How long should you be geocaching before you hide your first cache

[gojkgo]

No, I do get what you're saying. I just don't agree with it.

 

I think I may have pinpointed a key difference in our mindsets. I don't want to put a cache out there with the lone criterion being that I like well enough. I want to put the best cache out there that I can. Maybe it's the designer in me, because in good design there's always an information-gathering step that comes before design or production.

 

Anyway, we don't have to agree, you know.

[+sbell111]

No, I do get what you're saying. I just don't agree with it.

 

I think I may have pinpointed a key difference in our mindsets. I don't want to put a cache out there with the lone criterion being that I like well enough. I want to put the best cache out there that I can. Maybe it's the designer in me, because in good design there's always an information-gathering step that comes before design or production.

 

Anyway, we don't have to agree, you know.

I guess that you are right. We are of two mindsets.

 

I believe that a cache owner should place a cache that he would like to find. You believe something else.

 

EDITED to add that I just noticed that you haven't actually hidden any caches. Perhaps our differences can be explained with the fact that your argument is hypothetical and mine isn't.

Edited August 28, 2009 by sbell111

[gojkgo]

Not really, when my argument supports waiting to place caches.

[+Renegade Knight]

...Waiting longer to do a hide gives you an idea of what a good cache and a bad cache are, and when you do hide a cache, you'll be able to build off past experience.

How so? Until you place a cache you have no experience placing a cache.

[knowschad]

...Waiting longer to do a hide gives you an idea of what a good cache and a bad cache are, and when you do hide a cache, you'll be able to build off past experience.

How so? Until you place a cache you have no experience placing a cache.

 

 

Nothing wrong with learning from the experiences of others.

 

 

He may have learned, in his finding experience, that ammo boxes hold up better than glass jars in certain situations. He may have learned that film cannisters don't keep water out very well. I think its a valid point.

[+Renegade Knight]

Saying or implying that geocaching is just someone hiding a container and someone else finding it is an oversimplification. It ignores the details and the nuances. It actually kind of cheapens the sheer amount of thought and creativity that some people have put into their hides. There's a big difference between a cache hidden under some garbage in a patch of dirty scrub near an industrial park and a cleverly camo'd cache hidden creatively along a lovely nature trail in an underused park. Both are containers hid by someone and found by someone else, but that's where the resemblance stops.

 

Experience broadens our tastes and understanding of the world. That's just how it works.

 

When we first started geocaching, if there was a cache hidden where it was supposed to be, we were ecstatic. It was so novel to us that the rest of the details didn't really matter. There was a hidden cache, and we found it. All was good.

 

As the novelty wore off a bit, other things started becoming more important. We started to develop preferences for certain variables. We most like being taken to parks, for example. We prefer there to be a hint if it's a micro in the woods, or rated high in difficulty. We've noticed certain types of containers work better than others for keeping things dry. I could go on, but I'm sure you don't care. The point is, as a result of our experience, I do think we'd be better able to place a cache we'd most enjoy hunting for now than we would have when we first started.

 

There are nuances, however caching is someone hiding something and someone else finding it. It is that simple, the nuances don't take away from that simplicity.

 

You said experience broadens our tastes but the example you gave shows that experience actually narroed your tastes in caches. That is exactly why I stand by not having a find requirement before you place your own. Yoru views of what a cache is and isn't, get narrowed by your experinece. The caching world is robbed of creativity and the local communty instead of having a broad spectrum of hide styels and cache variety is narrowed down to a smaller subset of caches styles. Traveling teaches you this. That areas evne have styles shows the rut that caching can get stuck in by the copy cat, cookie cutter, "see what others do before you do your own" thing.

 

Your narrow tastes would actually be broader if your local cachers had a minimum hide requirement before they could ever find a cache because you would have seen more cache variety to selct your refined tastes from.

[+Renegade Knight]

...Waiting longer to do a hide gives you an idea of what a good cache and a bad cache are, and when you do hide a cache, you'll be able to build off past experience.

How so? Until you place a cache you have no experience placing a cache.

 

 

Nothing wrong with learning from the experiences of others.

 

 

He may have learned, in his finding experience, that ammo boxes hold up better than glass jars in certain situations. He may have learned that film cannisters don't keep water out very well. I think its a valid point.

 

There is nothing wrong in learning from the experinece of others. I wish my kids would do it more often. However at some time they have to do it themselves. The leeson of containers though, are lessons an owner willing to maintain their cache will learn about as fast as an owner as a finder.

 

When I look back at my great cache finds I can't remember the container because for the great caches, the cache is much more than the container. A great cache can use a soggy milk carton as a container while the owner learns the ins and outs of applied container theory. In time they will get it right, but the cache, the creative wonderful caches out there didn't come from looking around at all the garden varitey caches that teach us garden vareity things.

[gojkgo]

You said experience broadens our tastes but the example you gave shows that experience actually narroed your tastes in caches.

 

I disagree. My experiences finding different kinds of caches has certainly broadened my understanding of what's out there, what's possible, what works, and what I like. Naturally I've discovered things I don't care for as much, but it's not like people start out with infinite tastes and spend their lives narrowing them as they discover things they don't like.

 

And don't make the mistake of believing that ignorance spawns originality. That's so rarely the case. Look around this forum. How many ideas posted by newbies are brilliant and original? And how many are things that have been suggested a hundred times before?

 

Good ideas are usually alchemy of our knowledge and past experiences. Experience informs that. Being exposed to mediocrity only dooms one to it if they're not creative, interested, or willing to put in the effort.

 

I had no idea my opinion was going to be so controversial!

[+OldLog]

I am ready to place a cache but being new to the area I have yet to find an appropriate place. Certainly after what I have seen so far water tight is a must. Not a lot of attention has been placed on quite a few of what I have found so far. Many are too some degree or another wet.

[Clan Riffster]

The leeson of containers though, are lessons an owner willing to maintain their cache will learn about as fast as an owner as a finder.

I reckon that depends on how many, and of what variety, they've found.

If I opt to hide a real crappy container, way out in the swamp, I won't learn that it sucks until someone willing to be truthful in their logs tromps all the way out to it, then posts their experience. Around here, that could take a long time. However, if I find a crappy container, I can evaluate in an instant that it is utterly inappropriate for the environment in which it had been placed. That bit of experience gets added to my mental list of containers that really suck for geocaches.

 

For instance, I hid The Truth Is Out There on May 17th, as part of a tromping thru a swamp event. I told those brave souls who accompanied me to go ahead and log it as a find, if they wished. At the hide spot, we were entering our 4th hour of significant, double canopy, wetlands bushwhacking. I figured they earned it. The cache has not been found since. If that had been a crappy container, I still wouldn't know if it was suitable or not, based upon your theory.