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Becoming a Geocacher


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So how did everyone get into the sport/hobby of Geocaching? I'm sure there are plenty of stories out there.

 

Here's my story..... My dad sent me an e-mail and said he found his first cache while on lunch one day. He then sent me a link to the website geocaching.com and explained to me what it was all about. It peaked my interest. As soon as I could afford a GPS, I bought one. I then had to wait a month before going out and trying it because of too much rain! I currently only have 7 finds under my belt because it is still raining (even flooding) in my area. I can't wait till the rains die down and I can hit the outdoors again!

 

So what's your story? Did you hear about it through someone else? Did you come across the website? Did you see/hear about it via the media (TV, Magazine, Radio). Did anyone out there happen to come across a cache accidently (as a muggle)???

 

:laughing:

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Well, I'm sure this has been discussed here like a thousand times in a thousand different threads. :laughing: But I'll give an answer, I stumbled on it from a link on epodunk.com when I was looking up some useless municipal information on a local municipality for no particular reason. I'd actually stumbled on it a few months earlier, but the 2nd time I figured I should check it out. :laughing:

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I was looking into buying a GPSr for hiking and traveling and I noticed a lot of the reviewers talked about the use with geocaching and the features talked about geocaching so I came across geocaching.com and a few days later I bought a new Colorado and was out finding caches along my favorite trails.

 

I wish I knew about this sooner because it's an awesome hobby.

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I e-mailed a local historian asking about an old railroad tunnel. He said that he hadn't been down there, but a friend of his who was into geocaching had said that it still stood. Geocaching, eh? I looked it up and my initial reaction was "Why am I just learning about this now???" I bought a GPS the next day.

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I stumbled across one in the woods while hiking. It was very well hidden, but when I was bushwhacking for a nice spot to take my lunch and be all alone, I noticed something 'odd'. A few sticks were positioned in a most unnatural position...it just didn't 'look' right to someone who is in the woods alot.

 

Moved the sticks and found a box. I wasn't concerned with the fact that it could have been a bomb or something, plus it said 'geocache' on it. Opened it up, and wow...cool!

 

I thought it would be a cool new way to add spice to my hiking as well as find new trails. I was right!

 

Sad thing is...I forgot what that first cache was and I never logged it. I guess it adds to the mystery!

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Ohh, I love this thread.

 

Three years ago (September 2004) I was working as an intern at a refinery in Robinson, IL. I forgot how the conversation came up but one of my coworkers said something about geocaching, and told me all about it. I think he may have mentioned it because I was talking about what I like to do in my spare time, hiking and such. At the time however, I did not have a GPS yet. So I asked for one from my mom for my birthday, which is in October. At the time I was into jogging and staying in shape (that was when I was 40lbs lighter, now I can't jog for more than a few feet without getting winded). So my mom got me a Garmin Forerunner 101 for my birthday. It really had no way to hook it up to the computer and download caches, at least not that I was aware. I had to plug in every waypoint by hand. Well a week after my birthday I tried it and found the Touchy Feely cache. I was hooked from then on. Now as of today I have 360 finds, and have sinse upgraded my GPS to one where I can download waypoints from the computer. Makes things go a lot faster. But I found nearly 200 caches with that first GPS. This weekend will be the first time I will be actually taking a vacation for the soul purpose of geocaching. I am going to drive 10 hours to Big Bend NP here in Texas and find all of the caches in and around that park. I am so excited!

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My family and I stumbled upon a poorly hidden cache, clearly marked (and pointing us to geocaching.com).

 

I was vaguely aware of geocaching (I am a voracious consumer of pop culture) so I knew roughly what the game was about, but I had some wrong ideas, including the idea that the caches themselves were to be moved from one hide spot to the next :ph34r: .

 

I was intrigued and did some investigating. A month later, my husband gave me and my boys a GPSr for Christmas.

 

I've been sporadic about caching since, but very into it over the past month. I hid my first 2 caches recently, and I am all over ebay and other sites investigating & buying containers while I ponder my next hides.

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I read an artical about in my local small city news paper and borrowed a GPS from a friend went once and ordered my own GPS when I got home and was hooked.

 

The only problem I have is I can not spend enough time doing it, I only have time on the weekends and those are getting harder and harder for some reason.

 

I want to go to Missouri and go to the State Park where they have the MOGA and work on the 140+ permanent caches they have there. I could see spending a week there camping and going out to a different part of the park every day, that is still 20 caches a day.

 

I had my best vacation I have had in a long time last summer in Reno I cached a little every day 19 finds in 5 days and hit the casinos at night and even came back with money in my pocket. I am going to Vegas this summer to do the same. I am driving out and will be hitting some caches while going there thought.

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After I got my 3rd Garmin nüvi a co-worker mentioned he would also like one, then mentioned the word 'geocaching'. I had no idea what geocaching was and didn't really pay much attention to it.

 

A couple weeks went by and I remembered what he said, I figured it was some sort of land plotting or something and again, forgot about it for a couple weeks.

 

Well, it started to bother me that I wasn't exactly sure what he was talking about so off to Google I went.

 

'What is geocaching?'

 

2 days later I had a 60CSx on order.

2 weeks later I had my nüvi sold and Colorado 400t on order.

 

Now I find myself in $1 stores looking for cool swag as well as designing cool stuff for printfection.com that I can wear while caching :ph34r:

 

Oh, and I also made a personal page about my experiences geocaching.

 

Link is down there \/ if you're interested in checking it out.

Edited by XopherN71
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On my 25th wedding anniversary, I took my wife to a special resort. While there she happened to see an article on geocaching in one of those lifestyle oriented magazines put out by some tourist organization describing things to see and do in our state. Being an outdoorsy type and knowing we had a GPS for Search and Rescue work with the Civil Air Patrol she thought it sounded like fun. It was and it led us to this forum and we continue to this day. It is one of my younger daughters favorite ways to get "daddy time."

 

-dB

www.ayefon.com

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Used my GPSr for navigating on the road and out 2-tracking in the woods.

Said something about it to a guy at church.

He said ever try geocaching??

He gave me a geocaching.com card.

I took it home, checked it out.

7 weeks later:

Premium member

Palm M515 running Cachemate

running GSAK on the PC

A cache pack with all the necessary items.

64 finds

1 hide (yesterday)!

 

And best of all my 13 year old daughter loves it!!

Great quality time!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edited by gmcpower98
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More or less:

 

A fellow Toy Soldier (Sgt. Brain), posted on the Toy Soldiers missions forums about Geocaching, expressing that it would be a good way to spread the word of Doctor Steel. (Leaving buttons, manifestos, etc in them)

 

and I vaguely remembered hearing about this hobby ages back, and was like, hrm. So I poked the link out of boredom mainly. figured "Eh, Tucson sucks, ain't gonna be any around here." .. Poked sight some, put in my zip and was like "Oooh."

 

IM'd Roo. He was like "Oooh. We SO need to do this."

 

And I'm like "But I don't have a GPS. But I wants to do it. It would give us something to do." Which Roo and I both work night jobs and are on weird schedules, so we often lack things to do.

 

I get the brilliant idea to steal my dads GPS for the night. We tromped off to find 3 caches. Had a blast.. It's been down hill ever since.

 

Had my own GPSr within a month, premium account in 2, PDA/registered GSAK and Cachemate in 3.

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It's amazing at how many stories are out there on how people actually get started in the sport. While I admit I am not good at even finding the regular sized containers (That's another story in itself), I feel I am hooked. I am always looking for new caches to go after once I can get out and about in nicer weather. I love it so much that I have mentioned it to several people around me. Many seem interested in wanting to know what it is, but I just can't seem to recruit anyone! Maybe my next goal will be to come up with a way to get the word out there that this is a fun activity to do with the family! My daughter is still too young to participate and has only been with us once because I couldn't get a sitter. I can' twait til she gets old enough to help me search!

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I am in physical therapy for poor quadriceps muscles following a total hip resurfacing. I was chatting with my physical therapist who mentioned she and her boyfriend were into the sport of geocaching. It sounded like fun for my husband and me, as well as good exercise for my quads. We are hooked now. Thanks S.

Team JimandJudy

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I was looking for a spot to bury a body in the desert and I found this box. Well, I took the box home and did some research on the website listed on the outside and then I had to go find a different spot after I put the box back. :D:mad:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'

'

 

J/k :mad:

 

 

I've posted my start on about 9 other similar threads, but THIS STORY is more interesting than mine. :D Follow the OP's instruction after his link. VERY INTERESTING point of view.

Edited by Snoogans
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I was looking for a spot to bury a body in the desert and I found this box. Well, I took the box home and did some research on the website listed on the outside and then I had to go find a different spot after I put the box back. :mad: :mad:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'

'

 

J/k :D

 

 

I've posted my start on about 9 other similar threads, but THIS STORY is more interesting than mine. :D Follow the OP's instruction after his link. VERY INTERESTING point of view.

 

Link removed, thread closed by moderator! And to be honest, I can't follow the whole thing. (Not that there's very much of it). :D

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So how did everyone get into the sport/hobby of Geocaching? I'm sure there are plenty of stories out there.

 

I had read about Geocaching in the local newspaper. At the time I thought it sounded kind of interesting but I figured "Ah, there's likely not many of those around here anyway." and just filed it away in the back of my mind.

 

About a year or so later a friend of mine bought an eTrex Legend and hooked it up to a laptop running Streets and Trips. I thought that was really cool and I wanted to get a GPSr for doing navigation on road trips and vacations. I figured there was NO way I was going to convince my wife we should spend that much money on a GPSr just for navigation, so one night I looked up this "GPS treasure hunt" thing and sold the idea to her this way:

 

"You know how you always want to go for walks but I never want to? I think if we bought a GPS we could try this Geocaching thing and that would inspire me to go for more walks."

 

So, we bought an eTrex Legend -- with her thinking it was for Geocaching and me thinking it was for car navigation. Six days after registering on the website we found our first cache and I was completely hooked. (Honestly, up until we actually found that first cache I had a sneakin' suspicion this whole caching thing was some sort of scam and wouldn't actually work.) :laughing:

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My Dad got a eTrex (basic yellow) for hiking and one day I was browsing the Internet and searched for "GPS" and I got this site.

I browsed created an account and then lost interest.

Then one of my friends in Scouts was talking about it (tollerdudes), and he suggested we look for one in the park we were having our meeting.

After that I became re-addicted

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After my first alien abduction (i.e., close encounter of the Third Kind) by the alien grays in early 2005, I realized that I needed a ready-made and plausible excuse to be out and about, particularly in wilderness areas, at all hours of day and night in order to get my alien brain implant software upgraded as needed, and for battery replacement in the implant emplaced in the ethmoid sinuses. So, after hunting around a bit on that there interweb thingie, I quickly came up with geocaching as the perfect cover for my activities. To date, it has worked perfectly. Better, when folks -- often called geomuggles -- spot me lurking in a state park or in an abandoned field behind a supermarket at dusk, and approach me to ask me what I am doing, I simply tell them the truth, advising them that I am waiting for an imminent rendezvous with my alien friends in their starship, but that I am pretending to be a "geocacher" hunting for a "hidden treasure" in order to allay suspicion, and then I ask them if they would like to be introduced to the aliens when they arrive in 4.55 minutes. For some reason, none of them EVER stick around to meet my alien friends, and, in fact, these nosy people ALWAYS seem to manage to disappear within seconds of my forthright disclosure. Odd...! Go figure...

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I was looking for a spot to bury a body in the desert and I found this box. Well, I took the box home and did some research on the website listed on the outside and then I had to go find a different spot after I put the box back. :ph34r::D

 

J/k :laughing:

 

 

I've posted my start on about 9 other similar threads, but THIS STORY is more interesting than mine. :D Follow the OP's instruction after his link. VERY INTERESTING point of view.

 

Link removed, thread closed by moderator! And to be honest, I can't follow the whole thing. (Not that there's very much of it). B)

 

I sent an email to the OP asking if I could post a family friendly translation of his story. He's a muggle who found a cache and blogged about it. His point of view shed some real light on the entitlement issues that I and a few others take so much exception to. His perspective is unique as an outsider in that he doesn't plan to continue to cache, (like my wife, he thinks cachin' is kinda dumb) but he hit the main entitlement issue with respect to geocaching and pretty much life in general on the head. It was very well written if somewhat un-family friendly. I really enjoyed it.

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Today I found my first cache! Wow! Does it feel like that every time? I can say that if I hadn't done some homework on how you guys hide them I would have never found this one! I have been planning to get a GPS for backpacking and surfing for what to get brought me here. Then I checked hide and seek and O MAN there were hundreds within 25 miles of my home alone! Well, to make a long story short, I got a Garmin 400T today, opened the box, slapped some AA's in and punched in the coordinates for the nearest cache. Walked to it, waited for some ladies to finish lunch in their car and began searching. It was well hid (to a rookies eyes anyway) and it took me some time to find it even with my new toy pointing right at it!! Again WOW!! I think I will like it even more when I start going on hikes to find caches but I think I am definately hooked! :laughing:

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I was looking for a spot to bury a body in the desert and I found this box. Well, I took the box home and did some research on the website listed on the outside and then I had to go find a different spot after I put the box back. :laughing: :laughing:

 

J/k :laughing:

 

 

I've posted my start on about 9 other similar threads, but THIS STORY is more interesting than mine. <_< Follow the OP's instruction after his link. VERY INTERESTING point of view.

 

Link removed, thread closed by moderator! And to be honest, I can't follow the whole thing. (Not that there's very much of it). :laughing:

 

I sent an email to the OP asking if I could post a family friendly translation of his story. He's a muggle who found a cache and blogged about it. His point of view shed some real light on the entitlement issues that I and a few others take so much exception to. His perspective is unique as an outsider in that he doesn't plan to continue to cache, (like my wife, he thinks cachin' is kinda dumb) but he hit the main entitlement issue with respect to geocaching and pretty much life in general on the head. It was very well written if somewhat un-family friendly. I really enjoyed it.

 

I'm still having problems trying to figure how a muggle blogging about finding a geocache could possibly hit on the entitlement issues you take exception to in regards to geocaching. But that's not important, the important thing is I'm not the only cacher who has a wife who thinks Geocaching is kinda dumb!! :laughing:

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My story is kind of weird.

 

After I got divorced, I still used to check out my ex's blog. Some sort of obsession thing at the time. Well, she ended up with some guy who was into Geocaching and talked about it on her website. It sounded REALLY cool but I didn't want to get into it because I figured it would look pretty lame if I started geocaching just as she was. So, I left it alone and never bothered.

 

Last year, I decided to ask a good friend of mine what it was really all about so he took me out around Christmas time and we went caching. Man, I had a blast. Been at it ever since.

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Blame E-bay.

 

I bought a nice handheld GPS from Costco back in 2005 to help me figure out where I was. I was doing a bit of travelling at the time and thought it would help find things I needed to find or locate in regards to navigation. I'd never heard of geocaching at this point.

 

Fast forward over a year later. I am browsing E-bay for deals on commemorative US-mint issued coins and I see a cross-listing for "geocoins". Thinking this was a world friendly coin that I'd never heard of, I clicked the link the site displayed. And I saw tons of geocoins. I looked at the descriptions and they said, "Trackable on Geocaching.com". Went there and it said it was a sport using a GPS. Well, I already had a GPS! The gc.com site then indicated there were a number of caches near right where I lived! The curiosity got the best of me again.

 

I then registered with the site, unsuccessfully looked for a couple of evil hides and finally found a non-evil hide the next day. And the rest, as they say, is history.

 

Today I found my first cache! Wow! Does it feel like that every time? I can say that if I hadn't done some homework on how you guys hide them I would have never found this one! I have been planning to get a GPS for backpacking and surfing for what to get brought me here. Then I checked hide and seek and O MAN there were hundreds within 25 miles of my home alone! Well, to make a long story short, I got a Garmin 400T today, opened the box, slapped some AA's in and punched in the coordinates for the nearest cache. Walked to it, waited for some ladies to finish lunch in their car and began searching. It was well hid (to a rookies eyes anyway) and it took me some time to find it even with my new toy pointing right at it!! Again WOW!! I think I will like it even more when I start going on hikes to find caches but I think I am definately hooked! :grin:

 

But do you like turtles? If you're not aware of what I'm asking, try Googling "I Like Turtles"... :laughing:

Edited by _c3_
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i bought a gps for hiking use. then i deployed to iraq. while there, one sunday when i had some down time, i was at the mwr tent enjoying some internet/email time. i stumble across geocaching and it peaked some intrest. every week when i got some mwr time, i was looking up geocaches/geocaching. once i got home i found my gps, made a account, tried to explain it to the wife, drug her out with me and found some hides and been hooked since! she on the other hand is a part time cacher, lol...

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I had first heard about it back in 2002 or 2003 in an offroad magazine, which I don't have anymore and don't remember it because it was a one time buy to check the mag out. They had a monthly "geocache" where they hid a chache with a prize to keep in it, such as a Warn Winch or a Hi-Lift Jack. They had a list of previous ones that weren't found yet. They were all out of state, so I didn't really get into it. It was always in the back of my head, thinking it would be cool to find one of those. Now only if I remembered which magazine it was in (two are elimenated, bacause I have been a subscriber for 10 years).

 

Then a month ago, somebody had brought it up on a large 4x4 forum I'm on and people said that they had found hundreds around there homes, I decided to check it out. Signed up that night, and was out hunting early the next morning for Easter.

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i was doing research on mysterious megalithic stones in nova scotia that are analgous to ones in north western russia and scandanavia and when i typed in the name of one of the stones, the sibley stone, i found a link to a cache hidden beneath it. i was already using a GPS reciever to map out old french settlements in nova scotia from 400 years ago, and found out that i could use my machine for work AND play.

 

ive now been caching over a year, hidden over 30 caches, found a hair over 250 of them and have gotten my mom and dad, my son, my sister, my aunt and countless friends involved in the sport.

 

an they told two friends

 

an they told two friends

 

and so on....

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Read about it in a family magazine; they touted it as a great family hobby (which it is). It sounded like a blast, so I asked for a GPS for Christmas. Got one, loved it, but can't convince anyone else in my family (except my darling 3-year-old minicacher) that this is a fun hobby! No worries, my mini-cacher is up for a good treasure hunt any time any place, so we have our own fun!

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I needed a GPS for my bike to help me out on Penn. county roads, which may not have any signs. Then I learned to Track and download. I was in a State park and someone told me about the game and later I heard about it again and this time I got the name right and the web site - started reading. I thought it would be a great way to increase my GPS skills. It did! It took me to really wonderful locations and since I was new to Penn. It really got to be a fun way to see what is out there. All the caches THEN had great locations - every one I went after was placed somewhere that was wonderful to go to.

Edited by GPS-Hermit
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My story: A friend of mine in Miami, FL discovered geocaching and was adventurous enough to get started. He brought along a friend and they partnered up hunting caches with his new gps. When I arrived for a visit they took me along and I INSTANTLY knew this would be addiciting. I returned to Ohio and a couple months later got my own gps and started hunting on my own, and later have dragged along a few friends too.

 

I now have more finds than both of them and my friend says he is going to report me to the GAA (Geocaching Addicts of America) - lol! <_<

Edited by DreamGrl628
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The function was on my GPS. I searched through the Internet and since then I found over 400 geocaches. I'd like to place some eventually, but I think I live in the geocaching capital of the World. Just between here and work (6 minutes by bike) there are 4 I still haven't found yet!!!

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My brother and his friend, tweakers and MemphisDude, took me for my first cache. It was a virtual. I didn't even have an account at that time. I later E-mailed the owner and got permission to log the find, even though the cache had been archived. That was in 2003.

 

A short while later, my brother gave me his Magellan GPS315, and I was on my way. I used the GPS315 for several years (with about 40 ft accuracy) and found quite a few caches with it. One day, while searching for a magnetic keyholder on a storm drain, the GPS315 decided to go for a swim. It was my birthday, so I went and got a new Garmin 60CS (6-20 ft accuracy).

 

I am looking forward to passing the CS to another new cacher. I am waiting for the right opportunity, and hopefully have enough money to get one of those GPS/Phone/PDA units that are good enough(0" accuracy) to locate some of those difficult caches in our area... :D

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I was buying my husband a gps to use for work (at the time, he was an over-the-road trucker and I thought he could use it for all those times he got bad directions or had to go around major traffic snarls).

 

I was hunting around on the 'net to figure out which unit to buy and stumbled across these forums and the geocaching pages. I saw how many caches there were around our home and was fascinated that I hadn't suspected a thing. It reminded me of the priate treasure map games my friends and I used to play as kids.

 

When I gave him the gps, I said, "Oh yeah, there's this cool game people play using these things too. Look, there's one of them at the other end of the street" and we decided to go test his gps using that cache. We've been addicted ever since. Nowdays we plan our vacation to include good caching along the way to our destination and we've met some really great new friends, too.

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I was a communications specialist for the U.S. Army, and my main occupation was to be in charge of training my company on land navigation and operation of the DAGR and BFT systems.

 

In better terms for the geocacher, "I was paid to plan and host event cache's where we would use the military sattelites (not the civilian side you use) to find virtual cache's (road signs in the woods with codes on them)."

 

After I got out I mentioned to someone that I enjoyed doing that and he asked me why I don't start geocaching?

 

So here I am.

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Well way back in '02 I was searching for the stargate ring images (I wanted to make a mini moch ring for a mirror I have). And happened to find a google link to a Stargate Laser Disc TB. I read the site and was like oooh cool I own a GPS and I can use it for something other than finding my way to work everyday. 6 years later I am still here, still haven't made the moch ring for my mirror (though I did find the images), and actually happen to come across a website that sells a 9" ring replica.

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