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Tuesday, January 19, 2010

How is Your Geocaching "EGRK"?

When I go geocaching I always carry with me my "pouch o' stuff". If you watch many of my GeoSnippits videos you can see it. All army green and after several years of geocaching it is showing it's battle scars. Come to think of it so am I but that is another story. The point is among my geocaching thing-a-ma-bobs is what I call my "Emergency Geocache Repair Kit". It's not for my personal geocaches but for ones that I come across that need maintenance. Think about it, how many times have you come across a geocache where the log book is so soaked no one can write on it? Wouldn't it be nice if someone had the hindsight to bring with them a maintenance repair kit to fix that little issue so other geocachers can enjoy the find? I think that would be an extremely nice jesture. So Mr./Mrs. Good Samaritan, what would you need to do to accomplish this?

It takes very little effort and the impact is huge. All you need is some or all of the following:

Emergency Geocaching Repair Kit

- Pint sized zip lock bag
- Some pre printed log sheets of different sizes (you can get them here) http://www.techblazer.com/geocaching-log-sheets/
- Small jewelry baggies
- Large jewelry baggies
- Duct Tape
- Gorilla Glue

I am sure you can come up with other goodies to keep in your EGRK but this is a good start.

The pint sized zip lock bag is to hold the EGRK components together. The whole thing will take up very little space in your geocaching pouch.

The pre-printed log sheets are a huge bonus to have because you come across soggy log books all the time. They come in all shapes and sizes needed and techblazer's website does a great job providing all that you will ever need. Simply replace the log book if it really is in that bad of shape or add a sheet or two if it is full. You might want to get in touch with the geocache owner to see if they want said logbook of goo. Most times they are just grateful that it was replaced.

The small and large jewelry baggies are also helpful for geocaches that use them. After so many opens and closes the seal breaks and a new baggie is needed. Replacing a logbook baggie will help keep the log book dryer longer. Always a cool thing to do.

Duct tape is the universal fixer of just about anything. Many times geocaches get damaged from walking sticks poking through the top. A temporary fix would be to fix said damaged lid with some duct tape and then notify the geocache owner that the cache needs to be fixed. The duct tape will help temporarily keep the cache contents from damage.

I don't care what type of adhesive bonding you use a magnet and plastic is never going to hold forever and things break. Taking a couple of minutes and fixing a broken geocache with gorilla glue is again a fine way of helping another geocacher out. It takes a couple of minutes of effort and is greatly appreciated within the geocaching population.

So there you have it. The EGRK is a simple and highly needed piece of equipment all serious geocachers need to have on them. If everybody took a couple extra minutes to fix some of these troubled geocaches we find the game would be a whole lot less... gooey.

See you out on the trails,

-HHH


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