America's Favorite

[+Isonzo Karst]

I owned a skirt lifter once, a T 3 ....

 

[+colleda]

Well, it is my melancholy duty to inform the geocaching community of the demise of America's Favorite. The following message was received today from apercey.

 

apercey has sent you a new message.

 

"HI,

 

I am writing to inform you that on Thursday 25th Feb.2016 our company inadvertently removed one of your cache sites (GC5JFF5). This was located under an old KFC Bucket Pylon which we removed for recycling.

 

As we understand the social value of these sites, your cache will be held captive until such point in time it is claimed. A decision on ransom value is yet to be confirmed, however as you will see by the attached image our trusty gnome will guard it with his life! Any attempt of a rescue would be futile.

 

If you would like the physical cache back to relocate to a new hidey hole then please respond within 72hrs.

We will not be held responsible for the actions of the gnome should this time lapse.

 

Kind Regards,

Percey"

[+colleda]

The preceding message was accompanied by a picture of a very mean, threatening, gnome.

Is there a way I could copy and paste the message and image to our local geocaching facebook page?

[+TeamRabbitRun]

I beg you, I plead with you... don't do it!! Caches like that breed more caches like that. Think of the example you're setting. Hide better caches, not worse caches!

I understand your sentiment but lame caches are fairly rare around here. We do not have saturation problems either. There are a few guard rail caches but these are relatively rare. I'm hoping that the way we have done this one will highlight how not to hide a cache and hoping that finders will be intelligent enough to recognise it for what it is - a little bit of fun, although perhaps at the expense of our US cousins. :D

You say that now... When LPCs were first coming around out here, I bet many would have awarded them a Favorite Point...just because they were new, "unique", and caused most to scratch their head while they rested their hand on the hide location.

 

Next thing you know, everyone thought it was a good idea, and an easy and fun way to hide a cache. Then along came more and more of them in every single parking lot, along greenways...and on and on. Most still think, after finding their first, "Wow, that's a simple, plain-sight location I hadn't thought of before! I should hide a few of these so I can help others have the same feeling as I when I first lifted that lamp's skirt!"

 

We love to share ideas that appear, at first, to be a good idea. Next thing you know you've given your community a smallpox blanket, and the unmaintained urban drivel that is a LPC become a large percentage of any cache hidden in an urban setting. Bo-ring...and quite honestly not usually placed with proper permission from anyone.

 

I suppose if you frame it as a joke at the expense of we "Yankees", it might not become an epidemic cache spread. Frame it as a totally boring, lame, overdone cache--that generally also doesn't have permission, and you might keep others from joining in the madness. Meaning, I'd be sure to be VERY explicit that you have obtained permission for the hide (and that you have actually received said permission), and that it really is a "no redeeming value" cache.

 

Edit to add: I think that one of my favorite hints I gave for a LPC (that I've since adopted out) was "If this hide location were a lady, it would likely be offended..." A bit off-color, but still gave some good laughs in the logs and in person.

 

I love this point you're making, but it should really be explained to all the people reading this (including the OP) who aren't from around here:

 

A particularly impressive and honorable point in our country's history. In a show of late 19th-century compassion for the plight of the poor downtrodden "Native Americans", the US Army once distributed tons of blankets to the people they corralled into 'reservations'.

 

Years later it was discovered that the blankets were covered with smallpox spores.

 

<sarcasm>I'm so proud.</sarcasm>

[+TheAuthorityFigures]

00ps

Edited February 26, 2016 by TheAuthorityFigures