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Caches by Proxy?


Mick McPhee

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He could always set out the cache under his account and put your name name as the "placed by" If he's looking after it wouldn't it be his cache anyway?

 

I have a family member who is a cacher and a good friend who is a cacher. They are active premium members. I am sending them unique caches I have invented to place in a new area where the locals do not already know about this type of cache. If I place a cache at my home area such as inside a rock, then the locals know that is my method of hiding and the rock caches are no longer new or unique. But when placed in a new area they are unique and never seen before. BTW, the rock cache is not one of my new inventive caches. And my deal would be that I provide the other cachers with 5 caches to place and they own four of them and place (and monitor) one for me. That way I get the pleasure of reading all the posts about my Cowboy story as a lead in to the cache description and seeing their comments on what I have made. And the other cachers I would work with are cool with that.

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Personally I would think it would be better to send your creations to your friends (so they can hide them and spread the joy of your style) and simply monitor the caches via the watchlist or 'watched bookmark list'.

 

Certainly there are many examples of caches maintained by 'friends' of the owner, but I wouldn't want to be the owner of a cache I couldn't maintain for myself should the need arise.

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Nothing wrong with it, I've known some people to do it, including one very prolific hider. However I simply don't see the point. To me a huge part of placing a cache is finding an interesting place for it that I want to share with fellow geocachers. If someone else hides it for me then the chief reason I hide caches is missing from the equation.

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Nothing wrong with it, I've known some people to do it, including one very prolific hider. However I simply don't see the point. To me a huge part of placing a cache is finding an interesting place for it that I want to share with fellow geocachers. If someone else hides it for me then the chief reason I hide caches is missing from the equation.

I agree with you, but I also see where it could be fun to have a listing like a vacation cache that has another geocacher to care for the listing. I believe it is more common outside of the USA. :ph34r: Waymarking seems the better way for me to show geocachers places that I enjoy, but am unable to maintain a geocache at the location. I can only say that I would not be interested in owning such a geocache. :)

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Geocache maintenance distance is a lot like work commuting distance. Beyond a certain point, it becomes unlikely that anyone will put up with the drive. Either they move closer, or they get a different job. Maintaining a cache is, after all, a kind of work, and there's a certain maximum distance that any person would be willing to travel to do that work. The problem in predicting that distance is that there really are people out there who are willing to travel enormous distances to perform that task. I have a friend who lives in Tustin and commutes to somewhere around San Jose, for a total drive time of about six and a half hours, one way. He doesn't intend to move or change jobs. I asked him how he can put up with that, and he shrugged his shoulders and said it was okay; he used to commute to Arizona, and that was fine with him, too. I also discovered another man who traveled from Arizona to Newport Beach, California, every Sunday to operate his church's sound system, and that was about a six-hour drive, one way. Most people would consider that unthinkable, but he was fine with it.

 

Some people here are probably familiar with the infamous Svengoli, or Sven, who operated the Geocachespoilers channel on Youtube. He had a rant about not being able to place a geocache in Florida, near his brother's home, because he lived in the UK. People who knew him, personally, said that he was well-off, and that he had the ability to go off on long adventures at a moment's notice. Odds are pretty good that he had the ability to maintain geocaches halfway around the world, though there's no knowing if he would have actually done it. Several different factors contribute to a person's range, such as personal wealth (being able to afford the trip), employment freedom (being able to take the time off), personal freedom (not being tied down to family obligations, such as kids), and dedication (taking one's own hides seriously enough to invest the trouble in going the distance to make the necessary repairs). If you figure that the average person works five days a week, eight hours a day, with just a handful of vacation days, and when we figure those vacation days are usually coordinated with their kids' vacation schedule, as most people end up having kids...those that don't have kids are usually kids, themselves...then the standard rule of about a hundred miles is entirely reasonable. For some people, the plastic container in the bush isn't that important, and a smaller radius is better. Every now and then, though, there's going to be someone who wants to place a cache at some enormous distance from home, and that person will have not only the ability but the willingness and resolve to actually maintain it, effectively, but the rule of thumb and the rule of the reviewer will make it impossible, I think. Probably, there are far more people who would be prevented from placing a cache that they could not maintain than there are people who would be prevented from placing a cache that they actually could maintain.

 

Then, there's also the issue of the number of caches that a person owns, which follows a similar rule. Ironically, they have no policy on that, even though, to be fair, actual maintenance ability is really a product of the total number of caches owned and their total distance. If I have one cache really far from home, I might be able to maintain it as well as a hundred caches that are all about 100th as far from home.

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Nothing wrong with it, I've known some people to do it, including one very prolific hider. However I simply don't see the point. To me a huge part of placing a cache is finding an interesting place for it that I want to share with fellow geocachers. If someone else hides it for me then the chief reason I hide caches is missing from the equation.

I agree with you, but I also see where it could be fun to have a listing like a vacation cache that has another geocacher to care for the listing. I believe it is more common outside of the USA. :ph34r: Waymarking seems the better way for me to show geocachers places that I enjoy, but am unable to maintain a geocache at the location. I can only say that I would not be interested in owning such a geocache. :)

 

In that case at least the CO hid the cache himself so I do see the point of that. Owning a cache that you had no part in hiding other than supplying a container, I don't get it.

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