[RickBlick and Chick]

Sneak over here (the WGA page) to post this, and see that it is already done.
I would have titled it “Mathman borrows a boat to go to Math Camp”

Congratulations Matt on finally getting 3000 finds. It was a sweet adventure and I’m glad you invited me along for it even though we snuck off without you for our milestone!

[RickBlick and Chick]

Thank you all for the congratulatory posts! We had more than two weeks of
perfect weather to not only get married, but to add five more states to the
list of states that we have found at least 5 caches in. Maryland, Delaware,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York!

It’s also quite amazing to see how many caches are being found by all of you!
We even ran across logs by Honeybunnies, zuma, and K-spud in lower Mich.
up near Mackinack

[RickBlick and Chick]

If everything seems under control, you aren’t going fast enough!

Mario Andretti

[RickBlick and Chick]

Well, I was just doing some more reading and realized that the Packers Partners is the official fan club of the GB Packers. With so many fan clubs, I guess I missed that earlier. Now I’m just a little irate!

What I believe happened is; With the final weekend of the contest looming, and Steele not pulling away like he expected, he contacted the one Packers Partner that he knew. That person contacted two others, and they went through the members list of the Packers Partners and submitted ballots for each member without their knowledge.

I know the work involved in getting the 3408 paper ballots that we got in, and I certainly don’t believe they doubled that effort. Nor did they send ballots out to PA for Steele to fill in and get back to Wisconsin.

Then the other thing. I visited Mattress Firm & Goodwill locations every day to drop off ballots and had the people at these locations voting for me even though they couldn’t win the Packers Road Trip for two. One of them posted on the voting page “Mattress Firm is voting for you” and I was told by Green Bay, that we can’t have it appear that one of our corporate sponsors is endorsing you! Isn’t it quite hypocritical if I can’t have that, but the official fan club of the Green Bay Packers is then responsible for placing the new FAN into the HOF????

Of course nothing we do now is going to change anything, but I will be contacting GB with some of this knowledge and letting them know how displeased many of the fans are.

It is amusing to note – when I got to work last night, a recall petition for Steele had been started for me, and was already nearly full

If you watch the video announcement, Mark Murphy does appear to be aware of what happened and not pleased, by his statement “this contest was intended for . . . .” . I’ll try to get that posted in here when I run across it again.
Thanks once again for all your words of encouragement!

[RickBlick and Chick]

From what I saw and experienced, I no longer consider the FAN HOF an honor, because something you can buy, is not an honor. Think I will hunt down the phone number for John O’Neill (St. Vince) and see what he has to say about the HOF

[RickBlick and Chick]

Well, that was fun. I really am at a loss as to how someone from out of state gets 7309 paper ballots. Just the lack of support I was getting from Green Bay whenever I called, had me feeling that this contest was bought and paid for by the time it was half over. I was hoping for a realization that the votes should speak for themselves if we were able to get past all his rule bending and the “we know there are discrepancies in the rules” that I heard from them.

Anyway, the results are in, and our hard earned 3408 paper ballots weren’t enough to get past whatever method he used for the 7309 votes by paper that he mustered. It was interesting to note that Steele talked to no one other than the people from the Packers office, while we other finalists talked together and had a good time.

Hope at least that one of my voters wins the packers Road trip for two!

I don’t feel bad for myself, but I do for all the effort that was put into this contest by others. I also don’t feel right about the integrity of the contest as a whole. My god, St Vince isn’t even in the FAN Hall of Fame yet!! (he’s been a finalist 3 times already, and is a Super FAN!!)

Anyway, these are my thoughts, and not meant for sharing outside of this forum. In the end, I am still a FAN of the Green Bay Packers, even if I might be suspect of the politics involved in whatever just transpired!

Thanks to everyone for your wonderful support, which kept me going even when we were behind in the voting!

[RickBlick and Chick]

Well, that was fun . . .

We were all surprised by the end of voting. But since we expected voting to be over at 5:30, we got about 3/4 of our votes in. Final day Steele voted about 1000 times, and we were able to get 1400 votes in.

The final ‘leg’ of my campaign will be to check as many voting stations as I can to make sure all the paper ballots are sent to Green Bay on Monday. I dropped just over 1500 paper ballots myself, and family may have added just as many!? Apparently, I was the only one keeping a tally of the paper I was dropping, but they mentioned about 40 per day. No idea if Steele had any paper campaign, but given the furious assault online, it doesn’t appear that paper was in the plan . . . you never know!

My plan was just to stay close and the paper would work, but the family had other ideas. Comment was “we don’t even want his moral victory of beating us online” – think he messed with the wrong family? Hope anyway, that the 14th brings good news for the family, since many plan on being in Green Bay with me.

Now, the 8 days of wondering will begin!
Thank you to all my geocaching friends. I certainly will never be able to thank you enough for all the votes and efforts, some of which I may never even know about. The last two days were fast and furious until the voting booth door slammed shut (I didn’t even get my vote in!)
Rick “The Mayor’ Wiltzius

[RickBlick and Chick]

My usual informants were not working last night, so I don’t have exact numbers, but we had a great day considering. Think we were able to add over two hundred new voters, and down by less than 300 at midnight.

I really expected to be down by 500, so I was pleased. I called Joe Kuhar, one of the other finalists, from Janesville, and he is swinging votes our way now. That is part of the ‘new voters’ we added yesterday.

My family in Marinette will be actively signing up voters tomorrow with a goal of surpassing today. I will be in the Tomah/Cashton area for Tammy’s mother’s birthday, but also signing up as many of her family as we can. Well, those that haven’t been voting already anyway!

Will be interesting to see how much he will push the voting machine on the weekend! And, I am in agreement, I think the integrity of the contest, and thus, the HOF suffers from what is happening. I think the Packers don’t like it, but know that ‘proving’ anything would be tough, and probably not worth the effort. Just fix things for the next year as best they can.
Thanks again for the voting, and the continued support!
Rick Wiltzius

[RickBlick and Chick]

Sorry I haven’t been here in a couple days.

Watched Pennsyl tally up 700 votes in an hour and a half one night. Yesterday, he added 266 new votes for a daily total of 1683 votes. Even with heavy campaigning, our best daily vote add was 160. As of midnight last night, we are down by 48 votes. It will bounce around a little during the day depending on who gets votes in first, but he is nowadding 360 votes more than us each day. With 3 days left, and if he adds no more new votes, he will be 1130 votes ahead at the end. We have been adding about 50 a day, but efforts are being stepped up.

I’m sure he has guessed at a number of paper ballots that he thinks we have, and is shooting to get over that number. I’m thinking he is just using the phone book, or possibly one of the other school’s registry to add voters, because simply adding 260 votes on a whim borders on the impossible. I’m just hoping that his guess at our paper ballots is 1000 – we can cover that. People at work have stepped it up even further, and I have 70 votes to drop today. The big question is, will ALL the paper ballots make it down to Green Bay? I drop into 4 different boxes in town, figuring even if one doesn’t make it, the vote loss will be only a quarter.

Almost afraid to see how many more votes he might add on the weekend once he isn’t bothered by having to teach. At least it’s almost over, either way!

Thanks for all the votes, and for spreading the word. Appreciate all the effort going into this whole thing!
Rick Wiltzius

[RickBlick and Chick]

Total votes for Pennsyl yesterday; 1326
Total votes for Lambeau Mayor; 1210

He only had a vote increase of 31 votes from the previous day, but we still lost 116 votes from our lead.

My brother has been campaigning door to door nearly every day down in Stevens Point, I made one campaign stop yesterday, and also dropped in 45 more paper ballots. People at work seem to be kicking it up a notch, as I have 60 paper ballots to drop today!

If you read into the comments on the voting page, I think Joe Kuhar (the finalist from Janesville), is now voting for us. Just not sure how many of his votes he is able to swing our way. His comment “we need to keep this in the state” suggests he is helping.

Our 454 vote lead will only last 4 days, and there are 5 days left of the voting, if he manages 116 more votes each day.

Thanks for your part in reaching a 1200+ vote day (Who’d have thought that possible after our total votes on Jan 1st were 130? and we were in the lead!)

[RickBlick and Chick]

Monday saw an increase of 250 votes for Pennsyl. I know how much campaigning we have to do to pick up 160 votes, and that really borders on the impossible . . . if they are all legit.

He caught up by 69 votes with that 250 vote jump. The newspaper in Marinette plus some other campaigning will hold him off a little, but if he is able to manufacture 250 new votes each day, he will be even probably end of day Thursday. Of course, he won’t have time to sleep any more, given the amount of time it takes to create that many new accounts, and then vote the accumulated total every day.

This sure is fun – isn’t it!!
Thanks again for the votes and continued support!
Rick Wiltzius

[RickBlick and Chick]

That was a good weekend. I expected something from Pennsyl, but didn’t see anything.

Friday we added 170 to our lead, another 260 on Saturday, then 70 more on Sunday. Very little voter fall off over the weekend, and managed to pull in over 1100 votes each of those days. +639 as of midnight.
(Pennsyl only managed 850 votes on Saturday)

Saturday there were two branches of my family campaigning down in Sheboygan, plus we had a geocaching event here in Wausau.

I’d prefer we didn’t post anything to fuel the negative comments Dick, but I liked the composition. While Pennsyl is possibly relying on the same people having multiple accounts, we just keep talking to more people!

We had been just trying to stay with Pennsyl, but when he stumbled last Tuesday(lost 200 votes), I gave the family the green light! It appears to be working.

I’m not sure that Green Bay wants to open the can of worms re multiple accounts. I’d be willing to bet every finalist has a few, even me, even though we’ve done our best to discourage it. Some people just can’t resist the urge to ‘help’!

Thanks for all the votes and support throughout this lengthy campaign!
Rick Wiltzius

[RickBlick and Chick]

Sometimes the media just doesn’t want to take sides, especially with 5 of the finalists from Wisconsin. When Channel 9 had me on early, but not Lori from Eland, her whole family was mad, and I didn’t blame them. Pack Attack made up for that by giving her more time.

We are doing extremely well, and we were back in the lead last night at midnight. Also, with over 1100 voters each day now, it will be hard for Pennsyl to do too much damage with only 10 days left (he says with fingers crossed).

I picked up several hundred paper ballots in Madison today. Two places hadn’t even taken the plastic off the ballots yet. With everyplace in Wausau being either short or completely out, I needed these to feed the people at work who are not online.

I posted another comment on Pennsyl’s vote page for my people to refrain from commenting, or to even worry about what he does. It was starting to turn ugly, and we don’t need it. It will probably get uglier from his people (kids), if he falls further behind, but we shouldn’t take the bait and respond.

Thanks to everyone for your support (and letting me vent a little!)
2011 Packers FAN Hall of Fame finalist Rick Wiltzius

[RickBlick and Chick]

Thanks again all.

Tuesday was a wild day of myself and my brother going door to door, he in Point, me in Wausau. My nephew camped in front of the grocery store and signed people up to vote, plus many other efforts including some through this forum, I see now.

We were able to add about 160 new voters, while Pennsyl’s vote count fell off by 200 voters. Net result, we closed the gap to about 190 votes.

Both of us have about 900 votes so far today – all the effort is paying off and we are closing. One thing to keep in mind for Feb. 5th – someone mentioned they saw that the voting ends at 5:30 pm, so make sure we all vote early on the last day.

And now . . . I must go to work. Work sure gets in the way of fun!
Thanks for Voting,
Rick Wiltzius

[RickBlick and Chick]

Alrighty – Sunday, Steele added 225 voters and pulled into the lead. We campaigned Monday and were able to add 100 voters, but somehow Steele added another 130. We are 330 votes behind as of midnight Monday.

The big swings in the votes during the day are probably due to Steele taking over the voting duties from many of his kids, who couldn’t vote on weekends, or just forgot. (and since they are coming later in the day, probably the school district is tired of him using school time)

We will be campaigning to add another 100 voters, and appreciate everything the geocaching community is doing also! I’m sure some of that 100 is from you! We do suspect he is ‘manufacturing’ new e-mail accounts, but we aren’t going to stoop to that. We will run a clean campaign – thank you all for respecting that. We know we can beat him with real people!

Thanks everyone for voting and passing along the information for the Packers FAN Hall of Fame!
Rick Wiltzius

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