[Thraxman]

I have formed the Geo-Dashing team “Rabid Badgers”. Jeremy, and anyone else interested in joining, all you need to do is use the link provided at http://geodashing.home.attbi.com/
to join the Geodashing Yahoo group, which they use for message posts and file storage. Once a member, post a message to the group stating you want to join team “Rabid Badgers”, and I will then Post a message saying “Cool, you’re in”, and they will add you to the team.

I also posted my first Dashpoint reached immediately after I formed the team. The Dash-Point was about 13 miles west of Janesville, located in a field. Because you only need to be withing 100 meters of a dashpoint to score it, I was able to walk a few paces off of Tolles road, watch my GPS click down to 97 meters and call it a score. It would have been nice to walk to the exact point, but I saw no reason to walk any farther into the field seeing as it was actually someone’s property, and I couldn’t really tell which farm it belonged to to ask permission.

I met some cows near the dashpoint at the corner of Hwy 14 and Tolles Road, and checked out a very small, very old cemetery directly across the road from the cows. The cows seemed confused, perhaps even totally perplexed that I was was near the fence. Guess they just don’t normally get visitors

[Thraxman]

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Originally posted by GrouseTales:
I’ve tried saving the whole page, but then it saves each item on the screen in a folder, and doesnt connect them all into the web page format.

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I know I’ve seen webpage grabbers over at cnet.com that claim to save an entire webpage, graphics files included, for offline viewing, but I haven’t tried any of them, so I can’t say how well they work.

BUT, I just tried this… If you have Microsoft Word you can actually save the whole page as one *.DOC file, which includes all the graphics. Just open the cache page you want to save in your browser. Then at the top of the browser, select EDIT>SELECT ALL, which will everything on the webpage automatically. Next, boogie yer pointer on down to the highlighted area, right-click, and select COPY. Open Microsoft Word, and PASTE this into a blank document. When you do the PASTE function, you MUST still be connected to this internet, as Word needs to grab all the graphics files from the origianl server. Once the whole page is in Word, FILE>SAVE AS to save the document onto your hard drive. And you’re done The resulting DOC file will have all images built in, and can be read offline or transferred to a laptop or whatever. The DOC file, when viewed with WORD looks more or less like the origianal page, but the formatting seems to be a little different. completely readable though, map and all.

[Thraxman]

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Originally posted by Team Cachebarr:
Do you download from your computer or do you have your GPS by the computer and plug in the coordinates by hand as you read the cache sites on the webpage?

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I download them… geocaching.com lets you select a waypoint or a whole batch of waypoints for download as a *.loc file. Then you use easygps or expert gps or whatever software you choose to open the file and send the waypoint to your gpsr. If I download a batch of 25 waypoints, it takes about 2 seconds to download them all to my eTrex via the pc cable.

[Thraxman]

I don’t know if this is much different from what you have been doing… BUT…

I pick the first cache I want to hit, then select “Nearby caches”, select them all, and download them all to my GPSR. Next… and here is the important part… I change the setting on my printer from normal or high quality to FAST ECONO PRINT. It really spits out the paper at this setting, it will print almost as fast as I can queue up the pages. I print out each cache page (printer friendly – no logs format), and a couple maps to cover the area. If the caches are fairly close together, I don’t print a map for each, I print a map for one, and them mark the others on that map. This doesn’t take long because I have set the Fast Econo Print mode. I will glance at the topo maps, but I usually don’t print them unless I see some interesting features, or if it looks like hilly terrain.

I use a basic (yellow) eTrex, so I assume most GPSRs out there will have similar features to mine. When I am done at the first cache, I go to the “tracks” screen that displays a graphical display of my trail. This screen also shows my other waypoints around me, and allows me to zoom in or out. I pick the nearest one from that screen, or from the “nearest waypoints” screen, which lists my waypoints by distance, and tells which direction each is in. I like to make sure I downloaded many more caches than I plan to visit, so that I can just set out in one direction from my first cache and move cache to cache without back-tracking too much.

Nothing fancy, no massive planning. I just like to get out and explore and hunt

[Thraxman]

BTW… Blood Cache would be my vote for cache of the month if it was located in Wisconsin and if it wasn’t archived.

[Thraxman]

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Originally posted by Yawningdog:
When one speaks Swahili, one must enunciate most forcefully, you know. :0

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Ah… COOL… you know Swahili!!! Splendid!!! Could you please translate THIS for me: “Hey Joe, I am being kicked out of the Casino by a 95-year-old security guard!”

That gaurd was obviously a few cards short of a deck.

[Thraxman]

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Not only are we over 100, AND drive a Suburban…

Our average is 15.4 per month! Now we’re really in trouble!

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This just in from the “Nasty Rumor Mill”…
Alan leaves his Suburban IDLING while he’s hunting a cache so he can save a few seconds getting to the next one!

Then again, I should talk… I drove 500 miles round trip several months ago to hit some caches in St. Louis. But it was worth the impact on the environment just to see Sam fall victim to the “Blood Cache”.

Sam: “Found it”
(WILD THRASHING SOUND)
Sam: “BWWWAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Sam: “AAAAAYYYYYYYYEEEEEEIIIIIIIII!!!!!”

[Thraxman]

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Originally posted by jvechinski:
You bring up some good points Ken. Joe… I’m quitting the team. (Just kidding! )

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Whew! Scared me for a second there!

Anyhow, I don’t plan on making too many long dashes just for the purpose of dashing. The way I see it, every month one dashpoint will pop up somewhere near me, in my “cell”. This month it happens to be 12 miles away. I will probably go after those every month. When I am out geocaching, that will probably put me close to one or two others in a month, and if I plan them into the day, they should be no problem to hit. I head down to rockford every now and then to hit Sam’s Club, Best Buy, and Barnes and Noble (We don’t have these splendid establishments or anything similar in Janesville), and little drives like this are prime times to re-check the dashmap. Every two or three months I visit my parents in Manitowoc, so I will probably score from time to time up that way if any points happen to be nearby. Pretty much, I expect that some months I will only hit one or two points,while other months, while I am traveling around more, I figure on hitting several extras. All depends. Now, on the way to the Geo-Campout… might score lucky on THAT drive

-Joe

[Thraxman]

I guess if it sounds like I am trying to defend myself on my plans to burn a little fuel Geodashing, well maybe I am. The way I see it, in the good ole USA I probably would rank in the bottom quarter, or maybe even bottom 10 percent when it come to personal fuel expenditures, those expenditures being by transportation and utility consumption. And I don’t think the traveling I will be doing hitting a few Geodash points here and there is going to boost me much higher on that scale. And I am not saying this to point fingers and go “look at all THAT waste… I am a saint!”. I am just saying that I have made life choices that in general are much more energy efficient than average, so I’m not going to worry to much about burning a few extra gallons of gas each month.

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I’m taking an environmental class called “Voluntary Simplicity” that teaches about the earth’s resources and how much we Americans consume compared to the rest of the world — so my bias is especially skewed at this moment against motorized recreation, I admit.

That being said, I’m not going to hold it against anyone who wants to try geodashing. I’m just explaining why I’m not.

I welcome your responses.

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That sounds like an interesting class. And the fact that you are attending it probably gives you a lot more knowlege than I have on the topic… you can probably pick apart what I just wrote above quite easily I have been around the globe twice in my life, and have seen the way people live in many different countries. You just don’t SEE large vehicles in the hands of citizens of other countries. In fact, my small pickup truck would probably be considered a gas guzzler in most parts of the world. In Malaysia, I saw that the people somehow managed to exist just fine with very few cars… small motorcycles were all the rage in the town I was in. Hundreds of ’em The few cars I saw were taxi cabs, and they were comparable in size to, say, a Ford Focus. In fact, of all the places around the globe I have been, I can’t say I saw anyone driving anything bigger than a mid-sized american car, unless it was public transportation, or a vehicle hauling cargo. I never spent more than 3 hours in Europe, but talking to others that have been there, in some countries, people actually shut their engines down at long stop-lights. And it doesn’t stop at motor vehicles. Electric lights are dimmer, and fewer, and I Have been to many very hot regions where they just don’t USE air conditioning. In fact, I like tehir solutions for cooling off better: I found in many of these countries, if you are all hot and sweaty after hiking around and seeing the sights few several hours under the beating sun, you walk into a bar, order a Coke or Beer, and some girls will come over with a big hand fan… one will fan you while another cools your forehead with a cold, wet towel I’ll take this over AC any day… but that just don’t happen around here

Anyhow, I’ll be amazed if anyone read down this far. I just scrolled up and realized I have been quite lengthy in my babbling. But, I guess, if anything, you all know me a little better now

‘Night all…
-Joe

[Thraxman]

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Originally posted by kbraband:
Not chicken. Just not interested. I know you didn’t ask for a lengthy opinion, but here goes anyway…

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I love lengthy opinions! I’m never one to say “I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

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Sometimes I have hard enough time justifying to myself the extra driving (fuel consumption, air pollution) done in the name of geocaching. At least when we get to most geocache locations I know I’ll be able to shut off the engine, get out and enjoy a hike.

On the other hand, geoDashing seems like an unfortunate waste of resources to pursue random coordinates. Please don’t take this personally, Jeremy and Joe. I know both of you have done a lot to further the cause of geoCaching in Wisconsin. I’m just expressing a heartfelt opinion about geoDashing.

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When I first came across Geodashing, I thought to myself “gosh, that is kinda neat!” I geuss what really excited me about it is the randomness in general. Where will each dash-point take me to? What is there? And believe it or not, my next thought was similar to yours… “Gosh, those random points aren’t really all that close to each other… that could lead to a lot of driving”. I actually think about things like fuel expenditure, pollution, etc. I don’t consider myself an environmentalist or anything like that, just a guy with some common sense. Oil is not a renewable rescource, and our atmosphere can only absorb so much abuse. For reasons such as these, I make certain decisions. When I bought a new vehicle less than two years ago, I needed something that could haul some cargo from time to time, and drooled over some of the larger pick-up trucks, and even an SUV or two. But I elected to go with my cute little red ford Ranger with the peppy yet efficient 4-banger engine. It serves my purposes, and is fairly efficient. As a result, I fill its 16 gallon tank roghly once a month. The larger vehicles I looked at would have me fill their larger tanks up quite a bit more frequently. Hehe, in fact, it is scary… for me, a trip to a gas station for something other than a refill on coffee is so infrequent that I am often horrified to find, roughly four weeks since I last refueled, that as I am driving through town, I glance at my fuel gauge and it is near empty… I buy gas rarely enough that I often forget about it My cat and I live in a small single-bedroom apartment. It is big enough for us. I do not air-condition the place in the summer, and in the winter I keep it at sweater-temperature. Mind you, my utility bills are included in my rent, so I could throw a huge air conditioner in the window and keep the place toasty warm in the winter without it costing me a dime extra, but I don’t, because I am aware of the fuel expenditures involved. I choose to be somewhat conservative by today’s standards. We live in a nation where people choose to drive Chevy Suburbans (12mpg city/ 17mpg highway) as their main vehicle to and from work, no passengers, no cargo. People cool their large homes to a temperature many many degrees below what they heat it to in the winter (I never could make any sense out of that… if your home is comfortable at 74 degrees(!) in the winter, why does it have to be 65 degrees in the summer???)

[Thraxman]

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Originally posted by jvechinski:

As for a team name, I really don’t know. Dash-Cows wouldn’t be the worst name if our team consisted of mostly (or all) people from Wisconsin. ‘The Rabid Badgers’ would also work. (Should strike fear into the hearts of our competitors.) I also wouldn’t mind ‘The Untouchables’. I’ll let you decide what you want for a name… it doesn’t really matter to me.

Joe… do you plan on looking for dash points this month or waiting until the next game starts up in the beginning of April? If you plan to wait, we could hold off on forming the team for a week or so.

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I like “The Rabid Badgers” myself. If anything, might scare Markwell enough to keep him on his side of the state line

As far as starting the team now or waiting, it doesn’t really matter. I joined this morning. Forming a team is simple. One of us just has to announce the team on the message board, and then whoever is joining just announce that they are joining. They aren’t automated… they apparently just have someone watching the list and keeping track of who’s on what team by hand, and ditto for the dash-point finds. I DO know that there is a dash-point about 12 miles from my place that I intend to score team or no team

How about we form the team friday night or saturday morning. I noticed these forums are dead on sundays, so throughout the week we can see if anyone else here is interested. If not, we can try picking up a couple from other regions or whatever before the new game starts. Like I say, it doesn’t matter all that much, if we start with just 2 or 3 people, others can join any time.

[Thraxman]

Great!

Ok Jeremy, If I understand correctly, you would pretty much be covering up and down the west coast of lake michigan, with possible excursions farther inland in central and north-central WI. I live in Janesville, and figure I can normally be active in a 40 to 80 mile radius… with the possibility of going on a road trip or two out farther to score some extras in months where we are seriously in the running. You’re right, I am not overly concerned with winning, it just sounds like a fun activity, and personnally, I’d just like to shoot for top five or so to have a reasonable goal. But if it gets close for the top spot on a given month… look out

Anyhow, looks like our areas will have some overlap… which is fine. After reading the rules, team members can score the same dash point. The rule where two people hitting a point on the same day get equal points does not apply to team-mates however. But if say, you hit a point near milwaukee and score three points, and then I happen to be out that way or just decided to hit it for more points, that would be two more points for the team. SO overlap isn’t really bad.

We need a team name. We could blatantly rip off Alan and Co., and use Dash-Cows… hehe! But seriously, any ideas?

OK everyone.. A team can consist of up to 5 players. That leaves 3 slots. Jeremt Mentioned IOWA as a good location for someone. I believe lizs is in Iowa? Interested? Anyone else? Anywhere?

I will form a team tonite or tommorrow night, just need a name for it.

[Thraxman]

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Originally posted by jvechinski:
We could form our own team but it probably wouldn’t be competitive… to have a good geodashing team you have to recruit people from all over the world, not just WI…
…What would be cool is we put together a version of geodashing that only covered Wisconsin (or the Midwest). We could pick random points and have teams that scored points by visiting these points. (It wouldn’t be hard to get the wi-geocaching.com site set up to handle this if there was interest. In fact, we could do a much better job tracking who reached each of the dash points.)

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Well, last nite when I was checking the site out, I looked at the scores for the current month’s game, and only two teams really had impressive scores… and no team really had a score that a team of 5 scattered around wisconsin, or wisconsin and another state or two, could compete with. I downloaded the USA list of current dashpoints, edited it down to just wisconsin and a very small area around it, and that left well over 200 dash points
The top team at the moment has done 39 dash hunts, and the two runners up so far has done 23 and 10 dash hunts. I downloaded my scaled down list into my extrex, and it shows 8 dash points within 50 miles of me. I then checked the maps out on ExpertGPS… the nearest point (just over 12 miles from me) is located just under about 360 feet off a highway (you only have to get within 100 meters to score it), and the next closest was located on a small lake… but only about a hundred feet out, so scorable from the shore I didn’t look any farther than that, because 4am had snuck up on me. Decided to get a few hours of sleep. Anyhow, I don’t think a team has to be scattered around the world to do well… just spread out a bit… realistically, one person is not likely to cover a 200 mile radius very well

I like your idea of a more localized wisconsin or midwest version of the game. Could make things more interesting by tripling the density of dash points (three per “cell” vs one), which would make many more reacable points, and institute a rule to allow some minor scoring for unreachable points as you suggested. Maybe even require four photos from each point scored (one taken in each direction), and slowly index them to produce the most complete photo map of a state anywhere

[Thraxman]

I just did Elver’s Cache today. Highly recommended! I don’t understand why I am only the third visitor since it was placed in January. It is located in a great park, and involves a little variety. First time I ever really got to use the “projection” feature on my GPSR. Plus it has been a while since I have had a reason to look at a compass.

When I got home, I downloaded my tracks from my GPSR and super-imposed them onto the satelite photo… now I really wish I had taken a run around the bases on the baseball diamonds… would have looked cool on there

[Thraxman]

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Originally posted by Yawningdog:
I’m also sending in my $30. I think I would rather be charged a small amount (optional, at that) than have to put up with advertising on the site, which would be his next obvious source of income. He does have some minor ads on the site now but it could get much, much worse.

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I dunno…. Jeremy’s website really is lacking in the “Amazing x10 Cam” pop-under ads. He should add them. A website has absolutely NO credibility these days unless you can close your browser window and find an x10 ad under it

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