igator210

A lot of challenges define a birthday cache as a cache that is found on its hidden date anniversary

As long as the event was in good faith and you had hoped and planned for other cachers to show up, I'd log is as attended. Its not your fault that other people didn't show up.

I got a traffic ticket once: "Failure to come to a complete three second stop at a 4-way stop". Rookie rural county cop. Bit of a jerk.

Ohhh... good point... someone could grab a GC code and sit out it for years if they wanted to.

I'd also chalk this up a bit to saturation. Some areas have a low turn over, so new caches rarely get places.

In the early days, when only a handful of caches existed, you could store them on a floppy disk and it took only one person to run it in their spare time.. Today over 3 million caches exist. This takes staff and servers and a building and a website and a lot more overhead. Yes, Groundspeak monetized the hobby and turned it into a business. If they hadn't, there is no way the hobby would be as big as it is today.

I don't know why this irks me.... but for events where a TB is dropped and goes missing.... Why do owners post notes asking where their TB is and then ask why doesn't the Event Owner mark the TB as missing. I've seen these notes posted on events up to two years later. I understand that people are concerned, but its not like those notes are going to reach the intended audience. Only the Event Owner and the random person that looks back at an event are going to see the notes. And a TB owner can mark their own TB as missing. I've had to do that to some of mine.

I still wish there was a way to edit the date of past Lab Caches.If it has a Log date, it should be easily editable.

HQ needs to turn of all messages. My email in box is getting so spammed right now.

It hit me too.... the funny thing in the Message Center it is coming from the same user, but all the emails I'm getting are coming from different users.

I cancelled my Celebration event for next month because the limit size was capped at 25 by the county. I didn't want to assign people times to show up or tell people they couldn't come.

I leave FP on archived caches. They don't all of a sudden become less favorite just because they are archived. Plus, I view it as unfair to the CO: They have this great cache, racks up a lot of favorite points, but something happens and they have to archive it. This could have been the most favorited cache around. People might have traveled for miles just to do this cache. And all of a sudden all the favorite points are removed, only because it was archived. This once loved cache now has as many points as an LPC. (story exaggerated for illustration purpose) Favorite Points are a badge of honor to some cache owners. But, this is just my view of things.

If you search for the attributes "flashlight required" , "UV light required" or "recommended at night", make sure you search for them separately. Groundspeak's search function uses the [AND] function, not [OR]. You can also search for the works "Night Cache" in the title. Most night caches are listed as Mysteries, though I have seen them listed as Multies and Letterboxes. But, there is no single way a night cache is required to be listed, so its a bit of a hunt itself to find one. I have a bookmark list for the Northeast. Maybe I should add Texas to it.

Spotted something on the website. When I click it, I get a 404 error. My guess: something to do with Texas Instruments and their Spread the Math Love contest they had last year.

Sometimes a CO goes looking for the cache to remove and they can't find it. At some future date a cacher accidentally finds it, 100 feet from where it was originally hidden. Either moved my critters or weather and sometimes both.

After getting the first souvenir and reading the write up, its obvious that this was designed to tie into the the 20th anniversary of geocaching. Yes, you just have to go find any caches, but the souvenir itself is providing a history lesson, and thus the "memory lane". "Additional Information:On May 3, 2000, one day after selective availability on civilian GPS receivers was removed (aka everyone could receive accurate GPS readings on their location), the Great American GPS Stash Hunt began. The idea was simple: hide a container in the woods and record the coordinates using a GPS unit. A bucket in the woods near Beavercreek, Oregon was placed along with a logbook, pencil, and other various trade items – the first geocache. After the coordinates of the “stash” were shared with an online community, the “game” took off. Congratulations! You earned this souvenir by earning 10 points in Memory Lane."

Nightcaching is still quite popular is some areas. I think I've found over 60 at this point. I have public list for various parts of the US / Canada as I travel. I probably should update it soon. https://www.geocaching.com/plan/lists/BM2JWXC?sort=name&sortOrder=asc&skip=0&take=500

Causation and correlation are different. The numbers locally say that those people that "stayed home" saw a greater infection rate. Sure, it puzzling and there is no clear answer [yet] on how they got infected, but its something that needs to be investigated. Sweden, who had a relative relaxed attitude about the situation, and only really restricted cross border travel is only seeing about an 8% infection rate. Again, causation and correlation are different, but it does begs the question... is being active and outdoors better for people.

More anecdotal than a study, but New York had a spike from people staying inside. May 6th CNBC Article

Current Irk: Mud. Its been a wet spring and all the trails are big mud ruts.

There is no guarantee that anyone will agree with something you post. This applies to anything someone posts, including myself.

Back to the title of this thread... Is It safe? Locally, I haven't heard of any cacher getting Covid.

I've gone caching every week and have grabbed over 60 caches since the whole ordeal started. I haven't caught anything off a cache yet.

Certain regions are allowing geocaches to be published as of 12:01am Friday May 15th. According to this NYS dashboard: https://forward.ny.gov/regional-monitoring-dashboard?fbclid=IwAR0SqNhTABDOvFOAbvJgKkL-yrYkYoiHUmWwJ6TuGwdoTSEgYi9dJ5zeb2g If a region reaches 7/7 in Metrics, it will be eligible for Phase 1 reopening, and geocaches will be published.

This also gets into the: Do you log it when visited or when answers are sent. I know instances where people follow the second part and it could be months before they send answers, thus allowing them to fill stat holes. I know people that go to a challenge trail, sigh everything and then log the find when they "noticed that they finally qualify", which could be months later.