Michaelcycle
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Posts posted by Michaelcycle
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21 hours ago, BillyGee said:
Can you stand up in front of the mirror and tell to the person opposite you:
"Most of the geocaches are well-maintained."
(and by "most" I mean 50% + 1, nothing fancy like 90+%).
I know I can't.
But what is the difference between a well-maintained and an abandoned geocache for the muggles? There isn't any. They don't care about the dampness of the logbook. All they see is plastics.Yes, I can stand in front of that proverbial mirror and make that proverbial statement but I will admit that I do not do much in the way of power trails (I hate getting off the bicycle every 528' to look for a cache.)
Regardless. If I took every geocache I have found and weighed them, they would not equal the weight of material I have removed from the environment during CITOs. Dragging several truck tires out of a muddy river bank or a couple hundred pounds of old roofing shingles out of a local WMA once in a while still keeps me to the good.
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So far, I have been a part of 8 CITOs that have collected tons (seriously, tons) of plastic, tires, roofing materials and other environmentally unfriendly stuff from woods and waterways in my area. I have informally collected lots of smaller garbage as I pedal along on my geocaching adventures. I have had one cache go missing when water rose higher than I have ever seen it on a local river (the container was in a tree at least six feet above normal level and four feet higher than I have ever seen)
I think, on balance, I'm good. I suspect most of the rest of us are, too.
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4 minutes ago, niraD said:
If you submit your photo for publication in a magazine, you can't demand that all copies of that magazine be burned just because you change your mind later.
More to the point of the forum posts, if a person submits a letter to the editor of a print publication in the EU and it is published (normally requiring more specific personal information than just a geonik) that letter and any subsequent replies are not going to disappear no matter what the original writer might desire. The only difference is that this forum is digital media. To treat print and digital media differently in this instance makes little sense to me.
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Why would you compare one player's last 80 day rate to another player's last 24 day rate?? How can they be considered equivalent?
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12 hours ago, wmpastor said:
Plus some of the readers and posters in this thread. Plus thousands of other players.
We may feel that other achievements are more important (like curing diseases), but why the tallies and why the Guinness Book of Records? Because even "irrelevant" achievements are achievements! People care - big-time! Even if they deny it! Especially when they deny it!
Even if a percentage of the big number finds can be challenged, the remaining 98% are awesome! They did it - we didn't. Period.
Did 100,00 finds change the world? Did breaking the 4-minute mile change the world? Not really...but they are achievements.
You significantly underestimate the impact of Dr Bannister's achievement. His accomplishment inspired many to attempt personal challenges they might otherwise have seen as impossible. His training methods continue to be relevant today.
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I'll have to check for the longest time frame but I know the longest distance (just under 9,600 miles) Ubin Quarry is a multicache on Palau Ubin, a jungle island in the Staits of Johor between Singapore and Malaysia that I DNF'ed with Susancycle in Aug of '07.
My DNF:
"Spent a good 30 minutes here with S'cycle. Could not find stage 1. S was facinated by the mudskippers and the tiny crabs so it was not a wasted trip. Don't know when we might ever get back to clear this DNF, though."
As it happened, S'cycle had to go back in Mar '09 and I went with her. Grabbed a bumboat ride out to Ubin, rented a mountain bike and this time I found it!
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Thanks for the update. Sorry you are being mistreated but, if it helps, I know I am not alone in saying that your efforts are appreciated!
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On 7/2/2018 at 10:49 PM, h2o z said:
We are going on a 3 week cruise with Viking called the Iconic Western Mediterranean cruise. I would like to do some geocaching at each stop if possible. How can I get either the address or GPS coordinates for each one of those ports of call? Thanks.
The Viking website shows that cruise as 8 days long. Did you mean you are going in three weeks rather than for three weeks? If you are going in three weeks your ship is listed as the Viking Orion. If you go to www.vesselfinder.com you can see the current position of that ship. If you click on "track" (left side) you can see about a days worth of positions and as of this post you can zoom in and see the precise location of where it docked in Napoli (see attached screenshot) I followed the tracks of Hurtigruten ships along the northern and western coast of Norway for several days to nail down the exact location of each of our ship's 33 stops. Some were as short as 15" (working boat as well as a cruiser) and occurred in the middle of the night so we had to plan very carefully to grab some of the caches we got. Good luck and enjoy the trip!
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Most the caches I have to "feel" for are in places I get to on my mountain bike. I ALWAYS wear sturdy full fingered gloves when riding that bicycle. I also carry an extendable inspection mirror and flashlight in my pack/ water porter that have made searches easier in many situations.
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I checked the cache you referenced. The hints listed on the cache page for each stage look very helpful
and strongly suggest the trees have nothing to do with the first stage.
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I cannot answer the first question. But as for the second: if it takes me to an interesting place that I might not otherwise encounter, NO, it should not be archived.
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4 minutes ago, wanrex said:
Oh, thanks for the link, then i can log PM only cache easier now.
Btw, any similar easy/convenient way to "VIEW" a PM only cache?
Not that I m aware of, why would Groundspeak allow such a thing?
The "backdoor" logging method is open, at least in part, to allow family members of premium members the opportunity to log caches in their own accounts without having to pay for another premium account. GS decided that they did not want to allow "family" premium memberships and this is a compromise position. Susancycle logs PM caches this way occasionally (although she doesn't log online much, I think she is about 3,000 caches behind
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1 hour ago, barefootguru said:
Unfortunately the FAQ says:
I do not take that to mean that the caches/events must be logged online by that date. It could mean that but I take it to mean that you have to have found/attended by that date.
The FAQ is not precise about the date either:
"How do I play?
From June 27 through July 25, earn up to 13 mythical creature souvenirs by finding geocaches and attending events."but a little further on
"Can I join Hidden Creatures at any time?
Of course! You can earn all 13 souvenirs as long as you log caches and attend events before July 25."(bolding mine)
So I think HQ has some work to do cleaning up these loose ends.
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13 hours ago, TriciaG said:
@Michaelcycle might have some thoughts on this.
If I am on the road bike I will only be searching for a small number of caches (usually no more than 1 for every 10 miles pedaled) so I identify where the next one I want is on the map and stick my Garmin handheld in a jersey pocket until I get there.
On the mountain bike the Garmin rides in a holder on the right side of the handlebar (this mount would hold my iPhone if I used that to cache.) I choose the next cache I want and set the unit to show distance to the cache. I have the audible proximity alarm on and I slow down when I hear it, glancing at the reading on the GPSr as I approach.
Regardless of the bicycle, if I am (and I often am) in unfamiliar territory there will be times when I choose an intermediate point (say, after the first two turns) to stop and check on upcoming turns. Trying to follow the small screen of a GPSr or a cellphone along complex route just isn't safe for me, especially on singletrack in rough terrain where slowing down to stop the bike from bouncing enough to see the screen may very well cause me to crash ("speed is your friend".)
Remember that the first thing to worry about when geocaching by bicycle is...bicycling. I decided long ago that the ride comes first. The geocaches are the icing on the cake.
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14 minutes ago, The Rat said:
Mike's First (GC4) hidden 5/7/2000 is the oldest active listing. It has only two logs: 1 find and 1 DNF, but there's no solid indication that it has been replaced or gone missing. It's almost certainly gone, but so far as anyone can tell from the cache page, it's still out there and in its original state.
I would not call that cache "active" in the usual sense of the word. The page is locked. If you type it into the search page it will come up but if you click on "nearest caches" on a nearby cache ( GC5Y0BT for example) it does not appear. "Memorialized" seems a better description.
Oh, and the guy that logged it...I don't know if we can trust him
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Same problem when using Safari 11.1 and Google maps. Problem resolves when using OSM
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14 hours ago, colleda said:
Scored our Slovakia souvenir today. Can anyone tell me what the item is illustrated over the mountain background? BTW, we found Bratislava a most pleasant and enjoyable city.
That is a fujara, a musical instrument. We enjoyed bicycling into Bratislava on our 1000km trip along the Danube.
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This question caused to wonder about that other International Cache GC1BE91
It is listed as being in Kazakhstan
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1 hour ago, cerberus1 said:
IIRC, any opportunity for discussion with cachers was ignored by a caching organization, who "needed the property" for a series of caches and an event, and the "policy" somehow carried on to other parks kinda by default. Close?
No. I'm am not going to rehash the events in this forum but that would be a mistaken reading of what happened.
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7 hours ago, justintim1999 said:
Our town abides by the open meeting law. All meetings are posted and anyone is welcome to attend. It's at these meetings we discuss land conservation, management and possible activities in which the land can be used. We've had people disagree with some of the decisions we've made, people who have never attended a single meeting. Of course you get the few locals that were previously using the property to ride their ATV's and are now upset that they no longer can. That's understandable to a point. My response to them is always the same. "The citizens of the town voted, on a ballet, to purchase the land and protect it as open space for the use of everyone now and in the future. It was decided in an open meeting that ATV's would be prohibited. All voted in favor with no further discussion."
My point is I'm quite sure that any decision to prohibit geocaching on public land was held in a public forum. That would have been the time to voice an opposition. No one is going to stop a meeting and say "Hey, did anyone call justintim1999 and ask him what he thinks?" It's up to us to get involved in the process or live with the decisions others make.
I can assure you that no open meeting was held when the decision was taken by DEP to require the removal of hundreds of geocaches on public land in New Jersey.
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On 4/17/2018 at 9:12 AM, badlands said:
I grit my teeth and go. It only stings for a few minutes ...... if you don't scratch.
Poison ivy on the other hand, I take along a friend for that
Most people experience pain for 2 to 12 hours when injected with the cocktail of neurotransmitters (histamine, acetylcholine and serotonin) from the trichomes of Urtica dioica, scratching or no scratching. If I have appropriate tools, I will remove this weed without compunction. Otherwise, boots with long pants tucked in, long sleeve shirt with jacket over that and heavy work gloves with long cuffs (I am one of the 12 hour sufferers)
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On 4/21/2018 at 7:21 PM, Harry Dolphin said:
Yes. You deal with whatever the property owner requires. It's their property. A few years back, New Jersey State Parks decided to require permits for geocaches. Requirements included minimal bushwhacking. I archived all mine in the state parks. (Previously, no permit required.) I think about four-hundred caches were archived. Many (great) ones with owners no longer participating were archived. Sad. But the property owners can make such decisions. And we cooperate with them. We don't insult them. They manage the property.
No, Harry. It is our property. They manage it for us, they do not own it. Whether they make good decisions about land use is open to discussion. All I ask is that public land managers get input from the parties concerned before making ill-informed decisions. There are managers that allow rock climbing in their jurisdictions while others forbid tree climbing. It is impossible to make everyone happy. Again, all I ask is for the opportunity to have input.
In this case that opportunity, if it existed, was thrown away by the CO.
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On 4/14/2018 at 11:00 AM, terratin said:
I'll be travelling to Salt Lake City and some NPs later next month and might finally have the chance to hunt a few benchmarks. I'm a bit uncertain though about how to do this with regards to actually finding them. The benchmark website is a bit useless, and how do I find a postal code? Download all files as .loc and onto my gps? I've never dealt with that filetype, but I assume my Oregon 450 knows what to do with them? Then use the ID (assuming it's available in the name) to find more information online or are there better ways of doing this?
You are using a Garmin so the .loc files that you can download for each Benchmark in the Geocaching database can be used BUT you have to download them, import them via Basecamp and then send them to your device that way. If you are going to load geocaches into the Garmin before you leave just look for benchmarks near those geocaches (...all nearby benchmarks tab on each cache page) look those over for interesting marks (and in your case definitely some marks that have been previously found) Download the .loc files, open Basecamp and find all those .loc files (your collection) and transfer them to the Garmin in bulk. Note that you cannot simply download the .loc files and drag them into your device like you can .gpx files. The Garmin will not "see" them for some reason if you try that shortcut.
Note that the geocaching .loc files are bare bones with nothing more than the PID and the latitude and longitude. If you want the datasheet you will have to read it off of your cellphone or print a bunch of them out.
The benchmark page ( https://www.geocaching.com/mark/ ) is not useless and I strongly advise you review it before trying to find any marks. Pay special attention to location "scaled" vs. "adjusted" status. As a beginner and without easy access to data sheets I would mostly download "adjusted" location status marks. Also note how control points are different than intersection stations.
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From the article listed above:
Charles Brown, a 53-year-old truck driver who lives nearby, often winced at the footwear weighing down the cottonwood's branches.
"I felt sorry for the tree. It degraded it. Trees take a lifetime to grow out here," he said.
Also from that article:
There were so many shoes in the tree that, every few months, state workers hauled off several truckloads' worth — as well as couches, bicycles and kitchen sinks that littered the ground nearby.
I'm with Mr Brown on this one. "Shoe" trees are not my idea of a good idea unless they are in a closet.
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and strongly suggest the trees have nothing to do with the first stage.
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Dancing men code
in How do I...?
Posted
I cannot let this pass without mentioning that these symbols were introduced by Arthur Conan Doyle, M.D. in his story The Adventure Of The Dancing Men.
This first appeared in Collier's in 1903. It contains a nice discussion of frequency analysis by Sherlock Holmes.