Murphy’s Law of Cache Maintenance

[gotta run]

You all know Murphy’s Law. Do you have a cache out there where everything that can go wrong does go wrong from a maintenance standpoint?

And of course, problems always happen with the caches farthest from your home base, right?

So…how about some maintenance woes. Let the world’s smallest violins begin playing…

I’ll start off: Park hide. Micro. Muggled. Replaced. Muggled. Downsized to bison tube and moved 60′. Muggled. Replaced. Muggled. Downsized to nano and moved 20′. Muggled. Replaced. Muggled. Archived.

The name of the cache? “Lucky 7s” 😕

Number 2: 6-stage multi. Stage 3 in rock wall. Muggled. Replaced. Muggled. Moved and replaced. Rock wall razed and buried by 8′ of dirt. 8O. Ok, changed to 5-stage. The structure holding WP3 (formerly WP4) is bulldozed. Made new WP3. WP2 reported as wet. Went out to replace coordinate slip. WP2 muggled. Replaced. Still active…

On the Left Side of the Road...

[jerrys dad]

I hid one on DNR land. Was approved. Was a garbage can. Was alright until they actually saw it… had to change it to a regular size, that one lasted for a few finds until it went missing… replaced with a small, very first person to look for it couldn’t find it, it was and still is there!

Active

[Timberline Echoes]

WE have two that keep getting muggled, but they are pretty close to home. Changed one to a nano yesterday… we’ll see.
TE

[-cheeto-]

I have a puzzle cache that fits the bill.

First container was BURIED by landscaping crews.

Moved cache slightly.

Then 2nd container was muggled.

Cachers find the first container! (Miata is good..)

Then the bush that was being used for the cache was cut down to the ground. 3rd container went missing.

4th container is a magnetic nano.

We’ll see what happens next!

[Sagasu]

We have three caches on Rock Island, north of Washington Island off the tip of Door County. Being proud owners of 55 caches, with none yet archived, we are pretty careful about our hides and take the time to do regular cache maintenance to keep them in great shape.

Going to Rock Island on a routine basis for maintenance is pretty unrealistic, so we made some contingency plans with a couple of our hides up there, even though the park ranger is an informal trailman. Back-ups. Yes, second hides close enough to the original to avoid proximity conflicts, but far enough away not to be found accidentally.

“Fire In The Sky” was one of those hides with a built-in safety net in case the original somehow disappeared. It was in a cedar post hole in the top of Chester Thordarson’s old garden wall. The staff at Rock Island knew that some “tuckpointing” was going to take place on the wall, and had mentioned that to us when we were there a few months before, but they didn’t think the work would extend as far as our cache. Early in January, I got an e-mail from Ranger Randy:

“Rock Island update. Work has been done on the rock wall and unfortunately a cache has been permanently sealed into it. Was Fire In The Sky in a hole in the rock wall? If so you’ll want to make it inactive. Sorry, I was on vacation when the mason started the tuckpoint job or I would have removed the cache.”

Ranger Randy

No problem. I have back-ups ready to go up there, right? Murphy’s law strikes again. The back-up was in another old cedar post hole sixty feet away. Two caches entombed for posterity on our favorite island!

[Team Black-Cat]

@Sagasu wrote:

Two caches entombed for posterity on our favorite island!

Just raises the difficulty level, doesn’t it?

[marc_54140]

Saturday, during the Big Day, we hit around 30 DNF’s.

Maintenance? Well, the owner needs did not find logs to know, and from reading others entries, a lot of people are not entering them. so …. a major problem.

Why the high number? Two weeks ago they had heavy rain. How much? Well, one bridge we stood on to retrieve a cache was at least ten feet above the creek. One of the past logs talked about wading in water over the bridge to get to the cache!

[Team Deejay]

My first cache, I placed an ammo can on a breakwater in the middle of winter. Kind of looked like no one ever went there. Everything went well until warm weather. I get a DNF, so head out to check it, finding something like 500 people on the breakwater near GZ. Oops! No wonder it got muggled. Waited until night and replaced with a micro. Next finder logs that they were looking for a micro and found an ammo box….what? Back out, and the cache is back. I check the logbook and it was found by a muggle, who took it home, read the log, realized what they had done, and put it back. So…I removed the micro, got a chain, and hooked it to an old ladder, and hid the cache under a pile of rocks….resulting in it being muggled in less than 24 hours. Back out with the micro, hidden in a fairly obvious place. Gone in a month. Back out with a replacement, this time hidden more diabolically. That hide is still there (replaced once for wear).

If at first…

[Cachelovskys]

My woe is…

The caches that cost me the most money, seem to be go missing.

However, luckily the cache that has needed the most maintence is closest to my home.

[Astro_D]

Our problem cache is Cache Across America – WI located at Lambeau Field. It always goes missing when someone tries to find it on GAME DAY!!! It’s a PITA as we have to keep the container to a somewhat specific size and type as possible (size as part of the cache series) and the type (Lock and lock) is what we have express permission from Security and Grounds to place there.

Lock and locks (At least the GOOD ones) are not readily available and I hate being bothered to remove the cache before a home game and putting it back out the following Monday just to prevent it from getting muggled by some idiot.

[TyeDyeSkyGuy]

Try maintaining caches hidden or disguised so well that you have to search for 1/2 on your own cache to do the maintenance! That’s the NEMESIS series, but I love it so no complaints. 🙂

[gotta run]

We have one like that I just maintainted today. Well, not “just like” the nemesis caches, but it’s pretty highly woodland-camoed and it took me 15 minutes to find one waypoint even though I should have known right where it was.

How about that for a thread…”Can’t find your own cache?”

I love it when that happens, you put a new cache out, and someone else finds the original. 😳

On the Left Side of the Road...

[Lostby7]

@gotta run wrote:

I love it when that happens, you put a new cache out, and someone else finds the original. 😳

Been there done that…. 😕

[seldom|seen]

We’ve been here before. If I felt like it was worth it, I’d sit here and shuffle through all of mine to update my muggle list from June of 08 twice the length, but I don’t B&M anymore, I just take it all in stride. Even when a custom light switch with a key that’s gonna cost me $20 to repair/replace, argghhhh!

Bumping that thread from last year to the top. “Venting”

[TyeDyeSkyGuy]

@seldom|seen wrote:

We’ve been here before. If I felt like it was worth it, I’d sit here and shuffle through all of mine to update my muggle list from June of 08 twice the length, but I don’t B&M anymore, I just take it all in stride. Even when a custom light switch with a key that’s gonna cost me $20 to repair/replace, argghhhh!

Bumping that thread from last year to the top. “Venting”

I’ve learned a lot since posting that thread over a year ago. Since then, many of the NEMESIS caches and a few of the Riddler series went missing on shady terms. I’ve since archived the entire Riddler series, as the containers were far to valuable to let any more go.

Most of the NEMESIS series is gone now too. I had planted number 20, a 7 stage multi-cache, but it was never published. By far my best work, the most fun and the most time and effort spent on a series. A few locals were given the coords and were able to find the final in a single days work. They had some great comments too.

Losing all those caches (and the busy summer) took the spark from my caching, so after 6 months, NEMESIS #20 is still unpublished, actually archived. The stages should all still be there, and I may try to reset the cache this fall. As for Riddler, I have three new ones I could put out, but am afraid of losing them. The cost, time and effort for Riddler are far to high to lose more to caching thieves. Yes I know they were cachers. Only a cacher would solve a 5 star puzzle, cross a field of knee deep mud, and swim or boat to an island to steal my treasure chest, yet leave the rest of the cache and the nearby bonus cache intact.

So what lesson did I learn? Not to let this get the best of me, and never to place another cache I’m not willing to lose.

[Author]

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