Piles of caches - and What to watch for.

Wow.. today was one of those days.  Once and a while I get a ton of caches to review. Usually it consists of 5-10 people putting out 1-3 caches each.. and maybe one with 6-7.  So a heavy day is made up of 35-40 to go over.. and about 30-35 will get listed.

New people seem to have the most trouble.  That is expected.  Usually it is missing home coordinates or too close to other caches.  Less often are caches that I catch that have a business in the name.  They pop up because people think it is cute to use a nearby business, if it is a bigger company I usually catch it.

Today was one of those days.  It seemed there were 20-30 people or more listing many caches.  In the end I think I counted 52 caches that were listed with a lot that were waiting to have a few fixes by the cache owner.  That is a lot. More than I normally do.  Outside of times people were putting out a power trail this appears to be the biggest day.

So how can you get you caches listed?

The process is pretty simple.

1. Proximity.  Make sure there are no other caches around you.  Load them in your gps.  Then when you get back home do a search for the coordinates.  If you are not a premium member when you do a search it will pop up. it will not tell you its coordinates, but it will tell you SW 522 feet. Remember 528' is the rule.  There is no longer a "across the river/freeway" exception. There are some that are given, about 1-2 a month.  Usually for something dramatic, or they are a few feet to close to a puzzle, or be new. 
2. Avoid homes.  If you are publishing in a residential area, expect questions.  GPS units can be 50-70 feet off.  Are there clear hints? Is it your home? Are the neighbors aware (remember 50 feet off can be on their porch).  Do you mention you have their permission.
3. Colleges.  Every college student wants to place a cool ammo can labeled "grenades" on campus.  Welcome campus police and bomb squad.  They should know, use a clear container, or make it a micro, oh and label it.
4. Commercial.  Pizza Hut cache, or Zion's Bank Cache will not get listed without permission from groundspeak.  If you place those in your cache page you will get a similar result.  You will get tied up waiting for permission.
5. Challege caches.  Did you complete it? or is a number of people able to.  Prove it. Put the info in your description.  Oh by the way, it cannot be a list of Bobs, or your own caches.  Unless Bob has 300 and you want people to find a small number (but not your own).
6. No travel bug Prisons.  Travel bugs are not yours, THEY ARE NOT TRADE ITEMS.  Did I say THEY ARE NOT TRADE ITEMS.  You cannot say take one, leave one.  You can ask, but not tell them.  Personally if I run accross a prison, it is time for a Jail break.  If you are carrying 20 of them around, please set them free.  That is the goal, not for Bob to carry them.

That is pretty much the major things I run across.  Hopefully these help. Oh by the way there is one thing that you should remember.  Patience.  If I have a question or a problem I move on.  Why have a load of caches waiting because someone wants to hide a camo taped pvc pipe in a the bushes by the courthouse 300' from another?  I will spend time writing it up, so I move on. 

I may have some concerns and I email another reviewer for their opinion, or put it on the reviewer forum for all of them to give their ideas.  I also may not review for a day.. or two. I do have a life and go caching, or get out of town.  So a delay may be for a few issues.

Emailing every 120 minutes will not help.  If there was some issue, please post notes on the cache page.  If in a few days no response is coming along email me.  Give me the GC code so I can find it.  I have over 350 caches on hold right now (some waiting to be published others for issues).  Yes I do need to clear them out.

Importing the past, and the future

I am slowly closing down my old website on Google.  I transferred over all my old files today.  So instead of a 6 week old blog.. we jump back to  a year.

So one year of random thoughts.  Most of my earlier stuff was related to when I was just a reviewer.  I realized that there was not a lot to say.  Cool stuff, I can't say.  Some things I have to just wait until more is released. 

So I started to talk less and less.  Most of the old trending topics were maintenance, and reviewing.  Much has changed.

Thanks everyone for letting me have fun with you for the last year.  If I have upset you, I am sorry. Some have been vocal and hostile with me about groundspeak policies, or how I try to accoplish them. Hopefully the venting has helped out.  I have learned a ton, many things the hard way.  Like when I had to constantly move a cache because I doing things wrong at first, this is much the same.

If you have concerns let me know.  If you want to chat... the same.  I am pretty busy and it may be put off for a bit, but I save them all.  I save every needs archived email, until it is back or resolved. So if I take a bit, there may be some reasoning.

Once again thanks.  Utah cachers are the best.

Scout Caches and Reviewing

I went with my family camping this last weekend to Maple Dell Scout camp.  I was there for July 4-7, enjoying the mountains and relaxing for a few days.  It was a good time except for one small detail, two small details actually.

I was trying to review caches.  Quite often it is a bit of work.  Checking for all the possible issues and looking for problems, and most of the time publishing them.  This was a holiday weekend, and cachers were out around the state placing caches wherever they could find them.  So I ended up looking at all the caches that were available on my little cell phone screen.  It was harder than I expected.  I have done 2-3.. or even a dozen.  But trying to go through 15-20 each day was a bit tricky.  I cannot really leave a note for people if there was a problem, so I just tried to list the ones that I could.  Sorry for those that waited until Wednesday for an answer.

I am shocked at the amount of caches that people are asking to be listed.  So many new players are appearing.  There are a lot of new people out to place caches, and so many are being listed.  If you are from the Vernal Area you are seeing a huge group of new listings appear.  Great series and trails are being worked on, and many creative and interesting caches are being listed. 

I headed up to do the scout caches around the camp.  I still have a number more to go.  You can see above that I have done a number but I still have a few others.  I normally avoid puzzle caches. (You can guess why).  These are relitivly easy puzzles so I have taken the time to get them done. 

Hopefully I will get up soon and do some more of them.  This has been my most enjoyable series so far.  I hiked about 3 miles this vacation to get a group of them. (about 10 I think).

This weeks Podcacher, friends.

I really liked this weeks Podcacher Show 275.0: A Puzzling Day. It was one of the better podcasts that I have heard in the last few weeks.  I think it appealed to my evil streak.  Anytime you can come up with new puzzles it is a good thing.  Podcacher is one of my insperations.  I have a few that I took ideas from them.

In all it was a great show.  The pet GPS tracker would be good.  I really love the reverse geocache you can check it out here.   It is an idea where you need to get a box to a particular spot.  Then it will open. You need to take the cache container to the coordinates, then it will unlock.  I looked at the design at one point.  I should delve into it a little more.  i have a few hardwood boxes that I made some time ago that I would like to try it on.

I am still working through some of the caches in my list.  I am down to about 140 caches to go through.. i have a lot on hold that I am working on as well.  If I have not looked at your cache, or if you are wondering what is going on.  I have forgotten them before.  I have had as many as 300+ caches in my queue and on hold when I got back from scout camp.  So feel free to pipe up if you are wondering what is going on with yours.  That is what email is for. 

Friends

I wanted to toss in a bit about my friends.  I was reading the latitude 47.  The blog of groundspeak.  they just had an article A Journey of 1001 Days of Geocaching.  It made me think of some of the great friends and local cachers there are.  I will try and write a bit about them when I get the chance.  This guy has done 1000+ days of caching.  Yet Dr Jay passed 1200 in the past few weeks, and he has 700+ ftf's.  Jac0b passed 1800 caches.  I remember early on wondering who these two were. I am happy to have met them and count them among my friends.  

We have so many fantastic people here in Utah.  I have a hard time listing and naming them all.  Many I have met, and many more I have yet to meet. So until we do meet.  Good luck and good caching.