Patience is a Virtue

I can tell you right now, I will not be posting this week.  Last weekend was filled with caching, this weekend is filled with studying for my last final exam as an undergrad.  It is with a little sadness and a lot of exctiement that I will finally complete my Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology.  I must resist temptation and buckle down this one last time (until I start grad school, TBD). 

Here are the many exciting things I have planned:

• Adding "pages" to this blog.  Blogger now allows me to create a bunch of pages that will always appear under the title (i.e. About me, About geocaching, etc).  You know, like a real website.
• Other tinkering of this page.  Might go off-profile a bit. No dancing hampsters, I promise.
• A catch-up article to cover the best caches I haven't had time to write about.
• Handi-caching (my experiences plus a little research about what others are doing).
• Geocacher fashion and hair (I've been toying with this for a while, I think it could be fun).
• Software (there are so many neat things out there to manage our data).
• Profile of a geocacher (this may involve me conducting my own research, muwahaha).
• Puzzle/mystery caches (code breaking, puzzle-solving, etc).

Now that I won't have to focus on studying 20+ hours/week, I can actually do these things.  I'm pretty stoked.  The past 18 months have been a whirlwind and I'm going to try really REALLY hard to start posting once a week again.

If the Piece Fits

Last Sunday (while I was supposed to be writing my last post) I was perusing the Geocaching.com Facebook page when I came across a post titled Geocachers Puzzle.  It was a photo album showing about a hundred submissions to a jigsaw puzzle created by Louisiana geocacher, Sequoia_2.  Here's how it works: you email her to request a puzzle piece, she mails you the piece, and then you decorate it and send it back for inclusion in the puzzle.  It's pretty simple, but epic in terms of both creativity and commitment. 

I requested my puzzle piece immediately and emailed FTF Geocacher with what I thought was a hot tip.  Their response:  Why don't youuuuu write about it?  (That is NOT what they said, but it's what I heard in my head when I read the email.)  It's not that I didn't want to write about it, I just wasn't sure I would make time to, which is kinda my style lately. 

A few days later, the 4x4" shiny white puzzle piece arrived.  If you know me well, you know that I'm neurotic and become paralyzed when faced with too many options.  Wal-mart is hell for me...but I digress.  That's basically what happened with the puzzle piece, so I threw some mail on it and forgot about it for a few days.  But in the back of my head, the wheels were turning about what makes me unique as a geocacher that could be expressed in an art form. 



In the mean time, I decided to find out more.  Sequoia_2, whose real name is Brenda, has been geocaching since 2005.  She discovered the Community Puzzle in 2007 while purchasing school supplies.  At the time, she had no idea how this project would evolve.  She decorated one piece with a geocaching theme and showed it to a friend, who (of course) loved it and wanted to decorate her own.  Next, Brenda started passing out additional pieces and assigned a trackable number to the puzzle.  Word spread like a newly-published cache notification and soon she was receiving pieces from all over the world.  Her goal is to give the completed puzzle to Groundspeak when she has 500-1000 pieces.  Brenda doesn't know exactly when that will be, but she thinks it will be before the 20th anniversary of Geocaching in 2020.  Several hundred pieces have been mailed out so far. 

There are no specific goals/requests for pieces, but there are a few things she would like to see. "It would be awesome to have one from every country in the world...[and] it would be great to have pieces made by the reviewers and other Groundspeak personnel," says Brenda.  She goes on to say that although there are a few well known cachers she would be "honored" to have designs from, she would never ask.  I couldn't help but wonder if she has a favorite piece so far.  As you would expect, she loves them all and feels that picking one would be like "picking your favorite child." 

Another thing I wondered about Sequoia_2 was what kind of cacher she is.  PNG'er?  Number fiend?  FTF hound?  Her reply, "My favorite cache would have to be the one that takes you for a nice long walk in the woods.  I do truely love those the best."  Good answer.  I love those, too. 

Last night I unearthed the puzzle piece.  I had only one, so I knew I better have a good plan before even touching it.  I went into my office to look for my sketch book, long since buried by more useful, grown-up things.  But before I found the sketch book, I found my old juggling balls (more like hacky sacks than balls).  Twenty minutes later Brian showed up to investigate the dull thuds reverberating across the house.  Ashamed, I went back to looking for the sketch book. 

A few minutes later, I found it and started doodling.  I decided to focus on the iPhone, because I owe my start in geocaching to this glorious piece of technology. 

The first one is uber simple, because sometimes less is more.  In this case, less is really boring.  The second one is a take on the iPhone's compass app icon.  I actually fell asleep while doing the second one, if that tells you anything.  The idea for the one that became the one hit me last night, but I didn't have the energy to explore it.  It began as a very rough sketch.

Hopefully you recognize where I was going with it (and hopefully I don't get sued for copyright infringement).  A few hours later, I had this final product (click to enlarge).

I'm really happy with it.  The true stroke of genius was spotting a hot pink gift bag in my office that became the perfect backdrop.  The only downside is that it reinforced my tendency to hoard things.  Case in point: sometimes hoarded things make the perfect backdrop for a hobby-centric craft project.  Take that, A&E!  Anyway, the doodle is done with black Sharpie, and the white bits (stroke #2) were made from blank file folder labels.  It's not perfect, but it's way better than I expected.  The final step was carefully gluing the art onto the puzzle piece.

If you want to decorate your own piece, just go to Brenda's geocaching profile to find her email address.  She's very friendly, and very prompt, so you shouldn't have to wait long for a response.  Don't worry about your mad skillz, or lack thereof.  According to Brenda, "You don't have to be artistic, as long as your geocaching name is in the design, it can be anything at all!"

Also, if you are going to request a piece, please do so with good intentions of finishing it.  The postage alone is an enormous cost, especially if she has to send out 2-5 pieces for each one that actually comes back.  When you add-in the cost of the actual puzzle pieces, the envelopes, and Brenda's time, it's just best if we all respect it.  Those are 100% my words.  Brenda seems like she would be the last one to complain.

My Geo-Community

First, I will offer up my excuse for not writing in...a while. This time, it's school. I'm taking a class that is putting me far outside my comfort zone, so in order to succeed, I have to focus. Unfortunately, that's meant less time for writing. I planned to get caught up a few weeks ago when I was recuperating from surgery, but honestly, I just didn't feel like writing. I felt like sleeping and doing things that required no brain power.

Anyway, this is a post about my recent appreciation for the geocaching community. Brian and I cached for over a year before making our debut at an event last summer. Prior to that, I only knew the random cachers I had run into at FTFs and the few I converted from muggles into full-blown cache masters.

A while back I found out through Facebook that some of my friends were planning a night hike in search of a 4/5 mystery cache. I declined immediately, being that I have a long-standing dispute with all things arachnid. But like a tick, once the idea of this cache took hold, I couldn't shake the itch.

My drive was fraught with anxiety. I had visions of arriving to a collection of empty cars, cachers murmuring somewhere in the darkness, banjos duelling a melancholy melody. And if I arrived on-time, then surely social anxiety was not far behind. After all, I didn't really know half these people, nor did I have any caching accolades to boast. Adding to both fears, I got a little lost on my way over, in an area with one-lane dirt roads, moats, and a complete lack of street lights. Oy! What actually happened was much less exciting - I arrived in plenty of time.

After a brief foray into the woods to find a nearby cache, we were ready to begin our journey. We gathered in a big circle to do official introductions and discover that almost 40 of us had chosen to spend our Friday night dodging palm fronds and cow patties. The object would be to follow a series of Fire Tacks that would lead us to two checkpoints. A set of 3 tacks can be seen in the photo above. After completing both phases, the GPS tracklog should spell out two numbers. Those numbers (below - SPOILER ALERT) would be used to complete the coordinates to the actual cache.

Before you look below, realize that I thought long and hard about revealing these numbers. I do so ONLY because the owner gives them away in the hint and because I have tremendous admiration for what they've done here. I decided to remove references to the cache name and approximate area to conceal the spoiler as much as possible.

We spent over two hours ducking under branches, hopping over downed trees, and for me, blindly following the backpack ahead. There was a lot of friendly chatter, punctuated by the occasional "wait, how long has it been since we saw a Fire Tack?" and "Where the hell did the trail go?"

We didn't see any wildlife, probably because a heard of elephants would have been more stealthy. We did, however, find the cache, about a two-minute walk from our cars.

Needless to say, the conversation was swayed by rumbling stomachs. We descended on a nearby IHOP with an appetite for pancakes, mostly. This turned out to be a fantastic opportunity to get to know the people we'd all been stumbling around with in the woods. Facebook friend requests abounded, sort of. We swapped swamp tales, puzzled over mystery caches, and even spread a little gossip.

A week later we met up for another purpose - to say goodbye to a local geocacher who has since moved away. The venue wasn't stellar. We were at first crammed into a tiny room for a group half our size.

Cozy? Yes. Fire hazard? Most definitely, but we made it work until they were able to give us more space. A new cache was posted just for the occasion, which became apparent as cachers slipped out in ones and twos. A few minutes later someone came back with a small bird house, symbolic of impending travel and the home he will always have here in Central Florida. We all signed the log and the cache was presented as a farewell gift.

My experiences with my geocaching community have been nothing but good. I have found my fellow cachers to be accepting, supportive, decent people with a great sense of humor. Each of us is a unique blend of techie, adventure-seeker, problem-solver, and ninja (I said blend...I didn't specify the balance).

That is not to say we are drama-free. We have our share of scandal. We have squabbles between real-live adults who refer to themselves with screen names and have arguments laced with enough geo-specific lingo to make a D&D dungeon master clutch his bag of polyhedral dice and scoff, "nerds."

The bottom line is that cachers come and go, but the unifying urge to search for that-which-we-cannot-keep remains for those of us that will keep looking.

Meet the Travel Bug Bandit

Gather 'round, boys and girls, muggles and (number) fiends. Meet the Travel Bug Bandit.

Thousands upon thousands of travel bugs circle the globe each day. All but a few that stray into Travel Bugmuda Triangle. Travel bugs enter with the grandest of aspirations. Some want to visit every state, while others will benefit a charity, but most exist for the pure joy of discovery. All of them wait patiently, yearning for the opportunity to do something. An unlucky few cross paths with the Travel Bug Bandit.

They go willingly, begging to be moved. Any cache, any distance is a step closer towards meeting the goal. Travel bugs don't have mothers. There is no one to teach them self-respect or self-defense. There is only the goal and a distant owner who may or may not follow their progress. And so they go. First into the backpack, or maybe into a pocket. Darkness that will surely lead to the light of rebirth in a new cache. The bug is patient - it can wait a few days, even a week. After all, not every cacher caches every day. Weeks go by. Other bugs arrive, crowding the space between. A bottle of suncreen explodes, which prompts a thorough scrubbing of the backpack's contents. Hope lies in the indignities, but so does disappointment. Such is life in the hands of the Travel Bug Bandit.

It was not always this way.

Many a-cache ago, a wide-eyed neocacher discovered her first travel bug. Inside a swampy, arachnid-infested quagmire, lay a lock-and-lock that was home to GI-Wanna-Go-Caching (a GI Joe action figure with bendable appendages and a thinning layer of paint). It was like opening a box of cereal to find a slinky, or scratching a lotto ticket to find 3 liberty bells in a row. Joyous! The travel bug was posed for photos, logged, and promptly dropped in the next accommodating cache.

It continued this way for a time and the geocacher did her part to help bugs reach their goals. She even released a few of her own into the wild. This how she learned the truth about this whole travel bug ownership thing. No one pays attention to the goals, the bugs sit in the same cache for weeks, people rarely post pictures. These neat little treasures are nothing more than pieces of flair, masking the dignity of waiters and waitresses everywhere. The Travel Bug Bandit reared it's ugly head.

One day, while caching on vacation, the cacher and her boo discovered a geocoin clearly marked "DO NOT REMOVE." The Bandit tossed the coin in her backpack. The boo protested, but the Bandit would not be denied. When she returned home, she was met with insecure dogs, dirty laundry, and guilt. The tag did not mean "do not remove the tag from the coin," it meant, "do not remove the coin from the cache." She could see this now. The cacher immediately emailed the owner, apologized profusely, and mailed the coin back to it's rightful place. The Travel Bug Bandit momentarily lost it's hold.

But like a recovering addict, the urge was always there, barely in-check. The demon just under the surface waited for a moment of weakness. Occasionally a particular coin would pique it's interest - an ornately designed coin, or a super-cute travel bug necklace. If she didn't log the find, who would be the wiser? But she resisted, always passing travelers along in a timely fashion, unaware that the Travel Bug Bandit lurked on the horizon.

It gained strength with each passing day. A bug here, a coin there. Toss them in the car, move on to the next, get busy, don't cache for a while, add another traveler to the collection. It continued this way for moons and moons.

Do not abandon all hope, for this is a tale of redemption. One humid, sunny morning, the Travel Bug Bandit found itself at a tree much older than travel bugs and geocaches. A tree that pre-dated GPSr units, satellites, and even electricity. It had survived hurricanes, witnessed civil war, and laughed at Ponce de Leon's quest for a fountain of youth.



Near the tree was a cache holding a homemade paper geocoin. It was printed with the words, "Bad Karma." The Travel Bug Bandit faltered, but did not lose it's grip.



The coin made it's way to the car and settled in the cup holder. It stayed here for weeks, a daily reminder of the Universe's ability to restore balance (to the force). One by one, the kidnapped travelers resurfaced - one in the backseat, another in the trunk, a coin mixed in with a pile of mail, and a couple at the bottom of the backpack, coated in some unknown goo. The Travel Bug Bandit revealed itself for the awful creature it truly was. The cacher brought them all together, washed off the goo, and planned a bunch of bug-friendly caches. In a matter of hours, months of abuse came to an end as each traveler was reintroduced to its former life.

The final test came when the cacher crossed paths with a cache holding a geocoin. She thought about leaving it. Avoiding all temptation was surely a way of preventing future transgressions; however, this was also a chance to find out if the Travel Bug Bandit was truly gone. Not only was the cacher successful, but shortly after logging it, she received an email thanking her for finding the seemingly lost coin. Apparently it had encountered its own bandito. It probably would again, someday, but for a brief moment it's owner knew exactly where it was.

New Year, New Phobia

A few days ago I discovered that I was a mere 32 finds away from 400, so I made it my goal to reach that mark before the end of the year. Like many, I had Friday off, so I decided to do a newly-posted numbers run. It was wonderful - one of the best caching experiences of my life. The weather was perfect, there were hardly any muggles around, and the caches were super easy. I walked over 5 miles and eventually I reached my goal.

We had plans to go out for New Year's with EyeoftheSeeker and his wife, so as soon as I got home I headed for the bathroom to shower. There, I discovered, a few inches above my navel, a black lump. I tried to brush it off, thinking it was a wood fleck or stray fuzz, but it didn't move. I looked down and saw tiny black legs. I gave it a little tug, but the tick was firmly embedded.

I immediately went to Brian, shirt in hand. "I have a tick. I don't know what to do," I said, pointing to my stomach, voice trembling.

He just looked at me, unfazed, "You have to take it out."

"Yeah, I know THAT. I don't know what to do. This has never happened to me before. Do I use a lighter? A match? Is that an old wive's tale? I don't know."

"Get a butter knife and a lighter." He said this with stone cold apathy.

I grabbed a butter knife, a paper towel, and one of those long lighters you use to light a grill. I've never seen this done before, but I had the impression that you tap the tick on the ass with something hot, he dances out, apologizes like a freakin' Canadian, and submits to a swift execution.

I held the butter knife in the flame until Brian told me to stop, and then I hovered over my belly with it. Realizing I was not capable of this, I handed the knife to Brian and looked away. With one hand he braced my stomach, holding the knife with the other. He tapped the tick and its legs kicked wildly. I whimpered. "Here it comes," Brian said, but it didn't. He did it again, same deal. This time he also tried to brush the tick away with the paper towel, causing it to do something that hurt very much. I yelped and owww'd and finally started to understand what our pets go through at the vet. We tried this several more times while I hyperventilated and grasped the counter for moral support. "Just get it out! I don't care!" This time, Brian grabbed it with the paper towel and with a smooth yanking motion the blasted thing was out.

Brian told me to put all my clothes in the washing machine, with extra cycles. After that, I did a very thorough tick-check and took a shower. We went out, watched the ball drop from the comfort of our living room, kissed at midnight, and drank champagne, yada yada yada. I checked the bite occasionally, which is now all red and welty. I did a fair amount of research on the subject and learned that we should have used tweezers, but whatever.

Today was destined to be low-key. I woke up at a reasonable hour, but lazed around in my pajama pants and watched movies with Brian. About halfway through Jaws I adjusted my position on the sofa and felt an achy pain on the back of my leg/butt cheek. Yeah, I said it. Butt cheek. I went to the bathroom and discovered an implanted and very swollen tick #2. The area around the bite was all red, telling me this thing had been there for a while. There's no way I missed it during my tick check yesterday, so this one got on me later. I went back to Brian and announced this with as much profanity as possible.

I went around the kitchen again gathering the necessary tools, as well as a pair of tweezers and a baggie so we could keep this specimen. This time, I was nauseous. I gave the stuff to Brian, grabbed a blankie and laid face down on the carpeted living room floor (the BEST place to be handling an open flame). I balled up the blanket and hugged it, watching Brian's reflection in the glass door of our tv console as he heated up the knife. We went through the same tap and squirm routine. Again, I whined in an exaggerated fashion. This little guy REALLY didn't want to let go. I felt extra sick when the tick ripped in half, terrified that I would now have to go to the ER and have this thing surgically removed. Brian, ever the skilled surgeon, was able to extract the head, thankfully. This tick had definitely been in for much longer, so it left a visible puncture that is very sore and stung like hell when I cleaned it.

This time, the post-extraction activities included stripping the bed and spraying the inside of my car with bug spray. We also did a tick check of eachother. It wasn't nearly as fun as the Brad Paisley song makes it out to be. Brian had the presence of mind to check the shoes I wore yesterday. Like a huge moron, I took them off and left them in the laundry room. When he sprayed my shoes, another tick came shooting out. I think (hope) that's where tick #2 came from.

The last time I dealt with ticks was when we went geocaching in South Carolina and ended up covered in seed ticks. I was lucky that none of them attached. I had no idea this is how the whole tick thing goes down. Now I get to watch for signs of Lyme disease and panic every time I get an itch.

Interestingly enough, when my sister-in-law came down with Lyme disease, I did a little blog post about it. Apparently I forgot all my own advice:

To prevent Lyme disease, Wikipedia recommends wearing long-sleeved shirts, trousers, and a hat. Light colors are recommended because they allow you to see the ticks if they do hitch a ride. Pants should be tucked into boots or socks...but unless you're a commando, that looks pretty dweeby. I don't personally recommend it. Plus, I can tell you from experience, ticks go right through socks. You don't want them exposed. Wikipedia also recommends reducing the local deer population. I suppose you could take it upon yourself to do that.

If you do find a tick with it's head burrowed into your skin, pull it out with tweezers. And for God's sake, don't twist! I've always heard you should apply a flame to the tick to make it back out, but I would imagine that is advised against. Brian's preferred method is "draining" the tick...like with a needle. Or, "pop it like a grape."

Anyway, I have all kinds of other stories from yesterday, but we'll save that for another posting.

10-10-10

On October 10, 2010, some 78,313 Found It! logs were posted to geocaching.com. Without me, there would have been only 78,309. Like many, I had the goal of finding 10, but it just didn't happen. I had a feeling the iPhone app would be slow or dead (it was spotty at best), so I spent a lot of time planning, which contributed to a late start. Anyway, I did my part.

I started with a newly-posted cache by my house. If you're local, it's part of the Princess Anna series. For some reason, this one took me forever to finally see. Neon blue blends in so well with the trees.

Next, I revisited a cache I'd attempted earlier in the week. Shortly after arriving home from work one night, I got the onimous cache-posted email. Instead of making dinner, I grabbed a flashlight and headed for the door. I parked in front of EyeoftheSeeker's house, debated telling him I was there for about 3 seconds, and then went to find the cache by myself. He showed up about 2 minutes later, which was good because I needed someone to blaze a trail. Heels and a skirt weren't really the best choice for a level 2 terrain. Seeker8 joined the hunt and we waded into the waist-high ferns togethr. We searched for at least 30 minutes, but we came up with nothing. It was much easier to find in the daylight.

Two finds down, I headed for phase 2 of the Princess Anna series. The cache is located on the Cross Seminole Trail near an elementary school. Since this was Sunday afternoon, I parked at the trailhead (in the grass, not in a parking space) and walked to the cache. After a few minutes of stealthy-ish searching, I looked back up the trail to see a police car parked behind my car. I briefly contemplated ignoring it and continuing the search, but then I figured I might be able to avoid the ticket if I just offered to move...plus there was the possibility they would tow my car. So, I walked back, grudgingly. As I approached, the cop got out of his car and started talking into the mic on his shoulder. Here comes the SWAT team.

"Is this your vehicle?" he said, clearly addressing me.
"Yeeeeah," I said, in shame.
"Is everything alright?" he said.
"Yeah," I gestured back down the trail, "I was just geocaching...heh." My shoulders gave a mini-shrug. As I was preparing for the geo-whatnow conversation, he cut me off--
"Oh! There's one of those down there? I see people all the time looking for them. We must have a bunch in Winter Springs. Especially at the golf course, you know the one that's closed. These people come out of the woods with just a GPS and a pen. My partner and I, we think it's pretty cool."
My thoughts at that moment ranged from awesome to whoa. I replied, "Yeah! It's a blast. There are sooo many around here." [insert awkward silence] "Do I need to move my car?"
"No, you're fine. The school is closed today and you're off the road."
"So it's ok if I go back and find it?"
"Oh yeah, go find it! I just wanted to make sure you were ok. Have a nice day, now."

And that was it. I walked back to GZ and resumed my search. But that's not all - a minute or two later I saw this thing dart out from under the bridge I was standing on. It turned back and looked me straight in the eyes. We just stared at each other, until I had the presence of mind to take a photo. The clicking sound scared him off, so unfortunately I didn't get a second chance. The pic I took sucks, thanks to a combination of the distance (about 30 feet) and me being a spaz.

The picture below is a better representation of what I saw, but it's not mine. Anyway, I've thought about this moment a lot. It was part wonder, part terror. Wonder because I had no idea those things were around here, and terror because it challenged every notion I had about the nice kitties of my childhood. The look in its eyes said "I will munch your brains and bathe in your intestines!" I realize now that lot of his mean look comes from the "eyebrows". Those are textbook angry cartoon eyebrows.

I didn't realize until later that in the minutes before I saw it, I heard it. I kept hearing this bleating sound, like a sheep. I assumed that there was a farm nearby, or a sheep got loose, but it turns out that it was the bobcat. Fascinating.

After this little episode, I finally spotted the cache. Now I had the coordinates I needed for the final stage of the Princess Anna series.

This last piece seemed to take forever. I'm not sure which was worse - the tree cover or the swarms of mosquitos. Either way, it made for a miserable experience. When I signed the log I didn't really care what was in the cache, I just wanted it to be over. Now that I look again, there was some cute junk in there. Oh well.

Thus concludes my 10-10-10 caching experience. If you haven't seen it yet, here is Groundspeak's commemorative video.

The video was originally published on Latitude 47, the official geocaching blog.

Evelev's Review of the iPhone4 for Geocaching

Some geocachers use a map and compass, others carry a GPSr and clipboard. I am the type of geocacher that does everything with my iPhone. I plan, locate, and document all from the palm of my hand. You can imagine my sheer joy at the announcement of the iPhone 4. They promised faster processing, multitasking, better GPS accuracy, and a range of photographic enhancements (two cameras, flash, and a whopping 5 megapixels).

I joined the iPhone 4 zombie mob late in the game and did not pre-order online like I should have. It was only a few days before release when I tried to get my name on a waiting list. In order to accomplish this, Brian suggested I help my chances by being…flirty. I won’t confirm or deny if I used this tactic, but I found myself in the #4 spot on the waiting list at a nationwide chain electronics store. Oh, Apple, what have we become?

While the guy set up my phone, I jabbered moronically about how awesome it would be. Soon he handed me the phone like a delivery nurse hands a newborn to its mother. Angels sang, trumpets sounded, and the guy behind the counter let out a sigh of relief that I was leaving. In the following days, almost every one of my apps released an update to catch up with the new technology. Groundspeak was among them.

Groundspeak has released several updates over the past few months, but the first iPhone 4 version was terrible. Despite the improved GPS technology, the current location dot was extremely slow to update. This made it difficult to pinpoint a parking spot, let alone the actual GZ. I spent a lot of time driving in circles and the maps only compounded this issue. They were slow to zoom and the resolution was horrible, making it hard to read the street names. Back then we also had to choose between satellite and street view. It was barbaric.

I give credit to Groundspeak, they have addressed all of these issues. At the writing of this blog post, we are on version 4.2.1 and the app is pretty darn functional. The satellite and street maps have been integrated, meaning I can view a satellite map (which offers vital clues to a cache’s location) AND see the streets names (which tells me where to start looking). The maps load faster and seem to be more accurate, but I can’t say for sure. Maybe I’m just better at finding.

Another bonus of the iPhone 4 is the button that rotates the map according to the finder’s point of view. Instead of having to shift the phone around to see where I am in relation to the cache, the map moves for me so that all I have to do is walk forward. I use this function almost every time I look for a cache.

The new app also includes a bunch of new features on the home screen. For one, we now get an indicator of whether the app is working – a little dot that turns green when online or red when offline. Let me tell you, that little red dot is infuriating because there is nothing the user can do except look at it (Edit: I hear that logging out and then logging back in helps). Luckily, this rarely occurs. In keeping with their attempt at giving the user more info, Groundspeak also gives us a box dedicated to the device’s current location. It includes the current location’s coordinates, a map of those coordinates, and estimated accuracy (in feet). As I write this, my estimated accuracy is fluctuating between 98 and 213 feet, but the map looks dead on. I may finally be able to hide a cache and use the coordinates from my iPhone.

The search function has improved significantly. When I click “Find Nearby Geocaches”, each listing now includes the cache name, difficulty and terrain ratings, distance, size, and type (traditional, mystery, etc). I also have an option to sort the list by distance, GC code, title or type. I would assume that if you just pressed the “Find Nearby Geocaches” button, you would probably want them sorted by location, but it's nice to have options. Personally, I don't find this function particularly useful because I kept the option to see only 10 caches at a time.  I don't need to see the 30 closest caches unless I'm looking for something in particular. 

One of the lesser-known functions is the ability to add your own waypoints.  I'm not sure how long this function has been available, but someone at FTF Geocacher had to point it out to me, and I have shown several people since.  If I just blew your mind, here's how it works: Look-up a cache and view the map by pressing "Navigate to Geocache", click the little flag in the upper right corner, and enter the coordinates.  You can even name the waypoint, in case, say, you want to add actual coords for a mystery cache and the coords of your car.  Speaking of which, if you want to add the coords of your car, simply stand by it and click "Set to Current Location", which will auto-populate your current coordinates.  Just make sure that your iPhone's signal is somewhat accurate at that point in time.

I found a wonderful use for this feature yesterday.  I was at an event and the hosts had placed several "temporary" (i.e. not published or assigned GC codes) caches for us to hunt.  At the sign-in table there was a sheet with all of the coordinates.  It only took me a few minutes to plot them all out.

My only gripe with the app right now is how slow it can be at times, especially on the weekends.  Sometimes I press a button and have to wait a full 60 or 90 seconds for it to respond, or I get the error "No caches found" when I know I'm standing within a few feet of one.  I don't know if the servers over-loaded, or maybe the cell network in Orlando just sucks, but whatever it is, it's really annoying.

The app as it exists today is full of neat features and easy to use. Groundspeak has obviously put in a lot of work to make it that way. They continue to take feedback from the users and make improvements, which is really all that we can ask for. I eagerly await the next update.