The Maze (part two)

Well I don't really remember where I left off, but the maze wasn't quite what I expected. Since it's indoors and you can't get reception on your GPSr they set it up as puzzle caches inside this maze. There was locked room's and to get into those room's you had to figure out a puzzle to get the code to unlock the door to enter. Which inside those room's or "caches" Was some really cool information on how a GPSr work's, gear for out caching, trackable's, and some GPSr's on display. Also in those room you got a stamp on your card.

When you got all 4 stamp's on your card, well 5 stamp's, you get a signal stamp when you go in the maze. But the stamp's are number's. Using the compass on the card and the direction it's pointing that gave you a direction to look at from a list, then you had to take the number's and put them in and you could find your "Key City" using the cord's. The direction was there to give you your North, South, East, and West.

There was a puzzle about the Washington space needle. Another puzzle was you had to figure out bus route/s to get a lady every where on time but a piece of it was missing you needed, which was hid away in a micro cache in the room. Another puzzle was you had to find a ammo can and read the log book. You had to find a certain cacher's notes in it. She had left four threw the logbook but everyone had a number. Then the last puzzle you had to find some letter's from under a bench and match the letter's to a map, that had word's and it made a sentence that told you what item had the code for the door.





It was really cool, the whole family had a great time with it. I would like to see it again before it leaves, so I can take more time reading everything in there. PJ was on the go to find stuff and unlock door's, so I didn't get to read everything. We even hit a IMAX movie while we where there. Monster's vs. Alien's in 3D. That was pretty cool too.

If your close to it, check it out, it's worth the 6 dollar fee to get into it, plus you get access to the rest of the Putnam and there's a lot of neat stuff. I tried to pick up a date while I was there but she just gave me the cold shoulder. (See photo below)

I got to meet a Lackey

I met my first Lackey tonight. I didn't know what to expect, as I first thought it maybe a very serious type of person, but after we all got some time to chat with Shauna Muggs, she's just as much of a cacher as the rest of us. Just all kid's at heart.

In the picture from left to right is: c_dog, Shauna, not sure who's in the back in the middle, Parabola, shabs.

I was pretty excited I got to meet a Lackey. But we had all gotten together for a little pre-party before the Maze Exhibit in the morning. They had some good food, some great company, and got to chat about some of the great adventure's while out caching.

I wanted to get a picture of her and I posing like Jeremy's picture, but she didn't want to do that for a reason. But I did get to tease her about it. :) It was neat to hear some of her story's and I so wish I would have gotten to hear more of them.

Anyways it was great to meet you Shauna!!!! Thanks again for taking the time to do the photo opp. It's the first part of a goal of a geocoin of mine. Now how many more Lackey's can I hunt down? Here's the TB reference number for my geocoin if anyone want's to look it up. I'm still working on the write up and the perfect picture for it for the coin page.

Also it was great to hear about what kind of fun to expect at the Maze.

No more ALR's

It's no secret I haven't been to happy about this no more and you must get rid of all ALR's on all caches on geocaching.com. I've got one that I just don't want to get rid of the ALR. In fact I need to get clarification to even see if it was an ALR. A six stage multi cache with a total of three log book's. You have to sign all three to claim a find. It's not going out of your way to do anything extra. If you are doing the cache as intended you will see all the log book's. You don't have to do the chicken dance or stand on your head while signing.

So to remain in compliance with the guideline's, I made it a "request" instead of required. But after some serious though and thinking how I could change it so what I wanted to do with the extra log book's, I have decided it's time to archive it. I'm leaving it open for the time being to let a few that have express interest some time to finish it.

From what I've gathered it was reviewer's that got the ban in place. Not sure why. But it sound's like they became more of a problem on the coast's and not in our area at all. I don't think there where too many caches with ALR's on them in Iowa anyway's.

I'm starting to feel this is a step in the wrong direction and a kind of limiting what a person can do to make a creative hide. Something extra involved that doesn't have anything to do with geocaching is the given reason for the ban. So how far is that going to trickle down in other cache types. Puzzle's that the puzzle doesn't relate to geocaching?

I'm still surprised the existing one's were not grandfathered over.

Also one had to wonder is this the start of a cache owner losing the ability to police the log's on their caches. If an armchair logger, log's a find will we still be able to delete the bogus log or are they going to take that away from us. I've seen temp ban's and some permanent ban's now for some cache owner's that have deleted log's for no reason other than they didn't like the log. But you have to wonder if they are going to take that ability away here soon.

I wasn't around when virtual's where taken away but they still let the existing one's go or "grandfathered in". As long as the owner was still logging in and policing the log's, then they are left alone. But I can imagine it was a mess for a while with complaint's. I've delt with some of the lackey's and mod's on mine, just cause I didn't' think our volunteer reviewer needed to deal with it. I'm sure he's busy switching cache type for people that are removing the ALR's, and that and taking care of new caches coming out. And I didn't want to add extra work for him.

Just some food for thought, I guess. But as the forum thread's keep growing here, and more thread's are opened. Well, the debate's are no longer debate's, they are getting ugly. I've heard from a few folk's that had a code word hidden in their final cache that was to be e-mail to them by a finder, and they had to drop that as that was an ALR. I guess this should be interesting how it play's out. I would have rather groundspeak leave it into the hand's of the local review's to decide to approve a ALR or not. But I suppose that would lead to lack of consistency due to different opinion's of reviewer's.

On the plus side of thing's we went out today and redid some neat cache's and PJ had a lot of fun with those today.