Kabuthunk

I go with the same type of theory. Normally in my geocaching bag, I have a Fisher space pen... but just in case I run into other cachers and not have that bag at the time, I have one of those tiny bison canisters attached to my keys that have several micro and nano signature chainmail balls, as well as a tiny custom-made pencil using 2mm lead from a mechanical pencil/lead holder (my favourite type of mechanical pencil... nuts to those 0.5mm ones!) coated with JB Weld. This way, I always have a writing utensil AND some signature items to drop.

Up in Manitoba, I'd probably have put Junglehair at the top of the legends, but she just recently moved away. After that, most likely OHMIC would take the next spot in my mind.

HAH! That's awesome. Numbers 15 and 33 are so ridiculously true, and I'm surprised you're only just beginning to learn number 23 . Although I gotta disagree with 40. Fisher space pen all the way

That's a pretty cool sig item. I know that it'd certainly catch MY eye, anyway. It seems that for the most part, people leave a card as their signature item... which I just find boring. Actual non-paper objects are always a better option in my opinion. I myself have a homemade chainmail ball thing (see my geocaching profile). Keep in mind though that (assuming you leave it in every single cache) you'll be making literally hundreds of these. If it takes too long to make, I could see it quickly becoming a chore. With mine for example, if I have the chainmail rings ready (and I generally do, I make other things with chainmail), I can literally pound out one of my signature items in about 45 seconds. A few dozen can be made while watching a TV show. So yeah, as long as it doesn't become a chore to make (or if you only leave them in specifically awesome caches), then I'd see it as an excellent sig item.

There should not be. If it has the same number of files to read, the 'empty space' will not be accessed on the card when using the GPSr.

Just feel I should kinda comment on this, knowing all too well very similar situations. It applies in many other fields, and I'm almost 100% certain it would in geocaching, too. When you get rules that are way too overly specific, there WILL be people who will exploit the specificness of it, and will blatantly skirt the rules by finding loopholes, and then be more than happy to point out when they're yelled at that they are not breaking the rules. When you go the extremely specific route, then it's just a race between the people who love abusing the system vs. t he system, constantly having to update the rules to accommodate the jerks. Basically, it's a ridiculously massive waste of time and effort on everyone's part trying to keep the jerks from deliberately setting out to ruin things as much as they can for everyone else. And don't think said jerks don't exist in geocaching. They're friggin' everywhere. Thankfully, geocaching isn't as strict as other fields, and have rules (ie: the vague terms you spoke of) that are flexible so that it can be a judgement call as opposed to something on a very specific list. Thus, I'm by far on the side of Groundspeak in regards to their rule system as a whole. A general rule of thumb to go by in geocaching, as well as virtually anywhere else in life... is "Don't be a prick". It'll keep you out of trouble 99.9% of the time. Yes, that's vague as well. If you actually have to ask yourself "Is this a prickish thing to do" before doing something, then the answer is "Yes". Unfortunately as the saying goes, 'common sense is anything but'... thus the need for rules to begin with, and people get caught unawares. But that's life. Learn from it and continue on. EDIT: Don't take this post as me bashing the person banned at the start of the topic... I have no clue who that is, or anything about it. I'm commenting on the concept of the specificness of rules as a whole.

Aww... tis a shame to see INATN disappear. So far, it was the only web-based stats page that showed average log length (as well as the associated shortest and longest logs)... those being about the only things I had going for me with my stats Does anyone know of another stats page that has indications about log lengths?

Gotta say, I've felt that nervous twinge when hunting around bushes at night with a flashlight. The problem however is that it's a lot easier to explain why you're looking around with a flashlight than if you're looking around with nightvision goggles. The former looks relatively innocent and is quite explainable. With the latter, you would have a really hard time trying to convince the cops you're not a stalker.

That's moreso the reason I'm leaving them 'unlabeled'... so that albeit it's my signature item, it's seen by others as a swag item more than anything else. Far, far too many times have I opened a cache (ie: most caches small size and up), to find that half of the 'swag' is all signature items... cards with people's names, poker chips, whatever homemade stuff. All fine and good, but it seems like there's far more signature item than there is non-signature swag. With this seen possibly as more non-sig swag, I'm hoping that people trade for it moreso than sig items, and thus bring up the percentage of regular swag in the cache. At least around here it seems as though nobody trades for signature items... could just be a regional thing. I am amazed. I tried making chainmail (I make jewelry & stuff). It drove me bonkers! I've never been more frustrated in my life! All the links look the same to me while making it, so I was never getting the rings in the right places. And then heaven forbid you drop it! You'll never figure out which rings are which! Excellent work! Thanks. If you want a quick look at what enough patience with chainmail eventually comes to, check out this item I've made Also, when I place a cache, my FTF prize is usually a handmade titanium chainmail bracelet.

Don't worry about it. I avoid nanos at the best of times. And with the titanium thing, if your cache can't fit something not much thicker than the width of a human hair, eventual dampness or the sheer act of people writing on the paper are going to do far more than this will.

You're not suggesting that you have fit one of these into a nano blinkie are you??? Or a mini bison??? Trying to imagine any nano that I've seen fitting one as they pretty much are filled to the max with the log alone. Not only has the tiny chainmail ball fit into those blinkies or mini bison tubes, but I've even gotten one into a hollowed-out bolt, and had one sitting sandwiched inbetween several sheets of log-paper behind a magnet. In each of those that I've seen (except the magnet), on either the cap or at the bottom of the container there's usually an 'indent' as the inside of the container tapers down to nothing. That, which the log scroll will not fit into, this ball will. It's maybe a millimeter thick at its thickest where the rings overlap. For the blinkies for example, I'd typically sign the logscroll, roll it up, balance the nano ball on top of the log scroll and then screw it shut. And technically, I have a few 'limited edition' titanium mobius balls that make the nano one here look big, just in case . The rings are about 1/3rd the size in the titanium one. When I say I've never NOT left a signature item in a cache container, I mean it. Of course, this doesn't include virtuals or earthcaches since neither of those actually have a container or log to sign. If it has a log book/paper/something-to-sign, a chainmail ball has accompanied it. Also, I leave them at events for whoever is there to take

Y'know, I don't often see much in the way of faulty finds here (or failing that, don't notice them), but this one... wow. Just wow. July 19, 2008 by meh_whatever (xxxx found) Today I'll log this one as found, as I visited the other two locations (found the main cache on May 4th as per my previous log). Interesting spots but couldn't find the caches at either one of them. I'm guessing xxxxx was removed by nervous area residents some time ago. It was tough getting to ground zero without trespassing. As for xxxxxx, I was just so happy to finally have seen that thing, I didn't really care if I found the cache or not. Yyyyeah. I didn't find it, but I don't care. I'll mark it as found anyway. Not often someone's all that blatant about it. Looks like this was several years ago, but still...

My signature item(s) are hand-made chainmail things: It takes less than a minute to make one, and the rings are cheap (cheaper still if you just buy a spool of wire and coil/cut it yourself). As well, they're interesting enough that people actively trade for them. I think there's one cacher who's said they have over 100 of them collected by now If you can't already tell, the big one is for regular caches, the smaller one is for micros, and the tiny guy is for nanos. I have yet to see a cache that I can't fit one of those into

Ok, followup question for reviewers. I've created a 'placeholder' cache for lack of a better description to drop my TB's. The coordinates are approximately the location of my home, and the description of this unpublished cache specifically says that it exists only to keep things that I never want to drop from being dropped, keep them out of my inventory since they're typically not with me when I'm out, but at home. Should I leave this unpublished cache as is, or should I send a message to the reviewer to have them somehow activate and then archive it (or just bypass activate and turn it to 'archived')?

This topic brings to mind an interesting idea. Does it exist to have a TB number on a shirt with the travelbug logo? I have a personal TB for just myself (technically attached to my caching bag), but if I could have a big TB symbol on my back with the number that'd be awesome.

I've already done a lemon-juice test (see the multiple fluids test - part 1). That lemon juice absolutely destroyed the regular paper, but the all-weather mostly held out. Of course, it was only in there for 20 minutes. As for mold-growing... interesting idea. although I don't know if I'd have the ability to do it safely. Well... thinking about it more, I could shred a bit of all-weather and a bit of regular, get it damp or drop it on the floor or whatever, and then toss some of each into a petri-dish. Actually... I kinda like that idea. I'll mental note it for the next time I can find some petri dishes or better still agar plates. Well, one of my logbooks apparently spent about 4 months sitting frozen in a cache filled with water, followed by several months of... well... submerged in the liquid stream water that followed. It had some dirt spots where I imagine dirt from the stream just solidified onto the paper and refused to clean off... but the paper itself was still strong, and I could easily write on it. Dried it out at home, and it's back in the cache now that flood season is over. Aside from those spots (only on the first few pages... the middle pages (except the very edges) are still clean), it held up several months soaking like a champ . But yeah, aside from a mold test, I'll still take other suggestions. I'm looking for other ways to test strength, but have very limited tools. If anyone's got any ideas, lemme know.

Yeah, some of the tests aren't very... practical, but I mainly wanted to see how it reacted differently to regular paper. Still, the alcohol and oil tests were pretty surprising... BTW, if anyone can think of some other tests they want to see, post 'em and I'll see what I can do.

As it turns out, should the situation arise, I recommend signing the logbook (assuming it's rite-in-the-rain... the regular paper had issues with the drano) with a gel pen No explosives, but I did try burning the papers either wet or dry. The rite-in-the-rain flares up a lot more, and burns surprisingly decently after getting wet! But... the new tests: Bleach and Drano Paper airplane test

I know it's RIDICULOUSLY far after the first tests... but I finally got around to doing a few more tests on the regular vs. all weather paper. As I type, I currently have test strips soaking in bleach and Drano. I'll post an update and link as soon as I put it up on my website. So far though, I'm disappointed in both, since I figured all paper would be falling apart after 2 minutes. Then again, the Drano is a gel-type drano, so that might be slowing it down. In either case, we'll see what the 20-minute soakings look like.

Same here. 95% of any coins or TB's are just that, a coin or TB lying in a cache container. Don't know its goal until I'm sitting at my computer. Worst thing I've done is that I found a cache at some provincial park by a lake, and it had a TB in it that was taking up like... 90% of the cache. Took it home (several hours drive), only to realize it had been AT its destination waiting to be picked up by the cache owner. Although in my defense, aside from having no clue it had reached its goal, it had also been sitting there for like... a week. If it was so vitally important, I'd think they should have picked it up sooner, or had someone else retreive it sooner.

Awesome. Here's the image for those who don't want to wait for google maps And for the heck of it, now in demotivational form:

Sadly, I'm in the exact same boat, except my wife hates geocaching. Generally hates bugs and soforth. Thankfully, she at least recognizes my love of it, and lets me go off and cache usually whenever. If we're together, she'll stay in the car. On the downside though, I have exactly ZERO friends who like geocaching, thus meaning I always geocache alone. Which isn't bad, since I generally like the solitude... but having geocached in a group maybe... 3 times ever, I can't really form an opinion as to if I like group caching or not. I've gone to many geocaching events and know the people there by now, but unfortunately none of them have found their way into my 'group o' close friends I hang out with".

Keep in mind as well however that both itsnotaboutthenumbers and GSAK are dependant on the order in which you logged the caches. If you found say... 5 in one day, spread out over two states or whatever, if you logged them in any random order, or last to first or whatever, then that will throw off the map and make it look like you zig-zagged back and forth over the state line. I've been lucky. Well, aside from having a personal TB for the hell of it, from the get-go, I've been meticulous about logging caches in the order found, including DNF's (of which I've logged every one of those too).

Gotta agree with most of the rest of the thread... I have yet to see an ammo can that I didn't enjoy finding. Sure, some were ridiculously visible, but for me, the primary enjoyment isn't the end-stage hunt... it's the journey to get to the cache in general.

I like using a hammock in general, typically while camping... but I sleep in a tent for the night. I have one of those hammocks that are made out of parachute material or some such. I'd be a bit worried about sleeping in that for the night. I don't know how easily water can pass through the material, so any dew in the morning or light drizzle might collect at the bottom of the hammock and basically create a puddle for me to lie in. Methinks I'll have to run a test sometime and see if water poured into it will drip through, and how fast.