Gerald's and Coyotecal

Being that a long road trip to St. Louis is probably in my plans in the near future I decided to go to Gerald's Tires to check to see on what the problem is with my spare tire. Several months ago I backed up into the stupid light pole which is literally in the middle of the parking lot driveway. I have no idea why they couldn't put it in between the cars like they do in normal parking lots! Anway, I forgot it was behind me and BAM! I hit it. Since then the tire has leaked air and I wasn't sure if it was the the actual tire or the rim.

There are two Gerald's locations on Rivers Avenue so when I reached the closest one I noticed that the bays were full so I circled around a couple of times. I finally saw an open spot and parked my car. No sooner than I turned the car off a Gerald's worker came up to my window and said "You can't park here!" and I said that I was going to park in the other spot and that I had been circling around but someone else took it. He said "This spot is reserved for someone and you need to park in the parking lot over there and wait!" Wow. I had never been treated like this at Gerald's before!

I ALWAYS go to Gerald's because they will normally bend over backwards for their customers. They do a lot of things for free... tire rotations, plugs, check tire pressure, etc! AND if you are a lady and get any paid service they leave a rose on your seat - how sweet it that?

After my confrontation with this jerk I told him I would go elsewhere and had pretty much made the decision to never go to Gerald's again. I was already having a bad day and this confrontation made it worse. I drove up the road and happened to pass the other Gerald's location. They only had two customers so I decided to pull in and give them another chance. I told the guys what happened at the other location and they asked me who I talked to and unfortunately I never got a name.

I explained to this MUCH NICER Gerald's employee about what happened to my tire and he took it off and tested it. He was doing the submerging-it-in-water-trick and he called me over and showed me where the air was leaking. I asked him it was the tire or the rim and he said the rim. He pointed to the area where I hit the light pole and said "See here, all this corrosion? It's like your rim has cancer" - I paused and said "Ooh! Bad choice of words!" He gave me the name of a wheel and rim place and then checked my other tires. He said the tread is fine on my tires but for some reason the sides of my tires have dry rot and that I should replace them ASAP. Lovely - I wonder where that money is going to come from?!? He said that happens a lot with people who live near the ocean or where it snows. I told him that I must have hit the location lottery twice.

Just after I left Gerald's I received an email from geocaching.com. Some cacher named Coyotecal put in a request to have one of my geocaches's archived! What the hell!? The email read: "This cache is in a private cemetery. Cemetery caches are not permitted in South Carolina and this should be archived." I am so sick of these South Carolina geocachers and all of their uber-sensitive caching rules. I remember the days when caching was fun.

Since I was out on the road I couldn't really respond to the request properly so I tried to think of other things to keep my mind off of it, which was really hard to do! Once I got home I looked at Coyotecal's geocaching profile page just to see what his/her caching stats are and what gave them the right to be the geocaching police. Well... they didn't have any stats! They have been a member since 2008 but have no cache finds or hides. What is that all about? Do they have nothing better to do than harass people?

I was so mad that I went and deleted the log from my caching page. I knew that Brad, the cache reviewer, would still receive the archive request. About an hour later I get this post from Coyotecal on my cache page: "I'm not sure why my previous log was deleted. This cache is in a private cemetery. Cemetery caches are neither permitted by geocaching.com in South Carolina nor are they legal within the state (see SC Code of Laws (Criminal Code, Title 16, Crimes and Offenses) for illegal activities within a cemetery). Please archive this cache." Needless to say, I was livid!

I sent cache reviewer gpsfun/Brad an email:

Hi there!
I just received the notification that my cache 'Swamp Fox' GC266TY had a request for it to be archived due to it being in a private cemetery. As I stated when I listed the cache, it is NOT in the cemetery and that it is located on the edge of the park grounds next to the parking lot. The cemetery is fenced in and a good 100 - 200 feet away from the cache.

The person requesting the cache to be archived does not have a any cache finds or hides, but has been a member of geocaching.com since 2008. I think this person is a caching vigilante and I really have no idea what their problem is. It's obvious that they have never even been to the cache!

Anyway, I hope that you take all of this into consideration when you review the request to archive. I will happily supply photos of the cache location in regard to where the cemetery is located if need be.
Thanks, and happy caching!
~Pamela
aka skitpero

A couple of hours later I received his response:

Pam,
Thanks for your note.
It might be best for you to go ahead and send some photos of the cache location to me. When I reviewed your cache I depended on your note and the aerial photos, and the satellite imagery for that area is not crisp.

Thanks.
-Brad

Did you ever think geocaching was this serious??? Apparently in South Carolina it is!!! I have cached in many states and even in the U.K and have NEVER run into the problems I have in South Carolina. Some of my favorite caches in Ohio were what they called "spirit cache's", which are cache's located in cemeteries. Most of the geocachers I know are incredibly Earth friendly and would never dream of harming a cemetery or a nature preserve. There are even CITO events which stands for "cache in trash out" where cachers will converge on an area and spend several areas cleaning it. Also, a lot of us take those little 35mm film containers and put a plastic grocery bag in it. On the outside of the container we put a sticker that says something like "please use this bag to pick up trash on your way out, refill with another bag and drop in another cache" along with our caching name - I can honestly say that I have never seen one of these in a cache in South Carolina! Perhaps the S.C. cachers aren't as Earth friendly as those cachers I learned from in Ohio. Caching in South Carolina is so much worse than anywhere else I have cached and that is really sad.

The day that Robin and I placed the cache I took some photos, so I pulled them up and prepare them to send to Brad as my ammo. No one can ever say I went down without a fight!





Okay, the last photo I found on the internet, but I thought that it gave a pretty good illustration of where the cache was in regards to the cemetery. I deleted the Coyotecal "the caching vigilante's" post on my cache page again and I'm sure that will really piss him off.

I bet you can tell with all the arrows and stuff that this has really annoyed me (to say the least!) Now I'm just waiting to hear from Brad about what he is going to do with the cache. The cache reviewer has the final say.

In the meantime, I'm using my super-fantastic ninja-like investigating skills to found out exactly who this self-important, self-proclaimed geocaching police named Coyotecal is...

What a jerk!