Cache Advance

Now with over one million caches to find, and three to four MILLION geocachers out there playing the game, chances are getting better and better for finding a caching date, or maybe even more.

Many of us have seen geocachers connect and start dating. Taking a potential date geocaching can lead to many insights about that person and how the two of you might get along down the trail …er… road. I’ve even attended a few official geocaching wedding events -have you?

I am looking for stories to add to my book that I’m writing on life stories and geocaching. Specifically, how geocaching has influenced or impacted your life in a positive way. Today’s topic is dating, relationships and love. If you would like to share a story with me for the book, please feel free to email it to: stories@cache-advance.com. I am also collecting stories of all kinds, so please write away!

We also thought it would be fun to compile a list of geocaching pick up lines. Feel free to add more pickup lines in the comments below.

Now, to get things started, here’s what we’ve come up with so far:

• Do you cache here often?
• Ever done a ‘night cache’?
• Nice camo!
• Let’s calibrate our GPSrs.
• Your coordinates or mine?
• He’s got great stats
• Would you like to see my trackable collection?
• What’s your caching name, and how did you choose it?
• Are you a hider, or a finder?
• Wanna go on a FTF run with me?
• TFTD (Thanks For The Date)

What other lines can you think of? Please share!

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What are trackables you ask? They are items that are uniquely identified (special unique code on each one) that are meant to travel from place to place, person to person.

Maybe you’ve heard of those traveling gnomes that people take with them on trips and then take their picture at scenic spots? Or how about Where’s George Dollars that you can track by the serial number to see where this dollar has been spent before?

Trackables are usually found in geocaches -but not always! They move from place to place, picking up stories along the way. You can add your own story, or live vicariously through each trackable’s adventures.

Trackables come in many forms, such as:

• Travel Bug
• Geocoin
• Promotional
• Pathtags (not trackable at geocaching.com)
• Vehicle Travel Bugs (A TB for your Car/Truck)

Here are our Newbie Hints to help you learn more about trackables, and some basic etiquette for handing trackables. Many thanks to Trevor and Kate for their help in putting together these Newbie Hints.

60: A Travel Bug is a trackable item that moves from place to place, picking up stories along the way. More here: www.geocaching.com/track

61: Trackables usually have goals. Read the trackable page, recent logs online or in the cache logbook, and look for a goal tag with many trackables. Don’t move it contrary to its goals.

62: Pick up a bug? Log it ASAP. If you hold onto it more than 2 weeks, you should email the owner as a courtesy.

63: You do not have to leave a trackable in order to pick one up.

64: Don’t wish to pick up a trackable? You can discover it. Tells owner that it is not missing.

65: Do not log a discover if you haven’t seen or handled a trackable.

66: Don’t grab trackable from other geocacher until it is dropped into a cache. You may mess up miles or goals.

67: Is the trackable missing? Mark it as missing on page. Prevents others from looking for it.

68: Promo trackables: jeeps, diabetes. Do not collect and hoard; these are meant to be shared.

69: Most trackables have their own icon that will show on your profile at geocaching.com when you discover or grab them.

70: Some trackables aren’t in caches; they are on cars, shirts, bikes, etc. These are usually discovered.

71: Many buy and keep their own collection of trackables and will share at events to be discovered.

72: If the trackable goal is known and you cannot fulfill it, place it where someone can, or pass it person to person to fulfill its goals.

Do you have more tips on trackables? Please add to the discussion!

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Today’s post is another guest post from Anne, a new geocacher…

It’s another rare sunny day in the Inland Empire. What to do?

Cache Dashers: Lookout Lisa, Yellow Alligator & Liwolf

I’m thinking of a bike ride, but the trails still may be icy, so I pick up the phone to call the other Anne and see what she’s doing on this marvelous day. She’s going out the with gang geo caching and invites me along. I go, thinking I’ll shoot some pictures while they hunt for hidden treasures.

After some good natured kidding about their love of the sport, Lisa hands me a Geomate Jr. GPS and starts to explain how it works. It’s a happy, green color reminiscent of a certain insurance gecko that says to me “let’s go caching, mate!”

Small and lightweight, the Geomate Jr. has only two buttons that are easy accessible even with gloves on. After acquiring satellites, the unit displays the 20 closest caches to our current location. The display screen shows the distance to the cache, a pointer showing which way to go, and the size of the cache along with other useful information.

As we pull up to the first of our 12 caches of the day, I’m still on the learning curve but it’s a relatively short one. I have to scroll thru the nearest caches to find the one we’re looking for. It doesn’t take long, and I am enjoying the simplicity the friendly, little box affords.

Geomate.jr

At the first cache, I get to the immediate area with a readout of around 8 or 9 feet. Lisa is impressed. Her GPS reads 15 to 17 feet, and I’m told that’s pretty good. Ah, the green box is showing it’s stuff now. Though I must admit the small size of the Geomate Jr. is provoking some GPS envy on my part.

We journey on comparing notes on caches and enjoying each other’s company. The last cache is in a tangle of low lying bushes approximately 20 feet wide. This is the geo cachers nightmare, I’m told.

15 feet, 12 feet, 8 feet, 3 feet and then 0 ft. I look down, under, around, pull up branches and nothing. Anne finds the cache eventually, about 12 feet from where I thought it was.

A Muggle no more!

All told, the Geomate Jr. was a great introduction to this interesting day when I went from “muggle” to “cacher.” And as the gecko would say, “It’s so easy, a 52 year old newbie can use it!”

Happy hunting!

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Geocaching is hitting the mainstream! More and more folks are getting into the game, and wondering how to bring the fun and adventure back to their work, students, clients and communities.

We have had many requests from recreation departments, schools, tourism bureaus, geocaching clubs, boy scouts, summer camps and others for information and access to geocaching gear. We’ve also had a blast brainstorming with these groups to come up with fun program ideas, curricula and much more to help them meet their goals. So, we got to thinking, how can we expand on this energy and excitement to help even more groups? Why, start up an official program ourselves!

Introducing: The Cache Advance Group and Club Program

Does your club or group need geocaching gear? Are you teaching or promoting geocaching and need program ideas and/or supplies for your students, troop, campers, group, program, visitors, club or community?  Writing a grant or budget and need pricing for a large project?

We can help!

We offer discounts (usually around 15%) for many group and bulk purchases. We can also help you to determine and meet your programming, gear and other needs for your project and programs.

Just follow the simple steps below and you will be all set to go!

1. Log in or create a new account here
2. Fill out the form on our site with information about your program/group/club
3. Receive notification from us that your application has been approved
4. Get your gear and start sharing the fun and adventure of geocaching!

Its that easy. Why not get started today, and get your programs up and running in no time! Please feel free to connect with us if you have additional ideas and would like to brainstorm with us, or for specialized gear or pricing needs.

Now get caching!

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Today’s post is a guest post from a friend, Anne, who is a roommate of a geocacher…

Anne goes geocaching

It’s sunny and time to get outside for some much needed Vitamin D. Inspired by my geo-caching friends last weekend, I decide I can attempt this on my own. After a bit of education about the intricacies of her GPS, Miriam sends me off with a list of nearby caches.

I press the power button, get the “satellites are being acquired” message, and out the driveway I go. Half a mile down the road, no sats and low batteries. Back to the house. Now armed with fresh power I confidently head out once more. Wait a minute, after 5 mins. I have no satellites. Help. Back to the house. Miriam patiently explains the art of dashboard placement for the GPS unit. Got it.

Back to the hunt with 4 satellites guiding me now. I get to the immediate area, and the distance to waypoint readout only varies between 66.1 and 66.2. Huh? I have now covered the same 1/2 mile stretch of gravel road at least four times. I see no pullout, nothing obvious. The GPS screen is now getting covered by black tracks that look like a 5 year old’s Etch-A-Sketch art piece. Help.

Back to the house. I explain my frustration to Miriam. Why isn’t the distance indicator moving? What’s this arrow? Where’s the map thingy?

Cache #2. In here? They’ve got to be kidding!

She graciously offers to help me, as the cache is only .75 miles away from the house. She shows me how to use the zoom function..oh, okay. One problem solved.

We get close to the cache. It’s only a 100 ft. away. I still don’t see a pullout as indicated by the cache description. So we park a bit away. As we walk, I see the pullout…it’s right next to a broom that is sticking straight up in a pile of snow! Oh Lord, I drove past that 4 times! How could I miss that? Of course, Miriam saw it right away, but never pointed out my lack of observational skills. A true friend.

We find the ammo box at the base of a huge rock (another obvious clue that I missed) and truly I’m thrilled. I take Miriam back to the house, grateful to have such a patient and gentle teacher.

It took 15 mins. and a lot of poking around, but finally...

Cache #3 yielded an appropriate prize. It was meant to be.

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Twas the night before Cachemas, when all through the house

Not a computer was stirring, not even a mouse;

The caches were submitted to Geocaching.com with care,

In hopes that the reviewers would soon be there;

The cachers were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of ammo cans danced in their heads;

And momma in her beanie, and I in my cap,

Had just settled down for a long winter’s nap,

When on the phone there came some texts,

I sprang from the bed to see what was next.

Away to the netbook I flew like a light,

Tore open a browser and pulled up the site.

The backlight on the keyboard of the new open window

Gave the luster of mid-day to objects below,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But new cache listings from eight reviewers

With a little old hider, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be Cache Nick.

More rapid than eagles his caches were approved,

I whistled and shouted and was so moved:

“Now Mnt-Man! now Cache Effect, now Krypton and Max Cacher!

On Keystone, on Nomex! on Hemlock and Roadrunner!

To the top of the queue! to the top of the call!

Now cache away, cache away, cache away all!”

As dry leaves that before hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,

So up to the cache-site the FTFers they flew,

With a bag full of swag, and Cacher Nick too!

And then in a twinkling, I heard en-route,

The prancing and pawing of each cachers boot.

As I drew on my headlamp and was turning around,

Down the trailhead Cacher Nick came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fleece, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all stuck with twigs and soot;

A bundle of swag he had flung on his back,

He looked like a newbie just opening his pack.

His coins, how they twinkled, his travelers how merry!

His camo was like roses, his hides on my Cacheberry!

His small little micro was drawn up like a bow,

And the regular was quite the show;

The stump of a tree he held tight in his grip

And the logs it encircled his cache a barrier strip;

He had a five star difficulty and a three star terrain,

That confounded me and gave such pain!

The cache was stocked and had such wealth,

I laughed when I saw it, in spite of myself;

A lift of the skirt and a twist of the lid,

Soon gave me to know I was not out-did;

We spoke not a word, but went straight to work

Signed all the logs and turned with a jerk,

And laying the coordinates to the car,

We could tell it was not too far;

We sprang to the cachemobile, to the Nuvi gave a go-to,

And away to the next cache we all flew.

But I heard him exclaim, ere the logs were all signed,

“Happy Cachemas to all, and to all a good find.”

-Merry Christmas everyone!
-Lisa

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Did you go geocaching this Thanksgiving holiday weekend? Did you take along someone for their very first hide? We want to hear all about it. Please feel free to post a comment to share all about your Thanksgiving weekend geocaching adventures.

Cheers!

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Just this morning I saw a link to a horribly tragic story: You Can’t Trust GPS. This is a story about an 11-year-old boy who died in the intense heat of Death Valley National Park after he and his mother became stranded in one of the world’s most inhospitable areas. They were relying on their GPS to navigate them to their destination.

I was just starting to read it when Podcacher tweeted about the same incident:

“A tragic story. Reliance in GPS may not be completely at fault. How can we learn from it? What would you do differently? <Link>”

Well this got me to thinking about what would I do in a situation like this, and how might I be better prepared? And how can I share this information with other GPS users and travelers in general?

So I initiated a search and found this little gem: How to Read a Paper Map Like an Old Timer. It covers the basics of getting where you’re going with paper. Main points are:

1. Know Your Map -different types of maps
2. The Basics -scale and symbols
3. Advanced -how to reconcile the road system against the map
4. Other -other map features

We would also recommend carrying a compass and learning how to use it. And of course the other members of the 10 essentials list:

1. Map
2. Compass (optionally supplemented with a GPS receiver)
3. Sunglasses and sunscreen
4. Extra food and water
5. Extra clothes
6. Headlamp/flashlight
7. First aid kit
8. Fire starter
9. Matches
10. Knife

Be safe out there everyone and be prepared for when a fun outing turns to survival. We would love any and all ideas on how we can learn from this tragedy.

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When we first heard about the Geomate.jr we were a little skeptical: 250,000 preloaded caches? Which caches? What information about these these caches is loaded? What is the interface like? How accurate can it be?

I’m happy to report that all of our answers, and more, were thoroughly and satisfactorily answered. So much so that we now carry the Geomate.jr in the store, and I bought one for myself too! Let me tell you my story and adventures with Jr….

Warren and Lisa go geocaching

Back in May I was asked if I’d like to have a demo unit to try out. I said sure, and had it sent to my hotel in Tennessee as I was about to start my Geowoodstock 7 journey.

I didn’t get a chance to use it while on the trip, but I did get to meet with Warren of Apishere (the parent company) as Geomate.jr was also a vendor at GWS7. I wasn’t able to attend his educational session (I was teaching one myself on Twitter and Textmarking), but he did take time out to chat with me later that day, and again later on the phone at length.

Here is what I learned:

• Yes, about 250,000 preloaded caches!
• Caches include:
  • Traditional only
  • Lower terrain/difficulty caches -nothing higher than a 3/3
  • ‘Stable’ caches only: i.e. caches that have been out 6 months or so, and have recent finds (trying to avoid user DNFs and newbie frustration)
  • Some filtering of caches in more dense cache areas
  • US only
  • No Members-only caches (I was happy to hear that members-only caches were not included)
• You can go geocaching IMMEDIATELY with this unit: it is out-of-the-box ready to go, no computer nor Internet needed
• Cache information includes difficulty and terrain rating, size of cache, direction (bearing) and distance to cache
• The Update Kit will allow you to load newer caches, and caches from around the world.

So I decided to take the Jr out for a spin on Beacon Hill near the Cache Cave. I’m very familiar with the area and the caches and wanted to see how it would perform. I turned it on and after it acquired satellites it pointed me to 20 nearby caches. I picked one and started hiking. The Geomate.jr lead me right to the cache! I was quite happily surprised how accurate this little unit was.

Great accuracy with the Geomate.jr

So I decided to navigate to another cache and found a little issue: the 20 closest cache list does not adjust to your location if you have moved with the unit on. So now it was showing them in order based on where I was when I first turned the unit on. However, it did still show me the distance and bearing based on my new location, so I could easily see which cache really was the next closest. I found out later the simple solution to this is to just turn it off, then back on. This will update your 20 closest cache list to your current location.

The next two caches were easy to find, and again I was amazed how accurate the little unit was. I took it along on another cache outing a week later, and was disappointed to see that none of the caches we were heading to were in the unit. However, on further review, these were all higher terrain rated and some newer caches as well.

This testing shows how this unit is designed for simplicity out of the box, and for the new and or very young cacher -kids!

Geomate.jr leads me to another cache

My third time caching with the Geomate.jr was on a long 2,103 mile road trip from Spokane to Portland, Salt Lake City, Montana and home to Spokane again. This trip showed me how the Geomate.jr can shine for experienced cachers!

I decided not to do any route queries and just rely on the Geomate.jr to help me find caches along my way. I must say it was very liberating to just head out the door without all the fuss of putting together the route queries, downloading the files and then uploading to the GPS… the Geomate.jr was pre-loaded, right?

So off I went. And sure enough, every time I stopped for gas, snacks or to walk the dog, the Geomate.jr had a cache (20 actually) ready for me to find.

It was a very hot trip (over 100° F just about every day) so it was great to just fire up the unit and easily find a quick cache to break up the monotony of the long hot road. I think we found about 8-9 caches over 4 driving days; it would have been more but it was just too hot to do more than that since I had my dog along too.

Having dinner with the Geomate.jr crew and Tom from Groundspeak

While in Salt Lake City for the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market, I got to hang out with and meet the rest of the Geomate.jr team! They were there demonstrating the unit and networking. Very nice people, and they really do like to geocache too!

They demonstrated the Update Kit, which should be coming out this month (August 2009). With the Update Kit you’ll be able to add caches from all over the world. This would have been great to have on my Europe trip a few years ago!

After a long day at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market show I ended up having dinner and brainstorming caching strategy with the Geomate.jr crew and Tom from Groundspeak (see left).

To sum up my review of the Geomate.jr, it is a great little unit designed for kids and very easy to use right out of the box. For the more experienced geocacher, it is a wonderful addition to the cache bag as it is ready to go and find caches anywhere (in the US), anytime! With the addition of the Update Kit, I think we’ve got a real winner here.

Cheers!

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Getting new technology is great. My old smartphone was starting to crash about every other week and I was due for an upgrade. I called around to local Sprint stores to see about availability on launch day for the Palm Pre, and found the downtown Spokane Sprint store was taking appointments to set up and sell the Pre, where the others either didn’t have it, or just said to show up early and hope for the best. That was very nice to not have to wait in line or get up early to get the shiny new phone; probably about 8-10 folks came in looking for the Pre while I was there and they were all turned away as that store had ‘promised’ all of their small stock to others like me by appointment only that day.

The manager was very helpful and knowledgeable on the new phone as well. He was also interested in geocaching, so we had a nice chat about that, and Twitter too. Here he is just after handing the phone over to me -I quickly found the camera and snapped a quick shot in the store while he was just looking up. I should let you know that I am upgrading from a Palm Treo 755P, and have been a Palm/Handspring user for many years. So after a quick but thorough orientation by the store manager I was off and running!

First Impressions:

• Gesture -a bit to learn here with the all new capacitive touch screen -no stylus, just your finger and assist from the keyboard too. I found the screen to be ‘bouncy’ when you drag icons around and such -a bit distracting, but very responsive overall.
• Camera -Big jump up from the Treo 755 -here is the second shot I took just outside of the Sprint store:

• Sprint Navigation -Awesome and easy to use. I auto-route on my GPSrs, Garmin 60C and DeLorme PN-40, and this easier than both of those to use. It was very accurate, good verbal cues, but the speaker phone is hard to understand…see next two points:
• Speaker -rather tinny and voices sound a bit garbled. The Treo was much better
• Headset -this was a huge and great surprise! I have small ears and I have NEVER found an earpiece that is comfortable… I pulled these out of the box and was trying not to pre judge them as they looked huge… put them in and WOW! Very comfortable! And the sound was good quality too and allowed ambient noise to come through, so I wasn’t ‘deaf’ to the sounds around me.
  • Pandora was great to listen to on the headset
  • The Sprint Navigation prompts were MUCH easier to understand on the headset, and the Pre even toned down Pandora for each navigation prompt and then brought it back to the previous sound level; but alas, the headsets are illegal to wear while driving in my fine state of Washington.
• Multi-tasking -!! I could easily stream Pandora, check email, Tweet and surf the web all at the same time without closing any of the applications. The ‘card view’ is pretty neat, and easy to use.
• Applications -most are a little slow to launch, I had to be a bit patient for some to open.
• Phone -hard to remember this is a phone too -I called a few folks and everyone said the sound quality on both the headset and the phone itself was fine. It is easy to hold to your ear and easy to hear.
• Power -I had some power issues the first day -the phone was only about 45% charged when I got it, and of course I was putting it through its paces. I received a low battery warning, and went to pull out the car charger and couldn’t figure out how to plug it into the phone! I had to dig out the manual to find the power slot, and then it turned out the car charger was defective. Sprint exchanged it later that day no questions asked. Other power issues:
  • The Pre is power hog with the multi tasking and always on data/internet. Don’t expect it to run all day if you are a power-user (navigating, streaming music, email and web) without charging it
  • It takes a long time to charge
  • The little power plug cover is very cheap looking at gets in the way of the cord -may disconnect the power source if you aren’t careful plugging it in to the Pre
• Applications -I have only downloaded three so far (which is very easy to do, and right from the Pre)
  • Tweed -for Twitter this is pretty awesome. Huge improvement over just a mobile web site for the Treo. It’s not Tweetdeck, but very nice on a mobile.
  • Pandora -this rocks! What else can I say; it is great to have Pandora in your back pocket all day if you want.
  • Accuweather -this is an OK application, but really slow to load and not very accurate actually. I prefer Wunderground. But the satellite picture was very pretty.

Second Look:

• Web -the Pre loads full web pages fairly well. This takes a bit of getting used to with the zooming and panning to actually SEE the web page, and then entering text into text fields, but the screen is very responsive to your double finger gestures
• Keyboard -this keyboard is smaller than the Treo and the keys are much ‘flatter’, but they press well. I find it very hard to see, though, as the keys are shiny black on a flat black surface, giving me a bit of depth perception problem. At first I thought there wasn’t a way to copy/paste text at all, but then I finally found a tutorial buried a bit at the Palm Website that showed me how to copy/past text. I never would have guessed that was how it was done…
• Data transfer -this is different than the old ‘hot sync’ method -Palm will help you do a transfer once from your computer to your Pre, and then you move it to a supported online service. More info here. So you phone can become just another conduit to all of your digital life online (Google apps, etc).
• Email set up -my Gmail was easy to set up, and so was my domain email, but I haven’t been able to set up Exchange mail and data yet. Trouble ticket pending so I’ll update more on this in a few days.
  • Email seems slow to load to the Pre, but the notifications are great to get when they do come in
  • Writing emails is pretty easy to do once you get used to the keyboard and the nifty shortcuts
• Running ‘Classic’ applications -I have downloaded the ‘Classic’ app, but I can’t seem to find how to transfer older applications to the Pre, such as CacheMate. Will continue to investigate
• iTunes is syncing now… this should be pretty nifty! I’m looking forward to playing my iTunes and listening to podcasts on the Pre

OK, last, but not least -geocaching: there isn’t a geocaching app …yet. Seems like this would be a great phone to have the capability to help you seek out caches. So, who is going to come out with a geocaching application? We’d love to test it out!

Have you tried out the Pre yet? Do you have any questions that we can try to answer? We’d love to hear from you.

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