Lets worry more about protecting those that actually need it, not those that brag about being better than everyone else!
I am not greater or strong than anyone else but myself!
David (Team New Hampshire)
--- On Mon, 6/22/09, MayEve
From: MayEve
Subject: Re: [LbNA] Re: PFX 25,000!!! (I mean 28,000!!!)
To: letterbox-usa@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, June 22, 2009, 11:46 AM
I was shocked, disheartened and quite frankly, rather disgusted to read Team New Hampshire's post! Now I usually keep my two cents in my pocket where it belongs, but this is a rare occasion where I can't keep quiet.
Who do you think you are to "un invite" people to a gathering? Perhaps you should re-read your posts and stop behaving in the way you accuse and bash others for. Last I looked, we were all (or mostly) adults, and it truly astounds me what's happening here!
Shaking head,
MayEve
--- On Mon, 6/22/09, gingerbreadjunk@ yahoo.com
From: gingerbreadjunk@ yahoo.com
Subject: Re: [LbNA] Re: PFX 25,000!!! (I mean 28,000!!!)
To: letterbox-usa@ yahoogroups. com
Date: Monday, June 22, 2009, 9:52 AM
May I be hated for the rest of my life! Sounds like your looking for some pitty! Hike all you want, as far as you want, brag all you want, break another spine,but you will never feel the inner peace that only "you" can find. You don't need to put eeryone else down tofeel better about yourself!I might sound heartless in this first paragraph, but I can tell you, it might sound worse in the later ones!
When I started letterboxing (38 years ago), I concidered you and Pete, to be Gods of letterboxing. You guys have gone so many places (Connecticut) and have met so many people (Wal-mart) while doing an activity you love (boasting). But as I have become more involved in letterboxing (39 years), I have gotten to know both you and yours (Pete not as well but still) and found you both to be nothing but rude and selfish people. I have witnessed you hanging out with people on hikes gathering boxes, boasting about your accomplishments, putting down others. Don't remember that? I was there to hear you put me down and my ideas that lots of people (24,46 of them) thought were great ideas. I and/or anyone else that has ever been in your presence surely has heard such filth come from your mouth as well. Why else would there be such hatred towards you on this and other boards?
I don't know what an "O" race, but have a feeling it stands for orienteering (or orgas...or not). Sounds like you would rather take the easy route to a letterbox than to actually find a challenging box. Remember that box located across the street from my house. "Drive-By!" I wonder how many of your "finds" (2,353,454,744) are "Drive-By"(1) finds! Here is a challenge for you! Lets blow off Lightning Bug and Pink Panther for a Night Hike! Now from what I read from LBMA (which most of the posts generate from PA (12,436,534, 537)), they like to challenge each other by planting nothing but boxes that don't make any sense to anyone that lives outside of LBMA territory. Does this make thier boxes unique? Of course, but I would rather use the word "Challenging (unfair)!" Now I don't know what kind of boxes they were planning on searching for for you (as you would put it), but letsstand them up for that night hike! Hmmmm! What do people do on a night hike? I
don't know, oh ya, they all stick together! So usually what happenes, as I have witnessed on(203 1/2)night hikes I have been on, there are atleast 3 or 4 that generally are interested in following the clues and locating the box. Sounds easy to me (like stealing candy from a baby and then bragging about it)!
Which brings me to my gathering in little over a month. Yes, it is a night gather with just the right amount of people. I would like to have more from my area, but to be blessed with a group of respectful people that do nothing but respect each other, I will not complain any further (about them). You signed up for my gather and I dropped you from it. Knowing you as a person and knowing you would surely have a great time chatting it up (I found 2,353,454,744 boxes), boasting (I found ,2,353,454,744 boxes)starting rumors (I found 8,353,454,744 boxes), talking smack about other letterboxers (evereyone else in the world only found 56,783,280 boxes), watching others raise your already inflated PFX count. I don't like you and admit there once was a time when I did (34 years ago). Your brand of letterboxing can and will be talked about for years to come, good and bad, long after your and yours pass. But in my mind, there will always be anasterisk next
toyour achievement, for arrogance.
Breaking your spine and then hiking for the rest of your life is nothing. Try being blind and climbing Everest! Oh, and did I tell you about how last week I screwed up my ankle (both of them)and then spend the next day building a retaining wall (and built a pool, filling it up with 2,353,454,744 buckets of water, walked my hampster, planted and found a total of 8 1/3 boxes)? No, oh that sucked (worse than climbing Everest)!
Damn it all! Randy and I must have shopped at the same market! I got sour grapes too!
David (Team New Hampshire)
--- On Mon, 6/22/09, wandaandpete
From: wandaandpete
Subject: [LbNA] Re: PFX 25,000!!! (and more!)
To: letterbox-usa@ yahoogroups. com
Date: Monday, June 22, 2009, 8:29 AM
> Congratulations!
>
> While I'm not into this hobby/game for the counts I can certainly understand those that like that aspect of Letterboxing.
>
> Interesting how Letterboxing caters to so many different ways to play!
>
Oh, it's so interesting to see all the different personality types involved in this hobby, too: the sweet, the gracious, the jealous, the pugnacious! Oh, how many different revealing types of responses one can get just from sharing one's joy about one particularly hot and happy day... or whole bunches of them...it just makes me chuckle thinking about it!!! Oh, did I forget to say that my recent VA 100+ box day was also a gathering day, which I just happened to decide to attend at the very last moment because I knew I wasn't going to be able to get back far enough north in time to go looking for a "mapsurfer box" or some such thing with Lightnin' Bug and Pink Panther in PA that day, as originally planned? And, oh, did I fail, as usual, to mention that I was the first, and at some perhaps the only finder that day, of many of the boxes I found in that lovely big park around the lake, so I didn't have to take time to stop and read every entry the way I
usually like to do? And, oh, did I neglect to say that many of those boxes had hitchhikers in them (like those old "evil ones"), and, that going by those old "mapsurfer guidelines" (although not by the more recent AQ separation of categories), hitchikers actually count as finds? And, oh, did I not add that I could have found even more boxes that day had I continued on to the "official night boxing" over at the farm, but I opted instead to do my own version of nightboxing just so that I could find every single box that was then in the park, plus a few outside the park as well, which really did take me quite a few hours in the dark! Oh, I could go on and on, but it's just too funny thinking that some folks could get themselves so worked up trying to figure out how many minutes it took me to find each box that they missed the whole point - that I was just grateful for being able to do what I did that day, and that I simply had a blast!!! (as I do on most
every letterbox day, however big or small!) My quip about "o-races" was meant merely as a joke for Randy to consider the possibility that, despite my own personal feelings of inadequacy about my current state of "decrepitude" (which I, of course, expected him to share - I know, "low self esteem"!), there might somehow be someone in orienteering I could actually still be faster than! I know next to nothing about "o-racing", nor have I any interest in it (other than if a signpost were to help me find a letterbox!:- ), so it never even occurred to me that Randy could possibly take my quip as a personal challenge to Himself! O, how things can get misinterpreted! And, oh, the "male ego"! (this is just another light-hearted jab at Randy, in case he can't tell! :-), but it really does seem to me that he just has a case of "sour grapes" because, with all the other terrific boxes now available in beautiful places all around the country, we just no longer have
much vested interest in going looking for particular boxes as we did when they were practically the "only act in town" (although I do have to admit we were a bit intrigued by the recent piquant travel tales of a certain investigator! ;)
Anyway, I really do think that some people take themselves far too seriously sometimes, myself included. Just as my backpacking days meant so much to me because I was recovering from a fractured spine and it just astounded me that I could do it at all, and therefore made a point of counting every backpacking mile, so, too, now with letterboxing I stay focused on counting my finds because it just means so much to me that I can still keep myself going that way sometimes in spite of the bouts of fibromyalgia, PTSD, and other problems. However, it should go without saying that if it were just about the numbers and that I didn't really still love so many aspects of this hobby, I would have quit long ago! And as much as I love the idea that letterboxing, like backpacking, is essentially a private noncompetitive undertaking ( that's actually why I chose them both!), and I basically boycott those activities (road rallies, geocaching contests and such) that
encourage "racing" (other than simply to stretch toward reaching one's own personal goals), I suppose it would be just as naive of anyone to maintain that letterboxing has no experience levels as it would be to insist that there is no distinction between "weekend warriors", " thru-hikers" , "radical repeaters" and "triple crowners" in the backpacking world. (And the thought of Randy "pulling" a woman off the AT is, of course, absolutely terrifying! :-)
Anyway, we set up our PFX clubs to acknowledge the hard work most people do to reach particular letterboxing levels, once again sort of following "mapsurfer guidelines", suggesting that we set the next rung - (after F500, for which Randy even initiated a special box!) - at F2500 - "to give others the chance to catch up"! (Yup, it's in the archives! hmm..sounds a bit more "competitive- oriented" than"acknowledgemen t-oriented" to us, Randy!:- ) Anyway, quite a few folks wanted an intermediary step of F1000 to gauge their progress, so we gladly complied, and we're happy to see that the system has worked quite well. Of course, some of the newer folks may prefer those AQ "Halls of Fame", which don't, as far as I know, give dates for any sort of historical context. In any case, though, some people nowadays could do 500 local "drive-bys" (yes, it's imperative to focus on that verbal aspect!;-) and still get the same "credit" as someone doing big hikes all
around the country, but who cares? Whatever a person wants to get out of the hobby is up to that individual, and I don't feel like I'm boasting if I want to share my joy about getting such a lot out of this hobby in so many different ways and accomplishing something that just a few years back I wouldn't have even thought possible! I guess I can understand how that might be upsetting, though, to some folks with even lower self esteem than I have, but that's more of a reflection on them than on me, and perhaps includes those who think that only they should be allowed to brag about what boxes they've found or that only what they have to say matters, those who desire instant gratification without putting in the time and effort of working their way up the ladder, and those seemingly inherently so full of themselves and their own superiority that they refuse to acknowledge that any ladder even exists because they are already simply the "best"! These are the
folks I personally have the most trouble with, the narcissists, whereas, I happen to be at the other end of the spectrum, always thinking that no matter how much I do, it's never going to be good enough to please that "witch of an inner critic", and that I'll never find enough boxes to gain acceptance from the "letterboxing demons"! So now I just have to say thanks again, not only to the planters who keep me striving to at least try to be that "good enough letterboxer" , who could finally find enough boxes to appease those horrible demons (probably never happen!), but especially to those folks with such high self esteem that they could actually "ego-afford" to be happy for me and congratulate me rather than just trying to find ways to shut me up or put me down! Oh, you wonderful, wonderful people - you'll probably never know just how much that has meant to me! Now maybe I actually can take a little break and rest in peace, at least for a little
while....Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!!
Love,
Wanda
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]