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I Quit!


AE5D

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After locating 172 benchmarks, smokestacks, steeples and towers, the utter futility and pointlessness of benchmark hunting has finally hit me. It was moderately amusing at first, but after I found about a hundred of them, the benchmarks get harder to find and farther from home. Some benchmarks are in the database but they no longer exist, and this usually results in a wasted trip across town. This is especially true of benchmarks which have not been logged already on the Geocaching web site.

 

On the other hand, some benchmarks are just too easy to find. Like the San Jacinto Monument, or the dome on the State Capitol. It takes no great skill to locate, photograph and report such an object. I "found" and photographed CS2852, which is an old smokestack, without even slowing down on the freeway!

 

The old benchmarks themselves will soon be obsolete, in almost every case, because of the Global Positioning System and future systems like it. If they are lost and forgotten, that's unfortunate, but that's progress.

 

All this, coupled with endlessly having to explain myself to relatives, onlookers,

property owners and overzealous security guards, has led me to the decision to

pull the plug on this hobby and move on to something else.

 

Best wishes to all of you, and have a happy new year!

Edited by AE5D
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:mad: Don’t pay any attention to them they are both sour grapes and like to jump on newbe posters.

 

Before you give up try one more CT1167 placed in 1908, 95 years ago and no one has found, these are the most rewarding for me.

 

I know sometime the drive by’s will wear you down , but it the ones like this that make it all worthwhile and the sport of benchmark hunting fun.

 

Come on now try one more, who knows it may be there waiting on you…………JOE

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:mad: Don’t pay any attention to them they are both sour grapes and like to jump on newbe posters.

 

Before you give up try one more CT1167 placed in 1908, 95 years ago and no one has found, these are the most rewarding for me.

 

I know sometime the drive by’s will wear you down , but it the ones like this that make it all worthwhile and the sport of benchmark hunting fun.

 

Come on now try one more, who knows it may be there waiting on you…………JOE

That's not true....I'm still a newbie, too! In fact, I'm newer than AE5D! :D

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AE5D, I wasn't making light of your plight. I only have one question, though. Why did you decide to make your announcement to the forums? Did it serve a purpose to others, or did it just help you to rationalize your position? I'm not being confrontational, or trying to start any wars, I'm just curious. I've seen many people come into the forums and commit geocide just the same way, and most have not really served any purpose other than to be a rant and to stir up controversy and arguments. I apologize for seeming uncaring in my first post, as I am anything but that. I hope you find a hobby you will enjoy, and that gives you as much pleasure as BMH did when you first started it.

 

Have a Merry Christmas! :mad:

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IT'S not the FIND it's the Hunt All good hunters can find things.

 

It's the HUNT that counts and you have lost site of it.

 

I have 474 Benchmarks 102 caches and finding another is like finding the 1st it is the Journey one takes on the path to his GOAL

 

I have found numerous uses for the Benchmarks in the new mapping programs that I am doing,and others as well, so they are never outdated that is your GOAL to find it and to maintain it's integrity for the next generation.Or to say that it is gone.

 

No whiners in BENCHMARK HUNTING just WINNERS :mad:

Edited by GEO*Trailblazer 1
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Well BassoonPilot in the benchmark forums there are not a lot of cheap shots like yours over here there is a lot more discussions about the topic and helping out than wanting to knock someone around.

 

There is also not a lot of bickering between players that you seem to thrive on, so no more post from me on this subject as to keep from stirring the pot .………………JOE

Edited by JoGPS
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Well BassoonPilot in the benchmark forums there are not a lot of cheap shots like yours over here there is a lot more discussions about the topic and helping out than wanting to knock someone around.

You didn't answer the very simple question, Jo. I know; reading all the way through one sentence exceeds your attention span. For your information (and I know you'll never be able to assimilate it, "buried" this deep into the response), your post was actually the original "cheap shot" in this thread.

 

I greatly enjoyed your "Geocide" parody, AE5D. HoHoHo, Merry Christmas.

Edited by BassoonPilot
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Go to the one's on mountain tops, deep woods etc. Places where you need a hundred foot tape, compass, metal detector, shovel, water and rags to clean the marks off so you can take a picture of them. Sometimes you spend a day or more and still don't find the mark. I also have to drive a long way to find the marks so I try to get a least four to make the trip worthwhile.This kind of benchmarking is fun. ddnutzy

Edited by ddnutzy
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Finding any, and all, benchmark is fun. The art/science of finding these disks has brought much enjoyment to my life and has allowed me to share with my children part of the history of our local area and country. I share JoGPS's love of finding these disks and have spent time talking with him about finding them. With so many 'bad' things in today's world for kids to be involved with, I'm proud that I have taught my children to spot orange carsonite markers from several hundred yards away. The time I have spent with my children while searching for these disks is priceless. While we may only do it as a hobby, the disks that surveyor set so many years ago have brought us hours of enjoyment. I just wish they could somehow know that not only were they helping to provide us with modern conveniences, they were also helping to put a smile on two kids' faces.

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I would actually like to say it has been that easy to find for me. Started with radio towers (easy enough) but have moved to discs, rivets, and pins. Just today, we were confronted by an angry gentleman even though we were on a state maintained road, we were "snooping" around his property. Some people are very friendly and allow access to their private land to retrieve a BM find, others are better not asked.

 

A3crew

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i am burned on cacheing and so i think i will transfer to the benchmark area for a while till i get burned on these and then back to caches <_<

Good idea! You should drop this idea over in the "Why do people quit" thread! You could hunt traditionals till you get burned out or run out, then switch to virts, then LC's, then BM's, then start all over again! B)

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Finding any, and all, benchmark is fun. The art/science of finding these disks has brought much enjoyment to my life and has allowed me to share with my children part of the history of our local area and country.

I agree. Old Station Descriptions provide a window into the past. I loved discovering that a patch of old cracked concrete on a bluff I had walked over several times was the remains of an old airfield from the 1930s.

 

I did some BM hunting back in March then stopped for a long while and did other things. I came back to it in December with a renewed interest. Sometimes a person needs to take a break from a hobby and come back with a renewed perspective.

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I think I'm going to back off for a while, as well. I just have not had very good luck. Even when the description seems to fit perfectly, that concrete post just isn't there any more! I sought seven today, found zero. I still kind of enjoy poking around out-of-the-way railroad crossings, but I just wish I could find something, and I just know I'm going to get into trouble one of these days.

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Maybe some analysis could be taken on what causes the burn out so that it can be avoided. As a tadpole to these forums and only new to Geocaching the motivation levels are really high.

I too am concerned about burn out long term - and also burning out all friends and family that have no understanding of the thrill of the hunt!

 

Just a thought though.................

 

Do you think it can be the negativity in the forums that can start it?? <_<

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Maybe some analysis could be taken on what causes the burn out so that it can be avoided. As a tadpole to these forums and only new to Geocaching the motivation levels are really high.

I too am concerned about burn out long term - and also burning out all friends and family that have no understanding of the thrill of the hunt!

Everything in moderation is probably the best answer to avoid burnout.

 

Mix your geocaching and benchmark hunting with other hobbies. Take some time off, do something different and come back to caching and hunting later.

 

Balboagirl mentioned looking for seven marks and not finding any of them. Here is an idea of what to do with marks you can't find: do research to find out what happened to them or try to find photos of the area as it looked in the time period of one of the recoveries. See this one for an example: DY2601 It's a little short on description but a picture is worth a thousand words. :D

 

I try to find out something intersting about the marks I recover, if I can. This makes the log on the geocaching.com site a little more interesting than "Yup! There it is!"

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Balboagirl mentioned looking for seven marks and not finding any of them.  Here is an idea of what to do with marks you can't find: do research to find out what happened to them or try to find photos of the area as it looked in the time period of one of the recoveries.  See this one for an example: DY2601  It's a little short on description but a picture is worth a thousand words.  :D

 

I try to find out something intersting about the marks I recover, if I can.  This makes the log on the geocaching.com site a little more interesting than "Yup!  There it is!"

You're absolutely right, of course, and I'm already on it. I worked one summer for a history professor who was writing a book. My job was pretty lowly, but I learned that this man is an invaluable resource for local history, and Iowa history in general. I think he could probably fill in the names of all 99 Iowa counties on a blank map, and tell you at least five interesting things about each one.

 

But I digress. . . part of my problem is that I've been looking in areas which have been changed drastically over the last 70 years, and I'm afraid that most of my sought after benchmarks have been buried, if not destroyed. Given my experience with scraper and grader operators, probably both destroyed and buried.

 

However, there are lots of benchmarks set along rail lines which were abandoned years ago. In fact, my one actual disk find was on just such a rail line. See MH0319 I need to find some resources to help me locate those old grades and perhaps some of the old station locations. That's where my professor friend is gonna come in handy.

 

I think I've gotten way off the topic now, sorry. It only took me 2 or 3 days to get over my disappointment. I'm ready to hit the road again. I'm not going to look for seven in rapid sucession again, though. That's just a bummer.

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You might want to check Topozone for topo maps. My ExpertGPS software uses these maps, and while it is an older mapset than most of the topos I could go and purchase hard copies of, that makes them more valuable to me when hunting benchmarks. In my area these maps show many rail lines no longer in existence, and in one case, showed the old path of a re-routed road, which allowed me to recover a mark officially listed as "not found".

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"while it is an older mapset than most of the topos I could go and purchase hard copies of"

 

Well, no, it's not. The average USGS topographic map is 23 years old, so many topographic maps you'll find on TopoZone are quite "old". But almost all of them are just as old as the printed maps you'd buy in a store. When the USGS produces a new printed topo map we have to wait for them to release the digital version of it (which can take a few months) and then we periodically get in all the updates and make them available on TopoZone.

 

Over 98% of the nearly 60,000 topo maps available on TopoZone are absolutely the most current ones available. The real percentage is probably quite a bit higher than that, but I know I can say that much on a Sunday afternoon without having to go to the trouble of getting an exact count ;)

 

However, ExpertGPS gets topographic map images from Microsoft TerraServer, not TopoZone, and I can't say anything about their data!

 

Ed

 

Ed McNierney

President and Chief Mapmaker

TopoZone.com / Maps a la carte, Inc.

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Yes Ed, thanks for the corrections.

 

I guess my comparison to paper maps was really a generalization based on only a handful of paper maps that I actually own (thanks to them being available on the net). Also, I didn't realize the topos came from Terraserver, though I knew the aerials did. Since ExpertGPS utilizes a one-time download, and then stores the images on my hard drive, perhaps I should compare them against maps that are currently online to see if newer versions are available. Although, even if they are, I'm not sure I want to overwrite the old ones as I've already mentioned their usefulness in BM hunting.

 

Also, even though I don't often use the TopoZone site myself, I applaud your efforts to keep the site 'fresh' and think there have been some really nice modifications over the last year!

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