stlsportster

37, havent gotten the kids (2 and 5 months) into it yet

Ya know as a newb I have an interesting perspective on this. I have 5 finds and 2 DNF (although 1 of the finds was a DNF until I went back and 1 other DNF I intend to go back and find...just a little history.. I have several different hobbies...I ride a motorcycle, I play a little golf, I scuba dive, etc. and with each hobby I find the same thing... everyone is in the sport/hobby for a different thing. When I first started Scuba Diving, a buddy of mine who was a long time diver gave me a book to identify species of fish and gave me a big lecture on keeping a life list of new fishes. I never gave a crap about fish species. I wanted to get under water. I didnt care if it was a shallow or deep dive, I didn't care if I saw tons of fish or 2, but there were lots of other people that did care about those things, and the sport was diverse enough to give everyone the opportunity to get what they wanted out of it. And I just wanted to get under the water, whenever I got the chance. Caching is the same way. There are over 300,000 caches worldwide according to the statistics. I am a newb, but I can tell you right now, I hate complicated puzzle caches. Right now it is enough of a challenge to me to find an hour (away from the kids and wife), get to the right park, use my GPS, find the right location and then try to figure out where someone hid a cache...and I get great satisfaction from finding them...and I hate my DNFs. I might like a lamppost micro, I get it that not everyone does...and some of you are big fans of those puzzle or multi caches... Thats great..enjoy what pieces of the sport you do and let other enjoy what they do. Obviously each of us will feel "angst" when we are faced with one of the facets of the sport we don't like...good thing there are 300,000 to choose from.

Ok, spoon fed it is: A. You do not need a premium membership to download cache locations as a Waypoint (simply a marker in your GPS that gives you the name of the cache and the GPS coordinates). This you can do by signing up as a basic member and clicking on the "Click Icon to Download" button. This will download a single .loc file with the Waypoint data. You can use the free geocaching software that came with your Explorist 500 to upload that single .loc file to the GPS. You can also select multiple Waypoints to be downloaded. This will create a single .loc file that has the details for all the points you selected. Upload the same way B. There is more data to find a Cache than just the GPS coordinates, including description, log entries, hints, etc. There are several ways to get that information: - Print out the page and take it with you. - Write it down and take it with you. - Become a premium member and use Pocket Queries (which lets you download all that data to a PDA type device Hope this helps..

That is the beauty of an unlimited data plan That's what I was referring to. which comes FREE with my monthly phone plan...

That is the beauty of an unlimited data plan

Of course the ultimate paperless caching is to get the Palm Treo (like I do) or a Windows CE phone that has wireless internet service. You can search GC.com and get the pages live as long as there is a cell signal, or you can save the page to view while off-line.... Best of all, no need for a premium membership for that ! The only risk is to get out to your cache site, try to get the page up and get the dreaded 'Server Too Busy' message....

Of course the ultimate paperless caching is to get the Palm Treo (like I do) or a Windows CE phone that has wireless internet service. You can search GC.com and get the pages live as long as there is a cell signal, or you can save the page to view while off-line.... Best of all, no need for a premium membership for that !

Man that is asking a man on a diet to put down a piece of cake !! Now I got the bug, but not a lot of time to cache with 2 young kids at home, so I'm trying to hit all the caches close to the homestead... Patience may be a virtue, but oh so hard sometimes

Ok...now how do you handle it when you email the owner of the cache and get no response...

How do I handle it when I can't solve a riddle/puzzle to find a cache...is there a proper ettiqute to ask for a hint/clue?