's the story?

I think that's not right. ...I'm pretty sure that Mopar is right. There was a thread discussing this very issue, as I recall. Ding! I think that location is a far more important consideration than container type. Instances of caches in remote locations causing a bomb scare are very rare regardless of the container type being used. This is pretty good evidence that urban and suburban hides must be executed differently or not at all.I can't agree with this. The only way that they need to be executed 'differently' is that caches deep in the sticks don't require careful hiding because people are less likely to wander up on it. Your inference that caches should not be hidden in urban or suburban areas is nothing more than your personal opinion. As per usual, your post has no substance. You're just running your mouth. You allege that there is a thread that demonstrates that clear plastic containers are blown up just as frequently as other types of containers but you offer no link. Thanks for nothing. I did not say that caches should not be hidden in urban or suburban areas. The inference is all yours. And then you went on to agree that urban and suburban caches requre more careful hiding. What's your point of disagreement? I think that there's a much more obvious and important reason that caches in these areas must be executed differently: THEY ARE MUCH MORE LIKELY TO BE PERCEIVED AS A THREAT WHEN FOUND.

I think that's not right. In the List of Bomb Scares and Other Fun Stuff, i tried to identify the container whenever possible. There were relatively few instances of clear containers being blown up relative to other types of containers. This is my unscientific opinion based on my experience (the caches that I have found) given that it's impossible to gauge how many of the different types of containers have been used for geocaches. I think that pipes are very bad (there seems to be a lot of pipes in the list relative to the number of pipe caches I've found) followed by ammo cans and anything covered with camoflage tape. Ding! I think that location is a far more important consideration than container type. Instances of caches in remote locations causing a bomb scare are very rare regardless of the container type being used. This is pretty good evidence that urban and suburban hides must be executed differently or not at all.

This has been a busy week for my List of Bomb Scares and Other Fun Stuff I got the one behind the grocery store. Does anybody have a waypoint or link to the alleged cache hidden under the Piscataqua River Bridge (I-95) that caused a scare on November 11?

584 watchers on 35 active caches = 16.7 Is this good or bad?

Could you please explain how this "did not go well"? I thought that the geo-organization thread that was pinned to the top of this forum was a very useful resource. The only other thing similar to it was the "local focus" feature in the now defunct "Today's Cacher". I don't understand why it had to be killed. I don't think that it's a high priority for Groundspeak to establish a list of "recognized" organizations and I don't recall that there was ever any discussion about this. Three of the other regional forums have similar pinned topics and Groundspeak doesn't seem to have any objection to them. I realize that this requires the attention of a moderator to keep the list current but I don't think that it's that much work to add the name of a new geo-group every once in awhile. What's the problem here? Am I missing something?