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Be Sure To Lock Your Cachemobile


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We've all been there. The cache is only .15 miles away. it's just a short walk away from our vehicle. Then we realize, it's on the other side of the river/building/forest/etc. You end up being gone for 20 minutes instead of 5. More than enough time for a thief to abscond with the extra cache items you left in the car, or sometimes even the car itself.

 

Be sure to lock your vehicle when you get out. You'd hate to come back to this:

 

bike01.jpg

 

Then again, just locking your vehicle isn't always enough. If a would-be thief watches you hike away, he can guess at how long you'll be gone. It's a good idea to turn around and look at where you parked just before hiking over the hill, around the corner, etc. Alarms work great, you can usually hear them from a half-mile away. The flashing light on your dash is sometimes a deterrent enough. A would-be thief will move on to an easier target if he sees that your vehicles is protected. Be safe, get an anti-theft system:

 

bike02.jpg

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I can't help but notice that in the second picture the front tire is flat! Is this another antitheft measure? :mad:

 

Edit: Doh! Someone beat me to it. Next time I'll read the entire thread before responding.

 

--RuffRidr

Edited by RuffRidr
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I made a big mistake.......Me and my brother, Ninja Cache, went to Turkey Run State Park for a whole day of caching.......5 hrs later I came back to my truck and saw I left my back sliding window open with my companys LAPTOP in plain sight.......IT WAS STILL THERE...Whew!!!

Edited by AmishHacker
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well... this is some bizzare sort of privacy theft while geocaching...

 

was visiting this cache Lost in the Woods (Cache #GCGCGC) see my entry from April 29...

 

My girlfriend and I parked at this smallish town park, as soon as we parked, I got out the PDA and GPS to kind of get my bearings and read the cache page.

 

Just a second later my girlfriend whispers "there's some guy taping us" and I've got my head all in my electronics, and I'm like "taping us?", "yeah, taping us, like with a video camera taping us". He was uncomfortably close to our car, about 8'-10' away.

 

Anyways, I was pretty disturbed. I didn't say anything or make any acknowledgement as we left... aside from making sure the car was locked, and the alarm was on.

 

We came back, about a half hour later, and from a distance, I saw the same guy with a video camera, with some of his friends right up next to our car. He spotted me pretty much right away (must've taken note where i walked out into the woods). Anyways, they really sped off, I couldn't get their tag numbers... if something had been done to the car, but.... Alas, nothing was touched, luckily.

 

Some people just have to be jerks, dubble-ya-tee-eff.

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Some people do the opposite and remove all valuables and leave the car unlocked...so the windows don't get smashed.

 

Most of the breakins will happen shortly after you leave your car, so the idea to check back shortly after you leave is a good one.

 

There are some other tricks that we.... um, I mean car theives use. One is if the car is occupied by a lone person, they break in on the passenger side, so the breakin isn't noticed, sometimes for a day, or more.

 

Do not leave your wallet in the car. Another trick that theives use is to break in, find your wallet and write down all your credit card info. Then they replace everything the way they found it and you have no idea you were just robbed.

Edited by briansnat
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Most everyone in the South carries a gun, or so the legend goes, so cars unlocked and untouched on the side of the road are common.

 

I never lock my car, but then I don't leave anything attractive in it either. I put anything worth keeping in the trunk.

 

Two thoughts at work here -

If it's locked they'll break in to see what's there, if it's unlocked they'll look around, find nothing and move on.

 

And, while thieves may be dumb they aren't necessarily stupid - they know the owner is somewhere in the surrounding woods, maybe watching, and likely has a gun!

 

I did have a car stolen from my driveway a couple years ago. The cop asked me was it locked and I told him no. He says "Good, then the window won't be broken!"

The point being, if they want it, they'll take it, and the more you secure it the more they'll tear up to get it.

 

Ed

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Until this topic was posted, I had an unblemished record: nearly 700 cache hunts, and not ONCE have I ever left the cachemobile unlocked.

 

But on Saturday May 8th, I took Little Leprechaun out for some bike trail caching - our first time on the bikes this season. Due to the distraction of removing the bikes from the rack, at the first cache I left the door unlocked. At the third cache, I left the driver's side door wide open in the parking lot. In both cases, everything was fine.

 

Had there been any theft, I'd have blamed Saxman's evil forum topic.

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Do not leave your wallet in the car. Another trick that theives use is to break in, find your wallet and write down all your credit card info. Then they replace everything the way they found it and you have no idea you were just robbed.

Going to the gym to work out? Leave your wallet in the car? Doesn't take long for someone to pick up your keys and walk out to the parking lot to find your car. Keyless entry makes this very easy. Crooks using this trick will usually leave your keys in your car's ignition to trick you into thinking you left them there, mean while they emptied your wallet

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Some people do the opposite and remove all valuables and leave the car unlocked...so the windows don't get smashed.

I used this anti-theft method for over two years when I lived on the edge of the bad part of town. In over two years, I had a tire pressure gauge stolen. Everyone else in my apartment house had their windows smashed and various parts of their radios stolen. I must add that not only did I have a crappy radio, the installation was very poor as well, and it looked like hell.

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