zuma aka Ralph

[zumaParticipant]

Zuma is my caching name, and the name I use here, a name derived from a record album by Neil Young. My real name is Ralph Edwards.

I have 2 daughters, Sarah (25) and Rachel (20) and a third due in April with WI Robin. Right now, we are thinking of naming the baby either “Zumette” or “Lauryn Lea” and are open to suggestions as to which is better.

We live in Eau Claire, with Robin’s son Christopher (7), 2 dogs (Sally and Jesse) and a cat (Mrs Cougar). I would like to move out into the country, but with the housing market the way it is, it looks like I will here for a few more years.

I work 3 13 hour shifts a week as an ICU nurse, so generally have 4 days off a week to go caching. I like to cache alone (like I did yesterday) and find there to be nothing better than walking in the woods alone, with just the dogs and my thoughts. For me, caching alone is almost a spiritual thing, and I enjoy being in the woods alone. I also enjoy caching with friends (like I did last weekend) and enjoy the good times and the laughs along the way, and the finds are almost secondary to the adventure and the fun.

I have learned a lot in my two years on the WGA Board of Directors, and am hoping that folks will consider voting for me for another two year term. I think that the WGA is a fundamentally strong association, and has done a good job of meeting it’s mission. I do think there are some things that we do need to do in the coming year to grow the association and to reach out to geocachers in the state that are not members.

My priorities for the coming 2 years are:

1. Revitilize our existing committees. This can be done by giving the committees action items to work on, purging the committee membership list of inactive people, adding new members who are interested in working to the committees, and designating a chair for each committee. Our Public Education committee needs to resume planning and conducting “geocaching 101” classes.

2. Start a new “membership” committee, charged with growing the membership and with retaining current members. One of the things that I would like to see a membership committee work on is developing and presenting a “geocaching 201” type of course for new geocachers, to help newbie cachers learn the basic skills that once learned increase the fun caching.

3. Start a new “Geocoin” Planning committee. With Jennifer leaving the Board this year we will need to develop a new way to move ahead on future geocoin development, either this year or next, since Jennifer was the brains and the brawn of the board’s work on last year’s geocoin. It is time to move the geocoin planning away from the Board’s plate, and onto the plate of a half dozen people knowledgable in geocoin development

4. Use the resources of the WGA to promote the West Bend Cash Bash to mega status. I feel that the most direct way to get a mega event in Wisconsin is to build success upon success and work to grow the West Bend event. The WGA can support this in a number of ways, including by having a pancake breakfast event on Sunday morning and by hosting geocaching 101 and 201 classes on Saturday of the event.

5. Continue the outreach to all cachers in the state by WGA hosted events in all corners of the state. We should continue our two highly successful big events, but also start hosting a number of small events throughout the state to reach out to cachers who are not yet members of the WGA. The first small event was held last year in Chippewa County, and we need to do several more of those, all around the state.

6. We should host an annual WGA winter event, on the same weekend as our Board meeting and invite all WGA members to attend.

zuma

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