I have been reading about the problems in Conway but just haven’t had time to post my thoughts on the situation. I have worried for awhile about potential conflicts between geo caching and police and fire officials. Let’s face it. When we are out looking for geo caches especially in an urban setting we just look suspicious. The police are trained to look for suspicious people. The same thing goes for bomb squads. They are trained to look for suspicious packages and we’re out there putting them out. After General Lee and the Sherwood fiasco a couple of years back I really became paranoid every time I saw a policeman while I was out geo caching. Summer before last my wife kids and I were on our way back from Colorado and we stopped for the night in Annie Oakley Kansas. The next morning while the kids were still asleep my wife and I got up early to do a little geo caching before we headed out for the day. There was a cache located by an old filling station that had been turned into a community center. As I pulled around the building I noticed a police car about a block down the street and since I knew he would be able to see me as I looked for the cache I decided to skip it and come back later. After picking up a cache at the local high school we came back and there were no police cars in sight so I got out and started hunting for the cache container. After a couple of minutes here comes the police car. I walked over to the officer and said “I hope you know what geo caching is”. He smiled at me and said, “Well I didn’t until about a year ago when I drove by this place about 3 in the morning and found somebody snooping around the building”. “I had him spread eagle up against the police car with his hands on top of his head as he tried to tell me all about geo caching.” Now that I know about it when I see someone walking around this building I know exactly why they are there. I am glad to see the Conway officials willing to work to keep geo caching alive and going in Conway. I think that each of us need to make a visit to the local fire house and police station to make sure they are aware of geo caching also. The nature of the game has you sneaking around trying to look inconspicuous for fear of muggles. When it comes to our local authorities I think education is the key and they need to know all they can about how we play the game so what we do doesn’t interfere with their duties and responsibilities.