Who Introduced Who?

[+Mr Nibbler]

It was mentioned to me by Major Trek & Co in June 05 who had been told about it by Merecats. I bagged my first cache before Major T did (sorry guys) and introduced The Amazing Spider Man (son no 1) and Mcd1 (son no 2) to it. Mcd1 is on 80ish now (both with me and on his bike) but poor old TASM with a young family, no computer at home and not able to drive is dependent on me to take him out with his trusty camo. He's only on 26 (19 logged, 7 still to get around to stealing time from his employer to log). I also introduced my boss who's son, Howies, has got into it - now on 50 and I mentored him on geocaching as part of his DofE Bronze.

[+Naefearjustbeer]

It was google that introduced me. Only one cache in the county when I started and no other cachers. There are a few more caches and a couple more cachers now

[andy_the_rocketeer]

Before the Grammar Police arrive, isn't it supposed to be "Who introduced whom?" ?

 

Anyway, I found the hobby by chance on the 'net. Can't remember where, but it was ages and ages ago.

Mentioned it to a few people, mentioned it on another forum, and many of them have taken up the hobby too. Don't know their usernames, though.

[+bargee]

Back to the OP

 

I Hang my head in shame that i was responsible for enflicting

Helen in mustardland and the purple pineapples on you

I hope you accept my deepest apologies

 

I found out via a mag article in trail walker

 

So i suppose with their parent the easy ramblers? I am a great grandady

Edited May 25, 2006 by bargee

[+Old B]

Was introduced by *Bingoboy*!

 

Same here - Thank you son

[+scaw]

meismook................ i mentioned something about treasure hunts and then was told about geocaching so off we went

[+PopUpPirate]

Googled for "GPS games", I figured someone wouldve sorted something, but astonished at how popular geocaching was. Didnt have a GPS at the time, but knew about the walkers units.

[+Globetrotter.uk]

COUNTRYWALKING MAGAZINE

 

I was a regular reading and owned a gps as a gadget but never used it. So after reading about Geocaching well I just cant stop now

Edited June 12, 2006 by Globetrotter.uk

[+Icenians]

My intro came from a Canadian collegue who has never actually cached himself. He was aware of the site and pointed it out to me when he learnt I had a GPSr

 

I was reintroduced by Jango & Boba Fett

[+M0GEJ]

I was introduced to caching by Mrs Blorenge when I picked up one of her bookcrossing books. Haven't managed to introduce anyone new yet although I have found lots of 'tolerant drivers' for when my bike has broken......

[+TMM-Sarah]

Yeah, I know its been done before, but I'm determined to introduce a feel good thread!

 

So, which cacher out there is the grandaddy? We were introduce by Helen in Mustardland (our sister/SiL). She was introduced by Bargee...

 

Come on, own up!!

 

Dave and Mary

 

We were introduced by Gareth's dad and partner, Connie, who cache as Thornproof.

 

We now have no time for anything else!!!!

Edited June 14, 2006 by The Morgan Mob

[+Mike+Mary]

We found Nawtcher's Laughter Tor cache (now archived) by accident while letterboxing on Dartmoor. We knew quite a bit about letterboxes; geocaching meant nothing. Several months later, we casually probed some more into this odd new pastime. The mind-trap had been sprung... the rest is history.

[+The Forester]

I was introduced to geocaching by a bloke called Dave, but in a very roundabout and indirect way. Let me explain.

 

As far back as 1981 I had been involved in an ultimately failed attempt to lobby the Pentagon and the White House under the Reagan and Bush Snr administrations not to proceed with the proposed deliberate degradation of the quality of the C/A codes of NavStar GPS under a program called Selective Availability (SA).

 

Meanwhile, quite separately, in the 1980s I trained a group of specialist soldiers of the British army in the techniques of advanced land navigation, including how to measure metre precision co-ordinates of military objectives, such as caches of supplies, by methods other than SatNav. Occasionally I would bury a bottle of whisky as an incentive for my students on their field exercises. I later recalled having thought that it might make a great game when eventually the price and size of GPSrs came down so that they would be affordable by ordinary members of the public.

 

When Clinton came to power we resurrected our lobbying campaign and I was delighted to hear that he'd signed an Executive Order which instructed the DoD to make a plan to find alternative ways of denying GPS signals to an enemy without the use of SA. Eventually the long awaited day came when SA was switched off. I recorded the output of my GPSr perched on my garage roof and the following morning I reviewed the data and saw the exact moment that the signals' dither suddenly disappeared. I still have that file in an Excel folder. Those of us who'd been involved in the campaign excitedly swapped notes during the countdown to the switchoff and exchanged emailed high fives when at last the wretched SA was consigned to the dustbin of history.

 

Through UseNet, I received a message which I thought at the time was worthy of keeping. Here is a paste of the full text:

>>>>>

Date: Tues, May 2 2000 12:00 am

From: Dave

 

-- Now that SA is off we can start a worldwide Stash Game!! With Non-SA

accuracy is should be easy to find someone's stash from waypoint information.

Waypoints of secret stashes could be shared on the Internet, people could

navigate to the stashes and get some stuff. The only rule would for stashes

is: Get some Stuff, Leave some Stuff!!

 

Have Fun!!

 

Dave...

<<<<<

 

I like his naïve idea that there would be just one rule. Today, six years on, the GC.com list of rules runs to more than four and a half thousand words!

 

At the time I was doing a lot of hillwaking on the estate next door to Balmoral and was training Maddie of Team Maddie. It occurred to me that it might be fun to create a stash atop a hill called Craig Nam Ban and call it French Kate. She was a resident of Maddie's house, who in 1495 was tried and hanged as a witch on the summit of that hill. Actually, she was tried for murder and found guilty. She had been hired by the jealous wife of a sea Captain to cast a spell to produce a storm. The Captain had taken a mistress to sea with him and the wife's idea was that if the mistress got seasick then there would be no nookie. French Kate must have overdone the spell somewhat because there was a hell of a storm and the ship sank with all hands. I thought it might be fun to place a stash up there in Kate's memory and see if any stash hunters came and found it, but for various reasons and with various distractions I never got around to creating it.

 

In 2003 I bought a WAAS-capable GPSr to replace two other machines which had been stolen in a burglary. I was sceptical of the manufacturer's claim that the accuracy is better than three metres, so I looked for the co-ords of my nearest trig pillar and checked the accuracy for myself. Google took me to the Trigpointing website and from there I saw a link to those funny geostash things, by now called geocaches.

 

So that's how I found GC.com. If I'm to name any single individual who first alerted me to caching then it's that bloke called Dave and his message in 2000. I've no idea who Dave actually is and I don't know his cachername, but I guess it's thanks to him that I'm posting this long story!

 

In a strange way the whole thing has come almost full circle. 20 years ago I was hired to train those soldiers (actually, their instructors) because the unit's main expert had perished of hypothermia on an exercise in the Welsh mountains and most of the other leading instructors had been killed in a major helicopter disaster. Now I'm instructing soldiers once again in the art of precise position fixing, to metre precision, without the use of GPS. Most of their specialist instructors have been lured out of the army to work on lucrative civil contracts in Iraq and there has been a loss of the skillbase which the old hands had. The current crop of troopers have become addicted to shiny things such as laser rangefinders and GPSrs and are having to be taught the old ways of surveying in the co-ords of caches and of constructing 3-d landscape briefing models from improvised materials. I've become so accustomed to using GPS myself that I have to consciously tell myself to switch the thing off and to navigate properly!!

[NickPick]

that looks like Dave Ulmer's original newsgroups posting!

 

I bought a GPS in 2001 as a present to myself and my latest gadget. I used it for driving directions and mapping manhole cover locations for work. Then in 2003, I found a website with "what else you can do with your gps" which told me about geocaching, so I went out and found my first cache that same day.

[+rutson]

Through UseNet, I received a message which I thought at the time was worthy of keeping. Here is a paste of the full text:

>>>>>

Date: Tues, May 2 2000 12:00 am

From: Dave

 

-- Now that SA is off we can start a worldwide Stash Game!! With Non-SA

accuracy is should be easy to find someone's stash from waypoint information.

Waypoints of secret stashes could be shared on the Internet, people could

navigate to the stashes and get some stuff. The only rule would for stashes

is: Get some Stuff, Leave some Stuff!!

 

Have Fun!!

 

Dave...

<<<<<

 

Dave Ulmer surely?

[The Toughs]

Geocaching was mentioned in the instructions for my Geko which I had just bought for a speedo for my kite buggy

But it wasnt until we saw the article in the Telegraph that we had a go.

Have now bought a 60 csx jees, these expensive hobbies

[+The Forester]

Yes, Rutson, you're right. I've just had a look at the History section and it's definitely daveulmer.

 

I see from his profile that in six years he has placed 6 caches and found 14. Now I don't feel so bad about creating only three in three years!

 

However, by quoting him as my introducer to geocaching, I may have put a bit of a short circuit in the family tree diagramme.

[+psi-lo]

Found references to geocaching while researching which gpsr to buy for walking purposes. Then discovered I was surrounded by caches (one of the good points about living in West Yorkshire) and 115 finds later... geojunkie.

[+rutson]

Remind me Team Loumon..... how many hours from GPSr delivered to Tupperware Hunters and I meeting you at your first cache....

[+psi-lo]

Remind me Team Loumon..... how many hours from GPSr delivered to Tupperware Hunters and I meeting you at your first cache....

 

Either 90 minutes or about an hour and a half give or take a couple of minutes.

So I was a little eager.

[+windywalkers]

Fellsmanhiker introduced us

[+Kitty Hawk]

globalpositioningsystems.com introduced me.

 

I had looked for two unsucessfully and one find in the few week between then and delivery of a GPS from USA.

 

I introduced Solent Sheep (20ish finds), Finn * (90 ish) and Wiggy Boo (1 logged, half a dozen unlogged)