GeoCachingEdmonton.com

[zarya]

Here's a take from a whole other direction.

Some of us don't have vehicles. We cache on bike, or on foot. When we want to contribute to the game by placing a cache, it's not within our means to walk out of a city, get coordinates, come back, make sure those spots are free, then walk all the way back out again to place the cache.

To us who walk the moment we get out of our doorstep, that's the equivalent of going on a 2-day camping hike in the rockies. But of course, people with the automobiles will just drive up to it on whatever country road is nearest, walk maybe 5-10 minutes, sign it, and be gone with a "#3 of 52 on the way from X city to X town with X geocacher, easy cache, TFTC".

Think of it this way. Every cache hunt is a day trip. It's sad that we're stuck in a city and our day hikes involve trash cans, polluted roads, suspicious stares and grimy alleyways. But that's what's there. That's our world until we hitch a ride out one day - then that's a OOBE to the great outdoors. Our world is overpopulated and ugly. No bones about it. But we can't do anything about it. The rest, however, can. So why does said rest take it upon themselves to lament it?

The history of quality of geocaches in cities is like the quality of drinking water in cities, and the quality of *nearly everything else* in cities. The quality of city drinking water has been deteriorating. Some people decide to buy big drums of purified water. Others think it's a standard now, which is sad. Other's *can't* afford to buy big drums of purified water, even if they want to. Others think its sad but don't know that there's anything better. All those who drink purified water advocate the city water supply by paying their utility bills for the water that's used in sanitation.

The only way to avoid it completely is to move out into the country and use well water for everything.

So those who drive out into the country and see those who live there, or who lived out there to begin with, with their good water and lack of trouble about low-quality water, take it as a standard, and enjoy it. Then they drive into a city and lament that the quality has dropped.

The secret to happiness is low expectations.

It's not like one can cure poverty and inner-city crime by talking about it, though, that people should have higher standards or something. Of course everyone should have higher standards. These things degenerate if everyone isn't at least trying to push the envelope. But don't forget that there are people who can't get those higher standards because they're not as well (w)heeled. All spaces will fill with all kinds to cater to all. Unless all are of a particular kind, you're going to find some that are placed by, or cater to, the other kind.

It lowers the quality of the game, for you. But for the other's that's the way the game works, even if it's far nicer if everyone could do things like you, or the way a large number thinks it should be. That's diversity. That's society.

And yeah, I walked to the majority of my few cache finds. Sometimes I take a greyhound in between walks. But that makes almost every one of them meaningful points in part of my geo-adventure, even if they're in a sad, dirty place. Because each one has a whole day's walk's feeling, story and geolocation attached to it, and that's part of the quality. Not a sanitized car ride down a street picking up so many caches in a row they all blend together and turn into a burdensome, unremarkable, low-quality routine to log that doesn't mean much when one has already seen a hundred far nicer ones out of thousands found and possibly compared between.

If you've done the appalachian trail with a moped and have seen so much of it so fast you will of course identify crappy sections and neat sections, but don't diss those who go out and foot-hike a crappy section because that's all they can reach on foot. Don't diss those crappy sections - they're the best sections that some people can ever get without motorization.
If you feel put off by the fact that there are crappy sections, and you find it worth your while to envision less crappy and more neater sections, it's within your power to improve them.
Or get off your moped and do crappy sections slowly; get grimy in a dead-end street next to a trash can, walking there and walking back from the other side of town while doing other stuff, and if you don't think "gee, I've just wasted 3 hours getting a LPC" you realize that it actually has value regardless of how crappy it is. It's a find. It's a find you invested 3 hours of feet and effort into, more effort than it takes to gather up all the new finds between Edmonton and Red Deer from an air-conditioned automobile that becomes a chore to log with anything vaguely interesting almost forgotten. It's worth remembering in its own way.

I had low expectations when I started today, I had two hour's walk, I had some errands done, and I found two magnet micros in back alleyways. I'm smiling when I got back, covered with the dust and dirt from the road that vehicles kick up and I walk through with my backpack, GPS and slowly accumulating memories. Of course I could be happier doing nicer caches in the woods, and I am very much happier when I get an FTF or find a very creatively hid cache, but what honest right does anyone else have to criticize for what makes me happy, because it doesn't make them happy because their standards are higher from a time or place when or where things are better?

I am not the one who placed them, I am not the one who approved them, but I am the one who is happy because when you first start geocaching, when you walk, and when you find meaning most of the time, every little find counts.
For many of my logs my thanks are sincere. I don't always give it out. But when I do, it's not typed rapidly with an exclamation mark before clicking submit. Most of the time it's typed with a pause, not always in abbreviations, and I think about what I am really thankful for. Sometimes it literally is as simple as being thankful for a little trinket to find, a little extra to add to and brighten my day, whatever it is, in the midst of so much chore and machination.
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[DanOCan]

Interesting take on things.

I think the "low expectations" thing is the key. Those who expect too much from Joe Q Public are doomed to disappointment because the only actions we can control are our own.

I'm not above doing a garbage can micro at a roadside turnout. Mrs. DanOCan won't even get out of the car for those now. However, when I his my own RT cache I made sure it was in a Regular size container and hidden away from the trash cans. It just seems to me to be a little thing that brings the overall experience to a higher level for people.

I used to feel a pang of frustration when I would see one of the caches on my "Best Caches" bookmark list get logged with nothing more than a "TFTC". Some of those caches took a LOT of effort to set up and the seeker cannot be bothered to write a unique log -- too busy running off to get the next smiley, I guess.

My Ignore list and I are best friends now. I do not feel the urge to find every cache, nor do I feel motivated by running up numbers. Sometimes the best caching day is a day with no caching at all. I don't feel the need to log a Find just to get one more smiley.

My wish would be that every new cacher get two pieces of advice/wisdom when they start the game:

1) Having higher numbers does NOT earn you greater respect in the caching community.

2) When you hide a cache, the seeker should never be forced to ask 'Why did you bring me here?"

Urban or rural, there are plenty of places to hide a good quality cache, if one is willing to do the work and put in the time. But, like everything else in our fast-food disposable society, it's all about speed -- hide it, find it, log it, and move on to the next one. After all, must catch the person ahead of me in the "rankings".
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Put an end to Lame Cache Syndrome: Remember that not every place in the world needs a cache.

[Bush Creatures]

quote="DanOCan"]
My wish would be that every new cacher get two pieces of advice/wisdom when they start the game:

1) Having higher numbers does NOT earn you greater respect in the caching community.

2) When you hide a cache, the seeker should never be forced to ask 'Why did you bring me here?"

quote]

I am so with that and wish it were always true. Unfortunately numbers have always been hovering there. 10 drive-by micros and the monthly meet-up for beer and wings are not the same as a long hike or even a complex puzzle. But they are all legitimate caches and prove that caching has something for everyone and comparing numbers is meaningless. I, personally, wish that they would remove the number found from our logs. If you want to flash them, you can still use the many "look at me" stats generators for profiles but if you want to just do your own thing then it would be nice to skip them.

As far as the "why did you bring me here?", there are actually number hounds on number of hides. Great that people are giving back to the game but not every neighbourhood park and playground needs a micro in a spruce tree to upset the neighbours who wonder if drug deals are going down or if people are trying to abduct their kids who are playing there.

On the latter, I am starting to get ticked by the term "muggle" like it is us versus other people we share the landscape with. That guy mowing his lawn and that woman watching her child on the swings are local residents, not muggles. We are often the intruders. Get caches out of residential areas!

Back to crossing my fingers and hoping Groundspeak is back up.

[Viajero Perdido]

It's not dumbing down. Have you noticed how many "?" icons there are on the geo-map lately?

It just occurred to me that in the immediate vicinity of VPHQ (my command-and-control centre and site of the annual Illuminati BBQ) there used to be two urban micros, both just a Colorado's throw away. Now both are gone, victims of urban decay. What has that done for the property values?

The first cache I ever found was also nearby, a good old traditional. It's gone now too, but I've filled the void with a puzzle (of sorts) in its honor. Sorry Crusty!

When I started this game there were, I think, 4 caches in all of Blackfoot. Now there are about 60.

I love this game! (when the website works)
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[Bush Creatures]