mgbmusic

Ya know, they say the first cache is the hardest, but I find thats not all that true. I use the bearing and distance feature with a good old fashioned compass. And I use common sense. I'f I'm looking for an ammo box, the hiding places are gonig to be limited (althought I've been surprise a couple of times!). So, in your shoes, I'd start with those. Also, give yourself enough time to do a thorough search. I'm done caches in minutes, and some have taken me close to an hour. My first cache, I had actually given up and was heading out when I found it (and bear in mind - this was on the second trip!). The very first time I went caching, with a borrowed GPS, I searched for 2 hours and I wasn't even close. I know I'm REALLY bad, but when you have to cross a river twice, and still wind up on the wrong side, there's issues there...

Sounds like fun...hope one makes it out my way. I can think of a few interesting pictures.... How bout "Ducky Deuce" - a picture of Two Duckys as they cross paths in the wilds of GCing. Or Ducky-palooza of three or more. MGB

As a sports fan and official, I released a whistle as a TB right after last year's NCAA BAsketball tourney, with the goal of visiting the campus of each school in the Men's Basketball Tourney prior to next year's final four, and then making it ot the sight of next year's final four. Didn't happen. Disappeared after the first cache. Ugh...not cool. I get sick every time I think of a TB that disappears...I don't know it just occurs to me that someone spent the money and put some heart into the goal only to have some schmuck walk away with a freakin' whistle. I'm not expecting the MLBTB to make it's circuit in less than a year. I'm fully expecting 1.5 - 2 years. But I'd like to read about the experiences. We'll see what happens. I'll keep ya'll posted

One big thing I haven't seen, which is not strictly necessary per se, but I find a compass invaluable. As for the rest, it depends on what you like to carry with you to make your caching life easier- I have a Treo 650 phone that I use to store the web pages of caches (paperless. Printing the page w/ map is just as good) Clipboard - Good for paper, and good cover in muggle infested areas Swag - again optional. I've traded Twice I think H20 - If you're spoiled like me you'll have bottled. Time - GC'ing is a big time killer. You can kill 15 minutes or an entire day depending on where you are and how many you're searching for. I don't know aobut the rest of you, but I only have 2 days off per week and a pregant wife. Time's a bit of a commodity recently...Welcome to caching!

See the Coin Trifecta: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...e1-463987f3d6fd http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...b8-8ac979a605a9 http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...f8-fcc9484f6b71 Kinda fun. I found 1 of 3 so far... MGB

Is anyone else getting sick of geocaching being described as a "Scavenger hunt" or is it just me...

Nothing wrong with using a flag though! Cool photo Absolutely Right! http://www.geocaching.com/track/log.aspx?L...cf-17f546361f8d My photo for October is admittedly weak though... http://www.geocaching.com/track/log.aspx?L...81-169e2e5f3f56 Kinda an inside joke...

Right now the plan is to drop them both into the same cache Right here in Chi-town - since we have teams from both leagues here after all (went to the last Cubs game of the season today - I'm gonig to cry myself to sleep tonight.... ) and kinda race them - see which one gets to all the teams in their league first...Dunno. I know of one cache int he area that's a non-stop to Maryland caqche, so that could work sending the AL on to Baltimore...Prolly just stick with my first idea tho...

Well, for what it's worth, I'd enjoy seeing more Virtual Caches placed - I haven't gone looking myself, but it seems like a fun type of cache to me. Learning something interesting about a place or area, and not having to deal with ammo boxes burried under logs or soggy log books. I've got a couple of virts I plan to go seeking, once I actually have the time to do so... Comming home not covered in burrs is another BIG plus... Virt on man! We salute you!

Welcome to Geocaching! TB's can generally be given a "Goal" or path you wish it to take and for the most part, Cachers will do their best to accomodate. The instructions are placed on the Travel Bug's web page, located at Geocaching.com. E.G. This bug wants to travel around the shores of Lake Michigan, or This bug wants to go to Australia and see the Outback. Generally Cachers will do their best to follow the wishes of the Owner. Tracking is done on the TB's web page as well. Similar to writing a cache log, Cachers will write a TB log cataloguing the TB's experiences while in transit. Take this example of a bug I found: 9/27/2006 You retrieved "Joe Mills Mountain (CO)" Green Jeep Travel Bug (Green Jeep 4x4 Travel Bug) from McCache Found this one on a fun MacMulti - Liberated the bug from the cache and will hang with it for a while, before releasing it back into the wild... When you buy the bug (I belive for $5.00 or less) you get two "Dog Tags" with a unique tracking number - One for the bug (generally attached with a dog tag chain to, say, a plastic car or something compact and not easily damaged), and one for you to keep. You students will also be able to track its progress either by visiting GC.com and entering the tracking number, or by reading the printouts you so brilliantly decide to keep on the bulletin board of your classroom. As far as instant gratification is concerned - That's up to the Cachers in the area. There are "bug-hunters" who live for moving TB's from one location to another, and there are those who will retreive/move as fancy strikes them. Be warned- there are also those who, for some inanely stupid reason, keep TB's for themselves, don't log it, and it disappears... One other thing to keep in mind when having your students place caches - Secrecy. We Cachers would hate to see two good caches get muggled because a student showed their cache to a friend, who showed it to a friend, who showed it to a friend who decided it'd be a good idea to play soccer with it...I know, I'm such a doomsayer... Remember, and tell your kids to remember - This sport is Fun! But there is a component of patience involved. Try looking for a micro cache in the middle of a cornfield, and you'll see what I mean... Once again Welcome and good luck! Let us all know how it turns out! --==MGB==-- Edited - Spelling...Hey! She's a teacher!

Come Spring I intend to launch the MLBTB's. Two travel bugs - one American League, one National Leauge who I hope will travel to all 30 Major League Baserball Stadiums and return home to tell me all about it. It's fun for me, maybe not to non-sports fans though. Also, my school teacher wife plans to release a TB for her class next summer to try to travel to all the cultures her class studied - Aztec, Mayan, Egyptians, Ottoman Empire, and a number of other ancient civilizations around the world. More ambitious than mine, but still fun!

A question regarding the Green Jeep TB's given their nature (being a contest): 1. Is it necessarily a bad thing to take and or leave a GJTB in a cache you have previously found? I only ask b/c TB's want to travel. I don't generally travel more than 40 miles to and from work (yes, 40 miles) so I've found many caches near my house and there's one about 800 feet from my door at work which I've also found. Now in order to get maximum distance between bug caches, I almost have to leave or retreive the TB from a cache i've found already b/c frankly after work, I don't WANT to find another cache, but I want to move the bug. I generallyu will not persue TB's unless I've planning on travelling a good distance and caching when I get there (e.g before Vaca), but it's a contest, and it'd be silly not to try to win. Just curious about the opinions out there... --MGB

Ahh the famous frisbee rule. Ok fair enough. I generally find it hard to play frisbee in the forest....lots of trees you know...Thanks for the answer!

--==Sigh==-- I remember my first Cache hunt. Church picinic. Thought I'd slip away for a few minutes and find myself a cache. Crossed a river - it was on the other side...crossed the river again - and it was STILL on the other side....came back 3 hours later and everyone was gone....My first Hunt and my first DNF... I envy you...

Ok folks, got an interesting question for you and I ask for a number of reasons. I'm big on the whole "Follow the rules" thing (except, perhaps, while driving, but anyway) and I was wondering - If someone places a cache in an aea such as a forest preserve (large area), can another cache assume that permission for 1 was given, so why not a second? I would extrapolate this to say if 5 cahces are in a large forest preserve, surely someone will have asked and received permission. Would it not be safe to assume that permission is granted for my cahce as well? I ask for two reasons - 1. I wouldn't be too sure to whom to direct my request when it comes to an area such as forest preserve - city, county, state? 2. I wouldn't want to compromise our sport, or someone else's cache if I were to ask, and be denied. It may alert authorities that unauthorized caches were place w/o permission and compromisethe integrity of those majority who DO ask. Just some random thoughts...

preety soon now we'll have to place a memorial cache for this thread cuz were are beating this puppy to death...

Well, I'd have to say that it comes down to commons sense. When it comes to actions, I tend to agree under most circumstances that there are no stupid actions, just stupid results. For example a two-point convesion in a football games to secure a win, rather than a tie. IF it works, you're a genious. If it doesn't, you're a moron. It's a matter of perception. Now, if there is a cache that requires me to scale a 100 foot rock wall to complete, even if there's no warnings on the cache pages, then I'll turn around and go home. If someone decides to go for it and they mae it, that'd probably be pretty cool. If someone who is 5'5" and 300 pounds decides it'd be a good idea to take that one on, and checks out in the process, I blame them, not the placer, not the forest preserve commission, and not God. Now if I place a cache somewhere, regardless of terrain, i will do my best to give it a fair, and probably overestimated difficulty rating based on that terrain. That is all I think can be asked of me. If one person falls and hurts themselves, severly or otherwise, or god-forbid dies or ends up in the hospital trying to hunt it out, then I will have to reevaluate. I would not automatically archive the cache because one person got hurt. I would have to ask myself - "Did my familiarity with the area help me place this cache and skew my perception of the terrain." I would have to go to the area and look. I can't be expected to remove every root, rock, etc on the way to the cache, but I can ask myself did I give this a fair terrain warning. I would probably also take someone along with me to give me another perspective. If another person or two got hurt, then I would have to come up with a really good reason to keep it active. Failing that, I'll pull it and go place it somwhere else. It should also be mentioned that there is always more than one way to get to a cache. Often there's an easy way and a hard way. I remember one cache of mine had me scaling (ok hurtling) down an embankment that ended in a lot of downed and sharp looking trees. In retrospect, stupid. Little did I know that there was a PAVED hiking trail that passed within a couple hundred feet of the cache. So I guess what this all boils down to is this- Whatever you want to do, feel, etc. feel free. Some will agree, some will disagree. Some will be wrong, and some, as long as they agree with me, will be right!

Ch 2, but you might want to check out this topic i recently started: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=144086

I knew this one would come up. I could go on a rant about Darwinism, but it's off-topic. I mean, if you want to kill off the weak and the stupid then what we really need is a world-wide riot that gets millions of people killed. Give me a break. "Not to be cold hearted" my eye! Well golly Gee. Since KDI opened this door, I may as well step in too... I might be a bit jaded, because I do work in Technical Support. So therefore, if someone contacts me - they don't know something. However, I must say I've encountered the absolute dredges of human intelligence working where I have and where I do now. To give you an example - I work for an online university now. However, I get callers on a DAILY basis whose first word to me are "I know nothing about computers" Now I have no problem with someone not knowning computers - they're tricky and sometime scary things, but my question is this - If you know nothing about computer WHY ARE YOU ENROLLING IN AN ONLINE UNIVERSITY?!?!? Personally I don't care - it keeps me emplyed, but for the love of Jesus and everything holy. It's common sense lacking, not necessarily intelligence. My point is this - there are people out there that are so incredibly lame-brained, it really does lower the bar for everyone else. If they want to kill themselves and save us all a lot of grief, whether it's during caching, or playing with a rifle, I have no problem with that. Regarding that, if you set a cache on a cliffside, post reasonable warnings and danger signs, and a person decides to go after it with a rubber band and a beer - no big loss. If someone decides to go after the cache and takes the proper safety precautions and still through a freak accident, hurts/kills him/herself, then my heart will be heavy. For what it's worth. Have a nice day..

Not to be cold hearted, but that's called "Natural Selection" And BTW if I do ever end up in a bad way in a situation like this, I will have been naturally selected. Lack of common sense to me is and never has been likable. Maybe I need to lower my standards, but I'm gonig to stop now before I get off on a rant. Edit: adding content

So which cache was it??? I want to go get it!!! j/k. Seriously, it's good to know that cooler heads prevailed in that situation and no one got hurt. Say what you want about GPSr's and technology, but sometimes it's amazing what a compass and a lot of little urine puddles can do. Edited for Spelling & to remove quote since it's long...

Advice I intend to pass on to my son - Just do what you do. Screw the expectations. Myself, I've found a whopping 14 caches, and swapped once. Mostly, I'm excitied for the find, and could care less about digging thru the cache. Heck, once I even forgot to sign the log Most of the time, I've forgotten my "swag bag" so it kinda becomes a non-issue. Nothing a little TNLN can't sure...

for $4,000 that thing better go get the cache for me too!

A: RE: Burying in sand - It wouldn't be my first choice honestly. Sand is such a fluidic substance it's blown all around all the time. I honestly don't think a few inches would suffice to hide it. It's your cache, don't get me wrong, but whether it would be findable, or people would venture out to look, don't know. I know _I_ probably wouldn't look for it.. B: RE: Zip codes - usps.com - us postal service. specifically - http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/citytown.jsp C: RE: TB - To be honest, I don't have a good answer for this one. I would say it's a touch impractical for a number of reasons, not the least of which is transport. Things get lost/damaged/etc. when moving around. Throwing a logbook or papers or stamps into the mix would, I think, be pointless because at the end of the day, I think you'd end up with a dog tag in a cache in Connecticut somewhere. I know I personally would take care to follow your wishes as best as I could, but not everyone is me, and frankly I'd lose your stamps. In your shoes, I would release the TB, and use the TB log page to keep track of its movements. 9 times out of 10 it'll be easier to track and read than the average logbook scrawl i've seen. As far as pics are concerned, Ask people to email them. Most people are gonig to research the cache before finding it, and those people will bring a camera with them. If not, they'll snap off a picture while en route moving it to another cache. In a perfect world, your idea would be wonderful. In practice howevr, it doesn't seem practical. Just my $0.04 (there's a lot here, so I had to double it). --==MGB==-- Edited: added content

I appreciate the spontinaity involved of saying "Hey there's a cache here!" But More often than not, when I go out hiking, or to someplace where I might have time to kill, I'll automatically look up any caches in the area. If I'm in a pinch and find myself with nothing to do, and i'm not near a computer, I just whip out the old reliable treo and use the web browser to visit GC.com and find caches form there. Kinda cheating, but hey...it works.