Why maintain now?

    Someone asked me why I was doing a push for maintenance right now.  It is pretty simple really.  We have Geocoinfest coming up, we don't want to have a ton of empty/lost caches around for them to deal with, and second there is winter coming on.  Once October/November hits, there will be no ability to reach some of the caches, and the desire to go out in the cold keeps others from being checked.
The result is bombing you now, rather then in the middle of winter when we can do nothing about them.  So expect to be hit with a quick note if you have a cache that is under  the weather, or missing for some time.  I am trying to sort out the Difficulty 5 caches, so that they don't get flagged.  Many times people look for a few minutes and leave and say they looked.  That is the purpose of those caches.  You may get a note, please respond, or just to a quick check to see if it is still there.  People like to know they are looking for something, and that it has not fallen out of the tree and rolled into the storm drain.