[seldom|seen]

Then I guess I have been at a serious disadvantage for years! That battery-sucker H20 unit I had was off by an average of 50 feet when I put it up against my iPhone. And if you guys are telling me that my iPhone is not accurate… wholly crap! No wonder my cords are not the best… and, no wonder I have had to work twice as hard, at night, with an LED flashlight to hold second place LCG position!

I suppose I have a better developed geosense because of it though. Although I couldn’t find a micro on a bus booth today!

[seldom|seen]

@gotta run wrote:

@Sparse Grey Hackle wrote:

But I did win a bet for a pizza 😆 as for how many pages this topic would get into………serial posters indeed ❗

Well, I think we should

take a caching tour of ALR caches
while discussing the merits of the new WGA logo selection and
hopefully avoiding any bomb scares

You’re giving me way too many ideas for a new cache…

[seldom|seen]

I do, but I have yet to download any PQ’s to the phone. I’ve only used the “search for nearest caches” function.

[seldom|seen]

@Team Hemisphere Dancer wrote:

This would have been one sweet webcam cache.

Could you imagine the pictures? Of course you could drop a cache there and and an ALR to snag a picture of your partner grabbing the cache… oh wait, that option’s been kaiboshed as well…

[seldom|seen]

Thanks to everyone for their insightful comments. The decision certainly struck a raw nerve with me, but then if affected 15 of my own creative caches with ALR’s and how could I not feel affronted?

Anyone who has experience with my caches can comprehend the breadth of time, energy and intent behind them – that they are ALWAYS about more then just snagging a find. But, I have to concede that there is nothing to be done about it now and I will simply have to live with those who choose to miss out on the opportunities provided.

Surely, I will edit my boilerplate to something a little more pallitable but still with the same overriding sentiment. If you don’t want to get out of my caches what I put into them, then just skip them and move on. I will never understand why this is such a hard thing for some cachers to do and why some cannot comprehend the notion that I would rather have 5 finders who truly appreciate a cache of mine than 500 who don’t.

Now I have to get back to the workbench to complete the 100 underwater cache containers I’ve been working on… Winnebago is a BIG lake…

[seldom|seen]

Not too painfull. Just 15 caches with ALR’s out of 191. Another week or two and there will be 5 more and I have NO intention of quiting the practice of including them in my caches either. Bring on the flamage…

[seldom|seen]

Just working up my global boilerplate:

“I wholeheartedly disagree with the change in policy regarding Additional Logging Requirements but I must abide by the rules and make the ALR for this cache optional. While I will think that you are a lowdown no-good offspring of a farm animal for logging this cache without completing the ALR, I can’t prevent you from doing so. My caches are designed to give you more that a smiley and if that’s all that you are after, might I suggest you ignore list all seldom|seen caches and go elsewhere for that satisfaction.”

There, that ought to significantly reduce the number of number-seekers to my caches or at least give me the black eye that I apparently deserve and perhaps push some fence-sitters off the other side.

The next time a policy like this goes through without comment with the purpose of “precisely defining” geocaching, I’m out. Then cachers can flood the valley with grab-n-go’s with the express purpose of getting their pobah stats up.

[seldom|seen]

The irritation I express about this is not directed at any individual and certainly not at Rsplash to whom I owe a great deal of time and thanks for covering for me. No harm intended man.

What irritates me is the moves in recent history by Groundspeak to keeping pushing for simplicity so that every member has a fair chance of finding every cache and how that philosophy gets distilled into action.

Action: Some cachers armchair are caching and short-cutting virtuals to get finds, to which some owners respond by deleting logs.

Reaction: Remove the category and force every new cache to have a slip of paper and use GPS coordinates, even though the category and the caches in that category were in places where sensitive cache places would rather not put a container or where a container wasn’t allowed but the historical or natural significance of the area was certainly worthy of bringing people to it.

Same thing with this new decision:

Action: A few cachers decided to make some ALR’s TOO difficult or maybe even ridiculous to which other cachers responded by logging anyway and then somebody’s ego got bruised when a found log was deleted and subsequently complained.

Reaction: Avoid having to deal with case-by-case instances and problem caches, or cachers, by making a blanket change to policy and forcing the entire geocaching community to revise and cheapen their caches to fit that new policy, irregardless of how it was about too impact thousands of caches around the globe.

Any Why? So no one has to deal with anybody on a case-by-case basis. It’s the same reason a whole host of other societal problems are bubbling to the surface. No individual responsibility needed, just revise the policy and let the chips fall where they may.

Now, you may think I’m making a bigger deal out of this than is reasonable. But even to the point of Zuma’s post about the long walk in the woods. What is the best part of a cache like that? Is it the long walk, the hunting around for the cache or the actual opening of the physical container?

In the same way that the reward for finding traditional caches is the experience of getting there and making the find, the same holds true for some ALR caches, the experience of fulfilling the requirement is the reward, not getting the smiley.

So, the policy is make everything uniform and findable, yet a cache like Nifty Fifty which sits at the bottom of Lake Winnebago and will probably never be found by more that a dozen cachers in A-OK, a cache like Consult the Oracle, now with 109 finds AND almost as many renderings which EVERYONE, to my knowledge enjoyed, is not. That’s my issue and I’ll comment further later… I’m going bowling.

[seldom|seen]

@RSplash40 wrote:

The extra to-do’s are just time and bit wasters.

I would bet a good portion of owners might check them for the first few finders but then get busy and don’t. So then..whats the point? Those against it on this posting I believe are in the minority.

I agree that I might be in the minority, this is true. But there is a point for every one of mine that certainly goes above and beyond “take a picture with the camera provided” or “post a picture of you and your GPS in front of….”.

Letsee…

Laughing Waters | We Come From the Water: Add a water sample from your home town to the Global collection of water samples in the International Fountain of Menasha,

Native & Invasive | Alien invasion: Post a picture and report the location of an invasive plant species outbreak in Wisconsin to the Google Map for the DNR to reference,

Consult the Oracle: Draw your own version of the Oracle so your art can be posted to the cache listing,

Fox Locks |#3 Treasured Memories: Add a memory of a life experience on the Fox River or other water body,

See Through Characters: Take a picture of some creative graffiti and post it with your log,

It’s Your Call*: Record a most memorable moment to be added to the audio archive on the liked cache page in the listing,

Unless you are really into this sport for the posturing of find counts and bragging rights, I would expect that most of you can see the value to these ALR’s and how they are more that just a throw-away or waste of time.

Quite the contrary. For me, these give all the wasted time (going into the woods to sign pieces of paper) that we put into this sport an occasional reason to do so and actually makes it all worth the effort on the occasion that you not only get to log a find, but moreover get to leave a little piece of you behind for others to discover. And THAT my friends is the only REAL reason to do this thing we call geocaching. After all, if you hoot for a cache you find in the woods and no one else hears you, have you found it?

[seldom|seen]

Well, this might be the straw that broke this camel’s back. Let’s take every opportunity to grow the value of the sport and distill it down to finding tupperware in the woods. How mundane.

I just don’t get why the push is always in the other direction. Every cache I make has some other purpose behind it save a handful of exceptional locations. What would Consult the Oracle, arguably one of the most visited ALR caches in the Valley, be without the ALR? Cult of Personality, I’ll Come Bouncing Back, etc…

What’s next, remove all the requirements to solve puzzles and make them optional too? I just went through mine and was relieved to see that it only affects about a dozen of mine. Whew… I thought that number was going to be much higher. I have no intention of archiving them and I guess I will have to add a boilerplate now.

Why is it that EVERYONE must be able to find EVERY cache? Who cares if some cache owners go too far? Don’t do their caches. It seems SOOOO simple to me. Christ, I just spent a week setting up a new series of ALR’s. Glad that last one made it under the radar yesterday or I wouldn’t be smiling.

Gonna have to sit back and see what happens.

[seldom|seen]

Thanks Ralph, been waiting a long time to get this notice as you know. I’ll be checking in very soon. Great to see some of the other names on the committee too!

[seldom|seen]

@sandlanders wrote:

On the news we saw the huge ice pile-ups on the shores of Lake Winnebago. They looked pretty impressive. Anyone near those? Any caches now under the ice?

Yup, I know one that’s under there and hasn’t been found for over a year now…

[seldom|seen]

Well, I’ve been doing this for a few years and haven’t completed any challenge caches, which must mean they don’t interest me. I think I’ve only completed 2 6-pack caches as well, Honey of a Cache and Pulaski, from recollection. Oh, yeah, I almost completed Zoe’s Sudoko series, although I skipped one to get to the final.

The problem with these series caches it that as soon as one goes MIA, you can find yourself floundering for the final or bonus. That, or some other circumstance can leave you guessing. I still have a sour taste in my mouth for the Beefies series, the final for which I couldn’t find because a number was missing from one of the caches. Spent the better part of 3 hours getting that series only to come up short on the final because of an oversight – or something – the missing number was replaced with the words “e-mail me”. What? I’m a hundred miles from home and you want me to e-mail you for a number so I can complete this series?

Personally, I tried to get around this by making the criteria for the Laughing Waters series final “You must log every cache in the series before you can find the final”. But still I run into the issue of dealing with MIA caches. At least it keeps pressure on me to keep them all active.

So, while I’ve looked at Well-Rounded, I’ve no intention of pursuing. And I certainly have no interest in some of these other challenge ideas, but for some prolific cachers, I suppose it’s a good distraction and just another fun way to compete with their piers.

[seldom|seen]

Tip of the hat… Wave of the Finger…

Man, Mike, almost 350 for the month and no signs of slowing down. Keep that up and a couple of us leaders from last year will have to come out of retirement…

[seldom|seen]

Well, judging from the CONSIDERABLE effort gotta run made yesterday to TREK down a few loneliess in the Northwoods, mostly on foot through lingering snow and some slush – almost 12 miles of trekking by his count – there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s earned every last point for this and the last two months. That’s more determination than I think I even had last year. And on top of that to walk back to revisit a cache just to make sure you had GZ right, a nearly 2 mile RT… Kudos to you man. That’s some serious caching!!!!!!!

Thanks a million for checking on a few and replacing a few for me. At least I don’t have to go out to Nettle Island this summer. Hooray!

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