Carson Monroe – ACME_WildCachers

[ACME_WildCachersParticipant]

Hi, my name is Carson Monroe, better known to the geocaching world as ACME_WildCachers. I grew up just outside of Wichita, KS, and studied Management Information Systems at Kansas State. A job at Epic brought my wife and me to Madison after we graduated in 2005, and we’ve been here since. We have two daughters; our oldest is seven and our youngest turns five next month. Since I spend a lot of time behind a computer, I try to balance that with some more active hobbies like softball, bowling, and geocaching of course!

I’ve been geocaching since 2005, but have gone through two very different periods in that time. My wife got me my first GPSr as an early Christmas present the year we moved to Madison and we found our first caches while visiting family over the holidays. I was immediately hooked, and we slowly but steadily ran our find count over 120 in about 4 years. Caching at this point was an activity just for my wife and me, but it never really became a regular part of our lives, and it eventually faded from my mind.

Fast forward to May of 2016. We’d welcomed two wonderful daughters to our family by then, but their favorite weekend activity was watching movies. And since the weather had turned nice and I’d seen Frozen about 20 times already, I was racking my brain trying to think of activities that would get them outside. And for whatever reason, geocaching came to mind and I knew we had to try it again. After a pretty rocky start of two DNFs, we revisited a cache we’d found many years prior and the girls were thrilled with the experience. The outing reminded me how much I enjoyed caching in the first place, and thus began my second geocaching life.

This time around has been totally different. I made it a point to make sure geocaching wouldn’t fade from my life. I got a better a sense of the larger geocaching community by listening to podcasts and going to events. I realized I wanted to give something back, so I began placing caches of my own and hosted a quality event last year. I started reaching out to newer cachers to offer guidance, and I’m planning to host at least a few educational events in 2020. And when I got the email letting me know I’d been nominated for the WGA Board of Directors, (after the initial surprise wore off!) I decided this was just the latest opportunity to give back to this community that’s brought me so much enjoyment.

I’m certainly not an expert on the responsibilities and initiatives of the board, so my first priority if elected would be to learn and absorb as much as possible from the existing members. Once I get my bearings, I look forward to promoting community engagement, cache quality, and the use of technology to achieve the goals of the board. I hope that I can bring a fresh perspective and valuable contributions. Please don’t hesitate to send your comments or questions my way!

My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.

[Author]

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