Today marks the 100th edition of the PodCacher podcast!  (In fact, they’ve produced more than 100 podcasts when you include the Midweek Micro podcast, but those are typically numbered .1 (eg: this week’s will be 100.1).) I’ve been listening to Sonny and Sandy since the very early days of the podcast and the quality of their podcasts have improved steadily.  They have interviews with various geocachers and stories of both their exploits as cachers and listeners who send in their stories.  I even had the privilege to do the intro for one of their shows in the fall. 🙂

Congratulations guys!

Go And Get ‘Em 10 (GC11RNC) is taking place in Ottawa April 27th and 28th. In recognition of it, Darin and I are producing a limited edition trackable geocoin. If you want to purchase one (or more than one), please visit our online store at http://geocoins.pinetree.org.

I headed out into the sunny but cold world and found a cache I’ve had my eye on since Christmas.  The Christmas Present Cache (GCZW7T) was originally set up just before Christmas as a sort of Christmas present exchange cache.  It’s since been replaced with a more traditional cache container, though an assortment of Christmas ribbons and ornaments still adorn trees in the immediate vicinity.  While I was following the trails in to the cache, I bumped into a couple of friends who were out cross-country skiing.  They decided to accompany me to see what I was up to.

I also took the opportunity to release a Unite for Diabetes travelbug (TB1B65G), which is one of twenty thousand.  Each of these travelbugs has a specific destination it’s trying to get to.  Mine is trying to get to Tigri, India.

I’ve currently got three items for sale in my CafePress store: an oval bumper sticker, a rectangular bumper sticker and a license plate holder, all with a first-to-find (FTF) geocaching theme and the recognizable four colours. I’ve noticed that the oval stickers seem to be quite popular as three of them have been bought so far and one person has bought a license plate holder.

I’m in the process of designing a coffee mug in the same theme and may add some other custom products, too.

CafePress is a very cool service where you can design custom stuff (t-shirts, stickers, mugs, etc) and make them available for people to buy. You set the price and anything above the base cost of the item is pure profit for you. CafePress handles all the billing, shipping and production, meaning you don’t have to pay any setup fees.

I fired up my podcast downloader this morning to download the podcasts I listen to, including the PodCacher podcast, a podcast all about geocaching. A couple of weeks ago, I recorded some audio at a handbell practice and then mixed me reading an intro over part of the piece that I was conducting. Well, they used my intro in today’s show.

Sonny and Sandy, also known as iTrex and Foxtail, have also created a PodCacher Treasure Cache. Listeners send in special items and they rotate these items in and out of the cache (GCXA12). In the spring, I sent them one of the Go And Get ‘Em 8 copper geocoins that Darin and I created. It was one of the items they selected, so it’s going to end up in the coffee table book they’re creating depicting the first 100 items.

So far it’s been a very cool Monday. 🙂

A lot of geocachers feel that an ammo box is the pinacle of perfection in terms of geocaching containers. Basically, they are metal boxes that come in a variety of sizes depending on the type of ammunition they were designed to hold with a mechanism that requires more than strength and dexterity than your average raccoon has to open. Most of them have some sort of gasket that makes them very waterproof when sealed. They are usually already painted in a drab olive colour, meaning they tend to blend in with the vegetation.

On the other hand, Lock ‘n’ Lock containers are plastic containers that come in a variety of sizes, though usually smaller than your typical ammo box. They have locking mechanisms and gaskets that make them very waterproof. While not painted olive green, they can have cammo jobs applied and they’re usually easier to hide than ammo boxes because of their size.

The prices are comparable, so why would you pick one over the other, particularly if size isn’t a big concern? Well, ammo boxes also tend to have all sorts of markings on them describing the type of ammunition they held and some even have warnings about explosives on them, sometimes on bright orange stickers. Responsible geocachers ensure that these markings aren’t visible, but I have come across ammo boxes used as cache containers that have all the markings intact. If they’re found by non-geocachers, they can easily be mistaken for something much more dangerous than the trinkets found in your average geocache. In some cases, people who have stumbled across them have reported them to the police who in turn have deployed their bomb squads to neutralize the danger. This results in the public being unduly scared, the waste of police resources and bad publicity for geocachers.

If cache containers are transparent then it’s very easy to see that the contents do not pose a threat. Even if an ammo box has had all the military markings removed and the words “geocache – not a bomb” (yes, I actually saw that on a cache container), the overall shape is still identifiable as being an ammo box and you can’t see what’s in it without opening it.

What we really need is a Lock ‘n’ Lock-style container that’s made like an ammo box, with a lever-action locking mechanism, lots of space and a gasket to make it waterproof. If the walls are a bit thicker than the average Lock ‘n’ Lock, then it should be just as durable as the metal ammo boxes, though I haven’t had any durability issues with the Lock ‘n’ Lock containers I’ve placed.

A local geocacher who goes by the name Valpin mentioned a really neat thing to look at in Google Earth.

If you go to N50° 0’38.20" W110° 6’48.32" and zoom out a bit, I think you’ll be impressed. I’ve created a KMZ file you can open in Google Earth if you’d rather not have to cut and paste.