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I’m not even gone a week and my Kingdom falls apart!
The Bishop should know better than to start a Holy War in my absence. If I’ve told him once I’ve told him a thousand times, matters of the Church must be kept separate from matters of State.
And just to be clear, mine is not a nation of aggressors, we will not attack preemptively, at least my armies wont. Unfortunately I cannot control rogue assassins or splinter groups. Heck, I can even control members of my own court!
Fret not, good people, I have put my best cartographers to the task and will provide a fair interpretation of the lands in dispute to put the contentions to rest.
-the King of Sellzup
Not surprised to see all the holes in my DT chart, up there with the rest of ya. Heck, I don’t even have a complete column or row to log that other DT related cache that only requires you to have a complete bingo-like set! But then I see that even Sagasu has 17 left to fill…
And Marc 4 digits has a bakers dozen left to get. I think Ralph might be the closest with only 5 holes. I get the feeling this one is going to go un-found for a very long time unless someone specifically takes the challenge head-on. Wonder who that is going to be?
… and it’s a good thing I look in on the forums too. With Dave eying up the local rescue, I just had to jump in the car and go get it! That one was actually a decent hide and still there, and I’m not sure why that cache moved so quickly from “wet log – needs maintenance” to archive, but it happens. Too bad it didn’t get put up for adoption…
Cache Rescue Missions are part of the LCG although not incorporated into the LCG reporting widget. I have done a fair number of Rescue Missions and have had to ask Team Deejay and hence, Jeremy, to add them to the LCG list, upon which they are reported upon and then removed. Hopefully there will be a better method of including them into the LCG reporting framework which would certainly entice a few more of us to do more Missions and perhaps get more cachers to submit missions on theirs as well.
Cache Rescue Missions are not just about archiving and picking up old caches either. In fact, the Submit Mission form allows you to specify any number of reasons to visit a cache. Say you have a cache some distance away that a maintenance post was placed on and your trailboss in that area can’t get to is soon either. Just submit a mission to check on the status of your cache and perform any necessary maintenance. It is a great, and relatively unused, tool that more people should take advantage of.
Thanks Shane, you said everything I tried not to say or risk sounding – as some would say in politics – elitist. I know many cachers appreciate what I do based on the posts left behind, very few of which are “Nice, easy one for out team”. Your post is exceptional and really makes me feel like there’s a good reason to do what I do, and how I do it.
A couple more things since I started this thread. A HUGE THANKS to all of you FTF hunters, you know who you are, who have been my Rhesus Monkeys. Sometimes the build-up and distance from the start of an idea to a published cache can take many months and go through various iterations before it’s green-lighted. Many times I don’t catch all of the listing edits and a goose chases ensues, as happened on my latest cache where I had some letters transposed. So THANK you guys for your patience.
Lastly, don’t be afraid of puzzles! At the very least, give them 15 minutes to see if anything gels. That’s what I do. You will open up a whole new side of caching with its own set of rewards that go beyond finding that can in the woods.
Puzzles aren’t for everybody and if all you want to do is get the pesky “?”‘s off your nearest to home queries then you will miss the boat. If that’s your sole intent when you see S|S puzzles, I’d prefer you just put them on your ignore list.
If, however, you come to appreciate what goes into an S|S puzzle and what you can expect to come away with – a good laugh, a bit of knowledge, a unexpected location – then you are more than welcome to ask for a little help.
I am always open to giving clues as I want you to enjoy the cache, not get so frustrated with it then it leaves a foul taste in your mouth. Never that. If you need help and are reaching the breaking point, ASK!
My 100th puzzle will be published soon and immediately after I will be hibernating for a time so everyone can catch up on them pesky little ?’s.
@Trekkin’ and Birdin’ wrote:
at what point do folks decide that what they’re doing is crossing the line from a fun replacement behavior to a new problem?
When your tendency is to turn to creating new puzzles while your stack of things to do to make money and survive sits untouched. I have the unfortunate position (only as it applies to this sport) of being self-employed and in control of my own destiny. It is far to easy to turn from the serious matters of looking for and doing contract labor to the not-so-serious matter of creating a new puzzle cache, my own affliction.
This in when you have to decide to step back a little bit. I have 160+ caches in the field and, fortunately, most of them will need no attention for a very long time. There are a few that do need to be looked at and I for one appreciate the patience of all the valley players when it comes to disabled S|S caches!
Just a quick observation and moreover a response to a forum log suggesting that I archive some of mine to make space for new and better caches. Not trying to blow my horn here, but responding to that suggestive post.
Of the 24 recommendations listed in this thread as a list of “you should try these when you are in town”, 12 are mine. That’s 50%.
There are 623 caches in a 10 mile radius of 54914. 104 of them are mine. That’s about 17%. If half of the recommendations are for a cacher with about a sixth of the local caches (and that number goes down the further out you go) I’d say I’ve got some good caches in the field that have merit and are worth keeping active vs pulling a bunch to make room for some P&R hides.
@seldom|seen wrote:
“better” caches.
key word.
Not to worry, I’m not leaving the game, not do I intend to archive or put my caches up for adoption. Just taking a break from it, as many do, but alerting all comers to that fact because of the high number of caches I have in the filed.
I also intend to keep on top of maintenance and while some have been down for a few weeks, I am working to get them up and running again.
I have so much to say, but quite honestly it would fall on deaf ears. I have lost interest. Unfortunate, considering I spent a fair number of hours working up concepts for a refresh and tring desperately to infuse the conversation with a professional’s perspective. But the loose (perhaps lost) timeline, nit-picky politics, lasse-faire follow-through and lack of informed decision-making has left a foul taste in my mouth and I no longer care what happens to the logo. Good luck….
@-cheeto- wrote:
If you think 2 is lame, you really don’t want to know what I was thinking at the time… 😈
-cheeto-
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GC181GE
…is probably close to what you were thinking…
I can see that there are circumstances where one replacement is justified an another is not. Each of the anecdotal cases has a unique set of circumstances and it’s easy to make a case for one cache not needing a replacement and letting the process takes its course to archiving while simultaneously making a case that another one 1/10 of a mile away does.
The guiding principle should be that PERMISSION is granted by the owner to replace the cache. However, this does not preclude replication of cache containers as the previous posts mention. Even cache owners have had that happen from time to time when caches migrate and they replace their own own, only to have the original pop up again, as -cheeto- and lostby7 relate to. It just comes with the territory.
The primary LCG players are trying to adhere to this principle and not replace caches without permission. As I said, I am guilty of not doing so on a few occasions, like a recent replacement on a cache that got washed away and the owners did not respond to it for one reason or another. Last log on the cache was April 27 and it had a number of DNF logs after that during the high-water period.
Now, I know these cachers are active. I know that they are not interested in archiving their caches and I know that they have taken a bit of a break. I know that if the cache remained MIA that an archive request would come out of it. If it was archived, I know that a VERY SIMILAR cache would have gotten placed in that same spot. Knowing all of that, I replaced the MIA cache. Would anyone argue that this was not a good idea?
Henceforth, I will not replace any caches without getting specific PERMISSION from the owners.
I’ll admit that I am guilty of leaning towards replacing a cache if I can verify that it is missing. I try to thoroughly prepare before heading out to Lonely caches by contacting the owners of any caches that sound like they may be MIA to get permission to replace the cache. 95% of the time the owners respond with gratitude and are more then happy to have their cache cleaned up or upgraded.
However, there is that other 5% that doesn’t get back to me in time and I sometimes make the judgment call in the field. This last weekend I found a sad cache that was an open coffee can in an area that had no real interest as a location and had no desire to replace that one as it certainly appeared that the owners did not respond to a number of logs over the course of a year describing the open nature of the cache. Everything was rotten and I knew if I put a replacement out, the same thing might happen (though I would never put a coffee can in the field)
The same weekend, I visited a cache that was something of a unique location and the cache was MIA, as far as I could determine, and put a replacement container in place. The owners responded a day later with a huge thank you and an inquiry about the LCG. In this case I felt really good about being able to perform maintenance for the owner.
This brings up another issue. Cache replacements when the original is still out there. It has happened on several occasions that even with the owner’s description of the hide, a subsequent DNF search of the area and a determination that the cache is missing, that a replacement gets placed and then the original shows up, resulting in two caches in the field. It is certainly not the intention of this cacher to create confusion in the community but I’ll admit that it has happened more than once that I am aware of.
If this situation arises and you happen to visit one of these caches where you find two containers, I’d STRONGLY suggest to any cacher that they pull the weakest of the 2 from the field and combine the logs in the one that is left behind. I have gone back to two of these caches specifically to pull my replacements, but there may be more out there placed by me or other LCG players.
…more like you and Zuma have been smokin all summer…
I am honored that you chose Gaged Fox for #2000 in light of the issues I have had getting, “A Triangle of LOVE, JOY!”, your 2000th tribute cache, published. That one will come out soon and now that you are are your way to 2100, I’ll just have to revise that listing and make it your next milestone cache. Wonder if you’ll solve it by then?
Coming up on 2 years in the game and we’ve had some great times doing it, although lately, with this silly LCG, we’ve been going our separate ways. Looking forward to more time caching together in the future. Just try not to get too far ahead in the Lonely Game, Old Man, so we can go out for a combined lonely run instead of these midnight clandestine runs I’ve had to make!
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