Snakes on a Geocache Trail - OBGCP61

The Oh Beep! Geocaching Podcast

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This Week..

Doctor D tackles the issue of snakes on a trail

A listener from Perth tells us about his nemesis Geocache in Southern England

Has Shortyknits out dumbed Scott Berks in Dumb Stuff Geocachers Do?

Another bomb alert from the US

Edwardian Geocaching?

Want to win a copy of How to Puzzle Cache by Cully Long? We let you know how.

Last Week..

GC46G5M Church Micro 3773 ~ Durham ~ St Mary the Less by Just-Us-Two. A lovely little church tucked in behind Durham Cathedral.

GC2EJ55 RNLI Series - Sunderland Lifeboat by David-Joanne-Hannah. Great location. Some interesting sculptures to spend time appreciating (check out the photos at ohbeep.com/gallery). BUT, seems there has been zero cache maintenance.

GC3JYHG Sewage Works View (DUSCW) by dgk. For the third year in a row, we failed to find it. It was a bit ripe smelling in the area too. But we did see some wild deer running through the woods, which made the tripe worthwhile.

Nemesis Geocaches..

From Chris..

G’day Mark and Sam

I have a couple of caches that I have been unable to find but one of my most frustrating is one over there in Southern England.

It is GC17KR8, Trapezia Lick. I have been there a number of times while I have been staying there and always came away without the smiley. I would say I have searched under every tree and bush within 30 metres of GZ, fought the nettles and the brambles all without success. With such a good clue I thought this one would be an easy one.

It is good to see that people are still finding it and I will definitely give it another go next time I am over.

I am lucky that the journey I take to this one is quite a pleasant one. I go for a run in the mornings and running up to this cache along the disused rail track from Fareham is an experience a bit different from my morning runs around Perth but isn’t that what makes caching fun.

Cheers

Keep up the good work.

Chris Gore

Dumb Stuff Geocachers Do..

From Shortyknits..

A couple years ago, over Memorial Day weekend in May 2013, Scott and I decided to go to Wisconsin for the weekend to do part of the 400 State Trail. http://www.400statetrail.org/ No, we didn’t drive the car on the trail, but in retrospect maybe we should have! The trail is an old abandoned railroad that the state turned into a recreational trail for biking and hiking and snowmobiles and horseback riding, and there are a few hundred caches along the main trail and all of its spurs. It’s about 3 hours from where we live in the Chicagoland area, but fortunately it’s only about a half an hour from where my sister lives. And more fortunately, my sister has a rental house that just happened to be between tenants that we could stay in. And even more fortunately, she had an extra vehicle with a bike rack so we could set up a getaway car at the end of the trail.

We get off to a bit of a late start Saturday morning, mostly because we had been out night caching until about 2 or 3 in the morning the night before. But we get up and load everything in the two cars and drive to our planned ending place where we drop off my sister’s car. We drive all the way back to the start of the trail in my car, unload the bikes, get our trail passes, and head out. It took us a couple hours of driving back and forth to set up the cars, and it’s close to noon by this time, which is a few hours later than we had planned to get started.

Even so, we had a great time on the trail. The weather was perfect, and we found most of the caches along the way. Back then, I was still a relatively new cacher. I hit find #1300 on the trail, and this was my first triple digit day. We found a total of 114 between the trail itself and the towns along the way. It couldn’t be a more perfect day …

UNTIL…..

We get about 13 miles in, just a miles away from the town where we parked the 2nd car. It’s getting to be evening by now, and I’m thinking that we had actually timed it just about right, and that we’d get to the end just as the sun was setting. So I’m riding along heading to the next cache, when suddenly I have the most terrible, horrible, worst ever thought. I skid to a stop and say … Ooooohhhhhhhh beeeeeeeeeppppppp!!!! Scott pulls up next to me to ask me what’s up. All I could say was, “please don’t kill me!” Eventually I reluctantly told him what I did – I left the keys in the car.

That’s right. The key to the car that’s a mile in front of us is in the car that’s 13 miles behind us. And we’re tired. And it’s almost dark. I had no choice but to call my sister. I explain to her our situation and ask her to bring me a spare key. Well there’s another problem – there’s no spare key. The only key she had to that car was the one locked in my car. She was not too happy about it, but big sisters have no choice but to come to the rescue of the little sister. It took over an hour for her to get to where we were, during which time we found the only bar in the tiny town for a few beers. When she finally got there, we locked up the bikes and she drove us all the way back to the start of the trail so that we could get my car and drive all the way back to the end of the trail to pick up the bikes and the getaway car.

We had a good plan gone all wrong. So I hope that if you or any of your listeners are ever planning to do a bike trail like this and plan on setting up a couple of cars, they’ll think of me and REMEMBER THE STUPID KEY!

News..

The Silent Child has had a name change, he's now The Silent Searcher.

Edwardian Geocaching

Dumb stuff muggles do - a pine tree bomb alert

News from Geocaching.com..

Changes to event caches:

Beginning February 18, 2015, minimum durations will go into effect for Event Caches, CITO Events and Mega-Events.

• Event Caches will now be a minimum of 30 minutes.
• Cache In Trash Out Events (CITO) will now be a minimum of 1 hour.
• Mega-Events will now be a minimum of 4 hours.

PI Day souveniers..

We’re celebrating this year’s Pi Day with two new souvenirs. The first souvenir is inspired by the groups of people creating Pi Day Event Caches. Just attend an event, including CITO or a Mega-Event on Pi Day and you’ll earn this souvenir.

The second souvenir celebrates the mystery of pi - to earn it, log a “Found It” on a Mystery Cache on March 14.

Feedback..

From Redbeard4570..

Lets talk travel bugs. I think your idea about portal or worm holes for trading travel bugs is an excellent idea. Please keep us all updated on progress. I will put it to use. I have two travel bugs that have been logging miles and visits all over the world. TB4JB39, Dog Tag "BATMAN", has been dropped in GC3NTHV which is located in Colombia, South America. On its way from the USA it also visited three caches in Mexico, one each in Costa Rica and Panama before being dropped. This makes it my first travel bug to travel in North, Central and South America and visit more than two countries. Thank you to geocacher Sludge_Shoveler for taking my travel bug on vacation with him. TB4JAZ9 has been visiting caches and logging miles in over parts of the world. After touring the Midwest section of the USA it was dropped off in Hawaii. Of all places to be dropped off. Really. Bummer. An awesome geocacher, Scottish Cavalryman, grabbed it and has had it touring the islands and other great places. So far this includes South Korea, Philippines and Thailand. Here is the fun part. Both of the travel bugs are proxy tags. Neither of the original tags logged many mile. One logged ZERO!!! That is correct, ZERO!!! It never made it past the first cache I dropped it off at. I will give details of how I made the proxy tags in the future. Cache on!

Redbeard4570

Travelbug Race.. Ask Doctor D..

Audio from CraigsOutside

GGH Tips..

Many GSAK Users are running out-of-date versions of the app. Only the last major release is available from the website with the incremental releases through the app itself. Make sure you're using the latest version picking "Check for newer version of GSAK" from "Tools" to keep your version updated. cacheamaniacs.com/ggh-160-gsak-ii

GeoPauls Video Of The Week..

Free Little Library Muilti (GCNW) by GeoBadging..

Check out GeoPauls Youtube channel HERE

Ey Up Me Duck Challenge..

Listener Ey Up Me Duck will be setting us a challenger each month throughout 2015. The current challenge is:

As Feb is the month of love and as some people declare their love for each in church, your challenge for this month is to find 5 Church Micros.

We’ve decided to extend these challenges to our listeners. So, let us know how you’ve got on with this challenge. As an incentive, at the end of the month we will put all the names, of those who have taken part, in to a random draw to win a prize.

So far we have two names in the hat

Trevorskil and Tony Liddell (well Tony needs to get us his proof ;))