Deleted Cacher’s Log -or- “Doooooooooh!”

This past weekend was one of those rare ones when I could cache to my heart’s content. I went to a local state park the day after Thanksgiving. I could only get two caches in before heavy snow started falling (thus causing my GPSr to bounce something fierce!). So, I came back to the park on Sunday and I bagged TEN more caches!! Wooohoooo. So, that afternoon, I started logging my finds for the weekend. However, due to family commitments, I could only log the first two that I found on Friday.

Around 6:30 that night, I get one of those automated e-mails from Geocaching.com stating that my two logs had been deleted by the (same) cache owner. I was astounded! I had never had one of my logs deleted. I double checked the cache pages, just to make sure there were no additional logging requirements. Nope. These were your basic find / sign / hide cache. Now, I was really getting ticked! The gaul of the cache owner. I had heard about these guys in the past, but never thought I’d meet one.  I’d never found one of his caches before, nor had I ever met him in my life. I could not imagine why he had so capriciously deleted my two logs.

Instead of flying off the handlebars and sending an e-mail I really shouldn’t have, I spoke to a couple of local cachers who suggested I fire off a polite e-mail to the cache owner, enquiring why my two logs were deleted. “Okay, Pete,” said I, “Deep breath, be pleasant, now…. type.”  I fired off the e-mail and waited for some snotty, arrogant reply. It didn’t come that night.

The next day, I rushed home after work to check my e-mail. Going to my Yahoo! account, I saw the e-mail from the cache owner, waiting for me like a rattlesnake in the tall grass. I opened it. In short, this is what he said:  “Hi, there was no problem with your logs. You just logged both caches twice!”  DOOOOOOOH!!!!!

When I had gotten home from caching on Friday, I logged my two finds for the day. On Sunday, I had completely forgotten I had logged them already….. and logged them again.

I learned a few lessons from this incident. I hope you can learn from my DOOOOOOOOH!, too.