AATN

AATN is All About The Numbers, a term used in geocaching that some cachers are only concerned about numbers, not the quality or location of the geocache. This makes my 41st post and with the exception of my very first post, I have steered away from geo-politics and other controversial topics.

This post will be a controversial post and will reflect my views. In times past, issues of the micro vs. ammo can, rural vs. urban, interesting location vs. non-interesting location used to pop up from time to time on the GOWT forums but more available on the River Valley forums in more recent past. On GOWT, I did respond often and sometimes the matter became a little heated. Didn't bother me that much since I was a forum veteran from the History Channel Discussion forums and often got into heated discussions with Marxists. Even had one poster say he was going to buy a gun and shoot the conservatives on the board. I kept the porch light on, no one came by. I held my ground on GOWT and didn't mind seeing the parking lot caches come up in Jackson and later in Memphis and especially the LTL series along Interstate 40, at the displeasure of others. In 2006, I was on a warpath to reach the 1K by my 2nd geo-anniversary and took any cache I could find. I guess it's only fitting that my 1,000th cache was a geocache in a parking lot. In 2006, my average was 12 finds a week.

After reaching the 1K, I did slow down and doing more quality caches, more hiking, working some of the puzzle caches in Memphis. The quality cache issue has come up from time to time on the River Valley site. One cacher made a trip to Clarksville and came home disgusted with the parking lots, guard rails and storm drains. I personally know him and he is in for the numbers and I should have prepared him for the types of urban caches he would encounter. I did reply to his comment. But other topics that included the influx of earthcaches in the RVG area, I have pretty much stayed out. Can't say much since I have 3 earthcaches of my own, one that requires to pay admission and the place is closed more than it's open. An artisan well earthcache right next to a micro geocache and an very out of the way earthcache at Ft. Pillow State Park.

While reaching the 1K maybe somewhat easier today than it was in 2006 and prior, since there are more caches around. Going for the Golden Ammo Can takes much patience, stamina, drive and perseverance if they want to complete the goal in a timely manner. Cachers will have to do the guard rails, storm drains, skirtlifting and seeing more of today, the stop sign caches. Cachers will have to endure long days, early mornings and sometimes stomping in the woods at night.

For the cachers that want the quality and long hikes and like to maintain the 2.0 difficulty and/or terrain average caches, you do have my respect. In the last few months, I have found more of the hard terrain caches including two 5/5 caches in the last 6 months. However, when out of town and on business, I normally have to stick to the 3 or less star terrain caches since I am not dressed for the occasion.

AATN has also produced an issue where final coordinates were given out for a puzzle cache, this topic came up on the Uncle Mack's Blog. Was it ethical? Probably not. We can go further, are PAF's ethical? It is the choice of the cache hunter whether or not to take the coordinates or not. The blog also has a recent post of using the ignore bookmark. I also have an ignore bookmark, it's more for caches that I have no intention of doing, being the caches are behind stores, where I can have a police/security encounter, something I really don't care about, such as a micro in the woods, or a cache that I will never want to go find.

These are only my opinions.