The One That Started It All

We all had to start somewhere. Who took you to find your first geocache?

My first geocaching experience was just that - an experience. Teenie_Allen, whom I called Redial at the time, was working at a summer camp where I ran the front office. Saturdays were our only real days off and she convinced me to go with her one Saturday in August 2009. She picked out a multi-cache called Bird Cage and off we went. We parked in a nearby residential side street and started searching for the first waypoint.

 

I had no idea what we were looking for. A container? A word? A clue? A sign from heaven? After wandering around like idiots for half an hour, Redial says, "Maybe we should choose an easier one." I stuck my head behind a fence post and noticed a little piece of paper nailed to the back. "Is this it?" Victory! We were back in business.

Plugged in the coordinates we found on the fence post and headed off in the direction of the second waypoint. Rinse, lather, repeat. Second waypoint, wandering around for half an hour with no idea what to look for, deciding to give up just about the time we discover the next piece of the puzzle. And so it went for each and every stage of the multi. Until the final.

By the time we gave up, the sun had sunk low in the sky and we were quite exhausted. As we approached my car, thoroughly defeated, I noticed something stuck on the drivers side window. It was a police officer's business card with these words written on the back: "Your presence is alarming the neighbors."

And somehow, geocaching still managed to become my favorite past time.

P.S. A friend and I finally found Bird Cage almost a year later, in June 2010 after several more failed attempts.