Avoiding Muggles

[+Team Perks]

In our experience, as long as you look official, people won't bother you. In wooded/brushy areas, we claim to be biologists tracking a leg-banded bird or lizard or something that we picked up by telemetry.

 

In urban areas, we just act like we're "inspecting" whatever it is we're looking for (is this the light pole with the problem?)

 

Sometimes it's safer to be honest and explain what you're doing and why. Especially if you're explaining yourself to a cop!

 

Having a female member of your group helps...especially if you would otherwise be wandering around in a public park by yourself.

 

However, as much as people can be curious about what you're doing, it's amazing how some people just don't give a flip at all. One time we were waiting out a muggle outside an ice cream store because we knew the cache was literally right under him on the bench he was sitting on. Finally we just walked up to him and said "Excuse me, do you mind if we reach under the bench for a second?" He said ok, we grabbed the cache, signed the log, and put it back--all while he was sitting there. This is far from our normal M.O., but in this case we decided it was safe.

 

The bottom line--it's all a judgment call.

[+Hiemdahl]

Boots, jeans and a plain blue windbreaker with the following iron-on letters on the back:

 

BIO-HAZARD RESPONSE

TEAM

 

This with a painter's white mask generally precludes questions from the nosy.

[+boulist44]

Walk round them!!!

[+hwyman]

What a great topic! We often joke about going with a hard hat and orange vest amongst my circle of cache buddies. The USGS idea isn't bad either! The cell phone idea never had occured to me altho I once was fortunate enough to have a cache in hand that happened to have a disposable camera. I just hung out and pretended to take some pics.

 

My favorite exploit occured while finding GCHQN5. It's a subscriber-only cache, so I'll list my log here for all to enjoy:

 

February 28 by hwyman (79 found)

I have to beg to differ with Gaiter Man on this one. I too thought it would require very little stealth to go on the weekend. You have to remember that there are people who work on the weekend...including rent-a-cops as GLM found out.

I found the cache at around 1pm. I took it back with me to my truck to sign since I forgot to bring a pen with me. Good thing! As I was stuffing the sign-in sheet back into the container, I noticed a security guy (i.e. The Man) was standing not far away staring at me. I continued about my business in my truck for about a minute, but The Man was keeping me down. He wasn't moving an inch and kept on staring. Hmm...stalemate. Just about that time, a pizza delivery guy showed up and was trying to get into the nearby building so The Man went over to escort the guy into the building. Excellent...a distraction! For a brief moment, I actually entertained the idea of sprinting over and rehiding the cache, but decided not to risk it. I started up the truck and made a hasty retreat...cache in hand. I hated doing that, but I didn't have a choice. The Man was on to me!

 

I rushed home and informed RobAGD that I had the cache and of my plan to replace it. I decided a more subtle, covert approach was needed. Unfortunately, I had a prior commitment, so it took a few hours before I could attempt it. When I was ready, I changed into my running gear, grabbed a water bottle and the cache and headed back to the site.

 

Time to go jogging! I parked around a far corner and slowly jogged up to the hiding spot where I suddenly had the urge to take a rest and have some nice, cool water from my bottle. Three seconds later, I'm off jogging again...with the cache safely in it's hiding spot! ET would be proud!

 

Be stealthy!!

 

--Hwy

[+Nazgul]

Not an issue....

 

[+Bullzeye]

He who finds and runs away lives to find another day.

[+Bullzeye]

Wouldn't be wild if you found out "THE MAN" was RobAGD and he was just watching you work his cache?

Edited July 28, 2004 by Bullzeye