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I would have to say that probably 75% of mine are rejected on my first go around. It usually takes 3 or 4 revisions to get them honed down to the point of being publishable. At first I was very frustrated with this fact, but over time came to appreciate that my caches got better, the more they got rejected. Clang Boom Steam is a perfect example of this. It is another great cache, but only started out a single stage in the park. After numerous proximity issues and attempts (I think the count was 8 ), I finally took it out of the park and made it into something entirely different. The cache is now much more memorable for it.

Most of the time they get rejected because I am not far enough away from other caches. While the proximity guideline is just that, the saturation in the valley has necessitated pretty tight constraints on the reviewers and it is pretty rare that I get a cache published if it’s less than 515′ feet from the next one. I do get a tiny bit of grace if it’s between 516 and 528, which I appreciate, since nearly every one of mine end up being squeezed between others. I must drive the reviewers crazy!

Some of the time it is just because the puzzle is too obtuse or difficult to follow. Other times it is because I need permission where I wouldn’t expect to need it.

But, there are a few instances where the Idea itself was just NOT going to fly no matter what I did.

In fact, I just had one published today, Jim’s Place, about a homeless guy. The wording of the cache was suggestive of “an agenda”, much like -cheeto-‘s, and after several rounds of removing wording that one might consider a “call to action”, it was still getting rejected. My own statement of commiting time to the homeless cause was seen as a blanket call for all cachers to do so. So, I pulled the wording off the cache and put it on a TB that CAN have an agenda, but because it was tied to a cache, it was still rejected. I finally pulled off any language suggesting that anyone even “think” about the plight of homeless people and it got published. (I am happy that I was able to convince -cheeto- to place his – he was pretty upset about the whole affair and it took some convincing).

Copyrightstown was another one. That cache is all about copyright infringement. I couldn’t make the case that the use of pictured logo’s was educational in nature, because I am not a certified institution, and therefore had to grossly modify the listing which had 6 really interesting case of copyright infringement pictured. I probably had 8 hours invested in the graphics, research and write-up (pretty typical for an s|s cache) and was pretty hot about that one. In the end the cache wound up being about the first case of infringement only, so it is still a good cache and still educational.

I also like caches based on Remote Sensing, my “Nadar” series (look it up). But rule changes have made them more difficult to publish now and some of my favorite caches wouldn’t get published today without an additional puzzle component. Head Case, I’d Walk a Mile, Hyde’s Web – i just love these and have at least 3 more Nadar’s in the works. The most recent one to get published was Head East, which was initially just about finding the “big smiley face”. I had to add the puzzle part to get it published, but I do hope some of you use Terrabrowser to locate the “smiley”. It’s really fun to see unexpected stuff like that in remote imagery.

The funny thing is, every one of my caches has an “agenda”. I am here to do more than entertain, although that’s part of it, I am here to educate, share my life experiences and expand the limits of the sport. That’s my agenda. I am not here to stick containers in the woods so people can go out and have a “light, fun experience” although I’d venture to guess that most cachers have more fun doing my darker kayholder caches then the light fun ammo cans in the woods, full of junk.

Now, I take it in stride. I respect the job of the reviewers and the time they have to invest in mine. I know if I submit a cache and don’t hear back the same day that they are likely having a pow-wow trying to figure out what to do about seldom’s newest cache.

[seldom|seen]

I am using only my iPhone for caching these days. I have found it to be far more accurate than my Lowrance GPS. In fact, when I was using both units as I was getting used to the phone, I found that 95% of the time, the iPhone would put me right on top of the cache and my GPS typically 30-50 feet away.

This told me a few things. One, I have a sucky GPS unit and have been handicapped caching for over 2 years! Two, that the cords I taken for all of my caches, even though I’ve averaged them, are not as good as they could be. Three, that I am going to sell my GPS and use just my phone. Time and time again I would just leave my GPS in the car and use my phone instead. I am still surprised how accurate the phone is. And here, for the past 2 years, I thought people were just sloppy about their cords!

There are drawbacks though.

One. You have to have a phone signal to use the Google map function on the iphone which is how I hunt for them. At times I am just dead in the water and can’t continue caching. In this case, it’s good to have a backup GPS on hand.

Two. Google maps on the iPhoine has no zoom functionality. This drives me absolutely crazy when I’m caching and trying to navigate to a cache. I use the iGeoCacher app to pull up a cache listing and then hit “map it”. The app switches to Google maps (just like the new Geocaching app does) and drops a “pin” on the cache zoomed in to a few city block radius. Then, if I hit the google target to get my present location, I am swept away from the cache pin to my location and can’t see where one is in respect to the other because I’m zoomed in too far and have no way to zoom out. The only thing I can do is scroll around until I find the pin a few screens away. I am waiting for some “zoom” functionality to come to the Google map app and then it is going to be VERY doable and very east to cache.

There are already dozen of GPS and cacheing apps for the iPhone. So far, I have liked and will continue to use iGeoCache unless the Geocaching app proves to be better. I also use iGCT app which has a nice cord conversion feature, a decrypt feature, roman numeral feature and a text calc feature. All good tools to have handy. Occasionally I use GeopherLite which is a GPS navigator that I can use to find a cache when iGeoCache isn’t doing it for me. I haven’t filed tested Geocaching.com’s app yet, but I did buy it when it was on sale and it looks pretty good. It’s also nice to have cache listing information available right from the source.

The great thing about the iPhone is that everyone is clamoring for them and apps are being developed and modified at an unprecedented rate, so there’s a ton of competition and the apps are all the more robust for it. A poor app will die out really fast in that environment.

[seldom|seen]

@Team Deejay wrote:

My rule is that I only move bugs or coins when:

1. I know I will be able to help them on their mission (Missions of “Just move around alot” don’t count)
2. they are geocoins in caches which are vulnerable to coin theft (anything where either the terrain or difficulty do not exceed 2 in a metro area.)
3. everything in caches which haven’t been found in 2 months or more.

Great rules to abide by! There is a TB hotel in town that many of us fear for when TB’s or coins end up in it. To date, dozens of TB’s and GC have gone missing, yet the cache remains active and the trackables continue going in it.

It is great to help a trackable on a mission, but some of them are so well-defined, that it’s difficult to grab it based solely on the mission. Just moving them from one place to another at least keeps them moving.

I also agree with the languishing trackables and I too will grab them and move them without a trade even.

Sagasu just loves to see trackables in his caches, don’t we all. I think he gets more worked up about the uneven trades because he, more than any of the rest of us, works diligently to place trackables in his caches.

But, this mission of most trackables, is NOT to sit in a cache so the listing looks good. It is to move to some destination or another and the only way to do that is to grab them and move them along.

I would be nice to have a “verify present” option though, especially if you aren’t into moving them or don’t want the responsibility.

As stated, as long as you keep the TB and GC mission at the forefront of your choice to move or not to move, you probably can’t go wrong.

[seldom|seen]

@zuma wrote:

We ended up with a logo as good as we could get

Putting aside all the issues of similarity, this is my main point of contention. Without seeing a host of great logo options, it’s hard for any of us to imagine the choices we might have had.

When we go through logo development with the company I work for, it is usually very difficult to pick from the top 5-10 contenders. We typically get 3-4 strong candidates from 3 to 5 designers depending on the scope of the project. It takes many rounds of discussion and evaluation to narrow it down to the top three for presentation.

In the case of this logo, we had just a few contenders for strong concepts and one of them, if it had gone through our evaluation process, would have been tossed out immediately.

From where I’m sitting, we could have managed this a ton better by following the suggestions of a number of members who are professionals in the filed which would have resulted in a choice among many logos even stronger and more communicative that this one is.

Everyone agrees that the process was not handled as well as it could have been. Few of the voting BOD members choose this as their favorite. In the end it came down to the choice of the body, who I’d suggest were not fully appreciative of the issues nor are exposed to logo creation and understand the process as well as those who do it for a living.

But, that’s the road we choose to travel, for many reasons and this is what we got. So, we will live with it whether we like it or not. However, you will not convince me that “this is as good as we could get” nor that the final choice was based on a strong logo design. It was based on majority rule.

BTW, so was electing W to a second term…

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Thanks for the inside track on the BOD deliberation that stalled the logo decision for the last half of the year. I suspected this was the cause of the languishing final board vote on the logo. Again, thanks for sharing GrouseTails, I appreciate your candor.

If all the BOD invested was $100 and you were presented with 20 variants, then you did just fine. It would have been nice to see a more contemporary palette than this final version presents. Some might say it’s camo, but it isn’t (that would require a nonuniform pattern to break up the silhouette), some might say it’s earthy, which it is and maybe that fits. It just isn’t as strong a logo as we could have ended up with by, color, design or impact.

I don’t think the conversation can go anywhere but backward at this point. Unless the logo does prove to be an issue with WA, which I suspect it won’t or if the WGA body asks for a re-count, en masse, which I suspect it won’t or if a member of the BOD pushes to revisit the logo, which… you get the idea.

If this issue was making the BOD nauseous 6 months ago, this thread has them hugging the bowl, tightly… must be the canned worms.

[seldom|seen]

I’ll agree that there was sufficient time to dig through the logo threads and discussions about the logos submitted to find the similarity issue raised about 4 pages into the thread. And I’ll agree that many of us were aware of the similarity issue as we followed the discussion.

I don’t agree that “We all had ample time to peruse the information” because the other group who weren’t following the discussion closely, were simply not aware nor presented with, on the referendum page, the information that one logo had a similarity issue with another state.

(128 in round 1, 168 in round 2) I do not think that all 128 or 168 voters, depending on when you voted, were aware of the issue when they voted and I’d venture to guess that as much as 50% of the voting public was not. That’s a significant number and certainly would have made a difference in the tally.

Why do we have a board if we do not expect them to, at the very least, present information to the body about a possible trademark violation on the same page they are asking the public to vote on it? If they have no power to step in when necessary, then why did we let them move forward with a designer and choose a final option that none of us saw. I’ll tell you why. They didn’t want to start this firestorm.

I have nothing against the current BOD, I just think (as they all do) that the whole thing was managed poorly and in their own words, all agree that this is not the outcome they were looking for.

Defending the logo as a clean, bold design is beside the point. We could have had dozens of professional clean, bold designs to choose from for under $100.

[seldom|seen]

Opps, sorry Jeremy. Was in the middle of it when you posted!

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@Team Honeybunnies wrote:

Arguing that our members were uninformed isn’t correct, because the “Washington issue” was discussed at that time. We all had ample time to peruse the information and make our decisions before voting.

I’ll agree that there was sufficient time to dig through the logo threads and discussions about the logos submitted to find the similarity issue raised about 4 pages into the thread. And I’ll agree that many of us were aware of the similarity issue as we followed the discussion.

I don’t agree that “We all had ample time to peruse the information” because the other group who weren’t following the discussion closely, were simply not aware nor presented with, on the referendum page, the information that one logo had a similarity issue with another state.

(128 in round 1, 168 in round 2) I do not think that all 128 or 168 voters, depending on when you voted, were aware of the issue when they voted and I’d venture to guess that as much as 50% of the voting public was not. That’s a significant number and certainly would have made a difference in the tally.

Why do we have a board if we do not expect them to, at the very least, present information to the body about a possible trademark violation on the same page they are asking the public to vote on it? If they have no power to step in when necessary, then why did we let them move forward with a designer and choose a final option that none of us saw. I’ll tell you why. They didn’t want to start this firestorm.

I have nothing against the current BOD, I just think (as they all do) that the whole thing was managed poorly and in their own words, all agree that this is not the outcome they were looking for.

Defending the logo as a clean, bold design is rediculous. We could have had dozens of professional clean, bold designs to choose from for under $100.

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@Lostby7 wrote:

I have a local cache in mind….I spoke to it’s owner last night. He has been watching my finds sit at 1960……several months ago he said he’d help me in my attempt at his underwater cache for my 2,000th. I’m fairly sure this area, being close to a dam, does not freeze but to be honest I’m not positive. I will have to drive out and see for myself….39 more finds, an unfrozen access point and a drysuit and I’m on it. Otherwise I will have to “settle” for getting #2,000 at a local EC. But who knows, I might get hit by a truck tomorrow and never make it to my goal. 😕

I’d love to tag along on that one! I tried to get the FTF on it last year and was told that there was no diving allowed and was forced to leave by a over zealous security person. Hours later, someone tagged the FTF. That stung like you wouldn’t believe. Let me know when you go and if you want some company…

There, now I have a goal for 2009!

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@Team Deejay wrote:

Trying to avoid biting clean through my tongue….

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@Lostby7 wrote:

Originally I was sure I’d hit 2,000 before the waters froze and now I’m thinking it just may take me until spring to grab those last 40.

I think my goals for 2009 are:
1. Hit # 2,000 with a 5 / 5 if possible.

Hey Lostby, I know where you can grab a pair of 5/5’s for your milestone on water that never freezes…

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@Trudy & the beast wrote:

Today’s neophytes never saw the clever stories on cache pages by jthorson or sbukowski. They never saw cache pages that included a little midi tune such as Miata was so well known for; or the clever cache containers like “Jingle Bell Rock” or the caches of BJbest or badlatitude. I wish that we could take today’s cachers back to enjoy some of those early experiences.

There are still creative caches out there for the neophytes to find and great cache stories to go with them. I can think of a few with “jingles” and historical audio files etc. I think you need to solve some valley puzzles, Trudy.

[seldom|seen]

Wow. Reading these accomplishments and goals certainly makes me feel like a weekend warrior compared to the rest of you full-timers!

I’m not into goals and if I was I’d probably forget what they were anyway. I’m more of an impulsive cacher and just do it when I can vs looking ahead and planning adventures, although as the LCG wore on, I did finally decide to make a paper trail AND read previous logs. Now, where did I put my ADHD meds……

That being said, I did manage a few finds and have a little fun playing the game when the opportunities presented. I placed an earthcache in 2008 and hope to place several more this year. I hosted my first event which was well received and very educational. I suppose my biggest accomplishment is topping 100 puzzle cache placements which I know many of you have yet to enjoy. Gives you something to look forward to in 2009. Some other states of being that I found myself in over the course of the year:

Being this close |-| to having Miranda rights read to me while relocating a final on a guywire on a public street corner (watch yourself and don’t linger),

Being this close |–| to catching the all time high scorer of the LCG in 2008 since I spent most of the year 400-500 points behind him,

Being this close |—| to hypothermic shock as I waded across very cold water, bare-foot and knee-deep, several times, to get to a beefy cache,

Being on hiatus, sabbatical, or whatever else you want to call it – my definition of which has many scratching their heads,

Being able to adopt a very special cache and finally getting to log it after 3 trips to the top,

Being able to avoid a swim to find a lost boy scout thanks to some generous ones who weren’t (I really am a terrible swimmer), and getting a number of other caches by overnight kayak on a great fishing weekend,

Being the first to board a submarine that hadn’t been visited in over a year,

Being accompanied by a curly girl to a 5/5 cache and finding the other one was not so, on our wet and wild visit,

Being part of a successful CITO and orchestrating a class on invasive plant identification,

And just being a thorn in the sides of the reviewers and the WGA board who may not always agree with s|s logic, but do appreciate its source and what it brings to the table and to the game.

Here’s to 2009, may your s|s finds be many and more importantly, may they be memorable!

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Congrats JimandLinda on the December win. Didn’t have to work quite as hard as you did in November I suspect.

The prize coin will be at the event for you to grab.

I see you’re already out there vying for another one….

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@Team Deejay wrote:

I just added several listings to the cache rescue list for “Verify Present” reports. I am doing this for caches where someone strongly suspects a cache is missing, but there are insufficient DNFs to draw that conclusion directly, and the cache owner is not responsive. Please understand that the idea here is for someone who has previously found these caches to revisit and make sure they are still in place (or not). It is NOT to remove the cache. Note that these are all still active caches, so removing the container will cause additional problems. When you file these reports, please indicate that you had previously found the cache, so that it is not necessary for me to go back and check.

Thanks,

Dave

FANTASTIC! Finally someone is using another aspect of the Cache Rescue Missions for another purpose besides removing or verifying a removed cache. Now, hopefully, others will follow suite when they either know or suspect that a cache is in trouble and just can’t get to it.

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