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Dumb Acts. Who else is guilty?


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I have committed a few dumb acts while Geocaching.

 

Act # 1: 12 May 2005 when I was new to Geocaching. The guy that introduced me to this addiction and I lunched a canoe from the Fort Polk - Toledo Bend Morale, Welfare and Recreation and paddled out to “Skull Island (GCJKP4)”. This was about 2.5 miles each way. This was back when we both fat fingered cords in to the GPSr off the cache page and before we had maps loaded in our GPSr. We failed to mark our lunch point nor did we have the track back log turned on, oh yea neither of us brought our cell phones. We managed to get back on memory/terrain association.

 

Act #2: 30 December 2010 – Yesterday. While out on a run to grab four first to finds. I took the cache “Hwy.10 # 3 (GC2KHYD)” and signed the long in my truck as it was sprinkling. Replaced the cache and returned to my truck only to find myself locked out with the keys in the ignition and the truck running. Lucky my wife was at home and was able to come and rescue me about 30 minutes later.

 

O.K. Time to fess up. What dumb acts are you guilty of while Geocaching.

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Ugh where do we start? Geocaching in the rain and then missing the last bus and having to walk all the way home. Being at an Event and locking my keys in the car. Every time I go off course towards the cache, through a field of thorns and find out that if I had just gone 10 more meters it would have been an easy find.

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First day out with my new 76CSx and left it on a tombstone, went to another cemetery a couple of miles up the road, started to get out of the car and realized I didn't have it. Went back to the first cemetery and retrieved it right before a couple of other cars drove into the cemetery. I sure am glad that wouldn't have been my last cache of the day because I was about 100 miles from home.

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A couple of days ago, I was getting out of the car to go grab a cache in a park. I didn't realize there was a big gap between the curb and my car, and that the curb is actually quite high off the street. My foot slid between the car and the curb, twisting my ankle and getting caught under the car causing me to fall on the sidewalk. My dad started laughing at me. <_< First cache of the day and I get hurt getting out of the dang car...

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Leaving the gpr's on the fender of the Jeep and taking off to the next cache. Then getting out to find the next cache and realized I left the gps'r on the fender. Get out and it's gone. Ooooops. How about setting the gps on the dash making a left turn and watch the unit fly out the passenger window doing 25 mph. The gps still works great.

Edited by the4dirtydogs
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A couple of days ago, I was getting out of the car to go grab a cache in a park. I didn't realize there was a big gap between the curb and my car, and that the curb is actually quite high off the street. My foot slid between the car and the curb, twisting my ankle and getting caught under the car causing me to fall on the sidewalk. My dad started laughing at me. <_< First cache of the day and I get hurt getting out of the dang car...

 

Oh man, about 7 months ago I was so excited to start a day of geocaching that when I walked out of the house I sprained my ankle hard. Of course I was still going to go. On foot. For the next seven hours. Needless to say I could not walk the next day.

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Guilty! Yesterday while looking for a cache (our first, haha), we were near a rock cliff and found a dead dog, walked away from it and within minutes there was a 'rock slide' right where we had been standing. :blink: Not just rocks, boulders! If I hadn't been grossed out by the dead animal I'm sure we would have stayed there and been hit by the rocks! Lesson learned,, do NOT hike during freeze/thaw weather around rock cliffs. P.S. We did find the cache and the area was beautiful!

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Decided to do some Solo Geocaching in a local park.(Didn't tell anyone my plans) Figured 6 mile stretch didn't sound so bad I mean I run 4 every week... while walking in middle of summer with one bottle of water decided another 2.5 miles to the river would be awesome (Neglected to realize 2.5 miles there AND back.) Had a dieing cellphone,in shorts, middle of the summer at 12 noon in Florida... ran out of water, 11 mile journey that day... in 3 hours. I will not step back in that park... there is currently an e-mail notification telling me of a FTF I could have in the same location " I will let someone else get it." hahahah

 

EDIT: Didn't even get the geocache, and as many know I am a Firefighter/Paramedic all I kept thinking was... "I DONT WANT TO CALL 911 I WILL BE MADE FUN OF FOR LIFE"

Edited by COWSskateGOOD
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I once drove 50 miles to the trail head to start a 12 mile hike. Forgot to load the waypoints for the caches.

 

I once set my 60CS on the hood of my car, in the windshield wiper area. Drove 5 miles down the FWY at 70 MPH before it dawned on me what I had done. Luckily, the little attachment for the belt clip hooked on the edge of the hood and saved the day.

 

On a hike, I got to a spot where I had to swing across a 4' deep pond on a rope. Missed the landing. Ended up on a dead rope hanging over the center of the pond. It was a squishy hike from that point on.

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Decided to do some Solo Geocaching in a local park.(Didn't tell anyone my plans) Figured 6 mile stretch didn't sound so bad I mean I run 4 every week... while walking in middle of summer with one bottle of water decided another 2.5 miles to the river would be awesome (Neglected to realize 2.5 miles there AND back.) Had a dieing cellphone,in shorts, middle of the summer at 12 noon in Florida... ran out of water, 11 mile journey that day... in 3 hours. I will not step back in that park... there is currently an e-mail notification telling me of a FTF I could have in the same location " I will let someone else get it." hahahah

 

EDIT: Didn't even get the geocache, and as many know I am a Firefighter/Paramedic all I kept thinking was... "I DONT WANT TO CALL 911 I WILL BE MADE FUN OF FOR LIFE"

 

Oh no! Glad you made it out safely. One of the first (pre-logging) caches I found was in a state forest and I did the same thing, but fortunately it wasn't hot out and I wasn't out as long. I didnt take a gps or a flashlight. I did have a cell phone but it wouldnt work there. It started to get dark so I had to go off trail (another mistake) to hike some steeper hills to get back to my car. Luckily my (adult) daughter had a headache and stayed in the car. Finally my cell phone worked and I called her to have her honk the horn so I could find my way back,, in the dark with no flashlight. I also am a (now former) emt/firefighter and REFUSED to call for help out of embarrassment too. I'm like you, I just couldnt do it. lol

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Last year about May I was chasing what should have been an easy cache. That day my gps was all over the place so I tried to average it and, considering the hint(big tree, and I was by a large tree, though there were many large trees in the area), thought I found it. There was a conspicuous triangle made in the dirt with sticks and in it just a few inches under the dirt and leaves, a small wooden box. Obviously I thought I found it. I started working with the box but couldn't figure out how to open it as it had been sealed on all sides with screws. The details nor the comments made any mention of tools and it specifically said it was geared towards kids and was an easy family find. While I was sitting there trying to figure it out, from time to time i'd catch a whiff of something dead, but didn't think much of it since there had been reports of dead squirrels in the area. I shook it and whatever was inside didn't move much so I figured it occupied most of the space within the box, as well as not making a sharp sound against the sides I figured it was something with some kind of padding. Right then and there I realized I had dug up somebody's recently buried pet and that this was not, in fact, the cache. I dug the hole deeper, reburied it, tried to make it as inconspicuous as possible and got the hell out of dodge. I felt so awful after that it was only last week that I managed to make myself get out there again and search for that cache again(which I did find this time about 100 feet from the grave). I emailed the CO and let them know but apparently I'm the only one to have ever stumbled across the tiny coffin.

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Last year about May I was chasing what should have been an easy cache. That day my gps was all over the place so I tried to average it and, considering the hint(big tree, and I was by a large tree, though there were many large trees in the area), thought I found it. There was a conspicuous triangle made in the dirt with sticks and in it just a few inches under the dirt and leaves, a small wooden box. Obviously I thought I found it. I started working with the box but couldn't figure out how to open it as it had been sealed on all sides with screws. The details nor the comments made any mention of tools and it specifically said it was geared towards kids and was an easy family find. While I was sitting there trying to figure it out, from time to time i'd catch a whiff of something dead, but didn't think much of it since there had been reports of dead squirrels in the area. I shook it and whatever was inside didn't move much so I figured it occupied most of the space within the box, as well as not making a sharp sound against the sides I figured it was something with some kind of padding. Right then and there I realized I had dug up somebody's recently buried pet and that this was not, in fact, the cache. I dug the hole deeper, reburied it, tried to make it as inconspicuous as possible and got the hell out of dodge. I felt so awful after that it was only last week that I managed to make myself get out there again and search for that cache again(which I did find this time about 100 feet from the grave). I emailed the CO and let them know but apparently I'm the only one to have ever stumbled across the tiny coffin.

 

Good thing it wasn't easy to open

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Was caching in a park nearby my home. Went about 100 feet off trail to get to cache, realized it was on the other side of a small ravine. Rather than walking the 100 feet back to the trail to navigate to the other side, I decided to shimmy across the old, dead tree that crossed the ravine. (It was only about 10-15 feet deep, with a stream running through it.) Made it all the way across, and my last step was on a dead root on the other side. SNAP!! At least I, and my GPS, didn't fall all the way down, but I sure scarfed up my leg, which still has a rather large scar from this incident. But I DID find the cache, that's what matters, right?

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Well I can think of 2 dumb acts while geocaching. 2 winter's ago I was out caching and had come to a site that I had DNF'ed before. Getting out of the car I see this sketchy character walking towards me so I decide to turn around and get back in my car. Well there was ice on the ground right by my door... I slipped and my tail bone landed directly on the curb. it hurt so much but I had to get in my car and lock my door quick. The second was that same winter and I was out geocaching at lunchtime in the opposite side of town. I get out of my car to get the cache but as soon as i swung the door to close it I realized the keys were still in the ignition. Went to grab the door before it shut but it was to late. :anibad: I had to call my mom and get her to bring the spare set. :huh:

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night geo caching with hubby in a park, the clue being that the cache is in a stump. We find what we think to be the stump with a hole at the base of it.....handing a stick to geo hubby so he can poke around and find the cache.

 

Then spotting another stump and finding out it has the cache, then going back to the car to log in some light to find that the past people who found the cache logged about a snake and in fact took his picture...right next to the first log that I had hubby poking about in...OOPS and very lucky hubby would not have liked to find Mr Slithers.

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I think everyone is guilty of bush whacking in and taking the wide well maintained trail out a time or two.

 

Did it on consecutive caches in the same State Park. Realized since all the caches there were by the same person if we were trying to bushwack we were going the wrong way. :P

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1. Took the cache back to the car to sign the log and look through the goodies. Got the cache back in it's hiding spot, got home about an hour away and went through my backpack and found the log nestled nicely at the bottom of my backpack. I did not return to the site, however I did email the cache owner to let them know of my stupidity and that the log would need to be replaced.

 

2. My very first geocache was on Lake Powell, I believe a 4 0r 5 terrian rating and had to climb sandstone rock face in FLIP FLOPS.

 

3. Climbed up a steep embankment hanging on to Buckthorn as I went, slipped on wet leaves and did a backwards sommersault all the way back down the hill. Did a quick "Look around" To make sure no one saw me and gave up. Still need to get back to that one.

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Recently solved a mystery cache. Went to the location, spent 30 minutes looking all around. Gave up, came back home and looked at my gps, I had typed in the new coords, but hadn't saved them, so it had reverted to the mystery coords. I went to the correct coords and there was a park pavilion with 50 people having a birthday party. Still need to get that cache!

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I fell off my bike and hurt my ankle on the way out for a nights caching (the big cog on the bike punctured the skin a bit...). Stopped and let the blood flow for a bit then cycled to a petrol station and bought some bandages, strapped it up and went on for another 3 hours of cycling, walking and lifting Big_Bean into a tree :yikes:

Next morning I could not put ANY weight on it and had to go to A&E - yep - broken :anicute:

 

Now I carry a 1st aid kit :blink:

Edited by Afterburned
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Night caching looking for a cache by the legendary husband/wife team of DBRambling. Some doors are for exit only and outside the building there is no doorknob (because it is exit only). So DBR hid the cache in a doorknob and velcroed the doorknob to the door. When a cacher walks up, he/she doesn't realize it is an exit only door. An evil hide. Now for my dumb act. I looked and looked to no avail. Frustrated. I ended up taking a porch light completely apart looking inside it. Well, then I couldn't put it back together again! Tried and tried. Must've been there for an hour just trying to reasseble the light fixture. It was right on a main street and I was waiting for the police to show up thinking I was burglerizing the place. Finally got it put back together and called DBR (they happen to be one of my life-lines). Felt like a fool when Bob told me to open the door. D'oh!

 

This photo shows the porch light and the fake doorknob

30680b9c-5d65-4d5e-9c26-28c3ad7138cc.jpg

Edited by do not resuscitate
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Ugh where do we start? Geocaching in the rain and then missing the last bus and having to walk all the way home. Being at an Event and locking my keys in the car. Every time I go off course towards the cache, through a field of thorns and find out that if I had just gone 10 more meters it would have been an easy find.

 

How could I forget? Before the Event, I backed the rear wheels of my car into a ditch! I thought I was screwed and going to miss the event! Luckily some cachers stopped and helped push me out. :laughing:

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When I first started caching I did so primarily by myself up until the 22nd find or so. Well, being new and lacking the advice and experience of other cachers i looked and looked for hours for a particular cache near my house only to come up with nothing despite a very thorough and exhaustive search. As can often happen in Alberta in late April/early May a sudden snow began to fall and I decided to call it quits and accept what would be my first DNF and then moved on to another cache about a click away. It was now around 2000 hrs (8 pm) and still dark for that time of year and by the time I had driven the very short distance to the second cache the snow was falling very, very, heavily. I spent another hour or so searching the spruce trees for the cache and making many rabbits unhappy in the process. The temperature was dropping steadily and I was getting wetter and wetter from crawling around on the ground in exasperation and I had to call yet another one quits. Two DNFs in one outing and both being the first and second of them. Very frustrating.

 

After getting home and having a nice hot shower I decided to log the dreaded DNFs and accept defeat. Imagine my surprise when I pulled up the listing for the two caches (by the same owner it turns out) and found that they had been archived/removed a week prior to my outing... From that point on I always, always, load caches a maximum of two days prior to an outing. Lesson learned.

 

Dumb act number two: Failing to wear proper clothing for winter caching. It gets cold up here and you'd expect a former soldier who's been to the actual Arctic would know better. Pure foolishness on my part and thankfully no thermal injuries were sustained although my pant legs were comically stiff from being frozen due to cache hunting in deep snow.

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I have had my GPS fall out my pocket once in the snow while searching for a cache and didn't realize for a bit - luckily the snow ahead was too deep and had to follow my steps back and saw it.

 

But probably the dumbest thing was forgetting to bring extra batteries one time.

One weekend I wanted to go out and find 2 caches fairly close by that we hadn't found yet. We left home and after driving for a few minutes I turned on the GPS and realized the battery was down to 1 bar, and I had left the other batteries at home. I left it on until we found the first cache (a 2.5km walk) - almost the second we found the cache I had the 'low battery' warning come up. I turned it off and we went to try and find the second cache - about a 20 minute drive away. We stopped at 3 places to look for batteries but nowhere had them. Luckily we had seen the parking area while on our way to the first cache so we parked and I turned the GPS on to figure out the general distance and direction to he cache(3km). Because of the snow, the main pathways were now cross country ski trails so we couldn't exactly walk on them. So seeing the general direction we decided to go the direct route - bushwhacking through woods, uphill all the way. At certain points I'd turn the GPS on to get the distance and direction and continued to do that until we reached the cache about 2 hours later. Luckily the battery lasted and we eventually found the cache, but had about an hour of daylight left, were low on water, had forgotten snacks and I was getting blisters. Rather than go the same route back we decided to just follow the ski trails back as there weren't any people skiing at that time. We made it back much faster and just reached the car as the sun was setting. The whole sky turned bright orange, then went pink and purple before the colour faded just as we reached the car. Having that sunset made it feel worth the trek, but I'll never forget to take extra batteries again and will also include some extra supplies in my caching bag in future.

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I don't have any really amazing dumb acts. I have fallen through so many ice puddles though. That happens a lot.

 

I today was a mess for some reason. I walked halfway to the destination without a pen to sign the log. I forgot my tweezers for the micro so I resorted to using 2 sticks as chopsticks.. It kinda worked.

 

I'm surprised i didn't leave my backpack or keys laying somewhere.

Edited by shawnshamrock
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caching on public land, wearing my army field jacket (camoflage). Not being from around here, I didn't expect hunting season to start for another two weeks and hadn't thought to double check. The first shot ricocheted off a rock about 25 yards to my right, and taught me a lesson about situational awareness. The next four shots made sure I'd never forget again.

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My All-Star Dumb Acts in no particular order...

 

Didn't believe the cache page which said there was a trail...I found the trail after I found the cache

 

Bushwacked through mud and thorns to find the cache next to a parking lot. Although the cache page said not to park in this lot but to park in the other lot. CO didn't mention there was a bridge connecting the lots

 

My sole purpose was to solve a puzzle really close to home. I went to find the first stage of a puzzle cache to get the cipher...but I didn't have GSAK set to load unsolved puzzles, now I am standing in the parking lot with a lot of useless electronics. Used a PAF for the coords

 

Sometime during my first 20 finds, I couldn't find a LPC. Went to the location three times looking. I finally read about them here in the forums. Everytime I lift a skirt, it reminds me how dumb I was/am

 

Was standing on top of a geopile covering the cache (GZ 0.00 ft) typing my DNF notes into the GPSr

 

Find number 3 was a Hide-A-Key on a guard rail way down a dead end road, I logged that I thought it was clever.

 

On my first multi, I entered the Latitude from stage 2 and the longitude for stage 3, navigated to the spot and then discovered my mistake

 

Caches 22, 23, and 24 were found and logged online, but I didn't have ink and still took the credit...I say this here because this a dumb act thread, I now know better.

 

Took me a year to figure out what minimum meant in Geocaching (puzzle cache clue)

 

Spent an hour looking for a cache, even expanded my search out to 30 feet...in the wrong direction.

 

There is probably 6 or 7 caches that had me scratching my head. My wife reads the cache page and the hint looks up points, I go look and find the cache.

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One of my Einstein moments occurred on a cache aptly named Buncha Dam Rocks. The cache was on the other side of a stream, that comes out from underneath a dam. There used to be a bridge where you could get over the stream, but it got washed away. This is not the kinda of dam that you can walk on either. I thought I had it figured out, but didn't think it out. I left the part out of the log about us scaring the alligator (or was that vice-versa), when we were trying to get the canoe out of the water, so as not to scare off future geocachers. The gator charged out between us and hit my leg with his tail swoosh.

 

Anyhow, here is a link to my log of that incident.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=606f156a-70ee-492c-a9c7-32d4764a8312

Edited by LSUFan
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I'm fairly new to this, so I'm sure that most of my dumb mistakes have yet to be made. On my third or fourth find or so, I opened the cache and was pondering what to take in trade. I signed the log with the pen I brought, then while going through the swag I found a really nice little ink pen that I traded for. It wasn't until a few finds later that I realized the pen I took was most likely left there for people to sign the log with, and not part of the cache!

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I started geocaching in August of 2001 and there were very few caches around. Drove up and crossed the Hood Canal Floating Bridge in WA. Went North and found the right road. The GPS indicated it was about a half mile north along the beach. There was even a spoiler picture with an arrow pointing towards a driftwood root in one of the logs on the cache page. It was high tide and I waded water along the beach and sure enough the GPS lead me to where the picture was taken. I was hot from the hike and took off my caching jacket and laid it on top of the weather beaten root cluster. GPS indicated one foot. Looked and looked for about 30 minutes and decided it was gone. Took my jacket off the root and there was the cache down in a hole that I had thrown the jacket over. The owner deleted the spoiler picture the next day.

Edited by W7WT
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I have committed a few dumb acts while Geocaching.

 

Act # 1: 12 May 2005 when I was new to Geocaching. The guy that introduced me to this addiction and I lunched a canoe from the Fort Polk - Toledo Bend Morale, Welfare and Recreation and paddled out to “Skull Island (GCJKP4)”. This was about 2.5 miles each way. This was back when we both fat fingered cords in to the GPSr off the cache page and before we had maps loaded in our GPSr. We failed to mark our lunch point nor did we have the track back log turned on, oh yea neither of us brought our cell phones. We managed to get back on memory/terrain association.

 

Act #2: 30 December 2010 – Yesterday. While out on a run to grab four first to finds. I took the cache “Hwy.10 # 3 (GC2KHYD)” and signed the long in my truck as it was sprinkling. Replaced the cache and returned to my truck only to find myself locked out with the keys in the ignition and the truck running. Lucky my wife was at home and was able to come and rescue me about 30 minutes later.

 

O.K. Time to fess up. What dumb acts are you guilty of while Geocaching.

 

Ours is very similar. We were driving through Blythe, CA, I think it was, and we had to take a restroom break. We finished that, and decided to find a cache. We got to GZ and all of us , minus the littlest member of our team, left our car and went to go find the cache. Halfway through the hunt, the little guy decided to leave our car, which we had left running for him as it was hot outside, and come help us look. He closed the door behind himself. Well guess what. Our minivan has an autolock system, and when the door is closed while the car is running, the car will lock. So we went for our cell phones to call AAA, but those were locked in the car as well. So we had to walk a couple miles to a house and call AAA from there. We finally got into our car about an hour and a half later!!

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Leaving the gpr's on the fender of the Jeep and taking off to the next cache. Then getting out to find the next cache and realized I left the gps'r on the fender. Get out and it's gone. Ooooops.

I did that once but when I realized when we got home... IT WAS STILL THERE! I'm guessing it was my mom's very gentle driving that saved it.

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So mine was today. While out riding our bikes around a 6.5 mile loop I kept running into spider webs. I can not stand these little guys but I was doing ok just wiping them off and moving on. As we were finishing up the loop I hit one that was so large I felt it hit me in the head. After looking like a ninja for a bit I decided he wasn't on me. I had set my sun glasses on my bike tire like an idiot and took off. After getting back to the truck I realized what I had done. Also, not me but my poor wife took a nice fall while looking for a micro (in the wrong area)at the moment she fell a walker passed her and got a good laugh.

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Three of 'em:

 

- I swam across the Rhein River to get Hatto's Schatz, a cache that was meant for boaters only. Not in the navigation channel -- I didn't want a cargo barge rolling over me -- but I still got pulled about 150+ yards down river each way. I knew the current was going to be strong, but I later learned that folks dwon in the Rhein all the time...

 

- When we stopped by First Germany, the oldest cache in Germany, it started to rain, so we logged the cache in the car. And then almost drove off with it.

 

- While hunting for Stuart's Cache on an early Scottish summer morning, I quickly discovered a swarm of biting insects. Got so busy swatting at them that I lost my balance and slid about ten feet down the hill, and apparently dropped my cell phone as a result. Got to hand it to Nokia, they make a good product, even the cheap ones: though it sat out for a few days before being rescued, it still worked fine after I got it mailed back to me and charged it up.

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