Am I no longer a "newbie"?

[+PeakFault]

The reason I ask is because I found a cache yesterday and for the first time (in my short caching life!) I was left thinking 'What was the point?'

 

After a great week in the Lakes last week where I found some great caches that required walking up some of the best hills and mountains in the country, sometimes in rainy windy conditions, the sense of achivement was brilliant. And the caches were great too, big ones with plenty of good stuff in them that my daughter appreciated and that the owners had clearly spent time and effort putting together and hauling to the top of these hills!

 

Compare that to the test tube with no lid, with a scrappy piece of paper shoved in as a log, placed on a random 'U' bend in the road I found yesterday. Yes the view was okay I guess.

 

I know not every cache is going to be brilliant but seriously, what is the point in some of them?

 

*sigh* rant over.

[+SeekerOfTheWay]

No, you're still a newb because of that post. You may be on the cusp though! Lol

 

People cache for different reasons. Some like a view and a hike. Some like puzzles, some like the numbers only. Some just like to use a GPSr.

 

One man's trash...

[+PeakFault]

Yeah, I know we all like different things and thats fine!

 

My post was partly in jest really, I just found it funny how I found myself thinking something that many people, who have been caching for years, have written on here about pointless caches!!

[+SeekerOfTheWay]

I'd like to add that LPC and other P&G's have their place. I like a hike and view. However, I do the others when I'm shopping or with someone that is, or waiting for the dentist to open etc. Then I am very grateful for the parking lot and quick urban hides. Gives me a quick caching fix and kills some time!

[+SeekerOfTheWay]

We're two noobs passing in the night.

[+Lovejoy and Tinker]

I know what you mean. You get a great experience doing a really well put together series, or have great fun on a night cache (like we did on Sunday at North Hill) and find caches that the owner has put a lot of time, thought and money into, and then you come down from that 'high' when you realise the next 10, 20, 30 caches are not going to come near those in terms of quality or location.

 

The only option I know of is to be more selective in the caches you hunt, but that causes a problem when your nearest interesting looking caches get further and further away from home.

 

Just be thankful that there are COs out there willing to go the extra mile and put the effort into giving us all some fantastic experiences and some real fun

[team tisri]

The reason I ask is because I found a cache yesterday and for the first time (in my short caching life!) I was left thinking 'What was the point?'

 

After a great week in the Lakes last week where I found some great caches that required walking up some of the best hills and mountains in the country, sometimes in rainy windy conditions, the sense of achivement was brilliant. And the caches were great too, big ones with plenty of good stuff in them that my daughter appreciated and that the owners had clearly spent time and effort putting together and hauling to the top of these hills!

 

Compare that to the test tube with no lid, with a scrappy piece of paper shoved in as a log, placed on a random 'U' bend in the road I found yesterday. Yes the view was okay I guess.

 

I know not every cache is going to be brilliant but seriously, what is the point in some of them?

 

*sigh* rant over.

 

Wow, that's a newbie question if ever there was one

 

Seriously, I know what you mean. I live in the outskirts of London so most of the caches I find are variations of film pots on the back of signs, film pots in nooks of trees, film pots under park benches etc. When I'm visiting family in the forest we get to do hikes and find decent sized sandwich boxes under fallen trees and when I'm visiting my wife's family we get to see some spectacular vistas (including one particular cache I've revisited multiple times because I love the walk and love the view, and often choose it as a place to drop TBs that I take there)

 

Sometimes a film pot on the back of a sign can be an enjoyable find if it takes me to somewhere I didn't already know about and the area is interesting. I agree that a film pot or a nano under a bench outside a line of shops on the High Street does feel like a cache for the sake of a cache, but nobody forces you to find them. There are a load of caches I've felt were seriously lame and the only reason I bothered even logging them was to get the smiley and get them off my "nearest unfound caches" list but I said in the log I thought they were pretty lame.

 

Part of the issue is the whole "one man's trash" that someone already mentioned, and part of it is that in some areas there are only so many places you can hide a cache at the end of a long walk up a big hill. Urban areas contain mostly micros and smaller, simply because anything bigger is more likely to get muggled.

[+Gushoneybun]

I'd like to add that LPC and other P&G's have their place. I like a hike and view. However, I do the others when I'm shopping or with someone that is, or waiting for the dentist to open etc. Then I am very grateful for the parking lot and quick urban hides. Gives me a quick caching fix and kills some time!

 

 

Having cached in Florida, I agree some of those parking lots ones are great for just giving your body a rest before venturing back into the swamps and keeping the mosquitos well fed

[+FuzzyBears]

Think of it another way if all caches were 'good' ones and had a nice long walk and a lovely view you would have nothing to compare them to ... and when you have seen your 200th hill and dale would it still be as good.

Make the most of the good ones and treat them as a reward for all those pots in a bush you have had to do

 

And for some of us those hill walks are not possible and those caches in a lay-by are the only way we can carry on caching (good idea for a film???)

[+Gimby]

I just enjoy seeing all those little smiley faces on my cache map. If there is a little picture of a box in the middle of all those smiley faces then I have to go and find it to turn it into a smiley face... even if it is just a nano with a full log stuck behind a road sign...

Edited November 3, 2010 by Gimby

[+PeakFault]

I was in no way saying all caches need to be up hills and challenging to be good! I've found plenty of good caches that are small and have parking near them.

 

in fact on the contrary what I was saying was yesterday i found the 1st cache I thought was pointless. And it's the kind of thing I often see 'veterans' of caching moaning about! ( it was actually meant to taken in a light hearted way!)

[team tisri]

I was in no way saying all caches need to be up hills and challenging to be good! I've found plenty of good caches that are small and have parking near them.

 

in fact on the contrary what I was saying was yesterday i found the 1st cache I thought was pointless. And it's the kind of thing I often see 'veterans' of caching moaning about! ( it was actually meant to taken in a light hearted way!)

 

So does that mean you're a newbie trying to look like a veteran?

[+PeakFault]

I was in no way saying all caches need to be up hills and challenging to be good! I've found plenty of good caches that are small and have parking near them.

 

in fact on the contrary what I was saying was yesterday i found the 1st cache I thought was pointless. And it's the kind of thing I often see 'veterans' of caching moaning about! ( it was actually meant to taken in a light hearted way!)

 

So does that mean you're a newbie trying to look like a veteran?

 

Errrm now I'm getting confused. Where am I again?

[+drdick&vick]

Yoe definately aint winning this one!!

[+Mad H@ter]

Definitely still a noob and will always be a noob until you join the "Charter Member" group

[+NickandAliandEliza]

Definitely still a noob and will always be a noob until you join the "Charter Member" group

 

Charter Member Elite you meant to say. It's a very tough selection process. Think 'P' Company of the Paras. You have to able to spot a film pot in a hedge from 1000 yards and then get it onto your ignore list in 35 seconds. Then there's the bodyguard duties when the reviewers go to events........

[+Renegade Knight]

The reason I ask is because I found a cache yesterday and for the first time (in my short caching life!) I was left thinking 'What was the point?'...

 

That's jaded creeping in. some people hit that stage when they decide not to bother with caching to begin with.

 

Thankfully nOOb is another thing.

[+drsolly]

I've been caching for four years, so you'd hope that I wasn't still a newbie. But I still fetch up at caches with an unbroken record of 50 finds, broken by my spending half an hour there and still not finding it.

 

I had 4 DNFs yesterday out of 27 caches attempted. It would have been 5 but I went back to one of them and had another go.

 

It's experiences like that, that keep me humble.

[+Renegade Knight]

...I had 4 DNFs yesterday out of 27 caches attempted. It would have been 5 but I went back to one of them and had another go.

 

It's experiences like that, that keep me humble.

 

If that be the measure of a nOOb...I'm nOObier and nOOOOObier every year. I get worse at finding these things. The other day I found every cache I set out for that. That hasn't happened for um...years.

[team tisri]

What I find irritating is when I've been hunting for a cache for ages, using all sorts of tricks to cover why I'm hanging around, leaning on something while I scratch my lower leg for the umpteenth time, figuring the muggles I just avoided by tying my shoelaces have passed so I can tie my shoelaces again (for the third time in 5 minutes) etc etc etc but still can't find it.

 

Then just as I'm about to give up I do something like lean on the EXACT SAME post to scratch a genuine itch on my leg and realise I just put my hand right on the cache.

[+ayrbrain]

I'm a newbie and all the ones in my home town are micro okay we have found a few of them that are lock lock containers which is great when we do find them, but some in the town are so tiny (yes we found that one!) but it takes a few visits back to find them, there are still a few we cannot find

I feel I need to be on the "nursery slopes" as I only have 13 to my name so far,but hey its climbing

[+lmpinto]

Well, in my area there is not much cache density, so I am not picky and do them all. But while there were some that I found awesome (after 140, my favorite container is still the second cache we've done, 20m from my house, in a sidewalk, with lots of muggles, but perfectly camo'ed), there were someothers I found really lame.

 

There was one that had a criptographic enigma, that started on a fountain, with benches and trees and gardens. And where is the freaking cache? On a guarding rail on the road next to the garden!

 

And don't get me started on highway and busy road guard rails... We do not have LPC (our lamp posts have a different design) but we have the freaking 35mm on the rail. Seriously, I wish there was a filter only for 35mm on GS - I'm fed up with them. Almost all of them are really lame... I have one at home, with logbook, ready to place anywhere, but I feel I have to compensate the lameness of the container with the place I put it...