The Start Of A New Era?

A few days ago, I was having dinner with a good friend of mine. We discussed many things, but one thing that came up was the fact that he is trying to declutter his home. His attempts at decluttering have not been entirely successful because he has bought a number of things, offsetting the stuff he is getting rid of. The salient bit is that one of his newly acquired items is a brand-new, state-of-the-art 3-D printer. The even more salient bit is that, in his efforts to declutter his home, he has decided to get rid of the older of his two previous 3-D printers. To make a long story short (too late), I am poised to become the recipient of a 3-D printer! This may be the beginning of a new phase of caching hides for me. For a very long time, I have considered the possibilities of 3-D printed caches. I even have one that tends to be behind on maintenance because I have had to rely on my friends who have printers to replicate the container for me. No longer! Now I will be able to easily duplicate and replace one of my most favorited hides. I have also been collecting files for 3-D printing geocaches for a while. I probably have about a dozen of various types. I believe it is time for me to start learning the process with the simplest of these files and work my way up to the most complex.

This is actually incredibly convenient for another reason. I have been thinking a lot more about hides lately. More than a few cachers in the area have noted that there is a dearth of good low D/T hides. Not only that, but there are a lot of caches that have been around seemingly since the beginning of time. Of course, having some of those is great for Jasmer purposes, but sometimes it’s not a bad thing to refresh the game board. Sadly, we recently lost a handful of old Virtuals, archived by someone who is no longer in the life. But that does open up some locations for new caches. I also have several caches sitting around the house that have been gathering dust for a year or more because I couldn’t find the right place to put them and just sort of stopped looking for one. Maybe it’s time to look around again. I’ve noticed an uptick of newer cachers signing my logs. Perhaps it’s time to get off my butt and create something new for everyone. And, with 3-D manufacturing powers, what wonders can be wrought?