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It's a situation familiar to all of us: you've found what you think is the location of a cache, but there's a person or group of people who just won't go away so you can get to it. You start to wonder: maybe they're thinking the same thing? What we need is some kind of signal by which geocachers can recognise each other with the minimum of embarrassment if they turn out just to be a dawdling muggle.

 

Any ideas? Of course, these should be as obscure and Masonic as possible.

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It's a situation familiar to all of us: you've found what you think is the location of a cache, but there's a person or group of people who just won't go away so you can get to it. You start to wonder: maybe they're thinking the same thing? What we need is some kind of signal by which geocachers can recognise each other with the minimum of embarrassment if they turn out just to be a dawdling muggle.

 

Any ideas? Of course, these should be as obscure and Masonic as possible.

 

Well,,,, I'm just too blunt i guess. When i run across someone near a cache location and if i have the slightest inkling that they may be cachers, then i just ask straight out if they're geocaching. If they look to be regular muggles then i will usually wait a few minutes for them to leave, but i'm impatient so i don't give them very long before i go up and tell them what we're doing. Depending on the person(s) reactions, i may end up having to leave and make plans to come back later. Lot's of times however, they seem genuinely interested and thats when i go into more detail and sometimes even let them help with finding the cache. :laughing:

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Well, we sorta already have one. The only problem is that too many cachers are skeered to come into the forums to learn it. :laughing:

 

There's also briansnat's famous :laughing: NJ welcome dance; but that's only for advanced users.

 

aaarrgh edited to acknowledge that CTD was faster at the keyboard than me (I had to take a work break)

here, you can have the TB back.

Edited by wimseyguy
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I usually just leave my GPS hanging from the lanyard around my neck to "identify" myself as a cacher. It has worked everytime.

 

I look for Palm Pilots, printed out cache descriptions, or a GPS to determine if someone else is a cacher. Just look around and watch, and you'll soon be able to pick up who's caching and who's being a muggle PITA. :laughing:

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There we were, standing by a flag pole surrounded by bushes on a tiny hill in the middle of a subdivision, frisking the foliage with one hand and holding GPS units in the other hand when a red truck pulls up and the driver yells out "Hey, are you guys geocaching?"

 

Hmmmm, what gave us away?

Edited by Team Neos
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There we were, standing by a flag pole surrounded by bushes on a tiny hill in the middle of a subdivision, frisking the foliage with one hand and holding GPS units in the other hand when a red truck pulls up and the driver yells out "Hey, are you guys geocaching?"

 

Hmmmm, what gave us away?

 

That reminds me of when I was a stockboy at a pharmacy while in college. I was standing there with 20+ boxes of tampons in my arms, and someone asked "Do you work here?" I said "No, my girlfriend is having a bit of an emergency" Duh!

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All this talk of waving GPS's around to find caches make me think that my phone geocaching system may not give that much clues to what I'm doing (after all the actuall GPS bit stays in my bag and i have my phone in my hand (great for muggles dodging as they think you are just playing on your phone)) so to a geocacher it would seem rather difficult to suggest I'm searching for a cache. But ah well thats what you get if you buy your system for only 88p (plus £26 posting...)

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We were at a rest stop looking for a cache last weekend when another family yelled to us, "Did you find it?!" which was followed by a brief pause. They quickly followed with, "I mean, what did you find?" We were sure they were cachers but they had seen us eating wild blueberries in the area about 200 feet from ground zero and were just curious. We showed them where the blueberries were so we could go find the cache, hidden out of sight in the woods.

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I usually wear my Geocaching logo T-shirt, and pack my GPS openly. I was once approached by a woman on a trail in Mammoth Cave NP, where I was finishing a virtual. She looked at me and said: "are you Geocaching." I confirmed that I was, and after getting my clue, we talked for a minute back up the trail away from a tour group.

 

Works pretty good, and the Muggles never know the difference.

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I'll share one of my Recent DNF logs that reflect a possibility.

 

"Tried this one this morning with **** (3rd attempt) at 8:00am on Sunday morning. I was prepared to crawl around untill I found it this time. There was a person standing in the vicinity of the cache, and we thought it looked like he was holding a GPS. As it turns out he was a muggle holding a can of Natural Light.. :P

 

The other 11 were on the ground. He said he just stopped to have a few before making his way down to Coal Grove. :lol:

 

It's not often that you get to see such fresh trash. We thought that CITO at this moment might not be wise, so we walked around the car and went on our merry way."

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I never liked signals special handshakes or things like that, What if I get it wrong?

We are suppose to be observant so I agree with the ones who say to just pay attention to the others in the area, it has worked for me.

 

Not paying attention reminds me of the two guys standing staring up at a flagpole. A woman comes up and asks " what are you doing"? They reply "our boss sent us out to measure this flagpole but we don't have a ladder to reach the top" The woman reaches in her purse pulls out an adujustable wrench, loosens the bolts at the base, lays the pole down, takes out a tape measure and says 18 feet 3 inches, and walks off. One guy turns to the other and says " isn't that just like a woman, we needed the height and she gives us the length"

 

Moral: sometimes we miss the obvious answer.

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I don't often see other cachers along the trail. It's only happened once and it was pretty obvious at that point.

 

Today my family was having a picnic near where we have a cache hidden. Someone was out and about walking and my dad asked if he was a geocacher. The guy said "No, my name isn't geocacher."

 

So sometimes just asking will work.

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One group should start talking on their GPSr like it's a cell phone. Then the other group will come over and say "D'ya think we're flippin' idiots?"

 

We have never ever done that, but funny thing, we were at a cache yesterday (that ended up being a DNF) where it is mostly a paved, open path until almost the end. On the way out, we let our 5 year old son hold the GPS, and just as we're going to pop out into the crowd, out of the blue he starts putting the GPS to his ear and talking to it like it's a cell phone ("hi grandma, it's me"), we're not kidding we were awestruck! I guess the younger generation really is extremely tech savvy <_<

 

Seriously, we would just show our GPS in that situation I think that would say it all....

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just flip out your pocket knife if thier geocachers they will know wut your doing but if thier not they will start running away trust me it works i needed to pull out a really snug container so i flipped out my knife and some kids were staring at me from the start once they saw the knife they ran away although that might be a bit intensejust hold your gps in your hand where its visible

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