Tony called me one morning, February 2, 2002, a very cold and windy morning, and said he was going hiking and asked if Richard, Peter and I would like to come along. As good Scouts, we never turned down a winter ‘challenge’ hike. To my surprise, Tony had a borrow GPS unit and had coordinates for something called the Nemo Loop Virtual. It was our first geocache find, for both of us. He was hooked and by July, so was I.
Tony’s family and ours go back 13 years. We had a lot in common and the same interest: Scouting, hiking, camping, electronic gadgets, collecting, Sci-fi, and then the ultimate application that pulled everything together – geocaching.
Tony took me to my first Geocaching event, GAGAFAP II, and my first geocaching Pub night, GNASHERS 01. He always introduced me to the best ways of geocaching which included paperless with the Palm. What better way for geocaching at any moment!
Tony has a very good sense of humour (as written in the above posts) and he always recounted them to me during the many days of caching with him. But Tony was also supremely competitive, wanting for the challenge, always fair and continuously looking out for the safety of his geocaching partners on the trail. Tony was always prepared for the hunt.
There were times that I was not completely prepared when caching with Tony. One time (and never after that), Tony, Mike Quigg and went to a Scouting camp event (near our Mudduck Hill cache). Tony and I signed out to do a few caches. He had started a multi and wanted to due a few more stages and some others caches nearby. “Only about 3km round trip” he said. When he calculated the 3rd touch point of the multi he said, “Are you up to the challenge?” (there’s that challenge word and I should have known). Not wanting to say no, and he would have accepted that, off we went. Well the 3km turned into 13km. We got back to the camp to cold hamburgers after the Scouts had finished cleaning up. I never told Tony that I had major broken blisters on both of my feet as I had failed to don thicker socks for hiking, a caching memory never to be forgotten.
Tony loved the puzzles and the challenge to find caches that had recently been logged as ‘dnf’, the multies with a twist and the unique. Tony had a knack at finding the caches. On the days of our power caching I was never over 5% at being the one to find it first. He never gave up until he was absolutely convinced that the cache was gone. During this spring and summer, I told him and Sue that Tony was the best GPS receiver that I ever had. He got us to the cache area (even ones that I didn’t have the coordinates) with minimum of hiking and our ‘dnf’ were almost zero.
On Sandy’s and my 500th cache find, he stood by patiently with Sue while we searched for about what seemed about 5 mins to me. His words were “Congratulations on your 500th” and I’m sure he said “It’s about time”. I don’t know if he was referring to our 500th or the time to find the cache. That same cache had a CJ’01 crest in it. Usually the person to find the cache between us gets first choice at the contents. Since Sandy found this one, she flipped a coin and I won. Tony accepted the result and didn’t even offer to trade. I’m sure he wanted it more than I needed it.
Sandy and I had been looking forward to regular picnic caching outings with Tony and Sue. We enjoyed this slower venue and Sandy still would have let me power cache with Tony.
We’ll miss you greatly Tony, as a person with a supreme personality, as a best friend for 13 years, but mostly as our geocaching mentor and partner.
Love
Neal, Sandy, Richard and Peter – the CheeryO’s
