[Az-Geocaching] Only an altoids tin!!

Sun Feb 11 20:05:38 MST 2007

There is quite a bit going on there with urban caches and permission. I had
thought of permission issues more through rural caching where it is often
with public land managers. One question that comes to mind right away
regarding urban caches, Do all parking lot owners, especially in publicly
used areas, even want to know every time a micro is placed on their
property? It seems like opening a can of worms unnecessarily. I’m sure some
owners would like to know. Others will automatically be against the idea of
a cache on their property, insurance and liability and all that. The end
result will be less places to put caches, that’s for sure.

It reminds me of a similar push on public lands. There are lots of places
where cows can leave cow pies all over the mountainside and desert, but I
cannot place a cache. In some cases, it wasn’t the land manager, who often
had no local policy, but the cache-police types from within our own
community, who gladly triggered the restriction. Oh well, back in the good
ole days

  _____  

From: az-geocaching-bounces at listserv.azgeocaching.com
[mailto:az-geocaching-bounces at listserv.azgeocaching.com] On Behalf Of Jared
Ross
Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2007 1:27 PM
To: listserv at azgeocaching.com
Subject: Re: [Az-Geocaching] Only an altoids tin!!

Yeah, to be perfectly honest it was rather annoying to learn that I was
trying to explain myself to the devil's advocate that has no first hand
knowledge of the situation. You've seen some amazing places when out
caching, I can only imagine how you would feel if you stopped doing that for
a while and only did urban caches. Sometimes when it comes to urban caching
you've gotta try to balance it out with a few rural caches to keep your
sanity. By the way, I don't think we were all that far off. I have no
problems with micros, in fact most of our hides are micros. Earlier I said I
would rather find an easy micro in a park (even an LPC) than find a more
difficult micro behind a dumpster. Now give me a difficult micro in a park
and we're in real business! I like caches in parks because by now most
cities have acknowledged caching in their parks and the Parks & Recreation
guys are very aware as well. We've been approached by Parks & Recreation
officers before but after telling them we were geocaching they've just
joined in the hunt. Everyday we hear of more and more people running into
trouble (either the owner or the finder) because they were trespassing. This
usually occur in parking lots, behind stores such as Home Depot, Wal-Mart,
etc (my apologizes for using the stereotypical stores). And as more of these
caches are found by newcomers their popularity and acceptance amongst the
caching community grows. Unfortunately their acceptance amongst property
owners and law enforcement do not grow and are leading to discussions of
banning the activity in some areas. Whether finding a cache like this is a
treasure for one cacher or not, when placed in situations like this it's
very detrimental to the sport. 

Maybe we need a different approach than posting negative or snobbish
remarks, but I don't think we can just ignore the issue. Furthermore, we
don't need to assume that all parking lot caches don't have permission. Case
in point, there is a growing series of caches known as the Off Your Rocker
series. They are caches placed at Cracker Barrel restaurants all around the
US. Being a guy from the midwest that grew up on this kind of food I happen
to have fond memories of making stops at Cracker Barrel's whenever we were
on long trips. I decided to start a bookmark list so that it would be easier
for cachers to locate these OYR caches while on a road trip. Something I
found out right away was whether or not permission was allowed for these
caches. As it turns out all caches placed at Cracker Barrels are
pre-approved by the Head of Advertising at the Corporate Office (as long as
the cache meets the other guidelines set forth by gc.com). Hiders are still
encouraged to notify the local store manager but atleast if something were
to happen their is a name and contact information for each cache. I have
included this persons full contact information in my bookmark list. The only
unfortunate side to all of this is that even though approval has been given
not many cache owners actually list this information in their cache
descriptions. Maybe instead of leaving our negative remarks we could ask the
cache owner to supply the name of the person(s) who gave permission for the
cache.

There's actually a similar discussion going on in the forums right now where
they are discussing whether or not permission should be a forced requirement
for all caces located in parking lots (since someone does own the property).
I can't find it right now or I'd post a link to it.

Jared

----- Original Message ----
From: noshdoo tsoh <geocaching at deepsouthwest.com>
To: listserv at azgeocaching.com
Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2007 11:20:38 AM
Subject: Re: [Az-Geocaching] Only an altoids tin!!

In fairness to Jared and the rest of the posters on this topic, I have no
familiarity with actually going after urban micros or the seeking issues
that come with these. I don’t doubt these things that have been mentioned to
be true. The 'sneaking around' aspect of some of these caches sounds like no
fun at all to me personally, and I would give up on a cache that appeared to
leading me to that kind of situation. 

My point, and ShadowAce has heard my rant more than once, ;-) is that if
others enjoy a certain cache, or cache type, and it’s within the law, then
they should be allowed to play the game their way without being harassed by
cachers who don’t like it. A negative find log when you were mislead about
what you were seeking seems a great way to voice displeasure, but there are
those who’d love to go further. Self-anointed cache cops are always waiting
in the wings. How ‘bout an HOA-type organization to represent us and tell us
about the proper way to cache? It’s been suggested. 

  _____  

From: az-geocaching-bounces at listserv.azgeocaching.com
[mailto:az-geocaching-bounces at listserv.azgeocaching.com] On Behalf Of
AZcachemeister
Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2007 9:03 AM
To: listserv at azgeocaching.com
Subject: Re: [Az-Geocaching] Only an altoids tin!!

Perhaps we all should have a look at this site: The Geocacher's
<http://www.geocreed.info/index.html>  Creed

AZcachemeister wrote: 

DWYT is good! 
Here's another that has been used:

>From Prime Suspect's Geo-lexicon.
DPM – Including the letters “DPM” in a cache log was a once-secret way to
indicate the cache was of low quality. DPM is an abbreviation for “des
palourdes mortes", which is French for “the dead clams”. The entire French
phrase is “Les longs sanglots des palourdes mortes blessent mon coeur avec
un languor monotone pendant qu'ils dansent à minuit", which translates to
“The long sobs of the dead clams wound my heart with a monotonous languor as
they dance at midnight”. The idea was to include this phrase in a cache log
to clue in others that the cache was of low quality. Rarely actually used,
as the meaning of DPM quickly spread throughout the geocaching community,
and its secrecy was lost.

Jared Ross wrote: 

Anyone else have any ideas or comments on how we can improve the caches in
our state? Maybe we need a special acronym. Instead of TFTC we could have
DWYT (Don't Waste Your Time). Of course we could always start using this
website to generate log entries for us:
http://loungingatwalden.googlepages.com/RandomLog.html
My favorite generated log entry: "This cache was ill-conceived and
ill-received. You should turn your GPS over to the nearest authorities! TNLN
and almost didn't bother signing the log!!"

  _____  

____________________________________________________________
Az-Geocaching mailing list listserv at azgeocaching.com
To edit your setting, subscribe or unsubscribe visit:
http://listserv.azgeocaching.com/mailman/listinfo/az-geocaching

Arizona 's Geocaching Resource
http://www.azgeocaching.com

____________________________________________________________
Az-Geocaching mailing list listserv at azgeocaching.com
To edit your setting, subscribe or unsubscribe visit:
http://listserv.azgeocaching.com/mailman/listinfo/az-geocaching

Arizona's Geocaching Resource
http://www.azgeocaching.com

  _____  

Any questions? Get answers on any topic at Yahoo!
<http://answers.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTFvbGNhMGE3BF9TAzM5NjU0NTEwOARfcwMzOTY1
NDUxMDMEc2VjA21haWxfdGFnbGluZQRzbGsDbWFpbF90YWcx>  Answers. Try it now.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://listserv.azgeocaching.com/pipermail/az-geocaching/attachments/20070211/b02c1af1/attachment.htm 