Howdy,

First off.. I want to congratulate the Roadrunners on reaching their goal of 
700 cache finds in one year! All I have to say to that is.. WOW!

Also, congrats on your one year anniversary in geocaching!

Team Ropingthewind just passed our one year mark in geocaching as well. I 
had 492 cache finds on that one year mark. I was working for 500, but 
business and other issues kept me from reaching my goal. :(  However, 2002 
was a very enjoyable year for geocaching for us.

We found our first cache find on January 6, 2002. That was the "Junk Drawer 
Junkie Cache" out on Hwy. 88 near on the way to Tortilla Flats. Myself and a 
teammate, Brent, were there for that first find. This was a very special 
cache find.. however, we didn't know it at the time. We were the first team 
to arrive to the area to seek out this cache. With our very limited 
experience :), we ended up at the bottom of a canyon near the cache site. We 
eventually made it to the cache only to find another cache team there 
searching as well! :) We didnt know it at the time who they were... but, 
they introduced themselves as Larry and Connie of Team Wyle E! We had no 
idea who this team was and just knew they were geocachers! We all searched 
together for the cache.. but, Wyle E found it first! We almost had a first 
find on our very first cache find! Later on down the road we found out who 
Wyle E was, we were very excited to have met the top dogs of Arizona 
geocaching! :)  To top this first caching experience off.. Larry offered to 
take us back to our vehicle. (We had hiked in from the road). Again, we 
didn't know it at the time... but we got a ride in THE yellow jeep! :)

I thought that was a very special very first cache find that I wanted to 
share with yall. Meeting Wyle E and getting a ride in the yellow jeep AND 
ALMOST beating them to the first find (had we not hiked the hard route to 
the cache we would have beaten them by probably 30 minutes or better!) is 
very special indeed! ;)

Larry and Connie are very kind folks and I was glad to have had the 
opportunity to meet them that day (as well as many times since) and we knew 
at that time, geocaching was going to be a hobby for a long time to come! I 
noticed geocaching on a link from Garmin.com. I found a bunch listed and 
well... being the competitive type person I am.. I chose Junk Drawer Junkie 
as it hadnt had any finds yet! ;) So, I grabbed a couple of GPS's and my 
teammate (who was over here at the time) and we hopped in the truck to go 
seek out this cache. I love navigation and map reading and the use of GPS, 
etc. I also really enjoy hiking... so, geocaching has been a natural 'want 
to do' for me. I have met many nice folks on the geocaching trail in this 
past year and look forward to meeting new teams down the road as well!

The funny thing about all this was that I didnt really want to get involved 
in another hobby and after this first find was debating whether I should 
continue because I knew I would get hooked on it! :) LOL  Well, I did and 
went out and found a couple of caches near my home and it just snowballed 
from there! :) LOL Here I am one year later and 6 caches from the big #500!

Scott
Team Ropingthewind

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