romulusnr

Hey, Coreynjoey, NomadRaven and I are interested in filling your open spots. Let me know via forum or email!

I nearly thought we were gonna have to camp for the night in Dash Point. After all that trudging and then the bushwhacking (how far was that anyway? 300 ft? More?) I wasn't sure I was gonna make it back! Happy Birthday, JavaDuck.

Hey, I'll join you. I need to knock about half of those in your list off my nearest. Plan to see yall tomorrow at 11. Rom

More good news: "High-tech hobby sets off security turmoil at LAX" http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/articles/1166676.html

Has anyone considered a letter-writing and email campaign to the people involved? Perhaps emails and letters from across the country and world will clue these sherrifs and newspapers into the fact that this is a sport enjoyed around the world by families and all sorts of people, who take a direct interest in their local parks and other resources. For the record, the Star Press posted a follow-up story: http://www.thestarpress.com/articles/4/028670-2324-004.html They do point out that the hider had permission from the Tin Lizzy owner, but the owner had not informed his employees of the cache and was on a plane to Florida while the incident was occuring. I feel very sorry for cachers in this area -- as well as anyone living there in a small, out-of-the-way town like this, who lives in constant daily fear that their city is the next likely candidate for international terrorism. George Sheridan Delaware County Sheriff 100 W. Washington St. Muncie, Indiana 47305 (765) 747-7885 http://www.delawarecountysheriff.org/ Kevin Mahan Blackford County Sheriff 64 N 500 E Hartford City, Indiana 47348 (765) 348-0930 kmahan@blackfordcounty.com Kevin O'Connor Staff Reporter Newslink Indiana Ball Communication Building Ball State University Muncie, IN 47306 (765) 285-9300 (info for news organization) Ric Routledge Blackford County Reporter The Star Press PO Box 2408 Muncie, IN 47307-0408 ricroutledge@hotmail.com (765) 728-5241

This might not rate alongside the sorts of towers you're looking for, but there is a modest lookout tower cache (actually two, there's a multi that has a WP there) by the Green River in Renton (or is it Kent?): Spur of the moment cache (3/1.5) We haven't done this cache but we've been up the tower for the multi.

Hey by the way -- That was an awesome cache event. Which reminds me, I need to post my pictures from it. You managed to stump an awful lot of cachers more than once. And not a few of the stops were really entertaining. I think that's the first time anyone's had to use an R/C controller to get a cache waypoint to come to them.

I can't wait. I haven't been able to get my hands on any of the geocoins floating out there. I was lucky enough to touch a USA coin a while back in one of my adopted caches. Haven't managed to be within 100 feet of a M10B coin, not counting WSGA meetings and cache machine dinners. In the same week I had a Jeep TB in my cache and NomadRaven had a Ziggy TB (which is the nickname my father gave me as a child) in her cache, and they both got nabbed by stinkchz before I got to out them

Yay for wrapping up in big poofy winter jackets, trudging through snow, listening to the satisfying crunch under your feet. Yay for getting out the shovel and blazing a neat, geometrically lanscaped pathway from your door to the sidewalk, and to your car to the end of the driveway. Yay for being the only household within 100 miles that owns honest to goodness ice scrapers, and knows how to use them. Believe it or not, I miss all that.

I'm a little jealous. I haven't been able to enjoy real *snow* since I left Boston. The stuff Seattle gets isn't worth mentioning. It melts if you just look at it. All snow does to me out here is make my regular travels over the passes that much more of an unendurable experience.

to answer your first part, your difficulty rating should reflect the maximum difficulty involved at any point in finding the cache, not an average. People use difficulty and terrain ratings to judge for themselves what they are capable of (or up for). Surprising them with a 4-difficulty stage on a cache you've rated a 2.5 as an average makes the rating less effective. Now when you're talking about two different ways to do something, then an average between the hard way and the easy way might make sense, or you can rate it towards the easy way. Whether or not people initially land on the easy way is not for you to predict -- though IMO it would be better if you are going to mention that there is an easy way to do that step. Depending on the length of the easier way, you might want to bump up the terrain rating (unless it is already a hike )

it's kind of amusing how so much of the arguing that has gone on here has been between people who seem to fundamentally agree on the topic. despite all the venting of frustration about the plight of the persecuted hunter, it's been a pretty unilateral discussion. I'm sure that is partially because some people realize this is a geocaching forum and not a political one, and have refrained from mixing their own views into the mess. (Geez, if people who are on the same page can argue so much with each other, just imagine if an opposing view came along! ) i do appreciate the warning and think it is a good reminder and should be made by someone every time there is this risk. If I had (and ever do have) any caches in areas where hunting is permitted, I would probably disable them temporarily for the season, because I wouldn't want anyone to feel that they have to take special precautions to avoid being shot and killed while finding my cache. I think that goes a little bit beyond the expectations of "assuming all risks in searching and finding a cache".

one imagines it would have worked out a lot better if you'd been notified, and called the cops yourself. who knows what this person said, if they even explained the game. seems obvious they could have contacted you pretty easily if they logged a find. Why would someone call the police first on a cache? I've called the police about things *near* a cache, but not a cache itself. (Of course, the cops turned out to be useless and the cache owner ended up CITOing his way to a visit from the hazmat team and into quarantine for a few hours... but that's a story for later.) And in that case, other cachers had made note of the things in the cache's logs way beforehand.

Funny, I just caught something on Animal Planet last week, featuring Colin Mochrie, about surviving animal attacks, and it had a segment on bear attacks. One thing I remember is that black bears and brown bears need to be handled differently. Can't remember which, but one of the types is best handled by standing your ground and acting like a formidable opponent. I have a feeling that the yell was exactly what was needed in this case, more so than the pepper spray.

If the coin is to be coveted, then it seems fitting (though it saddens me to admit it) to place it in a challenging cache. If the coin is to be circulated, then it seems fitting to put it in any cache, so that more people will have access to it. I guess I don't entirely see the point of geocoins if they aren't to be collected. Are they just mass-produced travel bugs then? I would think that making a TB out of something that has some meaning or identity to you, or to make a TB for which you give a goal, would make more sense than just using one of a few hundred tokens with no individual identity beyond their number. Coin pressers beware, I do intend to hold onto one of any geocoin I come across, as memorabilia of my caching escapades. At least in the WA geocoin's case, the one I'll keep will be one I bought. I note that no one seems to complain about keeping wooden geocoins, like the M10B and GeoNap ones I have. Would it be different if someone wrote a number on each of them? What makes those coins less special?

Either your approver is extremely picky, or else there is a big schism between how Northeast admins handle event caches and how other areas handle them. In the NorthWest we have had over a dozen (at least) event caches where caching has been the main focus of the event. Not just the many "Cache Machine" sunrise-to-sundown caching events put together by TravisL, but also smaller events such as Geocache Poker Run, Freedom from Work Cache-A-Thon, and Welcome to Seattle. Nearly all of these have included a dinner at the end -- so maybe that's their saving grace. But honestly, 13 hours of caching followed by 1-2 hours of dinner isn't really focusing on the dinner part. Realistically, when cachers get together, whether they're eating or caching, they're going to discuss caches and caching. They're also going to be able to show off their caching techniques, tools, GPSrs, and not just talk about them but actually show them in use. Not to mention expose each other to new cache ideas and new tricks in a way that dinner just doesn't provide. Events that focus on the caching are going to lead to more useful cache-related experiences than events that focus on food. And of course, no event out here ever seems to go without an unofficial cache hunt, not even the monthly WSGA meetings. Throughout Seth! Leary's party last month, where he unveiled his new (very incredible) multi, people drifted in and out of the party as they went to nab the caches within walking distance of his house (some that don't even require leaving the property [] ).

I feel the cache placer should plan to be responsible for its maintenance, instead of relying on finders to do maintenance. A lot of finders have taken it upon themselves to fix up neglected caches, but that's hardly a reason to expect finders to do that. If you move away, then I advocate getting your caches adopted by people in the cache area. Having caches adopted is a neat way to turn cache finders into cache stewards as a stepping stone to becoming cache placers. It also keeps good caches around longer.

I personally am not thrilled by the thought that cache worthiness is determined by some hierarchal measurement or elite cache-valuing group. If you're going for a 1/1 cache, don't expect it to wow you. If you're underwhelmed by simple hides to the point that the act of finding them discourages you, then avoid low-difficulty hides. The difficulty/terrain ratings are a great asset to one's discriminating caching tastes. Maybe the tenth altoids tin in a lamp post gets boring, but you don't know until you get there. It certainly doesn't help, though, if you've hit 50-100 caches in each of seven major cities and metro areas over the past two years and probably have run into at least one mint tin in a lamppost in each city. Simply put... people aren't hiding caches necessarily to win anyone's seal of approval, they're hiding them because they got the notion that geocaching was fundamentally about hiding things and having other people find them. There's lots of additional reasons someone may place a cache -- great spot, great hide, challenging walk, challenging puzzle, etc.... but those are just auxilliary to the original purpose behind the hobby. No one can predict what sorts of places each person will like, and it certainly wouldn't be reasonable to expect cache hiders to try to please everyone. I guess I would advocate that if you're going to be picky about the sorts of caches you want to find, then try to be picky when you're looking up the cache pages, and minimize the negative comments placed in logs of people who hide caches who weren't looking to impress you, but just to have fun.

Hi, I'm interested in adopting a cache up in the Bellevue area: Death Star (GC7AF5) Owner: shorten'sweet I've tried to contact the owner a couple of times and gotten no response. The cache is a bit tricky and has been hard for people to find, so it's nice to have someone to check up on it after a few DNF's. It was almost given up on. The hint also needs fixing and has caused some unnecessary confusion for people trying to follow it. I could also adopt another cache near my work in Bellevue: You can't get there from here! (GCE3F9) Owner: Kodak's4

I can't help but be reminded of NomadRaven and myself on Mercer Island in Luther Burbank Park to get "North from the Source". This was during the first Hot Potato game. South team was losing, and North had a very concentrated effort (well, by first game standards, anyway) of getting that potato moved quickly. Well, it had been placed just north of the boundary line (I-90) to be picked up the next morning and beginning its juggernaut into South territory. NomadRaven and I had just come from my then-employer's Christmas party, and we had left early, bored. We're thinking of other things to do, and Raven informs me that the potato is down and relatively close, just up I-90 on Mercer. So we go out, get flashlights and batteries, and go for North from the Source. Now, this was well after sunset and after the park's normal open hours. Except that this was 2002, and King County had CLOSED a number of parks -- that is, closed 24/7 -- due to budget limitations. This was one of them. If we were to follow such "park closed" rules for regular caching, if it were 2002, a lot of caches would be completely off limits for that whole year. Now look. When I think of the concept of "people in parks after hours" as being a problem, I think hoodlums, teenage kids looking for a place to throw a drinking party, people looking for a place to do drugs, homeless people looking for a place to sleep, truck drivers looking for a place to dump bodies. People holding cellphones looking for boxes is WAY low on the list, at least for me. I realize the public might not necessarily see that, at least at first, but the self-affirming fact is that we know we do positive things for these parks -- not just assure their use, but keep an eye on them, and even sometimes clean them up a bit. That's both before and after "hours."

I think much of the same rules and scoring could be kept, and the game spiced up and made much more strategically interesting with three (or maybe even more) teams -- say North, South, and... East? It's not really Hot Potato with only two 'players', now is it?

O/T, but Travis, it looks like you're being flattered. Or maybe just imitated: Bellingham Cache Machine: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...be-6706e259651a

I can't help anyone who gives up because their attempt at a sneaky trick turns out to have a perfectly valid loophole. There seems to be prevailing notion that one's expectations (i.e. we don't expect that anyone could possibly legitimately be in a park after posted hours [what if we had a night park ranger on our team?], we don't expect that a cache owner or a totally uninvolved person would ever move a bug in their cache, etc.) should be the basis of the rules. I don't think that's a fair way to operate a game. As for our legal strategy, the ref was consulted before any preparations were made to pursue it. (Which were thwarted inadvertently by the cache owner.) Some may find this next statement inflammatory, but I think it's common sense: if you so strongly disagree with the ref's assessments, it's very possible that you're in the wrong game.

Might I ask -- Where exactly is this cache located -- Dumas Bay Park, or Dumas Bay Center? These are two different pieces of land. (Dumas Bay Center is a convention center, not a hotel, with its own grounds.) On the Federal Way Map of City Parks (link), you can see Dumas Bay Centre, the green splotch under the 509 dot, and to its WSW, you can see Dumas Bay Park, at the southernmost point of Dumas Bay. You can verify this with a TopoZone view of the same area. The Centre is visible as a hat-shaped building, its grounds appearing as a white splotch. To the WSW you can see Dumas Bay Park, a much more complex looking white splotch. Now if I go to the cache page for The Day I Went To The Sound... (link) and click on the TopoZone link, which should bring me to a topographic map centered on the cache coordinates (link), it displays me a map with the little red crosshairs in the northern tip of the grounds of Dumas Bay Centre -- NOT Dumas Bay Park. Travis' page even states that the cache is located in Dumas Bay Center, then goes on to give the hours of Dumas Bay Park -- which, we've established, are two different places. I guess it depends on how Travis originally got to the cache location. Did he start in Dumas Bay Park, take a trail heading ENE, and ended up placing the cache on the Dumas Bay Center grounds? (From the look of it this would only be about a 0.25 mi walk or so.) If so, this means it is possible to get to the cache without entering Dumas Bay Park at all, in which case, getting to the cache within the hours of the land in which the cache is actually located is fully legal. The hours of the park down the street from the cache don't have any relevance. Now, I'm doing this all from online resources, anyone more familiar with the area, and the actual cache location, is welcome to shoot me down.

This game isn't identical to Hot Potato, and it never will be exactly like real Hot Potato, so arguing that a call by the ref makes the game not like Hot Potato is a moot point. (First of all, real Hot Potato doesn't have a referee.) From the sound of it, since Team South made an illegal move, there's no points for the placement, but the ball is still where it is. Because they fouled, Team South was given the special chance to grab it and replace it legally, but since the ball is physically in a cache North territory, Team North is still obliged to try and make a move. So Team South was penalized (no points for placement) but still given a chance to redeem themselves (free chance to try and make a second move). I don't see why either team should be unhappy with that.