Too Tall John

Does Briansnat count?

I broke the screen on my Oregon within the first couple weeks of having it. I sent it back & they replaced it for a service charge. I suspect the reason mine wasn't free is that it wasn't from a side impact, but from driving a stick right through the screen! Still, it was much cheaper than having to buy a new GPS. After the new one came to me, I started looking for ways to protect the screen. I found the Zagg website and, while I realized it wouldn't help with another stick, it would be better than nothing. A couple years later and it was starting to look a little worse for the wear (don't get bug spray on a Zagg!). I went through their free replacement program and when the new protector arrived, it was super-simple to get the old one off. Then, you just need to send the old one back! Easy-Peasy. I think both companies offer a great product and are willing to stand behind them, which goes a long way!

Looking over the bookmark, is the gorge challenge "ITHACA *IS* GORGE-OUS CHALLENGE"? I didn't find a 500 Puzzle/500 Multi Challenge, but I did find in NY the "Multi-Mystery Challenge", a 500/300 Challenge.

Heh... If it's close enough, it's probably sitting in the evidence room at the station. . .

There are 33,000 McDonald's. If you ate 3 meals a day for just over 30 years, you'd have eaten at them all. There are 1,740,710 active caches according to GC.com. To find all the caches out there in the same 30 year time frame, you'd need to find 159 caches a day for that same 30 years. Consistently finding 159 caches in a day might be impossible, but so is your heart surviving 30 years of "McFood".

Are you loading GPX files for individual caches? Why not just load in a PQ of your area? It's easier, and might solve your issue. I have an older Oregon (300) and I find if I load 2 500-Cache PQ's in at the same time, it frequently doesn't show the caches, but if I load one PQ, start up the unit, then load the next, it does just fine. I suspect making the poor GPS parse 100 individual GPX files all at once is just taxing the poor thing beyond it's capabilities.

So, I was looking at this bookmark (I pointed it out in post 2) and found GC2R5YE: Puzzle Insanity Challenge in Oregon! If you look in this bookmark you could probably find one in Washington, closer to you in BC. Sorry, It looks like the guy who compiled the bookmarks is just doing the US States, you Canadians are on your own...

This thread is about Throw Downs and the cachers who throw them. The discussion about logging Finds vs DNFs on caches far from home, while an interesting topic, belongs in it's own thread.

Sounds like a NA would be the appropriate action for a cache like that. Perpetuating a cache that doesn't have an owner is a bad idea.There, I highlighted it for you I think TTJ was referring to the last scenario, where both the cache and owner are gone. The container should never be replaced in that scenario, but rather a NA should be logged.Sure. But I am suggesting that in that scenario, a throwdown is better than DOING NOTHING. That's all I meant. Nothing more, nothing less.And what I meant is that doing nothing is better than a throwdown in that case.

Congrats! I'm still looking forward to hiding one on one of the islands.

Sounds like a NA would be the appropriate action for a cache like that. Perpetuating a cache that doesn't have an owner is a bad idea.

I start my THREADS with "So" but I start many of my posts (including the last one) with "Well"

Everyone starts at the same number of caches to find, yes, but... I was working on the NH "Know Your Local Cacher" challenge, where you need to find 3 different cache types hidden by 10 different cachers. Once you've cleared out your home area and found most of the non-Traditional caches in a even larger circumference, do you know how long it takes to do this? Many cachers in my area have hidden only one or two cache types, and those who have hidden more, I'd already found all their caches of one type. If I was a new cacher, I'd have been able to finish this one in a week.

Well, this is embarrassing... I stopped off today to pick up the Hide-a-Key. I didn't find it, I found one of the earlier containers, hidden underneath the bridge as described in the email: Opened it up, and there was their signature, so it wasn't a Hide-a-Key after all. Glad I didn't start deleting logs just yet. Still want to know how the container got so very far away from where it belongs... Another mystery: There is still one signature missing from the combined sets of logbooks. What did they find???

I'd imagine there were several of these in different areas, there was something like it here in NH. Did a requirement like this get squashed by the new guidelines? If so, did they grandfather already existing caches, or did they archive 'em? I haven't looked recently for the one here in NH (which, I think wanted you to have a % of your finds be puzzles...) but if the cache you're looking for fell victim to the guidelines, that'd be why you can't find it. What new guidelines? Specifically: You might find this guy's bookmarks helpful in finding Challenge Caches.

So, I just found out that one of my hides had been "replaced" by a "helpful" cacher. It is a Bison Tube hidden magnetically on a railroad trestle. Not the easiest cache to find, but that's kinda the point. I got an email from the last finders of the bison tube with a photo attachment showing the log, missing signatures of those who logged the cache between 11/10/11 and 04/27/12. I know the last cacher whose name wasn't on the log so I emailed him. Got back: Here's the thing that really bugs me: According to the cache description, "There is no need to leave the decking." I thought about hiding the cache down below, but due to the icy grade around the bridge abutments leading into the sometimes fast-running, frigid river, this would be an extremely dangerous cache to attempt in winter, and since this rail-trail is primarily used in winter, I went for the hide reachable from the safety of the bridge deck. Also, why did I never get a note from whoever hid the hide-a-key? "Oh, hey, we couldn't find your cache, so we hid a new one!" And finally, there are about a bazillion potential places this cache could be hidden. Why on earth would you throw down a cache when you can't be sure the cache is still there? The Bison tube out there now is the 3rd container in the life of the cache. When I first got the pic showing missing sigs, I assumed that they had somehow stumbled across one of the older containers that I managed to overlook due to cache migration. If I can't be certain I'll find the cache, how can someone else!?!? Last summer, I had another cache get hit with a Throw-Down. The logs now only exist in my email notifications, but here they are: First off, if they read past logs, or even cache descriptions of the surrounding caches, they would have realized the caches were along an old woods road. There was no widening of the trail, they graded the potholes out of the road! They had managed to pull the grader over far enough to make a tree lean towards the cache, but that was about the extent of the damage to the hide. Next, if they had looked at the cache Title or Description, they would have read that this cache is a "Bison Tube." The description says "Hope you enjoy this hide, it's a bit different from your average Bison Tube Hide." Apparently, they took "different" to mean they should hide an Airborne Container. Actually, different means the container is a toy American Bison with a hole drilled through the body so a preform would fit. Here's what I thought about it at the time: So, back to the title: If You 'Gotta' Leave a Throwdown... Be sure the cache isn't there. Can't be sure, DNF it. Read the cache page. It might have information that might not only help you hide the cache in an appropriate manner, it might help you find the cache! Let the Cache Owner know what you did. Your container could be potentially confusing for other cachers, or even placed in a spot the CO avoided for good reasons. Their name is now attached to what you did. Think again. You don't 'Gotta' Throw Down. DNF It's helpful to CO's to get DNF logs. DNF There is no shame in a DNF log. DNF Even if you feel ashamed of DNF's, nobody but you can pull up the full list of your DNF's. It's really ok. ...So, other than perhaps a couple extra "DNF"'s, what else did I leave off this list? (In the interest of full disclosure, I have "Thrown Down" a cache. Sort of. I had the cache owner on the phone, who verified that I was looking in the right place, and as it was a location that wasn't easy to get to, he asked me to replace it. So, now that I think of it, not really a throwdown at all.)

Not geocaching at all. Also, I want my nine minutes back.

Try clearing your browser's cache. It might help, it might not. If that doesn't help, restart your computer. If that doesn't help, come to think of it, I got an unusual 505 error from GC.com within the past 24 hours, but haven't been logging any caches....

Have you ever made a smart remark then realized it was truer than you meant? Is there a theme for the cache that might translate into a LB stamp? If it's simple enough, I might even be able to help with the carving...

Put a stamp and pad in the final and call it a Letterbox Hybrid.

Now isn't that just SILLY??? WE're all such niiiiiiiiiiice people! Some people just love to be haters... Actually, this log... ...led to quite a discussion on the Atlas Quest forums. I got quite a few very nice responses from LBers who read the thread. There are some who are quite snobbish and give the rest a bad name. Just like there are some cachers who go and trade out the LB Stamps who give the rest of us a bad name.

According to the LetterBoxers of North America Website If EMS can be seen as a legit LB listing entity, why cant GC.com? Perhaps more importantly, according to the LBNA Website Coordinates? Ooh... Sounds like you can use a GPS to find some letterboxes...

With 150+ SD caches out there, that's over 15% of a 1000 cache PQ filtered out. If people are willing to go out of their way to get a 10% discount, won't they go out of their way even more to keep from loosing 15% of something? Plus filtering with GSAK is an extra step when, without filtering, I can just drop the PQ file into my Oregon's GPX file. Oh, and I'd have to get GSAK. I can solve the puzzles at my leisure and pick and choose caches based on the towns they are in as listed in Team Skywalker's Bookmark.

Thanks! Only one digit off from my EFF4F9 but still not a perfect match. When I used the Firefox "Inspect element" tool, it says the background colour for that box is EFF4F9, or (239, 244, 249). That's grabbing it right from the source code.See? Ya learn something new every day! Does that mean the background in the forums is 424242? Oops... I guess not... It's edefef

Load 'em into your GPS. When you find the perfect spot, check and see if any of the nearby caches show up as less than .1 mile. As long as there's no multis or puzzles, you'll be good. If there are hidden caches (multis or puzzles) the landowner you're getting written permission from should know about them if it's a spot that requires permission.