Cache Advance

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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“Congratulations - you are no longer muggles!” I announce this to all of my students when I wrap up the Geocaching 101 classes that I teach. They smile and laugh, because now they are in on the secret game of geocaching and they know no one can call them a muggle ever again!

What is a muggle you ask? In ‘Geo-Speak’, a muggle is a person that does not geocache, and most likely has never heard of geocaching. Where did this term come from? Remember Harry Potter? According to Wikipedia, a Muggle is the word used in the Harry Potter series of books by J. K. Rowling to refer to a person who lacks any sort of magical ability and was not born into the magical world.

The Wizarding world of Harry Potter exists alongside that of the real world and contains magical elements similar to things in the non-magical world. Many of its institutions and locations are in places which are recognizable in the real world, such as London. It comprises a fragmented collection of hidden streets, overlooked and ancient pubs, lonely country manors and secluded castles that remain invisible to the non-magical population of Muggles. Hmm, sound familiar? Just like geocaching!

Many geocachers tend to think of a Muggle as a person who lacks any sort of geo-magic and is not in or aware of the geocaching game or community. To me, as a geocacher, I believe I see the world a little differently than my non-caching counterparts see the world. Kind of like when Harry visits Diagon Alley or Platform 9 3/4: these are places and things that muggles don’t see, but we geocachers know how to find these places (we have the coordinates!) and we know how to come up with the cache once we are there.

So, why do we need to be aware of muggles? Caches are meant to blend into the environment, and only be discovered by other cachers. If a muggle sees you searching, finding and/or re-hiding a cache they will often get curious and wonder what is going on.

This often leads to 3 outcomes:

1.  The muggle will ask you what you are doing, leading to a great opportunity for you to be an ambassador of the game

2.  The muggle might take, damage or destroy the cache after you have re-hidden it. A cache that has been tampered with in this way is said to be “muggled”.

3.  The muggle will contact the authorities (police) and report suspicious behavior. This can lead to public alarm and possible bomb squad action!

Outcome #1 is great and it’s happened to me many times. Obviously we don’t want #2 or #3 to happen, and since we just don’t know how others will react, my best advice is to be careful and avoid muggles by employing some of my hints:

53: Patience pays: wait for muggles to go by if they might see you find or re-hide the cache. This helps avoid them finding it

54: Notice some muggles? That GPS in your hand looks amazingly like a phone… pretend it is one! Now you look ‘normal’ to them

55: Try not to yell ‘FOUND IT’ too loudly -it can scare the muggles!

56: It is often really OK to tell a muggle what you are doing -curious folks can make great cachers once they know about caching

57: Looking for a cache can look suspicious to many muggles, and they occasionally call the authorities. Always cooperate!

58: A dog is excellent muggle camo: no one will wonder why you are poking around at the bushes with your dog along

59: Go caching with friends and work as a team to distract muggles while one of you goes for the find and the re-hide

What methods have you used to avoid muggles? What outcomes have you had with encounters with muggles while out geocaching?

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I am tweeting daily geocaching newbie hints on Twitter (@CacheAdvance), and wanted to go into a little more depth regarding my recent tweets on the Geocacher’s Creed http://www.geocreed.info.

The Geocachers’ Creed is designed to help orient new players to the ethos of the geocaching community and to guide experienced players in questionable situations, so that everyone can enjoy geocaching. I stumbled on the Geocacher’s Creed rather by accident back in 2005: I was doing some research for my first product, Dr. B’s Cache Repair Kit, and found a link to the Creed while doing some key word searches on www.geocaching.com’s forums regarding geocache maintenance and repairs.

My last WA State DeLorme Grid Cache!

The creed was a perfect fit for my philosophy, and a perfect fit for justifying my new idea, which was literally in the ’scribbles on a napkin’ phase of development. What resonated with my kit idea was “Make minor repairs if you can, it will save the owner a trip”. Yes! And my kit idea would help you do just that! I felt so validated and ethical all at the same time.

I bundled all my cache repair kit ideas and headed down to our local Small Business Administration to see about what my next steps might be. I got amazingly lucky and met a business counselor that actually knew what geocaching was! Remember, this was 2005… We had a nice session, some good business tips were shared, and he told me he was looking forward to helping me build my first assembly factory/warehouse in the near future.

Cache Advance isn’t quite at the stage of needing our own factory just yet (although we have more than tripled our floor space and undergone a total remodel last summer); we have experienced some fantastic growth and continue to do, even in these challenging economic times. This past year has been a lot about managing that growth -a very good problem to have and one that I don’t mind losing sleep over now and again. We are very grateful to our customers, both new and returning, and love to hear product and other ideas and suggestions from you!

Geocaching is a great hobby, and one that can be enjoyed by the whole family in a very cost effective way. While vacation and other family and personal budgets are tightened, geocaching can continue to fill that recreational spot nicely. After 7 years, I still have a blast every time I go geocaching!

Speaking of geocaching, here are my Newbie Hints 46-52, based on the Geocacher’s Creed:

Newbie Hint 46: When placing or seeking geocaches, I will: Not endanger myself or others.

Newbie Hint 47: When placing or seeking geocaches I will: Observe all laws & rules of the area.

Newbie Hint 48: When placing or seeking caches: Respect property rights and seek permission where appropriate.

Newbie Hint 49: When placing or seeking geocaches I will: Avoid causing disruptions or public alarm.

Newbie Hint 50: When placing or seeking geocaches, I will: Minimize my and others’ impact on the environment.

Newbie Hint 51: When placing or seeking geocaches, I will: Be considerate of others.

Newbie Hint 52: When placing or seeking geocaches, I will: Protect the integrity of the game pieces.

The Geocachers’ Creed is a voluntary set of guidelines that describes how geocachers in general act.  It is not affiliated with any organization or listing site.  See How the Creed was Developed for more information on how crowdsourcing was used to develop the Creed.

Do you have any stories or thoughts to share regarding the Geocacher’s Creed?

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