Some time in 2003, I asked a co-worker (D&B) about which GPS would be a good one to buy. At the time, I was big into ice fishing and I wanted a way to mark any good fishing spots, winter or summer. I knew that she was a geocacher because she had hooked our boss on geocaching. So for Christmas of that year, I got an eTrex Vista.
I had told my son about geocaching before I had the GPS. He seemed quite interested, but without a GPS, nothing happened. On March 21, 2004, I was bored being kept up inside of the house, so I asked him if he wanted to go and try to find a geocache. He said yes.
After going to the web site, I learned that I needed to create an account to see the waypoint of any cache. I couldn't think of a good account name so I chose "TMRL", which is the domain I own as a family website. TMRL stands for Tom, Madelyn, and Richard LePage. I looked up the closest cache to us, which was Up Against a Tree by Team ManicPair. So I entered the waypoint into my new GPS and we headed to the James Nelson park. Once there, I quickly realized that something was not right. The waypoint was too far north. I also did not know how to put the GPS in a navigate mode. So back home we headed to find that I had made a typo in the waypoint. With that corrected, we headed back to the park again.
Once there, I just had the waypoint on the GPS screen and we walked closer to it. This took us to the west side of the creek that runs through the park. After a bit of searching, I told my son Richard that I was going to walk to the other side. Still no luck. Richard wanted to come to my side of the creek, and there was a fallen 12 inch diameter log over the creek which he wanted to use. He stepped carefully, as I reached out with my hand to assist him. Just as he made it across, my foot lost it's grip and I slipped into the creek. We searched the east side and still came up with nothing.
The next day, we headed back out with Richard's best friend and a one other geocache loaded into the GPS. We went straight to the east side and found the cache after a shorter search. Then we headed to the Mark Twain cache. The three of us had an absolute blast at this cache. As we moved closer, there were many low areas that were flooded to maybe 6"-8" of water. As we got closer, we could see the cache out in the open, but we couldn't get closer than within 20 feet of the cache. We could not see a way around the water, so Richard volunteered to wade to the cache. Somehow, we all started kicking water on each other. We all ended up being completely soaked, but we all had a blast!
I wasn't happy with "TMRL" as a caching name, but it was all that I could think of when I first signed up. Later that fall, we attended the MiGO Fall Fun Day. While there, a new name popped into my head, which was "Cyclops". I thought this was a much better name for myself, as I was born totally blind in one eye. At that time, you could change your own user name. However, the name "Cyclops" was already taken. I checked and saw that the user never validated their account. I wrote to Groundspeak, and they freed up the name. Shortly after that, Richard took the name "Son of Cyclops" and Madelyn took the name "Wife of Cyclops."
The rest is history.
Who?
Everyone's welcome at this event, including muggles.
What?
Help me celebrate 20 Years of Fun, Friends and Geocaching.
When?
Thursday, March 21, from 6:30pm until 7:30pm.
Where?
We'll meet at Oasis Mediterranean Cuisine, 5709 Twelve Mile Rd, Warren, MI 48092
We love their food.
Everyone is responsible for their own food purchases. A food purchase is not required to attend.
Why?
To celerbrate 20 years of fun, friends and geocaching!