[Ms. WISearcher]

I agree!!! I remember my first encounter with the park managers. I was sooooo intimidated and scared (yes, I hate to admit it, but it’s true). After meeting with the manager my whole opinion changed…they are just people too. It has been a great experience working with them…for both parties involved!!!

Keep up the hard and important work!
Rhonda

[Ms. WISearcher]

wow…I feel so needed…hehehe…although using notes on the test did help us out!Oh, and paying attention in my US Gov’t and US History classes helped out as well.

I have already recommended this cache and will do it again. Folk Trakers did a great job with this one…it is really not as bad as it looks…and it sure was a heck of a lot of fun to do this with a group…and to have them follow along and biting their tongues not helping us…

Inauguration is coming close…so find it now before it is archived! Well worth your time!!!

[Ms. WISearcher]

It has been exciting to come to this message board and see that there are new nominations coming in daily! This is awesome! Since I am currently serving on the board I have one major question that I would like answered by our nominees(of course it is a mutli cache…oops I mean multi-question…hehehe-I always liked a 4/4 over a 1/1):

What direction do you think the board should take specifically regarding what issues you think should be addressed (if there are more issues than one what is the order of priority in addressing these issues)…and what skills/experiences do you have to help to facilitate this direction?

Thanks and congratulations on your nominations!!!
Ms. WISearcher

[Ms. WISearcher]

The board is currently working on it…we will let everyone know as soon as we know for sure.

[Ms. WISearcher]

Kudos kudos kudos! Here’s to Many more adventures ahead!

[Ms. WISearcher]

We sure have enjoyed many of your hides…quite a few tricky ones…not to mention the evil goopy mess that never came out of my hikers from one of your caches…but wow…100 is awesome…they have been of quality…certainly not quanity!

[Ms. WISearcher]

quote:

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Originally posted by WISearchers:
Webmaster:

Please make the emails fo the board members a flat image (not text). The web spiders are grabbing them as they are and spamming the board.

Thanks,

Tony (Mr. WISearcher)

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Ahhh…so that is why we are getting all of that spam so frequently…I thought that you joined some weird site or something…lol

[Ms. WISearcher]

I would have to say that geocaching has changed my life a bit…I never thought I would be involved with local agencies before…I have learned to go outside of my comfort zone a bit and take those types of risks.

Most importantly I have gained many “life-long” (I am hoping) friendships. There are several people out there that I am indelibly connected with and wouldn’t have met them if we hadn’t geocached.

We also have found areas (in our own back yard even) that we wouldn’t had known about without geocaching. One of the greatest days of our honeymoon was because of geocaching (no, I am not talking about “that”)taking us to an AMAZING location in which we were able to swim with tropical fish, bike on an old highway that was taken over by the forest, and jumpin goff of a big bridge with the locals…we wouldn’t have ever experienced things such as this if not for geocaching…

although I do miss the days of not getting out of my pjs sitting at the kitchen table with a blanket wrapped around me, drinking hot cocoa, and putting a puzzle together…now there are just way too many places to go and hikes to be had…

[Ms. WISearcher]

uggg…I did marry him didn’t I…

I am sure that for those of you that didn’t have the joy of hearing him sing his gravy song that he would be more than happy to sing it for you…

wow…some things simply amaze me!

[Ms. WISearcher]

Congrats Joe and Patty!!!!

[Ms. WISearcher]

Awesome job Jenni!!!! You truly are an inspiration!

[Ms. WISearcher]

I have not chimed in on purpose until now. This topic was brought up to the board prior to this posting and we discussed it…we had determined that there was nothing to do since it was all accusations.

Personally- we had a goal to hit the “big one” (1000) we had a date set, a very special cache picked, and then word of this came up…I personally immediately lost interest. (I can’t speak for Mr. WISearcher) What once had been a great family activity and a wonderful way to experience nature had suddenly been reduced to “So what”. What does it mean to get 1000 caches?…apparantly anyone can do it.

Our milestones will continue…we will get back out on the trails again hopefully soon. This has been good for us actually as we now know that it really isn’t about the numbers to us(although it certainly is fun to go all out and get 20+ on a day and to hit new milestones)…and that we will cache for our own reasons.I think it is more an issue of respect for me. I would rather be respected for the quality caches that I put out or the way I (geo)cache. It is obvious from this thread that numbers do not equal respect.

There are only 1-2% of caches that we have that we haven’t done together as a team (mostly because Tony did some while out of state while at a conference). There was also one of the my favorite days of geocaching where I teamed up with a female member of another team and Tony teamed up with the male member(the four caches that he referred to earlier in this thread)Ladies vs the guys…we all had a blast (even if the guys found theirs first).

We may not all (geo)cache the same, but hopefully we can acknowledge the aforementioned misdeeds and learn from them.

I personally take offense when people point fingers at the board for letting this discussion (or others like it)take place. I think this has been a healthy process for members of the WGA community to share their opinions, feel that they have been heard, and most importantly to learn and heal from this. I acknowledge that it must have been hard for those that admitted this to speak up…furthermore, I think that it is possible that they have learned from this the most(at least that is how I read Tami’s post in particular). I stayed out of posting as a board member because I didn’t want my opinions to influence the WGA members’ opinions…please understand that sometimes saying nothing is not the same as doing nothing.

Rhonda-Ms. WISearcher
WGA BOD

[Ms. WISearcher]

This was a great day. I was very pleased with the turn out of cachers, and the city workers commented on how pleased they were with our group. It seems that often times they get groups such as Fraternities/sororities (not that there is anything wrong with that…I was in one in college), and they really haven’t proved to have the work ethic that our group had. They also were pleased with the wide variety of demographic that our group was composed of. They were very intrigued by geocaching and one of the employees took a GPSr and found one of the temps. They asked great questions. I think we all learned a lot from this event and it should most certainly be an annual event. I would really like to see more service events like this one popping up throughout the state.

At the risk of sounding cheesy…it really felt great to do something that was good for the environment…and giving back a little time. It is because of service projects like the one that we were a part of that allows parks to have more prairie/natural areas and less “manicured golf course looking parks.” With cutting of funding to parks programs, volunteers are going to be necessary to keep all of our parks beautified and cared for.

I WILL be doing this again, and I really appreciate the City of Madison Parks/Conservation employees, Charlotte and Jason, for being so helpful and kind. I think everone learned a lil’ something through this event.

Thanks to all that took part in the event…it couldn’t have been done without you all!!!

[Ms. WISearcher]

Thanks Linus…I should have posted a link!

[Ms. WISearcher]

Way to go you two! Here’s to many more…hope to catch you on the trails soon!

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