Ethankwolfe

So I've been reading into travel bugs lately, and I'm got a few questions for people who work with them a lot. First of all, what -are- travel bugs, most of the time? Are they mostly a larger toy or keepsake with the dogtags attached, or are there a lot of less-conventional, homemade kids out there, maybe with the code and insignia sculpted/painted on the item? Second, if I wanted to make my own travel bug, what would a good maximum size be to make sure it'll be able to get into hotels and trek towards its destination? Numero tres, How often do they reach their destination? How often do they just sort of... disappear? (I wouldn't want to invest too much into a new TB if they have a tendency to vanish) And last, do you have any tips for finding good travel lodges/ hotels nearby for a bug, whether to start it on its journey, or to place other bugs if I ever decide to start moving other peoples' bugs from cache to cache? Should I look for favorite points, or should I pay more attention to the logs or the history of bugs at that location? (That history can be a bit tough to navigate) Thanks!

Wish I'd thought of that first.

These are things that I would also love to see. I'm a sucker for statistics.

Surprising that it's held up so well!

I'd say give it more time, get a larger sample size. Then see how it looks!

I would never log more than a name and date in a physical log. So often, space is far too valuable to waste in those! But even if there was enough, I'd much rather write a note at my leisure on the site. That way the CO can get a nice little notification and know in real-time who's visited their cache, and how they liked it. As far as the online notes go, it depends on the cache. Simple hide-a-keys on guardrails or pill bottles under a streetlight? Usually they'll just get a "TFTC!". Don't get me wrong, I still love doing them, and I'm always happy to find a new or well-maintained cache no matter how simple it is, but there's really only so much I can say about them unless there's some other element of novelty! Big hikes, beautiful views, clever riddles, those will get a complimentary log. The most fantastic, the longer the log!

I've never done any EarthCaches, but there are a few nearby I've been meaning to complete and log. From what I've seen (around myself at least), EarthCaches have some pretty specific criteria to count as a log (visit, answer questions about the area, prove you were there, etc), and even if there's no physical log, there's still the element of visiting a location based on GPS coordinates and creating a lasting "log" of it, albeit in the form of questions emailed and photos stored on a phone. Seems like as long as someone's willing to go through the trouble to set one up, and other people want to keep visiting the location and searching for details, it keeps the spirit of caching. I don't know much about the other types mentioned, though.

If I looked, I log it. If I drive by and never really approach the place, I'll skip it or write a note, depending on why I skipped it.

Don't apologize, you were just asking around. I think people can be a little jumpy about spoilers sometimes.

Generally anything from Bruce Springsteen, but sometimes I get a real need for 80's metal when I'm out caching.

I hadn't insulted or intentionally offended anyone, as far as I'm aware.

Don't even start that nonsense. I'm not asking the rules to change. I'm not preventing you from doing anything. I'm not even asking you not to do it. I'm expressing the reason I find it inappropriate. Your freedoms are not even remotely close to being infringed upon. I am so sick of people pulling the "freedom of speech" card when someone disagrees with them. Nobody's creating a law to prevent you from doing what you're doing. Your freedoms are being curtailed in no ways here. It's like saying the most redeeming thing about your opinion is that it's not illegal to have it. What a terrible defense for an opinion.

There is no right or wrong here, it's just differences of opinion. The fact that my opinion is the right one, well, let's just leave it at that. Congratulations on your ability to simultaneously obscure judgment by hiding behind opinion and condemn someone else's opinion.

This seems like a pretty good solution for the problems brought up in this thread, yeah.

I'm not going to argue in this thread anymore, there are far too many people taking this personally and getting way off-topic. I'll continue to remove religious pamphlets from caches I find, though I may take up replacing them with other, non-religious pamphlets in the future. But the point remains that I don't see tracts as trade items. Prayers beads and the like were never the topic of discussion, by the way; I would never remove something like that from a cache just because it carried religious iconography. But leaflets that are specifically printed as propaganda? Yeah, I'll be throwing those out. Feel free to keep putting them in, of course! We're either both right, or both wrong when it comes to this practice, and either way I feel pretty good about my position.

This isn't a contest. There's no winner here, and no loser. I'm not changing the rules, and I'm not telling you what to do. I'm saying I find it troublesome, and I'm asking if others have encountered similar issues (which lo and behold, they have!). I don't imagine that my pointing out these problems are going to change anyone's behavior. I'm not here to convince you that you're wrong. I'm here to discuss this, and explain why I don't like it (to no particular end. This is, after all, a forum). You're here to express a dissenting opinion and that's fine, but don't pretend you get to slam down a gavel and "win".

If you're the type of person who cleans out "geo junk" (used McToys and 3-wheeled matchbox cars and broken necklaces) then I don't have a problem with you clearing out 50 pamphlets that are really just taking up space. If you take out one tract (that is in decent condition, and somebody might find either amusing or enlightening) yet leave one similar-sized cereal-box-comic book... then, that's just kind of wrong. I stalwartly disagree.

As I said, I would never remove actual swag, actual trade items, just for being religiously-themed. I'm speaking specifically about pamphlets, tracts, and religious "business cards" that are really just one of the former items in disguise.

I appreciate your sympathy for the reviewers, and trust me, I understand that volunteer-based reviews take time. But my reviewer in particular has had zero contact in twelve days, all while semi-regularly visiting the site (according to his profile page at least). I've had a couple people tell me now that it shouldn't have taken this long, and I just want to get to the bottom of it. Otherwise, who knows, I might just be waiting forever on this cache to be published!

Religious materials in caches has been a recurring forum topic for more than a decade. So, not sure about "recently." I'm also not sure about "especially in big cities" since the "Bible Belt" is just as strong or stronger in rural areas and small towns. As a veteran geocacher, I rarely trade for anything anymore. Find cache, sign log, leave the toys for the kiddies. As a Christian geocacher, the ONE type of trade item that will attract my attention is a religious-themed item. If you are removing these items, then you should be leaving something of equal or greater value. (Exceptions to this: if the pamphlet or business card is moldy/wet/ruined, trash it out, and if there are 43 tracts in a cache that can only hold five, remove the excess so that the cache can shut and seal properly.) Another commonly encountered trade item is alcohol-related swag. Beer coasters. Branded keychains. Business cards for local bars. And so on and so forth. As a non-drinker who's opposed to the promotion of alcohol, is it OK for me to simply remove these common items? Can I "yank that stuff out and throw it away any time I find it" because "it simply doesn't belong there?" The answer, of course, is "no." Other geocachers would enjoy trading for that Budweiser belt buckle or Miller Lite bottle opener, so I leave those items alone. Could you please do the same when you encounter religious items? Ultimately the governing standard on trade items is set forth in the "Cache Contents" section of the Listing Guidelines: I don't see anything there about religious items. Nobody said it was against the rules. I've already stated, in fact, that it isn't. All I'm saying is that it's rude, it's pushy, and it's not the place. Also, religious pamphlets aren't trade items as far as I'm concerned. If it were a rosary, or a neat little crucifix, something that someone would want that wasn't just an advertisement, then I would never remove that. But the pamphlets? I don't feel the need to trade anything for those.

Sounds like you might be the one with the smug superior feelings, to be honest. :/ Of course. I just stated such. You are bemoaning scraps of paper in repurposed peanut butter jars. Yeah, I guess we could just simplify everything down until we've removed all of the context and made it ridiculous. Pamphlets are just scraps of paper. Geocaches are just repurposed peanut butter jars. Nothing means anything, and involvement or investment is laughable. You're 100% right.

Sounds like you might be the one with the smug superior feelings, to be honest. :/

This, this is exactly what it is. It's not religion specifically, it's people who see a geocache and say, "Yes, this is the place for me to proselytize." I just don't understand that outlook. It seems narcissistic. Maybe I'm wrong.

By that logic, if nobody were putting them in caches then I wouldn't be pulling them out and nobody would be at fault. -shrug-

No, I think you got something wrong. What many are saying here can summarized as "Groundspeak is doing something wrong by allowing users to use the intro app and search for caches before they have validated their e-mail address and without making sure that they ever visited the website and know that something like guidelines exist. These cachers are unreachable and cannot be contacted in case something went wrong. It's Groundspeak's business strategy that causes the problem, not newcomers that have existed over all the years. You can be contacted by e-mail and you even came to this forum. This is not the group this thread is about. Cezanne See, that makes a lot more sense. That seems like a genuine problem, in fact, giving people access to all this without at least an ounce of orientation. I agree with that. But there are still a lot of people in this thread putting the blame on newcomers as a whole, and not Groundspeak. And I wish they wouldn't. :/