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After finding one in my sons hair, and one on my arm, I started using my OFF spray. Previous tick threads. ticks, getting them off you tick-talk tick-talk tick-talk Tick Talk Ticks Oh Man, They are REAL, ticks that is.... Proper Tick Removal - Its that season again

When I first started caching, I did not make myself really familiar with the rules before starting out. I thought the talk of buried treasures would be fun and exciting, boy was I wrong. Get to my very first GZ, could not find anything, so back to the truck, grab my shovel and I start digging (not knowing any better) Ended up digging up human remains... Called police..bla..bla..bla... Long story short, I did DNF the cache and I'm no longer allowed back at that cemetery. LOL

I know this sort of thing has happened to cachers before but I don't regularly read these forums. Just thought I'd share my little geocaching adventure for the weekend. Went caching with a couple friends on Saturday; one of them was driving and navigating (it was his neighborhood) so I didn't really know where we were. We went out to some business complex. There was a security guard cruising around the parking lot so we waiting for him to go away before moving in. Right by the tree the cache was in we found a busted-up safe and cash drawer with various things scattered about like a receipt book, gift cards, and what seemed to be some kind of disk drive. My friends poked about with it but I was the only one who wanted to do something about it so I looked up the address on the receipt book and found out it belonged to a local massage place. I found their number and called them and yes they had had a break in recently. I reluctantly left my cel number with them but said I couldn't stay on the scene to wait for a cop because I wasn't driving and my friends wanted to leave. I didn't even know were we were but I got one of the guys to check his gps for where we were and I gave the massage place an address. I didn't know if the cops could find the place on their own and sure enough, a cop called me about 10 minutes later while we were hunting for another cache. All I could do was tell him I really didn't have any more info for him, and that someone who knew the area should have been the one to call but I was the only one willing to do it. I had to explain geocaching for him and give him the website address because he wanted to know why we were poking around by the trees. I had to give him my address and everything which I didn't like doing but I guess he needed to fill out paperwork. I had a sneaking suspicion the media would want to talk to me if they heard about this - I'm not even quite sure why but I just had this feeling. Sure enough, while I was making dinner tonight (Sunday) the phone rang again. It was someone from the Sheriff's office, she told me FOX News wanted to talk to me. I said no without asking for details. I don't know exactly what they wanted, they might be doing a piece on that break-in and wanted someone to talk about how they found the stuff. Of course, if that security guard we saw had been paying attention, HE would have found it.

In the example above, you can avoid the upside-down labels by choosing to stay with north-up display. (It's not landscape that triggers that.) Not perfect, but I live with it. On a tablet, you'll see much more map, and the clutter around the screen edges becomes much less noticeable. Oh, and the navigation will talk to you, and even work on trails.

Yes. Nice that the person joined just to tell you they "found" it . Did you actually talk to them, or are you simply relying on their log ? Curious, as "I found this by mistake but I’ll re hide with goodies inside I work for Durham county council and found whilst working today I’ll log it so it can be found again " sounds (to me) that maybe they may not really understand the hobby. - "Logging it" not what enables it to be found again, and instead needs to be returned to that same spot.

+me and countless others !!! +me too!!! Seriously, does Groundspeak (or whoever the shadowy characters are behind the scenes) even acknowledge that this is a problem? Have they responded at all to the complaints? I haven't seen anything but stone cold silence....no change to make the search results more readable, no change to the ridiculous 30 mile limit, not even a link on the search page to a list of instructions on how to use the darn thing, nothing! At the very least, they could simply leave a link up to the old search. + us and most of the local (Hawaii) cachers who never come to the forums... I used to have an old car. I had a mechanic who was reliable, I could call him up and talk to him (or his one assistant) on the phone. He'd help me decide if I needed to bring the car in right away or not... When he was done he'd show me the hole in the hose, or the old worn out parts and ask if I wanted them back. He always believed there was something wrong it I told him the engine was making a funny noise or the brakes were squeaking too much. Now I have new car, it's fancy enough to come with "free" routine maintenance, for which I have to return to the dealer. I don't talk to a mechanic (or anyone who works on cars). I have a "service advisor" who never answers the phone. I get to play phone tag with someone who doesn't know much about me or my car. After the visit, the service advisor seems most concerned about the ratings I will give on the survey I'm going to get in an email. I miss the mechanic. I am beginning to think Groundspeak has gone the way of the car dealer... It seems no one who works on the code or designs the site has been here to tell us why they messed with our perfectly usable search engine & why we can't keep it. jrr

We'll discuss it with the CO of the ISS cache after you talk an astronaut into bringing the ISS cache back for you to sign, then go back up to the ISS to return it. If I were the CO, I'd be amused by you chutzpah...and your connections. But, to be more practical, I agree that there's a line: at some point, you aren't at GZ, so you can't be said to be using a tool to get the cache by sending someone else to bring it to you. The case we're talking about is where I'm in the same place whether I use a 20' grabber or send my son up the tree to get the cache for me. To me, there's no interesting difference.

My biggest peeve is throwdowns (why do the people after me get to log a find just because they replaced a container that may or may not have been missing?), but since this has been mentioned many times, I will talk about this guy in St. Louis who either takes the logs, or the containers themselves. He even notes it in his logs. "Easy find. Took log." People who come after note that the log is gone, and sometimes there's only DNFs after he logs an "Easy find." Granted, he's sort of new, so maybe he doesn't understand that you're not supposed to actually take the cache or log, but wow, it's annoying.

Hi guys, I'm doing a talk this Friday at Amsterdam Nerd Nite on geocaching, and did the run through yesterday with the organizers. Should be a fun talk! But they had an idea that on the last slide for the Q&A session I put a picture of a treasure chest or similar as lots of people go for the "treasure" angle when first hearing about it (even tho obv that's not why people stay). So I thought it would be more fun to put a picture of a geocache that is modeled like a treasure chest. I mean, surely this exists somewhere, but Google doesn't give me too many cache-specific ones. Anyone know of one? Thanks!

Thank You Buka2. I got it and have replied. I found out that they use Straight Talk for the phone. So they have unlimited Talk, Text, and Data. So, the only road block is them being able to afford the phone that can geocache. Currently Straight Talk has two android phones that are GPS enabled. One is $149.99 and the other is $179.99. I think that would allow for paperless caching. In their current situation that may as well be a couple million. LOL! But, it is good knowing that the capability of the plan is there, they just need to save for the phone.

I'm pretty sure attendees will forgive you if you're late by just a couple minutes, especially if some of them are with you while hiking up. If they can forgive you, you should be willing to forgive yourself for being a minute late. If you're an hour early, continue hiking 28 minutes in the opposite direction so you have a 28 minute hike back to the summit and therefore only have 4 extra minutes. You don't have to stay at the summit if the event hasn't started yet. Go explore and enjoy your time doing the thing you love to do until it's time to be at the posted coordinates. This talk about how hard it is for a heterogenous group to figure out how long it will take to get to the summit is purely for the sake of argument. It's really nice that you care that everyone gets to the event on time, but since you're an attendee (and not the host), the only person you should worry about is yourself and getting there on time. I'm pretty sure the rest of the attendees are thinking about how long it will take them to get to the summit and planning appropriately. It will take a heterogenous group a variety of times to walk 1 Km on a paved street. It could take 4-6 minutes if they walk at a REALLY fast pace, 7-10 if at a steady and quick pace, 10-15 at a leisurely pace, and even longer under other situations. The same goes for a hike to the summit. If you don't know your pace (which in your case I find hard to believe) and how long it will take you to get there, contact the host and start asking questions. Exactly how long is the hike (or close enough to get a good time frame)? What is the trail like? Rocky? Packed dirt? Animal trail? What sort of elevation changes? Slow and steady rises? Flat except at one stretch where it's really steep? Switchbacks to increase the length to lessen the elevation changes? Once you have as much information as you need, you post to the page and say I'm meeting at the trailhead at this time to start my hike because this is how long it will take me to get to the summit and still arrive slightly before the start of the event. Some will be faster hikers, some will be slower hikers, and some hikers will be near your pace. Those that are faster might slow down to talk with slower paced hikers and slower paced hikers would be well-served to allow some extra time, just in case.

I just went to test my theory that that version 315 was stripping a space in the action names. I renamed my action "Talk to" on the first character to "Talk". I just went to play it and i still get "Talk nothing Available". So there is a more fundamental issue. I am not using proximity. I was in the middle of a large zone. My iphone was very stable. Not sure what the issue is but it really needs to be fixed. I also just received an answer from Groundspeak saying that they are working on the issue: Hello Arnaud, The developer of the app has been notified of this issue and is working on a fix. Please let us know if the problem is not resolved in a timely manner. Best Regards, Jon ("Moun10Bike") Community Relations Liaison to Engineering Groundspeak - The Language of Location Hopefully there will be a fix soon.

I see at the top there is a link that says "talk Geocaching in:" listed by links to various states... but when I click on Indiana, it takes me to a new page that doesn't have a discussion forum. Is this expected? Or are there cache forums for state/region? Trying to reach out to the people in our area.

We have regional forums (you're in Midwest...), and they're very slow as it is. By state you'd hear crickets just leaving recordings of their chirping. - Last post before yours was September. Some regions see more... Definitely not faceboook, where most seem to talk today. If me, I'd click on your state in the regional forums, and look for an event nearby to attend (and ask there about local cache groups). I click on my state for events near me, and new caches that are outta my area for notifications.

So I was on my way home, from the biggest event to date in Colorado with 250+ attendies, the geochat,,, when i saw something florescent yellow swerve in front of me,,, I thought of you guys here and gracefully took the phone from the door of the car and had to press 1 button to snap a photo,,(i have it set up that way for a quick photo if something happends while im driving(other then that i dont talk on the phone while driving) also the only coin i took to drop at the event was a look twice coin- its nice to be apart of the project. i was susposto drop it,, but never had the chance to,,talk talk talk ..lol

Well, I'm happy to say that the new mapping experience finally works for me. Whatever the problem was, it was fixed with a Chrome update. I'm just going to add my 2¢, much of which has probably been discussed as long as this thread has become. 1. Let me start by saying Thank You (again) for making a more interactive map and search experience. I know back in the days of Opencaching, this was more of the format they had and it was quite efficient. This new map is getting there, but still needs some work. For those of us with older computers, the new map is quite resource heavy. I suspect with newer hardware, it'll run a bit smoother. But still something to consider. 2. Let's talk about aesthetics. There's a lot of unnecessary and wasted space in that side bar. Can we eliminate some of that padding, and maybe only display the cache name along with its small type symbol to display more caches in the list on a single page, letting the rest of the details become visible when clicking on a cache or its name. We don't all have large screens to work with. So let's minimize the amount of wasted space. 3. Auto-refreshing. I think this was initially part of the new map? At any rate, it's kind of a pain to have to click the refresh button on the map after zooming or moving the map. Maybe some users like it. Can we add automatic refreshing and make it an option that can be turned on or off by the user? 4. Raise the 500 cache limit. At least to the 1000 caches limit to make the search compatible with pocket queries and lists. 5. Pocket Queries and Lists. Next to the filters button, perhaps we need another button to let us select lists and PQs to view/preview on the map. Also, the old map had the option to use the map view as a start for a PQ. I think with the new map and the filters, we have the opportunity to make that feature even better. But first it needs to be brought to the new map. 6. Selectability. It's nice that we can bulk add the results to a list. But sometimes we just want to select specific caches and bulk add them to a list, as we did in the old search results page. Please bring this option back. 7. Old search results page. As great as the new map is, the old table format for search results had its benefits too. I think both formats complement each other, and both should be available for users to have at their disposal. 8. Direct download of search results. This is one of the features that made Opencaching great (of course, the rest of the site/service was terrible and unable to compete with geocaching.com). The results on the map/list could be downloaded in bulk as a single GPX file on the fly. I feel this should be one of the goals to accomplish here. Adding to a list is great, but directly exporting the search results to a file on the GPS would streamline the process.

Hi all, FYI, Emoji talk tread is also here, which I probably will post from now on, but not here. Forum link "Emojis in Cache Names" Thanks!

I've been happy with my old Etrex H, had to go shopping for drivers and cables when I moved up to Windows 8.1 but all good. Just had to move to Windows 10 and latest (7.whatever) version of EasyGPS, same issues, won't talk to my vintage GPS for upload/download. Anybody know if there are drivers and cables out there that will bring it back to life, as it is still working fine for my needs? Spare me the lectures, by the way, about "join the 21st century." I'm asking a simple question, as I'd like to stay with my current stuff until it dies, not for $$$ reasons, just because it gives me the enjoyment and challenge I want from our hobby. Does anybody know for a certainty that the Etrex H/EasyGPS 7.???/Windows 10 configuration can be made to work? If not I'm fine with spending a few bucks to upgrade, but I enjoy doing things the legacy way as long as I can.

Then why do you want to socialize with them? Why not? There are many people I enjoy to talk to who are not my friends. Most of the geocachers I know I do not know well enough to make them eligible for being called friend. Yeah, it's hard to make friends when you can't stand in one spot for long enough to talk to someone.

Definitely. Many holidays are related to religions, and we all know how divisive religion can become. There'd also need to be some decisions made regarding which holidays or themes are "good enough" to be included in this feature. Some of the big ones like Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, sure, I think we can agree those get in pretty easily. What about International Talk Like a Pirate Day? Probably not. In between, there are countless other "special" days of varying degree, and a line would need to be drawn through them somewhere. Cue the arguments about why this holiday made the cut and that one didn't... I don't think the idea is necessarily a bad one, but I'm not sure it could be made to work very easily.

One honest cacher out of a group of six. “F” Premium Member Caches Found 94426 Found it 05/29/2015 Out with our team “ABCDEF” (from “5 states”) on our “State” run. Thanks for the caches and the fun! “E” Premium Member Caches Found 16525 Found it 05/29/2015 Found this while caching with Team “ABCDEF” -- thanks for adding to our fun & TFTC ! “D” Premium Member Caches Found 87925 Found it 05/29/2015 w/”A”, “B”, “C”, “E”, “F” as “ABCDEF” I was invited over for my first experience with “State”. I got the east of the “Mountains” tour, meaning fairly flat land so I could see several rain storms miles and miles distant. Can't see something like that where I'm from. I guess, though, that's close to what I remember from “Other state”. This time, though, my distance sense was a little messed up because the area out here is just so vast--and the caches were farther apart than I realized (still wonder why). Despite the storms moving around us, the weather was wonderful and so was the company. I switched between cars as much as I could so I could get to talk to everyone. I even did one of my fun things, standing on the car's running board as we zoomed down dirt roads to the next cache. Fun times. Thank you for contributing to the caches I found during this trip! “C” Member Caches Found 44649 Found it 05/29/2015 Wrapping up a two week caching trip. This was one of many we found. Enjoyed the craxy weather, rain, thunder and lightening and the long hours of caching. Road trips are always worth it! As always, thanks to the CO's for the for the hides, the fun, and another smiley on the map ! See you on the trail and keep on caching ! Everything logged as “ABCDEF” “B” Premium Member Caches Found 78517 Found it 05/29/2015 Thanks for all the CO's who made this caching journey a nexessity. “A” Premium Member Caches Found 54666 Didn't find it 05/29/2015 Out with a great group of friends to cache the plains - thanks to everyone for placing caches and making this a great trip. We signed our logs as “ABCDEF” We hunted for this one but didn't have the correct TOTT to make the find.

I have already mentioned that we used to have events that were not bound to fixed coordinates for many years and people could find them and could use their GPS-receivers to do so. All went well and everyone who attended was happy. I have not been at an event where someone was chained to a chair either. I have attended however quite a number of events where moving around to get to talk to someone whom I wanted to talk to was almost impossible due to the crowdedness at typical indoor events in restaurants. I almost stopped to attend indoor events. I'm fully aware of the fact that there are typically more types of outdoor events in North America than in my area due to the infrastructure and the legal situation. In the very early years private gardens could be used, but these have become much too small for the exponential growth of geocaching. Hiking events have been a chance to offer an option targeted towards a particular audience for which the workaround approaches are rather ridiculous.

You talk about events and I talk about event caches. It hardly makes sense. Of course Groundspeak cannot hinder cachers who visit an event cache to do something else outside of the event cache. I have the issue with how Groundspeak defines event cache and argues with socialization. All what it boils down is that Groundspeak makes it impossible to come up with great event caches which are long enough to provide ample of opportunity for socializing but are not sedentary. The fact that you go for a walk after the end of your Pi event cache, does not change the effect that your event cache is a boring 30 minutes period spent at a bakery which is of the minimum required length to make it publishable. In my opinion it is a shame that you have to write up your event cache like this. Of course it makes no sense to first sit 4 hours at the bakery and do away with the other activity as it completely changes the experience to be expected. While some write geocaching events should be about geocaching, I rather say that the guidelines seem to suggest that events are about logging attended logs.

FRS/GMRS Radios are, as the name implies, dual-band radios that can transmit on either the FRS (Family Radio Service) or GMRS (General Mobile Radio Service) bands. The European PMR radios transmit on yet another band, can have more power output and external antennas, but of course are not legal in the US. Generally the channels 1 through 15 are FRS and 16-22 are GMRS. FRS does not require an FCC license. GMRS requires a ridiculously expensive FCC license that practically no one buys. If you are old enough to remember what happened with CB licenses, same thing... it seems that the FCC learned nothing. Geocachers have chosen channel 2, an FRS channel, as the primary contact channel. What this means is that everyone monitors channel 2 and when a contact is made the participants move off to another channel to carry on the conversation. The FCC giveth and the FCC taketh away. They gave us civilian access to these bands and frequencies, then limited the type-accepted radio's power and antenna capability. Limited them so much, in fact, that if you can't hit who you are talking to with a rock then they probably can't hear you! The FRS band is limited to, I think, 3 watts and the built-in antenna. The GMRS band is limited to, I think, 5 watts and may have an external antenna. In radio it's all about the antenna, power isn't so important. Since geocachers have chosen channel 2 (FRS) as their contact channel (in order to avoid buying the GMRS license), and the built-in stubby antenna on FRS radios can't transmit or receive very well, don't expect a lot of contacts from anyone who can't actually see you. If you are properly licensed then once you make contact on channel 2 you can move to a GMRS channel and get a bit more distance. When it comes to radio specifications manufacturers lie. They do so by telling the truth in ways that you don't expect. An FRS/GMRS radio advertised to communicate 17 miles won't do it in your hands. It will do it, at night, under certain atmospheric conditions, from the upper levels between boats over salt water. Since it can do it, albeit under laboratory conditions, that's what the advertise, thereby lying to you by telling you the truth, just not the whole truth. The radio waves on both FRS and GMRS are line-of-sight. How many times can you see the person you want to talk to 17 miles away? Even 1 mile away? Rarely. If you can, if there's nothing between you, if there's no sun activity, and if atmospheric propagation is just right, you might can talk that far. Realistically... you can't. You can expect decent FRS/GMRS communications up to a maximum of one-half mile, and much less than that in an urban environment, reliably... there will be exceptions based on topography and atmospheric band conditions. {Someone will invariably reply to this "I regularly talk 7 miles on mine!" ... great... show me. You won't often do it even in Alabama's mild hills!} So, here's the interesting part... FCC type-accepted FRS/GMRS radios all have exactly the same capabilities! The $19. Cobra set from WalMart will work just as well as the $79 Motorola set from REI! The expensive sets usually have more whistles and bells, none of which you need, but they all transmit and receive under the same FCC limitations. Just read the specs for output power and if the radio transmits at 3 watts FRS and 5 watts GMRS then it's as capable as any other of its type on the market. CB Radio (11 meter) is a step up, allowing up to (I think) 7 watts and much more effective antennas, but very few geocachers have CBs, especially hand-helds. Amateur (ham) radio is another step up, with up to 100 watts output from a hand-held (Handi-Talkie), and very effective antennas with dozens if not hundreds of miles range, but extremely few geocachers use them. Where there is cell coverage, your best bet is cell phones (they are radios but without some of the limitations) and the PTT (Push-To-Talk) cell phones can be used just like a hand-held radio... in fact they are one, just with world-wide range! Where there is no cell coverage, any FRS/GMRS radio is about equal. Save your money. 73 de Ed W4AGA

No, I'm not argue for the sake of arguing here. I understood that your list was not exhaustive. I just tried to convey my point that while for me nothing what you listed is essential for an event that I do enjoy, some of the aspects that I enjoy are somehow banned from what is regarded as actual event by Groundspeak and I'm sad about that. Somehow I start to wonder whether socializing means something different in North America than what it means to me. Of course, socializing is the key aspect of any normal event (for CITOS something else is added). I never questioned this aspect of events. I just wonder why it is socializing to talk with others cachers about geocaching while eating pizza and drinking beer while it is not socializing to talk with other cachers while walking along a forest trail (just two arbitrary examples). I simply do not get it. In my opinion, an event along the lines of Neversummer's orginal proposal (without the addition that the event owner waits for the attendants at one fixed location for at least 30 contiguous minutes) fulfills the requirement of lasting at least 30 minutes and involve plenty of socializing. Still such an event is not publishable which of course we all have to accept. I will never understand however what makes such events less well suited for socializing than much shorter static events. As I said many times before, I have never thought of flash mobs as real events. Any attempt to think of the bigger picture would require me to understand why events where there is not someone waiting for 30 minutes for normal events and an hour for CITOS at a fixed location are not regarded as events regardless of what takes place and for how long. For CITOs the new rule seems even more absurd to me - not the fact that CITO should last for at least an hour, but that someone should be present at the header coordinates of the CITO. CITOs are for picking up trash and similar activities which are dynamic by definition.